Buffalo Rising Online

Do not be turned off by the not-so enticing area of Genesee Street where the Dnipro building stands. Cameras are rolling and you can watch your vehicle remain motionless from the Ukrainian basement bar while ordering a drink from charming volunteer bartender Steven. Born in Germany, raised in Brazil and now residing in Buffalo, Steven is good preparation for the cultural and technological enlightening that is "Architect". He pours every drink generously and tends to forget the ice and soda.

"Architect" is third in a non-narrative trilogy by Dan Shanahan who designs productions around the specific Buffalo buildings. The trilogy marks three rifts in Ukrainian culture and mythology. The first production, "Muriel Goes Walking", represented a spiritual break in Christianity and Paganism. The second, "Terminus", related to the self imposed famine or the natural break. His final…

Hidden behind ad plastered doors, across from Jim's Steak Out, resides the Allendale Theater. Tonight I had the pleasure of entering through those doors to enjoy, Glass Garden, a production by Junko Hayashi. However, be advised that the event is sensory intensive and not recommended for the hypersensitive crowd. This combination of interpretive dance, narrative, film and experimental music creates an electric stimulation for around an hour.

This is not to say that the production was by any means vulgar or offensive, but I did witness a few senior men and women alarmed by the aggressiveness of the cross cultural portrayal. The intent behind the production was to express the alienation that comes with entering another culture after that culture has had a severe bought of technological advancement. Well, portray alienation they did.

In about ten chapters, the narrator delves into…

Studio Arena Theatre is looking for actors to perform several roles in their holiday production of Indian Blood by A.R. Gurney. Auditions will be held Thursday, June 21 and Friday, June 22 at Studio Arena Theatre. Indian Blood is scheduled to run from December 4 – 30, 2007.

Studio Arena is producing A.R. (Pete) Gurney’s newest comedy, Indian Blood. Gurney, Buffalo native and playwright is a Yale School of Drama graduate and past MIT professor. The story is set in Buffalo at Christmas in 1946. Indian Blood centers on an incident in the lives of two cousins who cause trouble at Nichols School and the boys blame their “Indian Blood” for all the trouble that they cause. Packed with references to Buffalo-area points of interest, this show will surely delight local audiences.

Studio Arena Theatre seeks male actors to play 16-year-old high school students, no taller …

Last weekend, a few friends and I went to see the play The Physicists at the Alleyway Theatre.

None of us had ever heard of the play, or knew anything about the story. The only thing we knew, which was told to us from the man sitting to our left, was that it is kind of like a mix between One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest and Dr. Strangelove.

What we got was exactly that. The play is a dark comedy about three inmates of an insane asylum who ponder the importance of modern technology and its implications on society. On the surface the play has an absurd, almost Monty Python-ish slapstick quality to it. But underneath its humorous guise is a story that questions the definition of madness, the thin line that separates genius from insanity, and makes you wonder if ignorance truly is bliss.

The story starts off with a murder. One of the inmates, who think …

In potentially one of the best-named fund raisers ever, The Infringement Festival will be holding the Bizarre Bazaar this coming Saturday at Soundlab, and trust me, based on the line-up alone, it's going to live up to its name.

For a mere $5, audience members will be treated to 6 bands, 4 performers, short films and animations, and, with great potential a 50/50 raffle and an indoor garage sale. All proceeds will benefit the 2007 Infringement Festival, and even the door money will co cover printing costs for the festival brochure and other important festival expenses, so be generous if you're in a position to do so.

Why? Well, with the Infringement, you're not getting your normal, comfortable night out. These people are pushing the limits, not for some additional number of myspace friends or a potential contract, but simply because they can. As a result, the work is pure – y…

Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red Hot Mamas is not a conventional evening of genteel entertainment. It’s like a party in a posh Manhattan apartment where Kelli Bocock-Natale as Sophie regales you with tales of her raucous adventures.

The high-energy show delighted a responsive audience in the Irish Classical Theatre opening night. Philip Farugia as her seen-it-all, tell-nothing pianist Teddy Shapiro, played her foil with bemused good humor.

Bocock-Natale as Sophie flirted with and teased the audience, even bringing a hapless patron on stage, dressing him in a grass skirt and coconut bikini and coaxing his awkward efforts to match her hip gyrations. Farugia as Teddy looked patiently on while accompanying her to “Hula Lou”.

The outrageous jokes are familiar as are the songs, from “The Lady is a Tramp” to “Yiddishe Momme”, but Bocock-Natale’s delivery is fresh and So…

There is usually a fun, lively, sizable crowd for opening nights in Shea’s Broadway series. Last night (Tuesday, May 24, 2007), was the opening of Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life, the final production touring through here for this theater season. The crowd included more of Buffalo’s theater community than usual… our own actors, directors, writers and so on, which made for a special kind of noise from the audience in response to the show.

You don’t have to be theater-savvy (just normal savvy) to read into the title and understand the gist of the show: Chita Rivera, a performer who has enjoyed a career of more than fifty years and is still going, relates to the audience her life as a dancer and the life that all dancers endure in their effort to make audiences happy . Again, just the gist, the essence, the idea. The seed--a simple thing--until planted.

The richn…

Old Wicked Songs sheds doubt on the theory that the truth lives between two differing points of view. Left, right? Old, young? Christian, Jew? Truth must be somewhere in the middle, no? Not always.

Playwright Jon Marans' first move in this gambit scrutinizes the possibility of absolute good or absolute evil. What you find beautiful must be art, and, of course, it is good. But is there ever beauty in the art of your enemy? And is it good if you and your enemy find the same beauty in the same art?

The play is an encounter between two musicians: Hoffman the student and Mashjan the teacher. Hoffman is a young American looking forward to his career, Mashjan an old European looking backward on his. Social, political and religious differences arise as they work together through Robert Schumann’s song cycle, Dichterliebe.

Their inner lives are reflected in the music…a …

One question you will never have to answer is “Chita who?”

There is only one.

To write about Chita Rivera: The Dancer’s Life comes perilously close to treading on the show’s territory…something a respectful journalist would never do. It would be worse that synopsizing the plot, always a lazy substitute for cultural journalism. Suffice to say, there is no traditional plot to this biographic revue coming to Shea’s as part of Rivera’s national tour.

One could write about the show’s purpose, a brainy attempt to get to the “why” of the show…but the show is all about purpose, and set to music to boot- why Rivera dances, why anyone dances- the training, the toil, ambition and disappointment, the thrill of performance victory, the agony of the feet. (Sorry. But that’s how hard it is to put an acceptable gloss on the physical suffering a career dancer experience…

Nominations have been announced for the 2007 Artie Awards, the annual honors for this region's professional theaters, performers and stage designers. The announcement was made on May 21, at popular watering hole Q, on Allen Street, a hang-out for local actors and home to a Monday evening Broadway show tune karaoke.

The announcement was made by Anthony Chase, theater editor of the weekly newspaper and founder of the awards, along with Lisa Ludwig, popular actress and frequent host of the awards presentation.

The Artie Awards will be presented at the Town Ballroom on Monday, evening, June 4, 2007. The doors open at 7:30 and the ceremony begins at 8 PM. The event will be hosted by Mr. Chase, actor Norm Sham and Loraine O’Donnell, actress and one of the hosts of WKBW Channel 7's "PM Buffalo."

In addition to honoring local theater and theatrical artists, the Arties are an impor…

Fun, zany, entertaining and just plain weird are a few words that describe some of the artists we will see this year at Hallwalls' Artists and Models “Nocterminal” event; a fund raiser to support Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center.

Our first interview was with visual artist and connoisseur of the sensual, Sean McGarry. Upon entering Sean's studio, I was besieged by an exquisite collection of erotic artwork. Beautiful paintings of equally beautiful women indulging themselves in various pleasures of the flesh, made me feel as though I had stepped into some kind of alternate universe. This was an atmosphere of fearless self expression and moral immunity, an environment that demands a laissez faire attitude from even its toughest critic.

Buffalo Rising: Would you classify your work as art for experiment or art for entertainment?

McGarry: …

Driving up to the Central Terminal to see—rather experience—Don Paul Swain’s “Ghost Train,” with the modern cars parked just outside the entrance, does not begin to suggest what is inside. Even milling about, waiting as the train is “repaired” as the conductor explains, does not prepare you for the “epic carnival of unlikely passions” as Swain calls it, on the other side of a very unassuming door. Inside the decaying Central Terminal, Swain and his collaborators have created another world, filled with films, video, robotics, a gigantic Ouijii board, and performance art that feel at home among the walls of the Terminal.

While the Terminal’s unfortunate appearance gives a lot to the atmosphere of the “Carnival of Souls”, the films, performances and gadgets throughout the space bring it to life. The ghosts that you are sure exist inside the crumbling c…

A favorite fairy tale comes to life as the Buffalo City Ballet Youth Company presents Cinderella, making many little girls’ dreams come true on the stage of Rockwell Performance Hall. A classic tale of love and redemption, Cinderella is a ballet that every one should see once in their life.

Since 1972, the award-winning Buffalo City Ballet’s Youth Company has nurtured the talents and confidence of children with few economic, academic and social opportunities through the discipline of classical dance. Students trained at the Buffalo City Ballet have been accepted at many prestigious dance venues including American Ballet Theater, New York City Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. The Buffalo City Ballet, under the Executive Directorship of Marvin Askew, was honored this year with an Arts Award for an Outstanding Arts O…

Call it one of life’s guilty pleasures, or perhaps it’s the simple fact that the people who grew up with the movie are now in a position to buy tickets, but Spam-A-Lot has hit the big time. The musical theater version was “lovingly ripped off” from the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and became a financial and critical success, receiving fourteen Tony nominations and three awards its first year running. Not a direct copy of the original film, some decry it as a work of lazy comedy formed of catch-phrases, exactly what the Pythonites meant to fight against (and what made their work so fresh) in the first place. However, if you were a fan before, all signs point to a thoroughly enjoyable evening of Mock Camelot, with dozens of other pop culture references thrown in for good measure.

May 1 to 6 $27.50 – $67.50 Shea’s Performing Arts Centre 646 Main, 14202 847.1410