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New England's Culture Magazine

Artscope Magazine | November/December 2020

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James Foritano

THE HUNTINGTON THEATER COMPANY PRESENTS A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK

// Audio/Visual, Featured, Theatre, Visual Arts

By James Foritano BOSTON, MA -- How best to introduce a play reeking with the ambiguities and ambivalences of the human situation is perhaps to start with a few paragraphs of bare facts. The title of the play under review is “A Guide for the Homesick” by playwright Ken Urban. Its current run takes place from October 6 through November at the Huntington Theatre Company’s new South End venue, the Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. The main actors on stage are Mckinley Belcher III, playing “Teddy,” and Samuel H. Levine, playing “Jeremy,” under the direction of Colman Domingo. The setting and time are Amsterdam. Teddy’s hotel room. Evening and the following morning. January 2011. All these bare facts come together in a most accommodating and highly professional manner to hand the attending audience (you and me) a “guide” that is so “hot” you have to keep tossing … [Read more...] about THE HUNTINGTON THEATER COMPANY PRESENTS A GUIDE FOR THE HOMESICK

Gallery 1832 at LabCentral’s Grand Opening

// Exhibit Openings, Exhibits, Featured, Visual Arts

By James Foritano CAMBRIDGE, Ma -- Charlie Baker, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ very tall governor, is standing at a podium in the lobby of LabCentral, deep in the heart of the Kendall Square Innovation District and giving his bipartisan blessing to LabCentral's new 42,000 square foot expansion in Cambridge, Mass. I'm here as an emissary of Artscope because this expansion is about more than feet and inches, more than new shared lab space for worthy startups. It's also about art, and in this instance, specifically "Gallery 1832," which stretches from one end to the other of a long white corridor just upstairs from this ceremonious lobby. "Wait a minute!" you might think, laboratories fitted out with the latest equipment to enable the inspiration of scientific, of entrepreneurial minds while art is banished to a corridor! Perhaps I misspoke. Let's say instead a busy "lane" … [Read more...] about Gallery 1832 at LabCentral’s Grand Opening

Jeannie Motherwell: Pour. Push. Layer. at Rafius Fane Gallery

// Exhibits, Featured, Visual Arts

By James Foritano https://youtu.be/KJAkFb9NwNM Boston, MASS. -- Jeannie Motherwell’s, fluid, shape-shifting exhibition, “Pour. Push. Layer.” at the Rafius Fane Gallery through October 22, stands in piquant juxtaposition to its, solid, four-square surroundings at 460 Harrison Ave. The gallery is located in the eastern end of a long, grey, brawny stone building in the very heart of Boston’s SoWa district. Like its mate, 450 Harrison Ave., which sits just across a wide pedestrian alley filled with art watchers and people watchers, it is, block by block, dedicated to a Victorian love of heavy lifting and solid foundations. One can almost hear the grunts of the workmen as they unload railroad cars bearing laboriously quarried granite from near and far when it was first built; you almost sense the satisfaction of architect/engineers dusting off their hands to pronounce: “Well, that’s … [Read more...] about Jeannie Motherwell: Pour. Push. Layer. at Rafius Fane Gallery

A Midsummer Night's Dream by Actors' Shakespeare Project.

Actors’ Shakespeare Project presents: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Multicultural Arts Center

// May/June 2017, Theatre

By James Foritano Shakespeare must have felt himself to be living in an increasingly and perilously fast-paced society when he penned A Midsummer Night’s Dream — still one of his most popular comedies in 1595-96. Earlier in that rumbustious century, England’s Henry VIII decided that he couldn’t abide an Italian pope telling him what he could and couldn’t do in his own marriage bed. So, Henry nationalized not only divorce laws but religion and all its far-reaching properties in England — thank you very much.   Actors’ Shakespeare Project is presenting Shakespeare’s masterpiece through early June in a production directed by Patrick Swanson. In this classic favorite of the season, Theseus, the duke of Athens, in Shakespeare’s parable of his own life and times, is also in a hurry to wed his intended, Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Recent antagonists on the battlefield though … [Read more...] about Actors’ Shakespeare Project presents: A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Multicultural Arts Center

A Pattern of Success

// Current Exhibits, Current Issue, Exhibits, July/August 2016, Visual Arts

Attleboro's National Juried Show by James Foritano Vibrant, funny, elegant, profound. Overall a deeply heartening and enlivening display of talent for a summer afternoon in Attleboro — or for anytime, anywhere. That’s “Patterns,” the Attleboro Arts Museum’s annual national juried exhibition whose call for art sought work in all mediums, sizes and concepts that related to, or included, a pattern: “Consider zebra stripes, the family tartan, flight patterns, nautilus shell curves, quilts, breathing patterns, a strand of pearls, dress patterns, kaleidoscopes, waffle irons, wallpaper …” And did the artists ever respond! I think of the alacrity with which Patrick leapt from his attendance at the front desk to assist me with sculptor Tim Dawes’ kinetic sculpture, “Amore-2016.” Patrick, with a practiced nudge, set in motion two wheels jutting from the gallery wall. Don’t ask me … [Read more...] about A Pattern of Success