PVDFest Updates
I remember going to PVDFest way back in the day when it was still called the Providence International Arts Festival, in 2015. The festival was a marvel of positive energy, and its entertainment vibe was almost ADD, with theater skits and choreographed dance breaking out in the middle of the street, sanctioned skateboarding and blading […]
PVDFest to Transform City into Magical Wonderland
Dust off your binoculars, a pair of sturdy walking shoes and a sense of childlike wonder. In early June, 17-foot winged dinosaurs will glide through streets of downtown Providence in search of merriment and new friends. But there’s no need to fear these ephemeral beasts. Close-Act, an arts ensemble from the Netherlands, is behind their […]
Providence Gallery Night: Art On Display
Providence is soaring into another enthusiastic season of Gallery Night, and this is a really big affair! When the doors open (5pm, closing at 9ish), the trekking, touring and mingling of art all come to life. What’s all the hype? Well, there is no better time to tour the city and treat yourself to an entire […]
Hope Street Annual Spring Block Party
When spring comes around, the urge to get outside and enjoy your surroundings is contagious. You might want to go for a stroll around the neighborhood, play with your pet in a nearby park, get a pickup game of basketball going or just sit on the porch with a cold beverage and relax. On Hope […]
Narragansett Valkyrie: War of All Against All
In a world premiere, Contemporary Theatre playwright-in-residence Andy Hoover imagines a virtual reality combat game, “Triad,” played by teams of three seated at their respective computers, the objective of which is to confront and defeat various incarnations of “leviathans,” computerized monsters with almost unlimited variations of forms and capabilities. Fairly accurately modeling air combat, each […]
Blues for Mister Charlie: Light from Terrible Darkness
Blues for Mister Charlie is an angry play from an angry time. The “Mister Charlie” of the title is a euphemism for “cracker,” a pejorative racial epithet for white people that has etymological roots in the slave driver of the antebellum South who literally cracked a whip. Trinity Rep deserves enormous credit for putting on […]
Animal Farm: Shake Two Legs
George Orwell was one of the most influential writers of the 20th Century and Animal Farm is his most widely read book, but that is because it is short rather than because it is good. Orwell was primarily an essayist: His journalism and non-fiction, although no longer commonly read, demonstrated remarkable prescience and ability. His […]
To Kill a Mockingbird: Art Is the Politics of the Impossible
Racism is the curse of American history and slavery was America’s original sin. Abraham Lincoln warned that expiating the sin of slavery might demand that “every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword.” Seven score and 11 years later, #BlackLivesMatter is a hashtag adopted as the […]
Titus Andronicus: It Fits Not with this Hour
The first warning Burbage Theatre Company’s Titus Andronicus was not to be the usual Shakespeare performance was seeing everyone in the front rows at a sold-out show covering themselves with dark green, plastic, 30-gallon trash bags because they were in the “splatter zone.” Although the play is notoriously Shakespeare’s bloodiest, Burbage presents the extraordinary goriness […]