Here is the finished version of the Julia Pastrana postcard. Graphic Design by Gyda Arber, illustration by me.
I caught the opening night of Victoria Libertore’s No Need For Seduction and it was completely delightful. Read Trav S.D.’s rave here.
My illustration of Vic with Ganesha above.
I drew this last night after becoming obsessed with a picture of late-Victorian.early 20th century actress Constance Crawley and her monkey.
I think I need to do a complete series. I am obsessed.
I created this image for a friend’s show about Julia Pastrana which will be at The Brick in Williamsburg this June.
If you would like to read about her interesting and tragic show biz career (which extended far after her death) please take a look at Trav S.D.’s excellent blog post.
I posted the following on my personal facebook page the other day: “maybe I’ll try to do one completed drawing a day? For 40 days. LIKE JESUS. But with more nudity.”
So, yeah. I’m doing it. A completed drawing a day. This is the first. Drawing #1 for Lent. Evelyn Nesbit and John Barrymore. Beautiful, young and drunk on too much wine.
This seems like it was a million years ago. Last Friday, the lovely Jody Christopherson in Eschaton Cabaret at Dixon Place. Dancing. Enciente.
Ah, yes, Halloween is once again upon us. And with Halloween comes another gory presentation from The Blood Brothers, this year, at The Brick in Williamsburg.
A recent commission - for Theatre Askew’s workshop of Trav S.D.’s The Fickle Mistress at The Hot Festival at Dixon Place July 25.
I’m so, so excited for this - the play is really wonderful!
Cynthia Hopkins is one of those really special artists that more people should know about. I saw all three parts of her Nostalgia Trilogy at St. Ann’s, a glorious multi-media musical about family and physics and mortality and SciFi and travel and America. And her band, Gloria Deluxe is just great.And she plays a mean accordion.
Here is another beautiful song by Cynthia Hopkins, everyone, courtesy the beingblog.
I just realized that tickets for her May 4 concert at St. Ann’s Warehouse are going very quickly.
She will be performing new songs from “This Clement World,” and old songs as well.
And seriously, friends, if you miss this one, I don’t know WHAT to say.
Tuesday Evening Melody: “I Know” by Cynthia Hopkins
by Nancy Rosenbaum, producer
(photo: Paula Court)
Cynthia Hopkins is a Brooklyn-based musician and performer whose voice taps a quiet, deep well of emotion. If you’re looking for catharsis, find a private chamber and and try belting out one of her songs when no one else can hear you.
“I Know” comes from her most recent play, The Truth: A Tragedy, an exploration of her relationship with her ailing father:
“It’s an homage to him. It’s a portrait of him. And it’s also an attempt to make peace with him and to portray the evolution of my perspective on him from anger and frustration to celebration.”
In this song, Hopkins suggests that we don’t really know our parents in their fullness. Like the bigger cosmos, these people who reared us are beautiful mysteries. No longer saddled by anger or disappointment, Hopkins makes peace with her father’s indirect expressions of love. There are other lovely songs to explore from her play, including “”Love,” “Resist the Tide,” and “The Answer” — all of which can be downloaded for free from Gloria Deluxe, the website of Hopkins’ band.
(via hodgman)
Lily Elsie, 1907
The cover of the tell-all 1933 memoir by famed Sardi’s hatcheck girl Renee Carroll and illustrated by Sardi’s original caricaturist Alex Gard.
My response to Tom Laughlin’s outrageous post about theatre being FOR white people
Tom! I wanted to thank you for your recent post “The Great Whiter-Than-Ever Way,” (http://www.apoorplayer.net/2012/01/the-great-whiter-than-ever-way) which is now being commonly referred to as the “Is it so bad to admit that theatre is for white people?” post. It’s a brilliant expose of the banal, but still incredibly insidious, dangerous, modern-day racism that lies beneath the innocent-looking façade of your average friendly, innocuous, white university professor chairing a third-rate theatre department in the middle of nowhere. I’m blown away by the courage it must have taken to reveal not only your native disdain for all cultures, races, and concepts besides your own, but also your incredible intellectual barren-ness – what some would even call thunderous stupidity! And to think – you’re a college professor! You work with impressionable young minds EVERY DAY! It’s just incredibly brave to reveal that you’re living your life half-asleep - something that could, in fact, SHOULD, cost you your job! Bravo, sir.
I only have one quibble with your post. When you use the word “admit” in what has become the de facto title of your post, I think you may have overstepped your bounds, even within the huge leeway you give yourself. You see, an “admission” is generally a revelation of a hidden fact – now, that fact can of course be your personal opinion, as in “I admit that I feel like black people are beneath me culturally” – but the fact you purport to reveal is that the theatre is for white people.
This, unfortunately, is not a fact.
Tonight, a reading of Trav SD’s Beach Blanket Bluebeard at Coney Island USA. Whee! Rehearsal last night was beyond thrilling (and hilarious) as we’ve managed to gather a brilliant array of off-off luminaries.
THIS is going to be happening soon. Coney Island USA.
