May 2020 | Alliance Theatre

New Episode of The Artists Approach

An Online Q&A Series with leading theater professionals.

Hear from award-winning theater artists including Tom Kitt, Sierra Boggess, Tony Shalhoub, and many more in Alliance Theatre’s new video series, “The Artist’s Approach.” Weekly episodes will feature pre-recorded conversations with some of today’s most exciting actors, directors, and writers for stage and screen on their approach to their craft and tips of the trade.

This week Jennings Hertz Artistic Director Susan V. Booth chats with Olivier Nominated Actor & Singer Sierra Boggess.

STAY TUNED FOR UPCOMING EPISODES:

Daniel Sullivan (June 2)
Jason Robert Brown (June 9)
John Clarence Stewart (June 16)
Rick Cleveland (June 23)
Kenny Leon (June 30)
Rachel Hoffman (July 7)
Bethany Anne Lind (July 14)
Tom Kitt (July 21)

Other future episodes will feature guests including Josh Radnor, Itamar Moses, Casey Nicholaw, Lex Liang, and Michael Arden.

To view full episodes visit The Artist’s Approach.

Join us for an Artists Roundtable Discussion that took place as part of our Virtual Kendeda Week in April. Moderated by Rachel Karpf, former Artistic Producer, WP Theater, NYC, and featuring all four Alliance/Kendeda Competition finalists- Logan Faust, Cary Simowitz, Ava Geyer, and Inna Tsyrlin; Alliance/Kendeda Winner, Steph Del Rosso, as well as Atlanta playwrights Will Power, Steve Coulter, Kimberly Belflower, Mary Lynn Owen, and Mark Kendall.

Roundtable Artist Bios:

2019/2020 Kendeda Winner:

Steph Del Rosso, 53% Of

Steph Del Rosso is a writer based in New York. Her plays include: 53% Of (Alliance/ Kendeda winner), The Gradient (Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, 2021), Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill (The Flea), Machinalia (JACK), Are You There? (UC-San Diego), You’re Crazy (a play with karaoke) (IAMA New Works Festival), and Life Savers. Her work has been developed at The Kennedy Center, The Lark, Ojai Playwrights’ Conference, Seven Devils Playwrights Conference, Colt Coeur, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, the Los Angeles Theatre Center, New York Stage and Film, SPACE on Ryder Farm, and others. She is the 19/20 Shank Playwright in Residence at The Public Theater and is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and Clubbed Thumb’s Emerging Writers’ Group. She is commissioned by Studio Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse and teaches Playwriting at NYU.

Kendeda Finalists:

Ava Geyer, Monster

Ava Geyer received her BA from Princeton University in 2015 and MFA in playwriting from UC San Diego in 2019. Geyer is currently the Shank Resident Playwright at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, a member of EST/Youngblood, and under commission by La Jolla Playhouse. She is a recipient of Theater Masters’ 2020 Visionary Award. Her play Monster was a finalist for the Alliance/Kendeda National Graduate Playwriting Competition. She was a finalist for the 2019/2020 Jerome Fellowship and semi-finalist for the Ingram New Works Lab. Her play Fruit Snacks appeared at the Hopeful Decade event in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in January 2020. Her play B-Storm appeared at Theatre Row in May 2019 as part of Theater Masters’ Take Ten program honoring the best short plays by MFA playwrights across the country. Past plays include SERE (Wagner New Play Festival 2018) and Baby Teeth (WNPF ’17).

Logan Faust, Unkindness

Logan Faust is a Louisiana-born, New York-based playwright, television writer, and actor who holds his Master of Fine Arts in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch. Before moving to New York, he lived in New Orleans, where he received his BA in Theatre Arts from Loyola University New Orleans. He currently works as Showrunner’s Assistant for Filthy Rich, airing on Fox this Spring. A lifelong Southerner, Faust’s work grapples with questions of religion, absurdity, and the End of the World; and are inspired by Samuel Beckett, Flannery O’Connor, Martin McDonagh, and, of course, Tennessee Williams.

Inna Tsyrlin, Stitched With a Sickle and a Hammer

Inna Tsyrlin was born in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Australia during the collapse of the socialist state. Her work responds to ideas of political freedom through the lens of historical and current events, identity in a diaspora, and society’s responsibility to the natural environment. She received the Trisolini Graduate Fellowship (Ohio University) for her play Stitched with a Sickle and Hammer, and the play was the 2019 Renaissance Theaterworks New Play Festival finalist (Milwaukee, WI) and 2020 Alliance/Kendeda Playwriting Competition finalist (Atlanta, GA). Her work has been presented in New York City at The Rising Sun Performance Company, Emerging Artists Theater, HB Playwrights Theatre, and Manhattan Repertory Theater. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Ohio University. More about Inna: innatsyrlin.org

Cary Simowitz, Djarum Vanilla

Cary Simowitz recently graduated from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, and Television with his Master of Fine Arts in Playwriting. He is the author of five full-length plays, three one acts, and several ten- minute pieces, in addition to multiple works of poetry and short fiction. He received his Juris Doctor from Washington University School of Law in 2016 and is licensed to practice law in Missouri and New York. Cary’s plays have collectively garnered him modest recognition in over two-dozen competitions across the country. He twice participated in the A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival in 2014 and 2015 with his plays, Ekphasia and The Divine Buoyancy of Being, respectively. His play, Djarum Vanilla, was developed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC as part of their MFA New Play Festival, in association with the National New Play Network and the National Center for New Plays at Stanford University. Moreover, this play received the Kennedy Center’s 2019 Rosa Parks Award for “Distinguished Achievement,” the 2017 Tim Robbins Award in Playwriting, the 2016 Leota Diesel Ashton Prize in Playwriting, the 2016 Dramatics Club of St. Louis Award, semifinalist status in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2017 National Playwrights Conference, and finalist status in Panndora Productions’s 10th Annual New Works Festival. His play, A Wolf’s Mother, was produced at UCLA as part of its 2019 MFA New Play Festival and was subsequently given a workshop production at the Garage Theater in Long Beach, California, as a winner of Panndora Production’s 12th Annual New Works Festival. His most recent project, All the Oxytocin at Your Fingertips was a finalist in the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s 2020 National Playwrights Conference and is still under adjudication for the finals.

Atlanta Playwrights:

Mary Lynn Owen

Mary Lynn Owen is an Atlanta-based theater artist with a career spanning over forty years. Her first full-length script, KNEAD, a one-person play in which she also performed, received its world premiere at The Alliance Theatre in November 2018. KNEAD, the recipient of the 2019 Gene Gabriel Moore Playwriting Award and The Alliance Theatre’s Reiser Lab Award, was also a semi-finalist for the 2017 O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference. Mary Lynn’s second full-length play, LADY PARTS, was a semi-finalist for the 2019 O’Neill National Playwright’s Conference, a selection for the 2019 Working Title Playwrights First Light Series, and a selection for Theatrical Outfit’s 2020 Unexpected Play Festival. Mary Lynn’s commissions include a ten-minute play, TRAILERS, for the 2019 MoJo Festival and the recent ’22 Homes Project’ by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. Her writing residencies include Cottages at Hedgebrook in Langley, WA and The Hambidge Center in Rabun Gap, GA. As an actor, Mary Lynn is a two-time Suzi Award winner for both Outstanding Performer in a Leading Role (WIT – Aurora Theatre) and Outstanding Performer in a Supporting Role (THE LITTLE FOXES – Theatre in the Square) and an eight-time Suzi nominee. Recently, she assumed the traditionally male role of The Stage Manager in the historic repertory of OUR TOWN and THE LARAMIE PROJECT at Theatrical Outfit. She is a faculty member of Emory University’s Theater Studies Department where she teaches Introduction to Acting and yearly workshops in Teaching as Performance. Also at Emory, she has curated for the Brave New Works Festival and developed an ongoing collaboration with the Spanish and Portuguese Department in the production of both new and classical Spanish/Latinx Theater. She co-created the popular course, ‘Taller de Teatro en Español – a Theater Workshop in Spanish,’ a class designed to improve Spanish language proficiency through the use of Theater techniques.

Will Power

Will Power is an internationally renowned playwright, performer, lyricist and educator. His plays and performances have been seen in hundreds of theaters and concert halls throughout the world including Lincoln Center (New York), The Public Theater (New York), The Battersea Arts Centre (U.K.), The Sydney Opera House, as well as numerous venues in Asia, Africa, Europe and throughout North America. Called “The best verse playwright in America” by New York Magazine, Mr. Power is an innovator and dramatic explorer of new theatrical forms. He is known as one of the pioneers and co-creators of hip hop theater, a late 20th Century art form that led the way for future iconic works such as Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, as well as dozens of hip hop education programs being established throughout the country. Power is also a master craftsman of traditionally based plays and musicals. His straight play, Fetch Clay, Make Man, has been produced in various LORT theaters and regional companies including the McCarter Theater, New York Theater Workshop, the Round House Theater, True Colors Theater Company, The Ensemble Theater, and Marin Theater Company to name a few. Other plays include Stagger Lee (Dallas Theater Company), Five Fingers of Funk (Children’s Theater Company), The Seven (La Jolla Playhouse, New York Theater Workshop, Ten Thousand Things Theater Company), Seize the King (La Jolla Playhouse, The Alliance Theater), and Detroit Red (Arts Emerson). Power’s collaboration with Anne Bogart’s SITI Company and composer Julia Wolfe resulted in the performance piece Steel Hammer (Humana Festival, UCLA Live, Brooklyn Academy of Music, plus World tour). Power has received numerous awards for his work as a writer and performer in the field including The Doris Duke Artist Award, an Andrew W. Mellon Playwright in Residence Grant, a Lucille Lortel Award, a United States Artist Prudential Fellowship, an NEA/TCG Residency Grant, TCG Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, a NYFA Award, and a Joyce Foundation Award. Power is also a passionate teacher of writing and performance. He has held fellowships, residencies or faculty positions at the City College of New York, Princeton University, Wayne State University, The University of Michigan at Flint, Southern Methodist University, the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). Currently, Will Power is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of theater at Spelman College, Atlanta.

Kimberly Belflower

Kimberly Belflower is a playwright and educator originally from a small town in Appalachian Georgia. Her play, Lost Girl, is published by Samuel French and won the 2018 Kennedy Center Darrell Ayers National Playwriting Award. Her other plays include John Proctor is the Villain (2019 Kilroys List), Gondal, The Use of Wildflowers, and The Sky Game, which have been commissioned, produced, and developed by Ojai Playwrights Conference, South Coast Repertory Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, The Farm Theatre, We the Women Collective, Peppercorn Theatre, Less Than Rent Theatre, Cohen New Works Festival, as well as many colleges and universities across the country. Kimberly is currently a Playwriting Fellow at Emory University, and has also worked as a writer and narrative lead for Meow Wolf, Santa Fe’s celebrated immersive arts collective. She proudly holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin.

Mark Kendall

Mark Kendall is an Atlanta-based comedian. He is an ensemble member at Dad’s Garage Theatre. His one man show, “The Magic Negro and Other Blackness” was produced by the Alliance Theatre and he continues to tour the show around the country. Mark studied film at Northwestern University. He worked at Comedy Central through the Chris Rock Summer School Program for up and coming comedy writers of color. During his time at Comedy Central, he got to pitch jokes to the writing staffs of “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” Mark was the Readers Pick for Best Comedian in Creative Loafing Atlanta in 2019.

Steve Coulter

Steve Coulter is an Atlanta-based actor and writer. He was the headwriter for both of Tyler Perry’s television series, House of Payne and Meet the Browns, where he supervised over 100 episodes and won two consecutive NAACP IMAGE Awards for Best Comedy Series. He wrote Alice Betweenfor the Alliance Theatre and directed the award-winning short film, The Etiquette Man, selected by the Sundance Channel and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. His screenplay, Keesha’s House, won the $100,000 Southeastern Media Award. As an actor, he has had recurring roles in House of Cards, The Walking Dead, Brockmire, and Yellowstone. Most recently, he appeared in HBO’s Watchmen and the just released The Hunt.

Moderator:

Rachel Karpf

Rachel Karpf is a cultural producer and was most recently the BOLD Artistic Producer of WP Theater in New York City, overseeing projects including the Off-Broadway world premieres of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord and Where We Stand. She previously served as Senior Producer for the international creative collective Guerilla Science, where she produced the multidisciplinary Works on Water Festival and created science-inspired cultural programming in music festivals, public parks, nightclubs, and more. Rachel has also produced and developed new theater with New Georges, the Public Theater, New York Theatre Workshop, Page 73, and Beth Morrison Projects. As an independent producer, she has collaborated with artists including Martyna Majok, Jackson Gay, Kate Benson, Lee Sunday Evans, Obehi Janice, and Caitlin Sullivan. Rachel is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a former Time Warner Foundation Fellow.

To listen to other episodes of the Alliance Theatre Podcast click here.

Welcome to our new video series: Ask an Artist! Each week we’ll go behind-the-scenes to give an inside look at the Alliance Theatre.

This episode’s focus is on Theatre for the Very Young with Alliance Theatre Education Staff Member Sam Provenzano and Actor and Teaching Artist Andrea Washington.

View all videos in the series here.

An art form founded on the human story cannot ignore human injustice. As a cultural organization, we believe that acknowledging and embracing differences in identity is essential to a dynamic conversation.

At The Alliance Theatre, we stand together in our call for justice for Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and all fellow citizens oppressed by systems of white supremacy and racism. We continue to remain committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion in all areas of our organization and programming. We stand with our community in our efforts to learn more and do more because Black Lives Matter.

Read the full statement. (Added June 3, 2020.)

Learn about Allyship in Action.

Join us for HANDS UP ATLANTA: Art & Activism.

For Parents & Families:

The conversations our country is having about justice and race are not only necessary for us, but also for the children in our lives witnessing it. Here are a few resources to help as you expand the hearts and minds of your family during these difficult discussions.

EmbraceRace fights systemic racism by supporting parents to raise children who are brave, informed and thoughtful about race. Join the movement!

NPR Podcast: Talking Race With Young Children
Even babies notice differences like skin color, eye shape and hair texture. Here’s how to handle conversations about race, racism, diversity and inclusion, even with very young children.

Parent Resources: Blog posts, organizations and websites containing information and racial and ethnic socialization.

For Parents of Black Children: Black Pain, Black Joy, and Racist Fear: Supporting Black Children in a Hostile World – Psychology Benefits Society

Overcoming anxiety so you can talk to kids about race effectively

Parenting for Liberation is a virtual community that connects, inspires, and uplifts Black folks as they navigate and negotiate raising Black children within the social and political context of the US.

Get Up, Stand Up! Drama Camps Explore stories of fairness, justice, and friendship in virtual summer drama camp inspired by our upcoming production of Sit-In.

FREE PLAY: Open Source Scripts Toward an Antiracist Tomorrow Award-winning playwright, poet, and changemaker Idris Goodwin offers five short plays for multi-generational audiences to spark conversation about race in America.

For Discussions:

Discussion Guidelines for EDI Conversations

Use “I” statements
Be honest
Assume good intentions
Maintain respectful engagement
Actively participate
Don’t monopolize the conversation
No side conversations
No talking or texting on cell phones
Maintain confidentiality
- Discuss and share broader themes when appropriate, but do not discuss specific stories or attribute conversations and decisions to specific individuals. When in doubt about what can be shared – ask.
Listen for understanding, not in order to debate
Ask clarifying questions if something is not clear
Agree to disagree, but please do not disengage
Address conflict directly if it arises – see it as a learning opportunity
Don’t speak for others or ask others to speak for their group
Challenge yourself – step out of your comfort zone
Acknowledge if you may have said something that was hurtful or insensitive
Be aware of your own power/influence/authority – you have the ability to either curtail or elevate the conversation
- Leave role/responsibility at the door, don’t “wear your title”

Over the course of my concert going lifetime, I have been fortunate to see many live shows by some absolutely amazing performers and I do confess to having had a difficult time narrowing it down to the five best. I was at a loss as to how to proceed, when I suddenly remembered the highest compliment we could pay an artist, back when we were still so young that our parents had to drop us off at the concert and pick us up afterward. “Just like the record,” we’d say. “They sounded just like the record.” In those days, that usually meant the precious 45s we bought with our very own money and later the albums we saved up for and then played over and over until we knew every word on both sides. By that time, we also understood that while there was a certain satisfaction to be had in an artist who sounded “just like the record,” there was also great pleasure in experiencing a song differently because it was live. Which brings us to this week’s list:

Five Performers Who Were Even Better Than the Record

1. The Temptations at Howard University. My freshman year at Howard University, we had the great good fortune to have The Temptations live at Cramton Auditorium for homecoming. On the day of the concert, my roommate and I walked over to Cramton amidst a throng of other students headed the same way. Outside the auditorium’s big glass doors, a large group had begun to form, jockeying for positions up front. We agreed that if we got separated, whoever got in first would grab seats for both of us. When I looked around a few minutes later, I could see my tall roommate up toward the front of the crowd. Good, I thought. She’ll score us some seats up close. That’s when I heard a loud cracking sound and the two middle glass doors cracked under the weight of so many anxious bodies, sending people tumbling over each other onto the floor of the lobby. It was some kind of safety glass, so it didn’t shatter, and my roommate was far enough from the front that she never even got stepped on, but she was shaken up. I sat beside her on a bench in the lobby with a couple of other girls who were crying, but also seemed unhurt while the staff put plywood over the broken doors and got things organized so the show could go on. But then my roommate said, “I just don’t think I can sit through the show after all that. Will you go back to the dorm with me?” The fact that I’m writing about this performance will tell you everything you need to know about my answer.

2. The Cockroaches at The Fox. There was so much secrecy about this Rolling Stones concert although I can’t remember exactly why anymore. I think they were just tired of doing giant arenas and decided to do some smaller venues, like the Fabulous Fox. As the date approached, counterfeit tickets began to appear on the streets of Atlanta, but the real tickets didn’t even say “the Rolling Stones.” They said, “The Cockroaches Live at the Fox Theatre.” I ended up seated between the Bond brothers, Julian and James who shared my fervent hope that the Cockroaches would blow the roof off the newly restored auditorium. And they did.

3. Bruce Springsteen at The Omni. Like many people, I discovered Bruce Springsteen with the “Born to Run” album. The iconic black and white photograph of Bruce leaning on sax genius Clarence Clemmons was my first look at them both and I hurried out immediately to find the record, probably before I even heard the music. But it was the music that captured my imagination and made me fall in love with the mythical place that is known as New Jersey. I saw Bruce and the E Street Band three times, and they were always great, but my first time seeing them at the Omni was the best. They played for three hours plus and just when we thought we couldn’t scream any louder, they came back for what was for years their signature encore, Rosalita.

4. Meat Loaf at Symphony Hall. Symphony Hall is not usually a place that we associate with performers like Meat Loaf circa 1977. Loud and raucous and sweaty with a ruffled tuxedo shirt, long blond hair and a great big booming voice, he was on the road promoting a new album, “Bat Out of Hell,” his classic collaboration with songwriter Jim Steinman and producer Todd Rundgren. At the time, I was the only Meat Loaf fan I knew, so I pulled on my camouflage pants and my L.A. boots and went by myself. The words “high energy” are overused, but this show was the very definition of those words. Meat Loaf was in constant motion and the band stayed right with him. But with all his showmanship, including a big silk handkerchief worthy of Luciano Pavarotti or Louis Armstrong, he never dropped a lyric, even in the dimness of the dashboard light.

5. Diana Ross in Rotterdam. It had been probably five or six years since I had gotten on an airplane when Essence magazine asked me to fly to Amsterdam to interview Diana Ross as she kicked off an international tour in support of her new solo album, “Silk Electric.” There is no way a little girl from the West Side of Detroit can turn down an assignment like that without losing her Motown credentials, so I talked Zeke into going with me and we hopped a KLM flight that deposited us safely in the Netherlands just in time for me to interview Miss Ross, who was beautiful and charming and as fabulous as I hoped she’d be. The next evening, we boarded a train for Rotterdam, had a lovely pre-concert dinner at a restaurant where nobody spoke English but us and it didn’t even matter. Our seats were third row center and when she caught sight of us from the stage, Miss Ross made a motion as if to say “is that your man?” I nodded and she beamed her approval. Zeke just beamed. Later when she launched into her hit and cooed in our direction that she wanted muscles, my normally reserved True Love jumped to his feet and flexed for all he was worth.

He is a highwayman, my husband, and the absence of purposeful motion makes him restless. Uneasy. He likes to drive. He likes to drive fast. He used to own a car that had a number for a name to let you know how many horses it would take to match the power under its hood. All that power, waiting for the slamming of the door, the turning of the key to activate that speed on the way to somewhere, or from somewhere, or simply as an element of the extended flirtation that is only possible on an impromptu road trip in a very fast car driven by a person who knows how to drive it. The grandmother in me wants to add “safely” to the end of that sentence, but nobody who hits the road with a true highwayman is really concerned about safety. Trust me. Which brings me to this week’s list:

5 Songs for Surviving Life in the Fast Lane

1. I am not a connoisseur of fast cars or fast driving. I am not the kind of woman who can squeal with delight in a convertible going 20 miles over the limit and picking up speed. At such a moment, my hair would be more likely to stand on terrified end then to blow in a lovely tousled swirl around my head while I laughed with a sound like tinkling bells. But there was one unseasonably cold twilight way back when we were still single and wildness was its own reward when I first felt the allure of highway speed. We were headed out I-20 on our way to someplace we probably had no business going and we were moving at a pretty good clip. Not as fast as the car with a number for a name could have gone, but it felt like flying to me that night and without fully knowing I was going to do it, I clicked off my seatbelt, stood up against the seat, hands above my head, heart in my throat and laughed into the wind. He didn’t even seem surprised, probably because I wasn’t the first girl who ever stood up in a convertible he was driving and laughed with a sound like tinkling bells. This song always makes me remember that moment.

2. I never stood up in a car again but during subsequent decades, we Criss-crossed the country for business and pleasure, book tours and performance festivals. Since Zeke loved the road, he showed me how to love it too. I learned to appreciate the weather channel and understand why it doesn’t make sense to cross the desert to Barstow when it’s already 113 in Needles and its not even noon yet. I got to see mountains up close and the Great Plains at sunset. I got to see snow at 7,000 feet up in New Mexico and the Pacific Ocean literally sparkling in the sunshine like a travel poster in California. We drove across the country three times and up and down the east coast whenever we got ready. We ate hot dogs and sauerkraut on the boardwalk at Belmar and had the best Fettucini Alfredo ever at Mastori’s. We walked home from a Broadway show in a light summer rain and watched the fog roll into San Francisco and envelop our hotel like a cloud. We got picked up in a limo in Miami and briefly shared the water with a shark off the coast of South Carolina. After awhile I felt like I knew what Johnny Cash was talking about in this song, although I’ve still got a long way to go.

3. The thing is, even after you get comfortable sleeping in a different bed in a different motel every night for 2,000 miles, and you resolve never to eat another fast food hamburger once you get home, there are some days when you need a little boost from your road music to get out there and face the next 500 miles. One morning, we left New York City at 4 a.m. headed for Philadelphia. We slid in a CD of Little Richard singing a Johnny Cash tune and it woke us up better than any cup of coffee could have done. We put it on repeat and by sunrise, we were headed for the Walt Whitman Bridge, but when Zeke noticed traffic backing up, he changed our course to the Ben Franklin without thinking twice and we cruised on into the city.

4. Although I never did any of the driving on our highway trips, I did get around a good bit on my own taking trains and planes and even a Trailways bus or two. But most of the road songs I know and love are written by men and sung by men. That’s why I love this one by Stevie Nicks because she talks about how it feels to be a woman on the road, traveling solo. The questions the song raises were as familiar to me as the layout of an AMTRAK sleeper car: “What do you love to do?/Outside your world, who spends time with you?” And her lover’s gentle suggestion: “Come down here for a minute, sweet girl,” seemed the best possible solution. It still does.

5. I have so many great road memories, but one of my absolute favorites is the evening we spent having dinner at The Big Texas Steak Ranch in Amarillo. The restaurant, which boasts two white Cadillacs with longhorns affixed to the front bumpers in case you need a lift, is the home of the 72 oz. steak challenge where you get the steak and all the fixings free if you can finish the whole meal in one hour. We didn’t take the challenge, but we did appreciate the roving trio of musicians who stopped by our table to ask what we wanted to hear. “Who do you like?” said the bass player. “George Strait? John?” Johnny Cash never needs more than one name in Texas. “I like Waylon Jennings,” I said. “Good choice,” he nodded. “How about this one?” And they started singing ‘Mama’s Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys.’ We sang along because of course we knew the words. And even though Ed and Patsy Bruce wrote the song, it was Waylon and Willie Nelson who made me love it and never more than that night in Amarillo when we got to sing it live at The Big Texas Steak Ranch.

Share your list of 5 things with Pearl here.

Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Ballet, and The Atlanta Opera will collaborate to produce hospital gowns for Grady Health System

Three pillars of the Atlanta arts community have joined forces to produce hospital gowns for Grady Health System. Eighteen full-time artists and 27 part-time and volunteer staff who work in the costume shops of Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Ballet, and The Atlanta Opera are working from home to sew and deliver approximately 500 gowns per week while their respective performances are suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The gowns will help relieve the shortages in hospital supplies affecting hospitals nationwide. The joint initiative is scheduled through June, and the organizations are pursuing additional funding to continue throughout the summer.

While this collaboration represents a new initiative, all three organizations have been actively producing personal protective equipment (PPE) since the pandemic began to spread in the U.S. in mid-March. The Atlanta Opera and Atlanta Ballet’s costume shop artists began by producing medical mask covers for Grady Health System, while Alliance Theatre’s costume and production artists worked to produce protective mask covers for Emory Healthcare. To date, the Alliance has delivered over 3,000 masks/400 gowns; the Atlanta Ballet has delivered over 2,256 masks/600 gowns/250 scrub caps; and The Atlanta Opera has delivered over 1,700 masks/505 gowns. All three organizations will continue to provide mask covers as well as the gowns. Fabric face masks are also available for sale to the public here.

ABOUT ALLIANCE THEATRE:

Founded in 1968, Alliance Theatre is the leading producing theater in the Southeast, reaching more than 165,000 patrons annually. Under the leadership of Susan V. Booth, Jennings Hertz Artistic Director, the Alliance received the Regional Theatre Tony Award® for sustained excellence in programming, education, and community engagement. In January 2019, the Alliance opened its new, state-of-the-art performance space, The Coca-Cola Stage at Alliance Theatre. Known for its high artistic standards and national role in creating significant theatrical works, the Alliance has premiered more than 116 productions including nine that have transferred to Broadway. The Alliance education department reaches 90,000 students annually through performances, classes, camps, and in-school initiatives designed to support teachers and enhance student learning. The Alliance Theatre values community, curiosity, collaboration, and excellence, and is dedicated to representing Atlanta’s diverse community with the stories it tells, the artists, staff, and leadership it employs, and the audiences it serves. www.alliancetheatre.org.

About Atlanta Ballet:

Founded in 1929, Atlanta Ballet is one of the premier dance companies in the country and the official state Ballet of Georgia. Atlanta Ballet’s eclectic repertoire spans ballet history, highlighted by beloved classics and inventive originals. After 90 seasons, Atlanta Ballet continues its commitment to share and educate audiences on the empowering joy of dance. In 1996, Atlanta Ballet opened its Centre for Dance Education, which is dedicated to nurturing young dancers while providing an outlet for adults to express their creativity. The Centre serves over 150,000 people in metro Atlanta each year. Atlanta Ballet’s roots remain firmly grounded in the Atlanta community and continue to play a vital role in the city’s cultural growth and revitalization. For more information, visit www.atlantaballet.com, follow us on Twitter @atlantaballet, and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/atlantaballet.

About The Atlanta Opera:

The Atlanta Opera’s mission is to build the major international opera company that Atlanta deserves, while reimagining what the art form can be. Founded in 1979, The Atlanta Opera celebrates its 40th anniversary this season. The company works with world-renowned singers, conductors, directors, and designers who seek to enhance the art form. Under the leadership of internationally recognized stage director and Carl W. Knobloch, Jr. General & Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun, The Atlanta Opera expanded from three to four mainstage productions at Cobb Energy Centre and launched the acclaimed Discoveries series. In recent years, the company has been named among the “Best of 2015” by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, has been nominated for a 2016 International Opera Award, and has won ArtsATL’s 2019 Luminary Award for Community Engagement in recognition of its successful Veterans Program in partnership with the Home Depot Foundation. In addition, The Atlanta Opera was featured in a 2018 Harvard Business School case study about successful organizational growth, and Zvulun was invited to present a TEDx Talk at Emory University entitled “The Ambidextrous Opera Company, or Opera in the Age of iPhones.”

The thing about us humans is when faced with a situation that makes all the old ways of doing things obsolete, we adapt. We don’t always do it gracefully and there is usually a fair amount of whining involved, but faced with a cataclysmically unpleasant alternative, whatever it may be, we figure something out. We adapt. One of the things that recently set off a lot of whining in me was the requirement for social distancing. All of a sudden, I can’t hug my daughter/my sister/my five fabulous grands. I can’t greet my friends with a kiss or hug them good-by. I can’t have people come over, sit down, have a glass of wine and talk until midnight. I miss all that. But I believe that social distancing is important for our collective health right now, so I am doing my human best to adapt by recognizing that my front walk is no longer simply a way to approach or exit my house, but a lifeline to the people I love. Thinking about it that way led me to this week’s list:

5 Moments of Front Walk Wonder and Drive-by Joy

1. The first time my front yard revealed its new role in my life was during the early days of the pandemic when we were all scrambling to get our mask situation under control. One beautiful, sunny day, a car pulled up outside and a woman opened the door, skipped half-way up the walk and gently laid down two wrapped masks, one for me and one for Zeke. It was my friend lauri stallings and the masks were made by member of gloATL, her dance collective. Realizing it was her, I dashed outside and had to remember to stop myself from running down the walk to hug her. Instead, we danced around my front yard and laughed out loud at our great good fortune in sharing this moment. It felt like we were dancing on sunshine.

2. A few weeks later, still staying safe, I answered a text from my friend, Chris Moses, saying “look outside.” I did and there was Eugene Russell, composer, musician and family man, standing halfway up the same front walk carrying his saxophone. He lowered his mask to greet us and Zeke and I welcomed him from the porch. Then he stood right there and played “Lean on Me” while we swayed and sang along. Bill Withers himself invited the crowd on Soul Train to join in when he performed the song on the show way back when so we figured Eugene wouldn’t mind. And he didn’t.

3. A few minutes after Eugene left, Tayari Jones, writer, teacher, world traveler and my Spelman sister, pulled up, parked and got out with her own little chair. Alerted to her arrival time, I had placed a glass of wine and a rose from the garden on the walk to greet her. I blew her a kiss from the porch steps and sat down with my own glass of wine looking forward to the kind of conversation we usually have at Murphy’s during our regular monthly dinners. The rose perfectly matched the hot pink caftan she was wearing and as we settled in, she tucked it behind her ear with no regard for possible thorns. As we shook our heads over the news of the day, we both knew the future was going to be more challenging than we could possibly imagine. For that kind of prolonged struggle, we needed the sisters of Sweet Honey in the Rock.

4. I was a little worried that not being able to hug my daughter and the grands on Mother’s Day might make me sad for what I was missing, but when we pulled up in front of their house, they all tumbled out, wearing masks that did not in any way diminish their smiling eyes, or mine. We exchanged our Mother’s Day offerings with gloved hands or propped them up outside for later retrieval, but the cards they wrote for me were as sweet as if I could have kissed them to say thanks. Besides, they already know how much I love them. And I already know how much they love me back. And in a moment like this, all I had to be was happy.

5. Okay. I confess. Little Richard never appeared on my front walk, but when he died last week at 87, it felt like I had lost a friend. A wild, flamboyant, charismatic, musical genius friend who roared out of Macon, Georgia, and changed American music forever. The thing is, when a Sprit that big makes the transition to whatever comes next, attention must be paid. And paid in full. Little Richard would expect no less.