Hudsonreporter Archive

  The lights burned bright at the Nutrition Center on Centre Street this week, as members of the Community Arts Scholarship Theater came together for their first full rehearsals. Clearly excited people, both young and old, climbed from their cars humming old 50s and 60s songs. Actors and singers, stages hands and other support staff giggled and laugh with a air of anticipation. Many took the musical review's title to heart and let the good times roll as they got in voice and sang their numbers. Earlier rehearsals had been in smaller groups. "We didn't want to keep everybody here for hours," Joan Lynch said, one of the show's co-directors. "We'd bring in five people at a time to rehearse, then let them leave and bring in another five." This way people avoided boredom and strain, rehearsing for a little over an hour a night. "But they seemed willing to come back two or three times a week," Lynch said.   Over seven weeks, the 35-person sho...

   Don't tell anybody, but I'm a sucker for crafts. If it's hand-made, you got me. Fine art awes me, but it doesn't tickle that deep down practical side that makes me want to spend my money. I go through galleries oohing over wondrous textures and clever shapes, but walk out knowing they will hang on other people's walls, never mine. But find a useful purpose for a thing, like a candle holder or a bowl, and I'm reaching for my VISA card.   In the 4th Annual Cathedral Arts Festival, I had the best of both worlds with a little music and poetry thrown in. While I managed to keep within my budget, the whole affair provided me with an amusing afternoon-- more than worth the price of admission. One of the people I talked at the show, echoed my sentiments. She had come expecting to find less quality in the craft show and was pleasantly surprised.   While the crafts prices were not inexpensive, they were well within the budget of most people, and the quality of me...

    Art and its connection to spirituality is one of the central themes of paintings to be displayed at the Cathedral of Arts Gallery at Grace Church. A solo exhibition by Cuban-born artist Raul Villarreal will run from June 19 to July 27. While grounded in reality, Villarreal's work is mystical in execution and is described as "magic realism" or "paintings of the fantastic." Villarreal's work is based on Latin American artistic tradition. His portraits feature ordinary people in extraordinary situations. The subjects in Villarreal's paintings look inwards towards the interior landscape of the soul. Spiritual symbols and mythological metaphors merge to portray the human spirit. Included within the exhibition are three of Villarreal's most recent works. "Ayagguna" represents a new direction in his use of symbolic imagery, while "Knocking on Forbidden Doors" and "Oba-Moro" incorporate African-Cuban imagery as Villa...

The Collaborative Arts Project (CAP) will put on a production of Paula Vogel's "Baltimore Waltz" at the Historic Loew's Theater in Jersey City next month. This is part of ShowPride Festival which is designed to encourage community awareness about the Center of Performing Arts at Loew's Theater. All proceeds will go towards restoration of the theater which CAP has worked to save since 1991.  The Baltimore Waltz was originally performed by New York's Circle Repertory Company in 1992. It received an OBIE award for best new American play. Ms. Vogel created the piece in memory of her brother who died of AIDS.  The thirty-scene fantasy deals with a woman named Anna and her fantasy terminal disease who takes a last fling with life's pleasures-- particularly sex while her brother prowls the streets of famous European capitals in search for her cure. The rollicking pace, however crashes to a halt as the dream ends and reality brings the last scene and a tragic clos...

    New issue of Long Shot reflects coffee house scene     Is poetry sound or literature? That is a question here. In reading the new issue of Long Shot literary magazine the most controversial aspect of the metropolitan coffee shop scene comes into crisp focus, where poetry has slipped over the edge of the literary table into an area that many critics define as mere entertainment. Part of the problem here <197> if it is a problem <197> is the very clear invasion of the 1980s Nuyorican Poets Cafe into these pages. While Reverend Pedro Pietri, whose ``If you don't play with fire you get burn,'' would hold up in either medium Miguel Algarin, a long time performance poetry star, does not shine in print as well as he does in the cafes. In this volume, the influence of Nancy Mercado is clearly felt. She has managed to find some of the biggest names in the late 1980s and early 1990s poetry scene but almost with a reckless disregard for the reader. Sta...

  Hennenbach weaves her spell over Grace Church While you can never really go back in time, there are moments when the past flows into you and you relive a time that has long become extinct. One of those moments came to the CoffeeHouse at Grace Church last week, as the vibrant and a moody music of Margo Hennenbach echoed in the high-arched world of Christian artifacts with the lively and playful air of an irreverent angel. She instantly brought back the days when I thought I was in love with Joni Mitchell. I've always been a victim to clever music and deep lyrics over which Mitchell was a master. Over time, her tunes always grew more meaningful, sometimes mellowing into moods I never presumed they could create. But even Mitchell took time to grow on me, her folksy early albums sounding better after her music moved on into a more jazzy vein, when the earlier work seemed more innocent to me. Margo Hennenbach's work struck that same profound yet innocent chord the minute she...

   Sensations magazine on the edge of thriving despite hard times     Surviving as a literary institution anywhere in United State is difficult in these days of tight-wallet economics. For small groups with a high intellectual concept, free of corporate, university or governmental patronage, survival is next to impossible. Yet a Secaucus-based literary group has found a way to keep its head above water without lowering its standard of literary excellence. The group, centered around Sensations magazine, will celebrate its sixth anniversary this December with a fiction contest and a special issue celebrating the winners. But the magazine is only one part of a growing community of writers, poets and researchers who have banded together to stimulate and educate themselves and their reading public. ``We wanted to start a literary magazine that could survive and thrive without grants or government assistance,'' said David Messineo, one of the chief motivators of ...