Triangle audiences have a very special opportunity this week to see the world premiere of a limited-run production of A Good Boy by local theater group Hidden Voices in collaboration with PlayMakers Repertory Company. In this show, stories from death row—fictionalized, but drawn from first-hand accounts—are presented in a setting called Crossroads Correctional, where the lives of prisoners and their families hang in the balance as a clock ticks restlessly above. Hidden Voices, a non-profit collective, works closely with marginalized communities, including, since 2013, men on death row. The work of sourcing and telling those stories involves years of workshops and interviews; after each performance, there will be a post-show conversation around “justice, visibility, and compassion.”
Here’s one way to help the artists at Eno Arts Mill who lost their work in the floods from Tropical Storm Chantal: eat some burgers. Like many of the events hosted by Weird Art Productions (which took over Durham’s Third Friday event just last week), the what and how of the event are pleasantly mysterious, from a distance, so you’ll have to just take a chance on some weird and experience it in person. That said, it will involve slam poetry (Dasan Ahanu, J Renee Sterett, Bishop Omega) and chefs (Chef B of Weird Burgers, Melanie Wilkerson of 21C, Chef Saka Monk) squaring off in pairs in a contest judged by Luis Zouian (Lagana), Mary Helen Moore (WUNC), and Jeff Polish (The Monti). A portion of the proceeds goes to the Eno Arts Mill, and the ticket’s sliding scale prices ($35-$55) come with three burgers and one drink.
Decades before Outdoor Voices popularized (expensive) outdoorswear for women, there was Claire McCardell, an active young girl who hated feeling restricted in the frocks of the day, as she climbed trees and went swimming, and who later went on to pioneer active, functional fashion as a designer. In a new biography, the award-winning journalist and author Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson celebrates “the gal who defied Dior,” as Betty Friedan quipped of the designer, and a legacy that included, per the event description, “ballet flats and mix-and-match,” as well as “wrap dresses, hoodies, leggings, denim,” and—here’s the key one—the addition of pockets on many dresses. Cheers to that! Author Julia Ridley Smith interviews Dickinson at this signing and talk.
With Survival Is a Promise, released a year ago today, Durham poet and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs took an appropriately unconventional biographical approach to Audre Lorde, an unconventional figure—a poet, professor, philosopher, and activist who died in 1992. The chapters are grouped thematically through impressionistic, in-depth portraits of the environment around Lorde. This approach seems to have paid off, with Gumbs’ biography reviewed and praised widely; at the paperback release of the book, hosted by Letters Bookshop and held at 21C, best-selling author Sonya Renee Taylor joins Gumbs in conversation.
Every year, audiences flock to the downtown Raleigh venue Kings to see a stacked bill of bands—though the lineup is always a secret until the curtains go up. This is The Great Cover Up, a Triangle music tradition held annually since 1999 (with a brief hiatus when Kings was closed), in which local artists perform sets by bigger bands. The bands really commit (see past INDY dispatches) to the bit. Now, the tradition is being celebrated with a PBS NC documentary, which will be screened at The Rialto, red carpet and all, followed by a panel interview facilitated by North Carolina music journalist David Menconi. Don’t worry: There will also be live cover bands.
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