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Season in theSun
All eyes on Elm City as International Fest weaves its cosmopolitan magic
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Business New Haven
6/10/2002
By: Nancy Barnes
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Anne Tyler Calebresi tells the tale of how New Haven's International Festival of Arts & Ideas, which will open June 13, began.
“We had a billion-dollar layout. It was like living on the lake and not knowing you had a rowboat. Why aren't we having a festival?” the community activist thought way back in what now seems the distant summer of 1994.
Calebresi says she was also concerned that the residents of the suburbs were not coming into the city.
“I was grumpy with the attitudes of the suburbs,” she says. “We had just had the Special Olympics [in New Haven]. We had had this wonderful coming together - and I wanted a festival to happen the very next year.”
So Calebresi contacted Jean Handley, who, as a former vice president of the Southern New England Telephone Co., was known to her as a woman with what she terms “super organizational skills.”
Handley commissioned the market study that confirmed that the city of New Haven had a vast potential audience for an arts festival within a day's round trip. With Roslyn Meyer, who joined the effort as a fundraiser, Calebresi and Handley became the festival's founders. The first festival, which lasted five days, took place in 1996.
Calebresi says the thought it “silly” to have a festival in New Haven that did not take into account the colleges and universities here. That belief accounts for the “Ideas” component of what this year will be an 18-day event.
And she acknowledges that Mary Miller, the new executive director of the festival (and a musician who served previously as director of the Northlands Festival in Scotland) has taken this year's schedule of events “cautiously.” The festival, for instance, has not yet commissioned a new performance piece, as other major summer arts festivals do.
But Calebresi adds that Handley even researched the weather in New Haven, looking for the best two-week period of the year for crowds of people to come together.
So whether besmirched by brow-beading heat or cool beyond reason, the arrival of summer in New Haven coincides with the city's annual gathering of artists and thinkers from around the globe in a celebration known as the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. A cornucopia of events, ranging from Danish street theater to a performance of La Boheme by the Metropolitan Opera, takes place from June 13 to June 30 in this, the festival's seventh year.
The hot spot for circus arts will occur above the New Haven Green, and it will comprise the festival's first official performance. The French troupe Transe Express, which performed earlier this year at the Sydney (Australia) Festival and in 1999 at the opening of the Scottish Parliament, will create a “mobile homme” in its U.S. debut.
The free performance will unfold with a parade of musical soldiers who, accompanied by one trapeze artist, will rise 100 feet into the air. Suspended by wire, the costumed performers will look like marionettes in the sky. The initial performance, on June 14 at 10 p.m., will be repeated June 15 at 6 and 10 p.m., and June 16 at 10 p.m.
On a decidedly more grounded note, late 19th-century Romanticism seems the operatic style of choice this year. On June 19 at 8 p.m. on the New Haven Green, Julius Rudel will conduct the Metropolitan Opera in its third consecutive festival appearance. A free event, the Met is performing Giacomo Puccini's La Boheme. The opera, first performed in 1896, tells the story of two doomed lovers - the flowergirl Mimi and the equally impoverished artist Rudolfo - and it is one of Puccini's most beloved compositions.
The tale of the quintessential Spanish gypsy, George Bizet's Carmen will receive an abridged telling by the Broomhill Opera, whose members hail from South Africa, in collaboration with Wilton's Music Hall (the oldest music hall in London) and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra. This ticketed event will take place June 13 and 15 at 8 p.m. at the Shubert Performing Arts Center, 247 Chapel Street.
Of multiple ethnic backgrounds, the Broomhill Opera was formed when two of Britain's most innovative opera talents, conductor Charles Hazlewood and director Mark Dornford-May, auditioned more than 1,000 trained and untrained singers from throughout South Africa.
In addition to the Bizet classic, the Broomhill Opera will perform in African dialects its highly touted The Mysteries, a retelling in carols, hymns and jive of medieval English stories from the Bible. This music theater, likewise a ticketed event, will take to the Shubert stage June 14 at 8 p.m. and June 16 at 2 and 7 p.m.
From Israel comes the contemporary dance of Inbal Pinto, whose mischievous choreography often has a fairy tale-like quality. Dance-pantomine is at the heart of Oyster, which Pinto's troupe will perform in a ticketed event at Yale's University Theater, 222 York Street, from June 25-28 at 8 p.m. and on June 29 at 2 p.m.
In the visual arts, works by women often exude great passion. At the Yale Center for British Art (1080 Chapel Street, between High and York), works on paper and plastic by Paula Rego are on view. Portuguese by birth but a Londoner since 1976, Rego is an artist whose figurative works examine the themes of old age, matriarchy and familial relationships, frequently against the backdrop of cruelty and madness first woven by Charlotte Bronte in her literary masterwork, Jane Eyre.
Among the most effective works in this charged, intense exhibition is “The Interrogator's Garden,” where a prison guard's face wears a smirk of authority, and “Celestina's House,” the large pastel after which the exhibition is named. As Rego says, “Celestina is a tart, but more than a tart.”
In fact, the woman is a courtesan but also very much a woman of the people. In Rego's depiction, Celestina sits among other equally wayward figures of Rego's - and, in at least one instance, the Swiss artist Balthus' - imagining. Much of Rego's work is earth-toned, but in a work such as “The Interrogator's Garden” she shows herself capable of creating a vibrant purple.
Lectures, an adult class and a children's workshop in pastels as well as a documentary film on the artist accompany the exhibition. Like all visual-arts events, these activities are free.
Across the street at the Yale University Art Gallery (1111 Chapel Street), the first complete exhibition of woodcuts by the abstract-expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler is on display.
Nimble and effervescent, the images Frankenthaler creates on woods such as maple, Philippine Ribbon mahogany and fir belie the tedious process that has given them physical form.
Her “Madame Butterfly” (2000), for instance, is a melange of 102 colors from 46 blocks. The monumental “Freefall” (1992-1993), combines a 12-color woodcut of blues and greens with the many hues of the hand-dyed paper beneath it.
More conservative tastes will enjoy the gallery's exhibitions of photographs by Emmet Gowin, Robert Adams and Lewis Baltz, as well as the nine quilts created by African-American women - primarily in Alabama - who mix colonial patterns with African weaving techniques. A final gallery exhibition, “Looking at America,” reveals the American landscape across a wide array of media.
In theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company's ticketed production of “A Midsummer Night's Dream” will take place at the Shubert from June 26-29 at 8 p.m. and June 29-30 at 2 p.m.
One ticketed performance by the very contemporary Kronos Quartet on June 30 at 7 p.m. as part of the Branford College Courtyard series at Yale (York Street between Chapel and Elm); a free outdoor performance by the New Haven Symphony Orchestra on June 22 at 5 p.m. at Quinnipiac University (275 Mt. Carmel Avenue, Hamden); and renditions on June 18-22 at 7 p.m. and June 22-23 at 2 p.m. of Igor Stravinksy's Petrushka by master puppeteer Basil Twist are other highlights of a festival that seems unyielding in its scope.
In Arabic with English subtitles, the drama “Alive from Palestine: Stories Under Occupation” will proffer intimate stories of ordinary yet vital lives. From June 25-29 at 8 p.m., the Long Wharf Theatre (222 Sargent Drive) will host the Al-Kasaba Theatre company as it makes its U.S. debut.
Increasingly, the New Haven festival has taken on the expansive feel of the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, S.C. The Spoleto event has Piccolo Spoleto, a spin-off festival featuring artists that cater to family audiences.
This year, the International Fest has a component similar to Piccolo Spoleto in its free family and neighborhood events. Among them are two series: the Family Matters Stage Performances and the Family Matters Sites Activities. Both will take place Tuesdays through Fridays throughout the festival on the Green. Performances will begin at 1:30 p.m. and hands-on activities open at 2:15 p.m. African drumming, puppetry and a doll-making workshop are among the scheduled events.
Like Spoleto, this festival is presenting several free conversations at venues throughout New Haven where performers will discuss their unique artistic visions. Among the artists who will take part in these “Artists-in Conversation” is Abdullah Ibrahim, the legendary jazz musician whose conversation is scheduled at the New Haven Free Public Library (133 Elm Street) on June 14 at 12:30 p.m.
New to the festival this year is an event called “Edge,” similar to the fringe festival that began at the Edinburgh (Scotland) International Festival a half century ago. In a fringe festival, artists and thinkers of all persuasions present events for the duration of the more established festival. As part of Edge, a boy/girl band, Les Baton Rouge, from Portugal will perform on June 21 at 4 p.m. at Temple Plaza (Temple Street between Chapel and Crown).
Also as part of numerous Edge events, the Arts Council of Greater New Haven will project the film, Strictly Ballroom, on the side of an arts district building on Audubon Street on June 22 at 9:15 p.m.
Because the greater New Haven area is home to so many colleges and universities, ideas matter - and that is where, among contemporary arts festivals, New Haven's stands alone. Accompanying an exhibition on urban renewal that will open June 14 at the New Haven Colony Historical Society (114 Whitney Ave.) are three seminars presented under the rubric “Reshaping New Haven: The Urban Renewal Era, 1950-1970.” The seminars will take place on June 15 at noon, 1:30 p.m. and 3:30 p.m.
Two seminars on the “green” cities movement will occupy the City Hall Aldermanic Chambers (165 Church Street) on June 27 at 5:30 p.m. and June 28 at 3 p.m. Most poignantly post 9/11, a series of seven seminars will confront USA: As Others See Us - A Dialogue at the University Theater June 13 at 5 p.m., June 17 at 7 p.m., June 18 at 5:30 p.m., June 19 at 5:30 p.m., June 20 at 5:30 p.m., June 24 at 7 p.m. and June 25 at 5:30 p.m.
Although strongly associated with the stoicism of the Vikings (and the children's stories by Hans Christian Andersen), Denmark also has an antic side. The street theater troupe Street Cirkus Frank is composed of ten Danes and one tartan-clad Scot. The Scotsman is Ewan McKinnon, who moved to Denmark where he founded the group. Watch for the clowning, juggling and general entertainment of these skilled pranksters on the Heart Stage at the New Haven Green on June 16 at 1:30 p.m.
At various sites throughout New Haven from June 13-17, the troupe - like the 18-day extravaganza that has embraced it - will appear at a location near you.
And what festival could thrive in New Haven without pizza? Whether the sauce is red or white (or no sauce at all), the Greater New Haven Pizza Fest will take place each weekday at noon throughout the festival, accompanying the jazz, folk, rock and ethnic music concerts on stage at the New Haven Green. Food will also be served by Cornerstone, a non-profit organization that helps the mentally ill, homeless and persons struggling with addiction, weekdays at noon and, again, from 5 to 7 p.m.
To purchase tickets and confirm ticket availability, contact the International Festival of Arts & Ideas at its Web site, www.artidea.org, or at 1-888-ART-IDEA.
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