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The fifth installment of our “Meeting of the Minds” arts and culture event is next week, and we’ve got details on the six interesting minds you’ll meet — an acclaimed photojournalist, a costume designer and a city planner/coffee connoisseur among them.
The event’s happening next Thursday, March 14, at Bread and Salt in Logan Heights at 7p.m.
More than 100 people have told us they’re coming. Have you? If not, sign up here.
You’re reading the Culture Report, our weekly compilation of the region’s arts and culture news.
Local Roots
• The first time Molly Puryear, a local dance teacher, faced a class of boys from an alternative learning school with a focus on behavior and attitude, “I was as terrified of the unknown as they were,” she writes in a commentary for San Diego Gay and Lesbian News. “They didn’t want to dance, and they knew I couldn’t make them.” But they eventually embraced it, and Puryear, education director at Malashock Dance, lays out the case for dance in education, even when the teacher faces a similarly tough crowd.
• Two local architects at CRO Studio won an award for their design of a new library and outdoor amphitheater at the intersection of two main commercial roads in Tijuana. The architects are also on faculty at Woodbury School of Architecture in Barrio Logan. (Architect Magazine)
• Frankie Quinones, who raps as Odessa Kane, was born in Tijuana and raised in Paradise Hills. He’s half Filipino and half Mexican — and now, he’s “a member of Kabatang makaBayan (KmB), an organization that seeks to fight injustice in the Philippines.”
“I knew about my history, but I never really acted on it,” he told CityBeat.
• A group meant to foster and hone local dramatists’ work, the Scripteasers, brings a rotating bunch of actors together to read new work aloud — it’s been happening regularly since the 1940s. (U-T)
• San Diego Free Press profiles Alma Rodriguez, the powerhouse behind Queen Bee’s Art and Cultural Center in North Park. Her tale includes homelessness, working as a server on a cruise ship and playing drums in a punk band.
• A niche group of sound experimenters see their work and art almost as a science, collecting “wires, synthesizers, amplifiers, drone instruments, the innards of children’s electronic toys, fuzz pedals and anything else they can use to produce strange, erratic and ultimately fascinating noises,” as CityBeat’s Alex Zaragoza puts it. And they take performing seriously: “It’s kind of hard to tell if the sound is making you do something or you’re making the sound do something,” says one of them, Clint Davis. (CityBeat)
• The county’s youth theaters are known for incubating theater talent, and the U-T’s James Hebert rounds up a few notable upcoming performances.
Building Battles
• As bankruptcy proceedings for the North Park Theatre continue this week, a local writer ponders the neighborhood’s future. (San Diego Free Press)
The man who owns the theater’s West Coast Tavern, David Cohen, is trying to foreclose on the now-bankrupt company that owns the theater, Lyric Opera San Diego. The parties head to court again March 7. (U-T)
• Escondido’s arts center leaders are convening community conversations this week about the center’s future. (U-T)
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I’m Kelly Bennett, reporter for Voice of San Diego. You can reach me directly at kelly.bennett@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.325.0531.
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