You might remember our backstage visit to the fitting room with local costume designer Jennifer Brawn Gittings a couple of years ago — her toddler, Oliver, stole the show.
Perhaps her experience informs this idea for local theater she shared with the U-T San Diego this week: “Child care,” she said. “For an extra ticket surcharge, bring your kids along to the theater and drop them at the group child-care while you watch the show.”
File photo by Sam Hodgson.
The U-T highlights ideas from other theater pros for expanding the drama scene, like producing more plays by Howard Pinter and performing plays in more unusual places, outside of traditional theaters. What idea sticks with you? Leave us a note.
You’re reading the Culture Report, our weekly compilation of the region’s arts and culture news.
Happening Here
• Here’s another theater idea: Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company hopes other theaters will be able to draw in more diverse audiences, and is hosting a workshop on how to do that in a few weeks.
• Catch yourself up on what else local theaters are up to — scroll through a gallery of blurbs and photos from productions on local stages at the U-T website. Or read CityBeat critic David Coddon’s descriptions here.
• Two red-tailed hawk babies (!) hatched atop the Museum of Man in Balboa Park.
• The Old Globe will present the story of “Romeo and Juliet” set to the songs of Jeff Buckley later this year. (U-T)
• San Diego’s airport shows up in a feature on airports with interesting art to check out while you’re waiting for your flight. (Conde Nast Traveler)
• Quite a crew of science- and arts-minded people have already signaled they’ll attend a community conversation about tying arts education efforts to the traditional “STEM” fields of science, technology, engineering and math in La Jolla next week.
• Which artwork do you think the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego should buy? You can vote online and then the U-T will compare the popular vote with what the museum’s collectors groups choose next month. (U-T)
• The creators of three Hollywood languages, Klingon, Avatar’s Na’vi and Dothraki from “Game of Thrones,” will have a panel conversation about linguistics Friday evening at UC San Diego.
Local Roots
• Sculptor David Adey is in the middle of a yearlong sabbatical from his art professor day job at Point Loma Nazarene University, working in his Little Italy studio on new pieces that are more ambitious than he’s made before. Kinsee Morlan profiles Adey for KCET Artbound, a Southern California arts journalism project that asks readers to vote on the stories they think should be featured in video documentaries. (You can vote for Adey’s here, if you like.)
• Hula dancing wasn’t always so tightly identified with tourism in Hawaii. Adria Imada teaches ethnic studies at UC San Diego and her book, “Aloha America,” delves into hula’s roots and recently earned Imada a prize from the Organization of American Historians. (U-T)
• Slices of street life and color juxtapositions in Southern California have always caught the eye of my friend Angella d’Avignon. The Holiday Matinee blog features a selection of 50 of her favorite photographs, many taken in San Diego.
• Our arts blogger Libby Weber riffs on a bunch of poems and poetry styles in her “Ode to National Poetry Month.” She also mentions a famed hometown poet, Rae Armantrout, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010.
• Two women in Oceanside led the charge to have monthly get-togethers and migrating art shows for the North County city’s culturally inclined. Says one of the organizers, “Oceanside is, for sure, a diamond in the rough. We, as a community, have so much local raw talent just waiting to be discovered, and that is where the [Hill Street Country Club] comes into play.” (CityBeat)
• A group aims to showcase “cutting edge opera” and will feature its first production at Space 4 Art in East Village next month. (U-T)
• A new production showcases and pays tribute to the history of the San Diego-Tijuana region, featuring raucous jazz performances by stellar musicians. Reviewers for the U-T and Gay and Lesbian News agree the show’s plot and trajectory needs focusing and tightening.
• One of San Diego’s finest guitarists, Peter Sprague, experiments with YouTube to help aspiring shredders learn his arrangement of “My Favorite Things.”
• Severely and chronically ill residents of the county’s Edgemoor Hospital have made artwork that’s now on display at a library in La Mesa. (La Mesa Courier)
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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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