Culture

Mother... set The day that ended with a bang with Duo Jalal's gig at Drom, began with meeting yet another Telluride friend, Diana Conovitz, and a Wednesday matinee. Bottom line: Run, don't walk to see the play, "The Motherf**ker with the Hat" at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. (Unless strong language offends.)

Playwright Stephen Adly Guirgis's newest play, his seventh, with the bleeping wonderful name is a no-holds-barred knock out: script, direction, performances, sets, lighting, the whole enchilada, terrific. Exhilarating. The story about life, love, despair, longing, a vague scent of hope and, well, a hat, is raw, in-your-face, intensely poignant and caustically funny.

 "Motherf**ker" marks the Broadway debut of comedian Chris Rock as the health-juice-drinking, yoga-posing nihilist Ralph D. in what has to be one of the finest, five-person ensembles ever assembled by a director, in this case, the talented Anna D. Shapiro. Shapiro won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Direction for "August: Osage County" and might well dust off her shelves for a second statuette for this comedy-drama.

Concert finale Telluride may be a toy town, but it casts a long shadow. Turn around too quickly and you will bump into Telluride no matter where in the world you are. Like yesterday. All day. The point takes on an all-caps clarity if I begin at the end.

Part-time Telluride locals Anne and Vincent Mai are co-producers of the Telluride Musicfest (with documentary filmmaker and part-time local Josh Aronson). Among the regular guests and returning for the 9th annual musical event, (June 22 – July 3) is classically trained violist Kathryn Lockwood.

In her ethnic persona, Australian born Kathryn performs with her husband, Lebanese-born Yousif Sheronick as Duo Jalal. On April 27 the couple happened to have a gig at a club in the alphabet soup of Manhattan's lower East Side.

by Jim Bedford

078165H1 MV5BNTAzMTg1NjY0NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODc3MTgzNA@@._V1._SY317_ The Nugget Theatre in beautiful downtown Telluride shows movies all year long and features two films this week.

Playing Friday, April 29 through Sunday, May 1, 2011, HOP (PG), mixes neat state-of-the-art animation with live action. It's for the whole family.

In HANNA (R), running from Friday, April 29 through Thursday, May 5, 16 year old Saoirse Ronan is taught to be an assassin by her father (Eric Bana) and we learn how she puts her schooling to work. With Kate Blanchett.

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews, and below for movietimes.

kicker: shows 6 p.m. nightly April 29 – May 1 Eddie, Betty, and Rosco are a bunch of boring, unimaginative  Telluride kids. They text each other. They play video games. They even watch the microwave.  But all of that changes the day they're visited by...

Picasso at MOMA Telluride Inside... and Out spent last Friday and Saturday in New York City.

On Friday, we returned to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see "Cezanne's Card Players," a fitting exhibit, so it would seem, for this high-stakes moment in history. Then again Cezanne's stoical models, all tradesman and employees of his family estate, appear totally content with their lot in life. Not so much like today.

We need to look further back in history to the 17th-century genre paintings of card players for our metaphor, images in which lusty, drooling drunks dominate. (The Met supplies example of his antecedents in the Cezanne show.) In his card players, Cezanne's emphasis is on rugged individualism and living in the moment, not on gambling and its attendants: greed and violence.

by Tracy Shaffer

 

Denver stories Curious Theatre Company’s Denver Stories is an open book. Now in its sixth edition, this annual fundraiser unites local legends with a playwright, director and a troupe of Curious actors to tell their life stories on stage in 15 minutes or less. A big part of the magic is in the mix of selected luminaries: a cultural icon, a politician, a culinary wiz, a do-gooder, and the like. Part tribute, part roast and always a celebration, the house is packed with friends, fans and nail-biting “celebrities” waiting for the artistic interpretation of their lives to unfold before their very eyes… and those of everyone they know. The singular quality in the Denver Story is a sense of community, and as we learn about those who’ve shaped our fair city and how they came to their passions, we feel closer to them and to the institutions they’ve helped to create.

This year’s honorees are Living Blues Reader’s “Best Blues Entertainer”, Otis Taylor; nationally recognized restaurateur, Paul Attardi (Fruition, Aubergine, Mizuna); Denver’s original “Shear Genius” and master coiffeur, Charles Price; and real estate developer/preservationist/”Queen of Lodo”, Dana Crawford.

By Jon Lovekin

(Editor's note: One of the pleasures in publishing Telluride Inside... and Out is getting to know new  [to us] writers. Susan and I independently ran across Jon Lovekin on Twitter. She took the next step, checked out his writing, liked what she saw and asked if he would be interested in contributing to TIO. Herewith, another article from Jon.)

Chugwater The Powder River Basin is one of America's sacrificial lands for our energy needs. Oil derricks, oil and gas pipelines, industrial roads that seem to go nowhere, and the largest open-pit coal mine in the United States. This vast region occupies an area approximately 120 by 200 miles or 24,000 square miles of open prairie, desert, high mountains, isolated buttes and deep rivers. This was home to the Ab-Sa-Ra-Ka or the Crow Indians and remains remote and unknown to much of America. Camping on Casper Mountain near the North Platte the view north remains crisp of the Big Horn Mountains near Montana hundreds of miles away.

 

Pclmaps-topo-co-telluride-1894cropped 
1894 Map of Telluride

You are cordially invited to a presentation on mapping and the launch of a Community Mapping Project by Dan Collins on Monday, May 9th, at 6 pm in the Wilkinson Library project room. 

Dan is working on a set of maps that fold into the Institute’s ongoing efforts surrounding watershed and environmental education.  The central project involves creating an online map of local “artworks” (with the broadest possible interpretation of what that might involve) and linking it to a webmap that Dan is developing using some interactive mapping software...kinda like Google Earth, only better! 

by Jim Bedford

078165H1 Sourcecode_smallposter The Nugget Theatre in beautiful downtown Telluride shows movies every night of the year and features three films this week.

Playing Friday, April 22 through Thursday, April 28, 2011, Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan dodge a stitch in time in SOURCE CODE (PG-13). It's a quirky thriller will a romantic soul that has lots of GROUNDHOG DAY-like surprises.

Also playing all week is HOP (PG), which mixes state-of-the-art animation with real action. It's a funny, feel-good film for the whole family.

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On Thursday, April 28 only, the Telluride Film Festival Presents CEDAR RAPIDS (R),  a witty comedy from the people who brought you THE VISITOR. No Nugget passes please.

See the Nugget website for trailers and reviews, and below for movietimes.

 

 

[click "Play" to hear Steve Gumble's conversation with Susan]

 

 

Front Stage Shot, Blues & Brews He's on the road again –  and headed our way. Turns out Steve Gumble has booked the iconic Willie Nelson, who first appeared at Telluride Bluegrass in 1982 –  as the headliner for his 18th annual Telluride Blues & Brews Festival, September 16 – September 18, 2011. Joining Willie on the Main Stage are The Flaming Lips, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, Dweezil Zappa, Mavis Staples, Yo Mama's Big Fat Booty Band, to name of the few of the acts, which make a lot more sense in context.
 
Steve, now owner and CEO of SBG Productions Inc. opened Telluride Blues & Blues for business in 1994. Like Telluride Film Festival, Mountainfilm in Telluride, and Telluride Bluegrass, Steve's festival evolved into an event with a global reputation, helping to brand Telluride as a cultural mecca.