Jersey Arts Podcast

Christopher Benincasa talks with curator Donna Gustafson about fifty years of Fluxus at Rutgers University. Fluxus was a radical and experimental art movement that started in the sixties and involved a group of Rutgers faculty members. The exhibit "art/around/beyond: Fluxus at Rutgers" is on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick through April 1. Thanks for listening! Subscribe...

Young playwright Danai Gurira first made waves with “Eclipsed,” her play about 5 young Liberian women during that country’s civil war. She is now writing a cycle of plays about Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean identity. Part one, “The Convert,” premieres at the McCarter Theatre January 13th to February 12th. It starts at the beginning, during the first black/white conflict in 1895, with the story of Jekesa...

Producer Eric Schultz visits comic artist, painter, illustrator and author Daves Devries at his Budd Lake, NJ home. In 1998, Devries asked the question, what would a child's drawing look like if it were painted realistically? The answer is The Monster Engine, and a book, gallery exhibitions, lectures and a website that went viral in its first month with over 17 million hits followed. For more...

Inspired by a true story, an unemployed bartender living in a trailer park buys a painting at a thrift store for three dollars – and then comes to believe that it might be a long-lost Jackson Pollock worth millions. However, as she learns, words like “authenticity” can become slippery when the art world is forced to clash with the rest of the world. That’s the premise of Bakersfield Mist, which wi...

Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill A Mockingbird was an instant classic that was made into a great movie. Mary Badham played the role of "Scout" when she was 10 years old, and it transformed her life. Susan Wallner talks to Badham about her special relationship with Gregory Peck ("Atticus") and the universal appeal of this Southern tale of race, justice, and childhood. The pl...

The Atlantic City Ballet is performing Dracula just in time for Halloween. Producer Eric Schultz recently chatted with AC Ballet's founding director Phyllis Papa, who created the work five years ago. She says, "It's more of a dance experience than a ballet -- scary, sexy and dramatic." Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favorite podcast player. T...

For years, Junot Díaz was known for his explosive collection of short stories, "Drown," set in New Jersey and the Dominican Republic. His readers loyally waited for his next book - a novel that took him 11 years to write. "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," about a Dominican American nerd from Paterson, New Jersey, won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. Susan Wallner talks to Díaz ab...

The 1992 Disney movie-musical "Newsies" was not a box office smash - the epic, fact-inspired tale of a newsboys' labor strike in 1890s New York was a notorious flop. However, nearly two decades later, the movie's passionate cult following - and Menken and Feldman's enduring pop score - have helped to create enough demand for a new expanded version for the stage. The NEW Ne...

Conductor Jed Gaylin has transformed the Bay Atlantic Symphony during his fourteen years as Music Director. Eric Schultz talks to Gaylin about sold out concert halls, summers performances in Avalon and all the great music the Bay Atlantic Symphony will be performing this year, including a Motown pops concert in Atlantic City. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favor...

NJPAC’s Sounds of the City is a summer tradition in Newark – a free Thursday night concert series attracting thousands of people held outside in Theater Square. It features the hottest new artists around, playing everything from jazz and pop to hip-hop and world music to the ever popular salsa night. This season ends on September 1st with a tribute to Michael Jackson. Susan Wallner talks to the pr...

The Smithereens have just released their first album of new material in twelve years - Smithereens 2011 - and now the band of New Jersey natives is back on tour and enjoying a warm welcome from critics and fans alike. They'll be performing at WXPN's XPoNential Music Festival in Camden on Friday, July 22. Christopher Benincasa spoke with Smithereens drummer Dennis Diken about the legacy -...

Producer Eric Schultz chats with Richard Russell, General Director of Opera New Jersey, about the company’s 2011 summer season at McCarter Theatre in Princeton. Menotti’s The Consul, Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Pasatieri’s new opera The Family Room are all on the bill. Thanks for listening! Subscribe to The Jersey Arts Podcast in your favorite podcast player. The Jersey Arts Podcast is one med...

Josh Ritter’s career began to take shape in college when he decided that playing music was more important to him than neuroscience – and, after years of bouncing around the music scene, he’s emerged as one the most respected singer/songwriters of his generation. He’s playing the Appel Farm Arts & Music Festival with Ani Difranco on June 4th. Christopher Benincasa speaks with Josh Ritter about...

The Two River Theater Company in Red Bank is hot. New artistic director John Dias has moved quickly to bring new artists and new plays to the stage. His 2011-2012 season was just announced, including everything from “Much Ado About Nothing” to the new academic sex comedy “Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England” (developed at Two River). Dias talks to Susan Wallner about his almost mystical pas...

Artist Joan Snyder has been widely celebrated for her vibrant expressionist prints and paintings and her leading role in feminist art. Producer Eric Schultz spoke with the 2007 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius award,” as the Zimmerli Art Museum mounts the first major retrospective of her prints: “Dancing with the Dark: Joan Snyder Prints 1963-2010.” Thanks for listening! Subscribe to Th...

The TromaDance Film Festival is returning to Asbury Park – April 22nd and 23rd at the Showroom Theater. In this podcast, Christopher Benincasa talks with the man behind the festival, Lloyd Kaufman. Kaufman is perhaps best known for introducing us to The Toxic Avenger – a mutant super-hero character he created that has come to symbolize independent, do-it-yourself filmmaking – just the right mascot...

Producer Eric Schultz talks with renowned New Jersey-based choreographer Carolyn Dorfman. She founded her modern dance group, the 28 years ago. Dorfman discusses her latest work and collaborative approaches to creating dance. She also talks about growing up with parents who were Holocaust survivors. Her parents, she says, told her everything, and that has profoundly shaped her entire being and art...

“Black is Beautiful” - Deborah Willis, artist, historian, and curator, explores the history of this idea, from early slave images to an iconic 1970s photo of model Suzanne Taylor. “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present,” will be at the Newark Museum through April 28th. Willis, a MacArthur “Genius,” has a new book out as well: “Michelle Obama: The First Lady in Photog...

Christopher Benincasa interviews curator Angela Sergonis about a new show at the -- 50 photos of acclaimed African American artists -- from Lena Horne to Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston to Dizzy Gillespie. In the 1920s, Carl Van Vechten, critic, novelist, and chronicler of the Harlem Renaissance, began photographing black writers, musicians, and artists -- the result is the vivid portrait arch...

Christopher Benincasa talks with Dr. Rafey Habib, Professor of English at Rutgers University, author of many books on literary criticism – and a poet. His book Shades of Islam: Poems for a New Century has just been published. One of his passions is cultivating mutual understanding between the Islamic world and Western cultures – which includes working with colleagues at Rutgers University to estab...

"Black Nativity," by the great poet Langston Hughes, premiered in 1961 on Broadway. Since then, the gospel-inspired musical play has become a holiday favorite. This year, see it December 30th at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, in a production directed by Darrell Lawrence Willis of the Dunbar Repertory Company. Willis describes the production to Susan Wallner, and reflects on why it...

[Title of Show] is about two guys writing a show – Hunter Bell and Jeff Bowen – who really did write and star (as themselves) in the show, which ended up on Broadway with 3 Obies! It’s a show about four friends taking risks, creating art, killing Vampires (the dream-destroying kind, not the Dracula kind) — and how relationships change when life happens. Now, [Title of Show] is at the George Street...

Christopher Benincasa speaks with poet Amiri Baraka on his birthday. Which also happened to be the kick-off date of this year's Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival. Which just happened to be taking place in his hometown - Newark. At the age of 76, Baraka has a long history of activism and controversy coupled with a vast catalogue of artistic output, and many awards to show for it. Being the fi...

Playwright Joe Paprzycki runs a theatre where his grandfather's bar used to be in Camden, New Jersey. In his play Last Rites, he engineered some clever time-traveling by staging the production on the same location the story is set in -- his grandfather's bar, circa 1967. The play harmonized with Paprzycki's mission -- renewing a neighborhood in a struggling city. Next, he's mou...

n a special back to school edition, producer Susan Wallner talks to Bob Morrison, founder of Music for All, VH1's Save the Music Foundation, and Quadrant Arts Education Research. He's one of the nation's foremost movers and shakers in the field of arts education, and he has the data to show why the arts are so important to students in the 21st century. Morrison also describes the &q...