Playwright, performing artist and former Artblog New Art Writing panelist, Carl(os) Roa, is our newest man on the street. Here he embeds himself with rising local hip-hop ensemble, ILL DOOTS, on the eve of their two-night engagement at the Painted Bride’s Bride Next residency culminating showcase. Check them out November 17th and 18th and BYO pretzels.
Read MoreImani chats with poet, dancer and playwright, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, about his libretto for “We Shall Not Be Moved” — an Opera Philadelphia O17 festival world premier with music by Daniel Bernard Roumain and direction by Bill T. Jones. Brutal and poetic in equal measure, the story unfolds as a band of North Philly teens flee the violence and school closings of their neighborhood to take refuge at the abandoned Osage Avenue site of the 1985 MOVE bombing. Throughout the opera, dancing ghosts and a dense web of black cultural references, old and new, demonstrate the past is always with us.
Read MoreThis summer Matthew Rose while visiting friends in Brooklyn came upon the artist Susan Gardner who was walking around the front of her 1860 townhouse. Seeing the façade curiously encrusted with a jewel-like mosaic made of bits crockery, jewelry, toys and other materials, Matthew struck up a conversation with the artist about her “Mosaic House, a work of art now more than 15 years in the making.
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