Performance

Worth the wait: Waxahatchee brings ‘Saint Cloud’ to Pappy & Harriet’s

Saint Cloud is the sound of a woman meeting her higher self with the confidence to embrace every iteration of self that came before. This confidence recalls the nostalgia of youth with the forgiving wisdom of age and is planted firmly in a legacy of women who have weathered the seasons, spun their searching into songs, and kept on down the road, in the words of Williams, “pedal to the metal and (their) luck to the test.”...

The Power of Art: Life Lessons with Lonnie Holley

In 1979, Lonnie Holley made his first sculpture. Like most of his art, it was something born out of an ugly situation. Holley’s niece and nephew died in a house fire in their hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. Their mother, Holley’s sister, fell into an even deeper depression when she realized she did not have enough money to buy her children tombstones. “You can imagine me having to absorb all my family’s tears and my tears,” Holley told The Fader in 2013, “I was just wondering, what could I do?”...

Behind the Scenes of Visions and Voices’ “Race Relay”

USC Visions and Voices recently came together with the USC School of Dramatic Arts, Cinematic Arts and Public Policy to create "Race Relay." Shown on February 8th, 9th and 10th at the California African American Museum this multimedia theatre production was designed to start conversations about race relations in American today. Reporter Zazu Lippert went behind the scenes to talk to the the creators and actors about the production....

“Race Relay” Softens Hard Subjects

I’m what they call a “mixed” kid. My mother has golden hair and fair skin, and my Nigerian father is as dark as can be. As a child, I was a bit too light, my caramel face splattered with freckles, to blend in with the black kids, while my hair was a bit too kinky to be the “right” kind of pretty for the white kids. Growing up with just my mother and grandmother, I had predominantly white friends and did not fully understand what the terms “oreo” and “exotic,” or the question, “What are you?”, meant or implied. I went from wondering why I didn’t get that “mixed hair” to wishing I did, when kids asked me how often I washed my hair. When the transition to high school came, I began to feel my blackness in the form of the pressure to represent. I saw the racial achievement gap in action, as one of two faces of color in an AP course. I didn’t know who I was, who I should be, or what to be proud of....

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez: Redefining age and activism

Xiuhtezcatl Martinez has spent nearly his whole life fighting for the environment, well 67% of it to be exact. That’s an easy calculation to make because Martinez is only 18 years old. Known professionally as an indigenous climate change activist, hip hop artist, writer, and public speaker, Martinez began making a name for himself at age six, when he started speaking out at environmental rallies in his hometown of Boulder, CO. In the intervening years, he seems to have been working as fast as he can checking off what, for many, would be bucket-list items....

The undying, unfiltered debauchery of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”

Gathered on the carpet outside a movie theater are Kristin’s castmates, their bodies stretched out among set-pieces, suitcases full of costumes and props, their language peppered with equal parts exuberance and expletives. This is Kristin’s makeshift dressing room: she balances a lighted, three-paneled mirror on a plastic folding chair, her half-costumed body perched before it. Tonight, she is portraying a corset-and-fishnet-wearing mad scientist called Dr. Frank-N-Furter....