New Haven’s International Festival of Arts & Ideas welcomes The Wailers, Wu Man, “Whitman, Melville, Dickinson—The Passions of Bloom,” “We Are Citizens” and “The War Room” this summer.
And that’s just the “W”s.
Arts & Ideas announced its wide-ranging 2017 slate at an event in the Alexion building in downtown New Haven Tuesday night. The festival will run June 3 to 24 this year and feature the accustomed array of world-premiere theater performances, internationally renowned musicians, modern dance, circus theater, weighty discussions on contemporary issues, food, bicycle tours and more.
This was the first festival announcement event in years that was made open to the public; more than 500 people RSVPed. This was also the last Arts & Ideas announcement to involve Mary Lou Aleskie, the festival’s executive director for the past 11 years. Aleskie is moving to Hanover, N.H., to become the director of the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College.
Arts & Ideas Director of Programming Chad Herzog unveiled the 2017 schedule. Highlights include:
Free concerts on New Haven Green from the Mexican rock-fusion sextet Troker and Latin soul/funk ensemble Fulaso (both June 17), Connecticut jazz icon Jimmy Greene and his quartet fronting the New Haven Symphony Orchestra June 18, and reggae pioneers The Wailers and jam band Rusted Root on June 24.
LEO — The Anti-Gravity Show, a one-man acrobatic circus theater performance from Montreal, June 23 and 24.
(Be)Longing (June 17 and 18), a new performance piece “prompted by our collective understanding and judgments around the Virginia Tech and Newtown tragedies,” by New Haven-based hip-hop playwright Aaron Jafferis and composer Byron Au Yong.
A six-film retrospective of recent work by revered documentarians Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, June 9 to 11. Pennebaker has been active since the 1950s, Hegedus since the ’70s, but this series focuses on their work since 1993, including “The War Room,” “God Spoke: Al Franken” and “Unlocking the Cage.”
Chinese pipa player Wu Man and the Miró Quartet, in an indoor concert June 22. Wu Man performed with Kronos Quartet at the festival in 2013.
The performance collective Manual Cinema, which creates multi-media “cinematic shadow puppet” shows. “The End of TV,” a new work commissioned by the festival, will be performed June 19 to 22.
Whitman, Melville, Dickinson — The Passions of Bloom, the premiere of an oratorio by influential contemporary classical composer Martin Bresnick, based on critical insights of American Literature guru Harold Bloom.
Black Girl: Linguistic Play by socially conscious dance troupe Camille A. Brown & Dancers, June 15 & 16. “Black Girl” has already been seen in Connecticut, at the Wesleyan Center for the Arts in October.
We Are Citizens, a community-based sociopolitical theater piece organized by Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, June 21.
A new concert series Altar’d Spaces will be hosted by three churches on New Haven Green, plus the nearby First & Summerfield Church. Among the dozen-plus acts in the series are jazz visionary Taylor Ho Bynum June 11, Canadian rapper Baba Brinkman’s “Rap Guide to Climate Chaos” June 13, the Connecticut pop band Olive Tiger (who performed at the announcement party) on June 14, the clown troupe Happenstance Theater June 14 and the Afro Peruvian New Trends Orquestra June 21.
The Ideas side the festival includes talks by African authors Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Aminatta Forna, Imbolo Mbue, Okey Ndike; an appearance by Constanza Romero, widow of the playwright August Wilson; a conversation with writer and performer Taylor Mac and comedian, physician and TV personality Bassem Youssef; Timothy Snyder speaking “On Tyranny”; a WNPR program on the U.S. economy; talks on everything from citizenship to local architecture to food, local history tours and discussions with many of the festival artists; as well as workshops and master classes.
The Yale Institute for Music Theatre will again offer readings of two musical works-in-progress. The New Haven Documentary Film Festival is returning for a fourth year June 1 to 11. Artists in the ongoing Yale-China Fellows artist exchange program this year include Phoebe Hui, Cai Ying, Onnie Chan and Debe Sham. Outdoor Scene of the Green performances, many from Connecticut-based performers, occur throughout the festival. Guided tours of local museums, walking tours and bike tours of New Haven, restaurant events, and boat tours of the Mill River and Lighthouse Point Park are also listed in the festival program.
Another recent tradition that will continue: pre-festival Pop-up Festivals in various New Haven neighborhoods: June 3 in Newhallville, June 4 in Dixwell and June 10 in The Hill.
The festival is honoring Mary Lou Aleskie with a celebratory dinner titled Lux & Gravitas June 23 and also with a fundraising initiative intended to support the types of programming she was best known for. Arts & Ideas Director of Development Tom Griggs declared that half of the fundraising goal of $1,000,000 has already been raised.
A complete listing of festival events (many of which are free, but many of which require tickets and/or reservations) can be found at artidea.org.
![By JAKE COYLE (AP Film Writer) NEW YORK (AP) — “The Fall Guy,” the Ryan Gosling-led, action-comedy ode to stunt performers, opened below expectations with $28.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, providing a lukewarm start to a summer movie season that’s very much to be determined for Hollywood. The Universal Pictures release opened on […]](https://www.courant.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Film_-_The_Fall_Guy_54148.jpg?w=620 "By JAKE COYLE (AP Film Writer) NEW YORK (AP) — “The Fall Guy,” the Ryan Gosling-led, action-comedy ode to stunt performers, opened below expectations with $28.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, providing a lukewarm start to a summer movie season that’s very much to be determined for Hollywood. The Universal Pictures release opened on […]")