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REVIEW: ‘The Broken Chord’ resonates with honesty, simplicity, beauty

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Mother (Saffron Henke, from left), son (Tim Budd) and daughter (Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers) embrace and dance during a March 27 rehearsal for "The Broken Chord," at the Englert Theatre in Iowa City. The play focuses on Alzheimer's disease and dementia, and uses emotion and body movement to illustrate ideas. The show opened April 12 and continues through April 14 at the Englert. (Kaitlyn Bernauer/The Gazette-KCRG9)

IOWA CITY — At intermission, the woman next to me said what I was about to say to her: “This is my life.”

Afterwards, she was in tears and I was fighting back mine. A mutual friend introduced us Friday night, and who knows when or if we’ll see each other again. But for two hours, we were united in the shared experiences of “The Broken Chord,” onstage through Sunday (4/14) at the Englert Theatre.

This is another brilliant Hancher commission by Working Group Theatre, a small professional troupe of the highest achievement. Time and again, founders Sean Christopher Lewis, Jennifer Fawcett and Martin Andrews have gathered their colleagues to cast light on the shadows swirling around us all.

Theater originated to educate audiences through artistic expression — to present complex issues in a way the masses could understand. That is exactly what the Working Group cast and crew have done with the world of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.

To call them “actors” seems inadequate. Their specialty is illumination through immersion in some of the most difficult situations facing society today, from Michigan’s crumbling auto industry in “Rust” to race relations in last year’s Hancher commission, “Mayberry.”

They spent a year researching Alzheimer’s disease through the eyes of patients, their families, medical professionals and caregivers. Several of the actors trained as hospice workers, to provide bedside comfort through patients’ final days.

They met with panels of health care professionals, shared their project with students across a wide variety of disciplines at the University of Iowa, conducted storytelling workshops with patients and presented mountains of material to playwright Fawcett.

Their deep, deep delving now sings with the utmost beauty onstage — a poetic ballet of heartbreaking humanity that brought the opening night audience to laughter, tears, gasps, silence and a most deserved standing ovation.

Every aspect of this show is elegant, with director Lewis seamlessly weaving theatrical devices into a rich tapestry that flutters and envelops the audience into the action.

Objects and poles and sails fly in and out, creating scenery real and unreal, sometimes stopping overhead, other times engulfing the characters. Gorgeous music captures the very essence of every mood, from harrowing to humorous, anxious to exhilarating. And the lighting. So stark one moment, so perfect in another, as delicate tubes and twinkle lights take us into the fragile realm of sweet memories.

The main story involves two adult children tearing themselves apart trying to join forces in caring for their stricken mother. This new mission reopens old wounds and their frustration is palpable.

On the periphery is a Greek chorus of actors who present other common scenarios — the husband of a wife with early-onset Alzheimer’s, a chaplain reaching out to physically and spiritually touch the afflicted, an older wife clinging to a lifetime of memories, and adult children on very different, yet similar paths.

All of the performances are stellar, but Saffron Henke is utterly magnificent as the mother, Helen, a Ph.D. archivist — a preserver of memories who cannot stop her own from slipping away. We see and feel her transformation, her anguish and her frailty every step of the way. Tim Budd and Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers sweep us into their journey through sibling anger, resentment, frustration, unity,  resignation and acceptance.

Dancer Elizabeth June Bergman brings fluidity to the churning emotions, like a delicate music box dancer embracing an invisible partner, cradling a child or cradling memories, savoring their touch. The other actors follow her lead, in moments charming and sweet.

This is an experience not to be missed. It will stay with you long after the lights dim and the memories fade.

ARTS EXTRA

What: Hancher presents “The Broken Chord,” by Working Group Theatre

Where: Englert Theatre, 221 E. Washington St., Iowa City

When: 7:30 p.m. April 13; 2 p.m. April 14, 2o13

Tickets: $10 to $35 at the door or Hancher.uiowa.edu

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Memory Play

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In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln spoke of “the mystic chords of memory” strong enough to stretch and bind a nation divided until its people would again sing in harmony.

But what happens when the chords of memory break into dissonance? When memories strong enough to light the corners of our minds fade into darkness?

Iowa City’s Working Group Theatre has devoted the past year to exploring the worlds of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, interviewing patients, their family members, caregivers, social services workers and medical professionals in the Corridor. Some members of the professional theater troupe even trained to became hospice workers, to deepen their research, understanding and experience.

The final product  — “The Broken Chord” — will premiere April 12 to 14 at the Englert Theatre. The event is a Hancher commission, following on the heels of last year’s “Mayberry” commission, in which Working Group explored race relations in Iowa City.

With a similar theatrical structure, nine actors will embody various roles in this memory play, using a full gamut of raw emotions, dance, flying wisps of scenery and dramatic lighting and sound to cast light on a world that touches everyone in some way.

“Anyone who has ever cared for someone with dementia or had any relationship with someone who had a chronic illness will see themselves in the play and will learn something about both themselves and others who have gone through the same thing,” says Dr. Christopher Okiishi, 44, of Iowa City, a psychiatrist who walks in those worlds professionally, personally and as an actor in “The Broken Chord.”

The details

“People who come to this play will realize they’re not alone, which for me is particularly touching, because my grandmother (a psychologist) ran an Alzheimer’s caregivers’ support group for a number of years. It was one of the last professional activities she continued to maintain as she began struggling, herself, with forms of dementia,” Okiishi says.

“I don’t think anybody has escaped it. It’s out there in everyday life,” Chuck Swanson, Hancher’s executive director, says of Alzheimer’s disease. “It’s one of those issues that’s just tied so closely to the world.”

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 5 million Americans are living with the disease, which is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and in 2012, 15.4 million family and friends provided 17.5 billion hours of unpaid care to people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

“People are touched by it, but not everybody is involved personally, so to be able to see and really observe what happens in a given situation will be eye-opening” for audience members, Swanson says. “The great power of theater is that we can really feel the difficulties and feel the strains and the day-to-day pressures that people have to deal with in a situation like this.”

The play, based on fact, follows a fictional storyline of a mother afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease and her two children “trying to figure out what to do with her,” says Working Group co-founder and actor Martin Andrews, 37, of Iowa City.

The mother figure is a composite drawn from all the stories presented to Working Group playwright Jennifer Fawcett to distill into a cohesive play structure. Director is her husband and collaborator, Sean Christopher Lewis. Their careers are rooted in creating socially responsible theater.

During the research phase, Working Group participants heard “stories over and over again about families falling apart because of this,” Andrews says. “I haven’t perfected this image (but) if it is a rope stretched out into a line, solving the problem should be going from Point A to Point B. You have all of these family members who can’t solve these problems because there are all these knots in the way — all the baggage that comes with being a human being in a family. When you have this crisis in the center of it, it all falls apart.”

But what Fawcett saw shining through the difficulties, obstacles, heartache and depression was a surprising spirit of resilience, laced with humor.

“I interviewed a woman in Cedar Rapids who nursed her husband through it,” says Fawcett, 38, of Iowa City. “He passed away a few years ago, and she’s amazingly positive and strong and wants to talk about it.”

Through such revelations, Fawcett saw time and again “what we as people are able to do when faced with the situation.”

She was amazed by “people who have had to deal with caring for a spouse or parent as if they were an infant, and doing that on a day to day to day to day to day basis, (can) still be able to laugh and be able to love them after all that.”

Those moments bring charm to the show.

“The play, in addition to being truthful about dementia in all its harrowing ways, is also surprisingly romantic,” Okiishi says, “in that many of the people that are in care-giving situations are caring for the loves of their life, and what that means to be with someone throughout the entirety of the experience.”

Particularly satisfying for Swanson is the way Hancher has been involved with the creative process in this project, taking the University of Iowa arts organization well beyond its usual, primary role of securing grants to cover about $60,000 in artists’ fees and presentation expenses for this show.

“Hancher’s been involved in close to 100 commissions,” Swanson says. “Part of our mission is commissioning new work, is giving artists the opportunity to create art. We want to keep art alive. The joy of being able to work with Working Group Theatre is that they’re right here.”

Hancher helped facilitate workshops that provided the actors with feedback from Alzheimer’s experts and audience members. The project also has taken Hancher and Working Group into UI classrooms, spanning the academic realms of rhetoric, social work, nursing, public health and the anthropology of aging.

“It’s so wonderful to be able to use the arts as a way enrich that classroom experience,” Swanson says, “then we get the students to come to the performances. That’s very important to what we do. … We want to make a difference in the lives of the students,” as well as the community.

Director Lewis is proud of the project and is looking toward its life beyond the Englert premiere.

“I’m hoping that it’s gonna be our coming-out party,” says Lewis, 35, of Iowa City. “The issues and themes of the play are so universal — I think it’s some of the best work that we’ve done, all the way around. It’s the most full realization of the documentary married to the stage poetry married to a visual life.”

 

Related: The Postcard Project — What is a memory you would not want to forget? Write it on a vintage postcard at The Java House, Home Ec. Workshop, The Haunted Bookshop, Oasis Falafel, Iowa City Senior Center, Prairie Lights and T-Spoons in Iowa City. Postcards will be displayed at the Englert and on social media.

(from left) Kristy Hartsgrove Mooers, playing the part of Amy, and Tim Budd, playing the part of Jacob, argue over what to tell their mother, Helen, played by Saffron Henke at rehearsal for the Broken Chord at Englert Theater in Iowa City on March 27, 2013. (Kaitlyn Bernauer/The Gazette-KCRG9)

REVIEW: India Jazz Suites suits combined talents, traditions and styles

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India Jazz Suites

IOWA CITY –  “India Jazz Suites” is  a fascinating comparison of two dance styles, from ancient India and contemporary America.

As performed by two masters of their traditions, classical dancer Pandit Chitresh Das and tap dancer Jason Samuels Smith, the Hancher audience at the Englert Theatre was blown away by their skill Thursday night (3/7/13).

The evening was all about percussion, all about feet and drums, and how they can work together across the divide of two cultures to make a new music.

First up was the American tap dancer, all energy and power, all hard-driving percussion. Even though there is a tap language now, with a recognizable series of moves and sounds, it has an improvisatory feel. For the most part, the dancer follows the music, adding his sounds in a playful, challenging way. There are times when the dancer leads, and then the drummer leads, the percussive equivalent of call and response.

Smith has the look of a contemporary American, and even raps at one point to the Indian drums (tabla), commenting on the evening: “take a risk, throw the disc, ” as well as the cold evening outside the theater.

American tap dance has elongated roots, as does the Indian classical dance. Certainly in English clogging styles and Irish step dancing, but way back into African cultures, as well.

As presented, the tap dance is an “entertainment” and the Indian classical dance comes from religious ritual. This particular style of Indian dance can be traced back to performances in the temples, as far back as the 4th century B.C., as a form of worship. It then moved into the courts and became more secular.

Classical dancer Das is an accomplished master of his highly refined style, Kathak. At age 68, Das is a dynamo. He conducts his musicians with precision and counted out the complex beats for us, and for drummer Biplab Bhattacharya.

Das dances barefoot, and his ability to pound out complex rhythms is astounding. At one high point, with the help of his drummer, he becomes a galloping horse. His costume is age-old India, and each foot has 5 pounds of bells on it.

The blending of the Indian and American styles creates an entertaining, joyous event. It contains an essential playfulness, a sense of mischief  at the heart of each dance style. And these two dancers love working together.

It is also an important experiment, deliberately seeking a kind of fusion, defined in the Oxford American Dictionary as a “process of joining two or more things together to form a single entity.” The progress of all culture is based on ongoing fusions, like jazz assimilating the sounds of rock and roll, or vice-versa. Or Picasso’s use of African masks. Or George Harrison’s study with Ravi Shankar. And so on and on.

This evening represents a successful experiment, one that that may very well have a future. The finest moment of the performance is in the tap dancer working with the Indian drummer, with a remarkable synthesis of sound, of call and answer, of mutual challenge that became, perhaps, a new music. Can this synthesis be a starting point for these artists? Or other artists? The possibilities are myriad.

The results confirm the power, as well as the yearning, of the human imagination. Our culture remains an open book, with an infinite number of blank pages. And the desire of artists from all over the planet to work together, to learn from each other, to take inspiration from each other is very, very strong.

From the perspective of “India Jazz Suites.” our future is awesome.

 

 

REVIEW: eighth blackbird flies in the face of convention with new music program

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eighth blackbird

IOWA CITY — Chicago new-music ensemble eighth blackbird has built a fine reputation, and lived up to that billing at the Englert Theatre on Wednesday night (2/6/13).

This is a lively, talented group of six musicians who are very well matched in their abilities. New-music can be quite demanding, and this gang plays very well together. They obviously enjoy each other’s company. And we enjoy being in the theater with them.

The Hancher program was wildly varied, featuring seven composers, six of whom are American. The best-known composer of the evening was Phillip Glass (“Knee Play 2″ from “Einstein on the Beach”), with an 8-minute segment of one of his major works. Ironically, it was the weakest piece of the evening. Of interest to aficionados, perhaps, but not particularly successful.

Another well-known composer in new music circles is Gyorgy Ligeti, with “Etudes for Solo Piano,” arranged for the sextet. It is a very difficult work to perform, with swiftly changing dynamics. It is also a difficult work to listen to. However, eighth blackbird artists have remarkable charisma to go along with their musicianship, and their energy and commitment is most persuasive, even if the music is tough sledding.

The ensemble engages the audience right away, and holds onto us for a couple of hours. What the artists play is often impossible to comprehend at first hearing, but it urges us to keep listening and to identify promising composers.

They are the scouts out ahead for new sounds, for explorations that may produce a different way of hearing and apprehending our sonic environment. I applaud their quest and value what they are up to.

Last night’s concert offered much to enjoy. “Pieces of Winter Sky,”  a piece commissioned by Hancher in league with the Music Accord consortium, is evocative of an environment Iowans know all too well: a cold, harsh winter. At times it reminded me of sleet hitting my face in sub-zero weather. At the same time, it has a kind of calm inside: lonely and still, with the quiet beauty of the end of a winter storm.

In the midst of the blizzard created by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis, birds are trying to sing, trying to find their voices. And, thankfully, they do. Their music will survive.

Commissioned works are almost always a roll of the dice, as you never quite know what you’ll get, even if you support the very best artists. But it’s a suitable activity for an enlightened presenter like Hancher Auditorium, if ambitious music is to have a future.

I also liked the new work by Andy Akiho that concluded the program. A steel band percussionist, Akiho has created a terrific composition called “erase,” that ends with very strong drumming by Matthew Duvall. It is a perfect “closer” for an eighth blackbird concert.

Please be on the lookout for this remarkable band of committed music-makers. They are up to something good.

 

REVIEW: Dianne Reeves brings beauty everywhere when ‘Christmas Time is Here’

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Dianne Reeves

RIVERSIDE — An ill-fated shopping trip this afternoon (12/7/12) sucked the Christmas spirit right out of me. Jazz giant Dianne Reeves breathed it right back in.

Her Hancher concert tonight in the Riverside Casino Event Center was sublime in every sense of the word. The Denver diva, 56, is at the top of her form, the shining star leading the way for female jazz singers around the world.

She brings a global mix to her stylings, her fascinating rhythms wrapped in Afro-Caribbean beats from her years touring with Harry Belafonte in the ’80s and sultry Brazilian infusions from her band’s guitarist, Romero Lubambo of Rio de Janeiro.

She is one with her stellar band of brothers — musical director Peter Martin of St. Louis on piano, Reginald Veal of New Orleans on upright and electric bass, Terreon Gully of East St. Louis on drums and Lubambo on acoustic and electric guitars. Their music has an exciting improvisational feel, but they are always in synch, always united in the symbiotic way their paths separate and entwine, bringing smiles of glee and satisfaction to their faces and ours.

Everything they feel surges through their audience. The 507 people bathed in Reeves’ holiday Hancher glow showered her with spontaneous bursts of applause throughout the show, displaying their appreciation not only for her luscious, luminous moments, but for the sheer magnitude of her bandmates’ musicality and finesse.

While the title of her concert –”Christmas Time is Here” — hearkens to tradition, only the lyrics are traditional. Everything else is new and fresh and totally unexpected. She takes the melodies, turns them inside out and spins them through the magical arrangements, making you feel like you’re hearing the most familiar songs for the very first time.

Her band started the nearly two-hour show, giving us a taste of the evening’s unusual turns, from Latin-laced guitar to sizzling syncopation so hot it was totally cool. The bedazzling Reeves, in a casually elegant mix of cream colored knit top and sparkling gold skirt, then launched  into a cascade of oohs, leading into “The Twelfth of Never” that never sounded so good.

She then sang her greeting to us, inviting us to sit back and relax, clap our hands, stomp our feet and dance up and down the aisle. “We like it that way,” she said, and we liked it her way — bringing chromatic dissonance to “Carol of the Bells,” regaling us with stories from her life, told at family Christmas gatherings past, and singing a most glorious tribute to her spirited mother who died in May.

The evening was intimate, joyous and heart-warming, with a touch of exotic sensuality enveloping “The Christmas Waltz” and bringing a velvety smoothness to “Misty,” in a tribute to her idol, Sarah Vaughan. (I dare say no one scats like Reeves, who keeps it always mellow, always dreamy and never frenetic.)

One of the highlights of the evening enveloped all that is beautiful and exciting about her artistry, with “The Little Drummer Boy” getting his groove on, thanks to Gully’s funky, progressive intro before Reeves and the rest joined in. I’ll never hear that song again without thinking fondly of Reeves’ imaginative, entertaining rendition.

And that’s how I’ll always remember this glimmering, glittering event announcing that Christmas time is, indeed, here.

Related: Jazzing up the holidays — Dianne Reeves brings it home to Hancher

 

Jazzing up the holidays

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Dianne Reevesa will perform at Hancher in Riverside on Dec. 7

After spending her fall touring Europe and Turkey, Dianne Reeves is happy to be home for the holidays — even if she won’t be home for long.

After a short hop around the United States for three Christmas concerts — including a Hancher stop in Riverside on Dec. 7 — she’ll head into the recording studio in Boston. Then it’s off to Australia for three shows in January before heading back to the States, then off to Switzerland and back for another U.S. tour.

No wonder she relishes her down time amid all that zigzagging.

“I enjoy it, but I always feel it when I come home,” Reeves, 56, says by phone from her home in Denver, surrounded by the majestic Rocky Mountains. “I live in the city, but I see them every single day when I get up. I love them. People always ask me, ‘Where do you go on vacation?’ I travel so much, I come home.

“Denver is a very beautiful city,” she says. “I like to walk and I like to go up to the mountains. I like to cook — I’m really good — and there’s a very organic culture here for food. I’ve been working with a couple of friends who are chefs, to learn really good, organic cooking.”

But caroling season is upon us, and the jazz diva will be doing what she does best — dishing up her great, organic takes on familiar holiday songs. A liberal sprinkling of scat singing turns up the heat on “Let It Snow,” syncopation moves “The Little Drummer Boy” to a very hip beat and sparkling piano weaves nostalgia through the title track of her 2004 album, “Christmas Time is Here.”

She’ll share plenty of those tunes with her Hancher audience, but also add in some of her new music, some of her favorite vintage tunes and “lots of stories,” she says.

The details

The four-time Grammy winner has performed several Hancher concerts before the Floods of 2008, and is eager to return to Eastern Iowa. She remembers those concert experiences as being “really cool.”

“There’s a lot of jazz people and lovers of the music right here in the middle of the United States. I love that,” she says.

She’ll be bringing her band along for the ride, with piano, bass, drums and guitar, ready for anything. That’s what she likes best about performing live.

“It’s the interaction with the people and the edge that it puts me and my band on,” she says. “While we’ve played this music from night to night, it’s always different, and I love that. Every day inspires what will be played that evening.

“We get out there, and it’s an intimate exchange with the members, and we invite the audience to be part of that — and when that happens, my goodness, you can sing all night.”

Born in Detroit and raised in Denver, Reeves has been singing all her days. It’s in her DNA. Her father, who died when she was just 2, was a singer. Her uncle, Charles Burrell, played bass with the Denver Symphony and turned her onto jazz. Other relatives work in the music industry, as well, and helped guide her through her early days in Los Angeles.

Long before that, she knew music would be her profession.

It happened in junior high.

“I thought, this is what I want to do. I like it, I like it,” she says. “I like how it feels. Having had the opportunity to work with my uncle, who was really, really instrumental in helping me get out there, working with him was really great. And I loved it. I loved the feeling. I liked jazz because it was a kind of freedom. I couldn’t say that then, but that’s what attracted me to the music.”

Today, music is her sanctuary.

“It’s like a prayer,” she says. “It’s not from my mind, it’s from my heart. It just comes right from there, out of my mouth. You feel lifted. I always tell people the stage is my sacred place. I’m totally different on stage than I am walking around in my life. I feel a kind of connection to something greater than myself.”

After a year at the University of Colorado, she left for California to embark on her career, finding work as a studio and sessions singer.

“I love that I was 19 years old and I had a plan,” she says. “I felt good. Didn’t know what I ultimately wanted to do, but knew what I didn’t want to do. It was a good start.

“I just wanted to be able to be respected for the music that I was singing. I was very selective,” she says. “I understood even then the power of words, so I was very selective in the lyrics that I would sing, and the kind of music that I wanted to sing. I loved the sophistication of jazz music at that time.

“I love all kinds of music, but there’s something about being able to be in an environment where people have these intimate conversations through music that are soulful and intellectual. I knew that’s what I wanted. I knew that the people that were a part of the music, no matter how old they were, always felt young and that they had been able to do their heart’s desire for as long as they lived.”

Touring with Harry Belafonte in the ‘80s changed her life.

“Up to that point, it was strictly jazz music,” she says. “The music was becoming extremely complex, and when I worked with Harry Belafonte, he sings folk songs from all over the world. He is very much part of the struggle of people, and it was through him that I really learned how to deliver a lyric, that simple ‘less is really more.’ I started to enjoy playing the space of music way beyond the notes that I was caught in before. Then I learned how to place the notes and I realized you have more notes to place if you take the time, at any given time.

“It was through that experience that I really learned how to deliver lyrics and even more so, the importance of words.”

REVIEW: Pilobolus dancers bring high-style high jinks to Hancher presentations

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Dancers from Pilobolus rehearse "Hapless Hooligan in 'Still Moving,'" a collaboration with cartoonist Art Spiegelman. (Matthew Cavanaugh)

IOWA CITY – Pilobolus returned to Iowa City in a new space and place — the Space Place Theater in North Hall on the University of Iowa campus.

This “talent gang” of dancers and choreographers looks mighty good in this intimate space. Two sold out performances on Nov. 13 and 14 were joyously received by a hungry audience.

Pilobolus, defined as a “phototropic fungus that thrives in farmyards,” has been a frequent visitor to Hancher Auditorium over the years. Since its founding at Dartmouth College in 1971 by four choreographers, this ensemble has successfully toured the planet, and has been well received on the college and university touring circuit.

Indeed, the wildly imaginative spark that drives this ensemble has a “high jinks,” collegiate feel to it: often wry, always sexy, always challenging the human form into new shapes, new possibilities. A favorite moment in this performance was a kind of a “thing,” dancing across the stage on one hand and one foot. The audience responded with both laughter and admiration.

You have to be a gymnast, as well as a dancer, to work for this company. You have to be very strong, very supple and very good looking. Pilobolus has been consistent in its ability to attract, develop and sustain the talent that it requies.

Two works stand out in this visit. The oldest work on the bill, “Pseudopodia” is from 1973, and is classic Pilobolus. It features a female solo in a fluid series of somersaults that resembles the movement of cells in a microscope. Talk about limber! This work is at the heart of the vision of the founders. It is astonishing to observe what the human frame is capable of, fulfilling that capability with remarkable beauty.

A vivid theatricality beats at the heart of this work, an esthetic that stems from the work of Alwin Nikolais, witnessed further in the work of Momix, Mummenschantz and Cirque du Soleil.

“Gnomen,” created in 1997 by Robby Barnett and Jonathan Wolken, features four young men. They work together with grace and strength in a well-conceived pattern of relationships, with breathtaking strength and inventiveness. Their level of accomplishment is remarkably high, and feats of strength and endurance are performed with an apparent lack of effort: a characteristic of superb art.

Even though Pilobolus is now more than more than 40 years old, nothing is stale or predictable about the troupe’s work. Yes, some dances are better than others, but there is much to admire in their ongoing quest for expression. As Walt Whitman wrote, “I sing the body electric.” One can only hope that Pilobolus will keep on singing.

REVIEW: Brian Stokes Mitchell creates some enchanted evening for Hancher audience

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Brian Stokes Mitchell

RIVERSIDE –Brian Stokes Mitchell makes elegance look easy.

That’s the only simple thing about Friday night’s “Simply Broadway” concert  (11/2/12) in the Riverside Casino Event Center.

With an appreciative audience of about 325, too few people were on hand to revel in this world-class Hancher concert featuring a much-lauded Broadway star who also lights up television and film screens with his charisma and charm.

What a rare and wonderful treat to experience the magnitude of his talent — the epitome of elegant, sophisticated conversation. He was showered with multiple, immediate standing ovations.

Mitchell, 55, has been on the scene since 1979, with roles in “Roots: The Next Generation” and “Trapper John, M.D., on television, then made the leap to Broadway where he won a Tony for the 1999 revival of “Kiss Me Kate.”

With the rumbling resonance of his passionate lyric baritone, it’s no wonder he’s made his mark as a leading man — even if he does specialize in bad-boy romantic roles, from “Man of La Mancha” and “Ragtime” to “South Pacific,” “Sweeney Todd” and Javert in “Les Miserables.”

Most recently, he’s played one of Rachel’s two dads on television’s popular “Glee.” (For trivia fans: Lea Michele, who plays Rachel, also was a Broadway baby, appearing with Stokes in the 1998 production of “Ragtime,” which garnered him another Tony nomination.)

His new CD, released Oct. 30, is titled “Simply Broadway,” mostly because the collection of classics is stripped down to the essence of artistry, recorded with just his voice and a piano. That’s how he came to Riverside, too.

And that’s all we needed.

The concert focused mostly on the music Mitchell has sung on Broadway, but nothing about this was simply singing. Mitchell is a master interpreter, slipping instantly and fully into each character with an ease and strength, exuding emotion from every fiber of his being. He didn’t sing like Miguel de Cervantes or King Arthur or Sir Lancelot or Emile de Becque, he WAS all those men, transporting us to the heart of La Mancha, Camelot and the South Pacific.

His microphone stand became a lance as he tilted at windmills, his smile sparkled in the spotlight and he talked to us — really talked to us. He freely gave us glimpses into his life, his work and all he holds dear to his heart, from the pride he feels in his father being one of the last surviving Tuskegee Airmen to the joy he feels watching his nearly 9-year-old son discover the world around him.

He spoke passionately about the charity he champions, the Actor’s Fund, which gives financial support and social services to any show business worker in time of need. After the concert, Mitchell greeted fans in the lobby, signing copies of his new children’s book, an A to Z primer titled “Lights on Broadway” and his new CDs. Proceeds from Friday’s sales were channeled into the fund, especially needed in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, which displaced so many Broadway performers, technicians, musicians and others who work behind the scenes.

He passionately applauded Hancher and its supporters working so hard to keep the arts alive and flowing through Eastern Iowa in the aftermath of our own natural disaster four years ago. He drew wild applause when he said he can’t wait to come back to Iowa — and wants to perform on the new Hancher stage, due back in 2015 or 2016.

Until that time, we have to spread the gospel of just how magnificent a performance that will be. Any night in which Brian Stokes Mitchell steps up into the spotlight is some enchanted evening.

That’s how he started the show, then moved seamlessly through “I, Don Quixote” from “Man of La Mancha”; C’est Moi” and perhaps the most gorgeous rendition ever of “How to Handle a Woman” from “Camelot,” a most ahh-inspiring moment; the hilarious newlywed’s lament “Where Is the Life That Late I Led?” from “Kiss Me Kate,” as he thumbed through his little black book; and “Stars” from “Les Miserables.”

He took a step back and time and sang “This Nearly Was Mine” without a microphone, just using all the physical and emotional tools in his being to convey this mesmerizing apex from “South Pacific.”

In the second half, he turned to his roots and cranked out some jazz that his engineer-father played on their souped up stereos. He gave Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” an uptempo turn, with fantastic improv, walking bass and boogie woogie touches from his fabulous pianist, then took us to Brazil for a captivating song about the spring rains, “The Waters of March,” dripping with quiet, breathy, exotic intensity.

Too soon the evening came to an end, but not before spinning the “Wheels of a Dream” from “Ragtime” and encores of “What a Wonderful World,” “(We’ll Catch Up) Some Other Time” and reaching impossible heights with “The Impossible Dream.”

When he comes back to Iowa, scale the highest heights to hear him.

Related: Brian Stokes Mitchell finds his glee with ‘Simply Broadway’ concert, CD

Word Becomes Flesh: Letters to unborn son capture human experience through hip-hop lens

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Word Becomes Flesh by Marc Bamuthi Joseph

Hancher is launching its 2012-13 season with a modern twist on an ancient art form.

It’s a spoken-word performance that embraces body and soul, born in the theatrical verse of Sophocles and Shakespeare and reborn in the hip-hop streets of New York about the time creator Marc Bamuthi Joseph was born.

His much heralded piece, “Word Becomes Flesh,” hits the University of Iowa’s Space Place Theater for two performances Sept. 20 and 21, 2012.

Described as “critical and political, haunting and poetic,” Joseph says his hourlong work is “a meditation on pregnancy from a father’s perspective,” incorporating music, contemporary dance and verse.

“It’s a rare pop cultural moment where five diverse, really smart and attractive black men use a very personal and ritualistic space to examine manhood in the 21st century through the lens of the pregnant moment,” Joseph, 36, says by phone from his home in Oakland, Calif.

“It’s dramatic theater that references modern dance and hip-hop culture and is primarily spoken in verse, but that doesn’t mean everything rhymes. It’s not ‘Seussical,’ ” he says with a laugh. “My literary sensibility references poetic and prosaic forms, but I’m a child of hip-hop, so there’s definitely a sense of percussion, energetic reciprocity, emotional politics that play into the work, as well.”

“The piece is structured as letters from fathers to unborn sons, so it’s really serious, it’s really funny. All the men are super fine, so there’s a lot of eye candy, but the material is very substantive,” he says.

The details

“It’s racialized because it’s five black men, but it’s so human,” he says, “because everybody has a birth story. It’s an extremely accessible way of looking at both fatherhood and motherhood, as well as the politics of race, class and intergenerational politics.”

It’s also semi-autobiographical, with five men telling one man’s story.

“I wrote ‘Word Becomes Flesh’ in the months before my son was born,” Joseph says, “in part, because I was going through all these changes and didn’t really have peers I felt like I could talk to, who would get it, so I started these letters to my son,” who will be 11 in December.

A single dad at the time, Joseph has forged a strong bond his son, a budding writer and filmmaker with his own YouTube channel.

He’s been part of his life all of his life.

“I just got married a month ago, and my wife has a daughter from a previous relationship, I have a son from a previous relationship. In my nervousness, I didn’t want to talk to my dad or any of my friends before the wedding. I wanted to talk to my son. He’s still my sounding board,” Joseph says.

He describes his blended family as “the best example of a modern family there is.”

“I love our family. I love how we operate,” he says. “His mom is engaged, I’m recently married; all six of us will have dinner together. It’s pretty great.”

He’s hoping to use his theatrical piece as a teaching tool for audiences.

“There’s an alternative narrative — maybe even a counter narrative to impressions of hip-hop generation men and our relationship to fatherhood,” he says. “Hip-hop is youth culture, and so many of us who have grown up in this generation have chosen not to grow up. There’s social pathology that contributes to that. This, I think, presents a very reflective moment in time that also happens to traverse these traditions from Greek mythology to Jay-Z. That’s important to absorb to reflect upon and see.

“I hope audiences get a sense of that continuum and also find themselves somewhere in the work.”

He’s received lots of viewer comments over the years from women, as well as men.

“The feedback I’ve valued the most was from mothers — particularly single mothers who have often said to me, ‘I always wanted to know,’ but also from kids that grew up in homes without fathers,” he says, as well as “from accountable and respectable fathers who just said,  ‘Thank you for telling our story too,’ because if feels like there’s  this other part of the narrative, particularly about black men, that is over-reported.

“But the under-documented story is this story about the fragility of impending fatherhood and the decision to ultimately be there for your kid. That’s what this particular piece unearths, and does it in a really stylized and acceptable way,” Joseph says.

A dancer, performer, creator and educator of international acclaim, Joseph got his start in “The Tap Dance Kid” at age 9, understudying Savion Glover on Broadway before taking over the lead role for the national tour.

He comes from several generations of teachers and spent many years teaching high school English before his students dared him to participate in a San Francisco Bay Area poetry slam in the late ’90s. He stepped on stage, won the competition, then won a national poetry slam in 1999. And a new life path was born.

With many other shows to his credit, he created “Word Becomes Flesh” as a solo work in 2003, performed it around the world until 2005, then remounted it as a group piece in 2010.

Even though he directed and choreographed the production coming to Iowa City, he won’t be in town for the shows.

“As much as I love Iowa City — I’ve been to Iowa a number of times — one of the things that’s great about this work is that I don’t have to be present. The performers are so strong,” he says. “So much of the strength of this piece is the diversity of lenses the story is told through.”

 

Hancher announces 2012-2013 season

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IOWA CITY — The University of Iowa’s Hancher Auditorium has announced its 2012-2013 schedule of events, which includes dance, music, theater, and family-friendly fare. Tickets for the entire season — including $10 tickets for youth and college students for all events — are now on sale via an order form available on the Hancher website.

The season brochure, bearing the slogan “Great Artists, Great Audiences, Hancher Performances,” and the website include a listing of events by date, full details about each event and more information about Hancher’s outreach programs and diverse partnerships.

Celebrating 40 years

The season marks the organization’s 40th anniversary, and four events have been designated to celebrate the occasion:

 • On Friday, Nov. 2, 2012, Brian Stokes Mitchell, star of stage and screen, will appear in concert.

 • Pilobolus Dance Theatre, a longtime Hancher favorite, will perform on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nov. 13 and 14, 2012, in the intimate Space Place Theatre on the UI campus.

 • On Tuesday, April 2, 2013, the legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins will present his first Iowa concert since appearing at Hancher in 1993.

• The Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which was the first touring ensemble to appear on the Hancher stage when the original facility opened in 1972, will perform a free outdoor concert on the UI Pentacrest on Saturday, June 15, 2013.

 The Preservation Hall Jazz Band performance is part of a larger collaborative project entitled Living With Floods that will take the band to seven Iowa communities — Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Dubuque, Cedar Rapids, Davenport, Muscatine, and Iowa City — for free outdoor events. Hancher has several UI partners for the project, including the College of Engineering, the Iowa Flood Center, the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research and the College of Education.

 Multimedia production and groundbreaking ceremony

The new season will not only reflect on Hancher’s history; it also will include an important step toward the organization’s future. On Friday, Oct. 19, 2012, Hancher will present the multimedia production It Gets Better, a show that has grown out of the wellspring of YouTube videos decrying the bullying of LGBT youth. The performance features six members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles who will be joined by a large number of local choristers.

Earlier that day, the singers will convene at 4:30 p.m. at the site of the new Hancher facility to perform as part of a groundbreaking ceremony that will highlight Hancher’s ongoing work connecting artists from around the world with the local community.

A tradition of commissions

In keeping with Hancher’s reputation as a major commissioner of new work, the organization will present four commissions during the season.

The first is the culmination of a project with Tony-winners Stew and Heidi Rodewald. The two songwriters visited Iowa City in the fall of 2011 to collect material for the Iowa City Omnibus, a collection of songs inspired by the community. Adverse weather forced the cancellation of the concert by Stew & The Negro Problem, so the band will now unveil the songs on Thursday, Sept. 27, 2012, at The Mill as part of the Club Hancher series.

Hancher is also a co-commissioner of UI alumnus and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang’s lovefail, which features stories by acclaimed author Lydia Davis and will be performed by vocal ensemble Anonymous 4 on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012.

The Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013, performance by innovative classical ensemble eighth blackbird also will feature a Hancher commissioned work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Aaron Jay Kernis.

Building upon the successful collaboration that yielded the play Mayberry, Hancher is again partnering with Iowa City’s Working Group Theatre. The new collaboration, The Memory Project, will culminate in the presentation of a new Hancher-commissioned play titled The Broken Chord, Friday through Sunday, April 12 to 14, 2013.

Additionally, former Hancher Artistic Director Judy Hurtig and her husband, Richard, are part of a group of commissioners for a new work by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, which will be performed by the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. The performance is supported by the Richard and Judith Hurtig Chamber Music Endowment.

Club Hancher events

In addition to Stew & The Negro Problem, Club Hancher events include the Friday, Oct. 5, 2012, performances by the Haitian band Ti-Coca & Wanga-Nègès and the Thursday and Friday, Feb. 14 and 15, 2013, performances by saxophonist Miguel Zenón, winner of both the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellow “genius grant” in the same year.

Dance

In addition to Pilobolus, dance fans will be treated to India Jazz Suites, which features master Indian dancer Pandit Chitresh Das and tap dance superstar Jason Samuels Smith in a cross-cultural collaboration (Thursday, March 7, 2013), and to AXIS Dance Company, which is an innovative ensemble of dancers with and without disabilities (Thursday and Friday, April 25 and 26, 2013).

Theater

Theatre offerings include the season opening Word Becomes Flesh by Marc Bamuthi Joseph, which explores black fatherhood (Thursday and Friday, Sept. 20 and 21, 2012), new work by monologuist Mike Daisey, who has found himself at the center of a controversy surrounding the details of his acclaimed The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs (Thursday through Saturday, Feb. 21 to 23, 2013), and Kindur, an interactive family performance by Compagnia T.P.O. (Tuesday and Wednesday, April 9 and 10, 2013).

Additionally, in collaboration with the Iowa City Community School District, Hancher will present school matinees of The Man Who Planted Trees, performed by the Puppet State Theatre Company of Scotland (Monday through Wednesday, Nov. 5 to 7, 2012).

The performances of Kindur and The Man Who Planted Trees are supported by the Herbert A. and Janice A. Wilson Arts Education Fund.

Music

A wide array of music will be on offer as well, including Mexican songstress Lila Downs (Saturday, Oct. 13, 2012), the chamber orchestra Sphinx Virtuosi (Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012), the return of jazz singer Dianne Reeves’s popular holiday performance, Christmas Time Is Here (Friday, Dec. 7, 2012), the stellar bluegrass stylings of Dailey & Vincent (Saturday, Feb. 16, 2013), theinnovative Shuffle. Play. Listen program from pianist Christopher O’Riley and cellist Matt Haimovitz (Thursday, March 28), and Terrance Simien & The Zydeco Experience, which is part of both Spot — The Hancher Family Arts Adventure and the Summer of the Arts Friday Night Concert Series (Friday, May 17, 2013). Hancher will be taking Simien on a tour across the state in addition to his Iowa City performance.

Tickets for the 2012-2013 Hancher season may be ordered using the season order form. Through July 16, Hancher contributors at the $500 level and above will get priority seating. For more information or for assistance with the order form, call the Hancher Box Office at (319) 335-1160 or 1-(800) HANCHER. Ticket order forms may be mailed, faxed or delivered in person to the Hancher Box Office, located in the University Capitol Centre (formerly Old Capitol Town Center).