Entertainment

City Gauging Interest in Restaurants, Businesses Hosting Live Performances

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Ken TibertWatertown is looking at whether restaurants and businesses want to host live music and performances. Pictured here, Southern Rail. The City of Watertown has joined with the Watertown Business Coalition to find out how much interest local restaurants and businesses have in hosting live performances. Watertown Public Arts & Culture Planner Liz Helfer sent out the following survey announcement:

I want to share an exciting new initiative in Watertown. The Watertown Business Coalition and the Public Arts & Culture Committee are gauging interest for live performances in Watertown with the goal of encouraging opportunities for businesses and musical artists to collaborate. The team behind this initiative is digging into local ordinances and permitting processes to determine how best to assist businesses in bringing performers to their space.

Entertainment

Small Saves Gets in Some Extra Practice in This Week’s Comic

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James DeMarco grew up in Watertown and became a goaltender at age 5. It’s his life’s passion to stand between the pipes and keep the puck out of the net. Combining this with the love of cartooning Small Saves emerged in 1991 and took on a life of his own. “To play goal–then come home and draw Small Saves — is my ideal definition of a good day.”

Entertainment

Watertown Gallery Features Paintings Focusing on Relationship Between Humans and Nature

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Watertown’s Storefront Art Projects will host a reception for the opening of its latest show, “On the Edge” featuring the artworks of Anne Sargent Walker, on March 4 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

The gallery provided the following announcement:

Anne Sargent Walker’s luminous paintings are about nature and crisis and the fraught and fragile relationship between humans and the planet. There are birds and lush foliage and often the outline of a helpful or intervening human hand.  

She says, “My work is about the beauty, complexity, and fragility of nature and our complicated relationship with it. The surface of my paintings, with birds, flora or other creatures, often peels back, dissolves or drips to reveal layers underneath, suggesting the loss of habitats, species, the earth itself and of course us. “I want my paintings to be beautiful – to inspire the kind of love for nature that I feel.  And yet I want them to have some elements that are ugly, or out of place, or out of sync – something that makes people wonder- what is going on?

Entertainment

YardArt Returns in 2023, Two Upcoming Events to Help Inspire You

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YardArt Watertown”PaTRASHia” was one of the pieces made for Watertown’s YardArt. The following information was provided by YardArt Watertown:

YardArt Watertown, the popular outdoor public art exhibition featuring the work of residents, artists and art enthusiasts who live or work in Watertown, returns this year for the entire month of April. The town-wide exhibit begins Saturday, April 1st and runs through Sunday, April 30th, and features a variety of artful and whimsical projects displayed on residents’ front yards and porches. All Watertown residents, families, organizations, clubs, classes, artists, and businesses are invited to create something to be viewed from the street or sidewalk. It can be an assemblage, a sculpture, an art project, a lighting arrangement—let your imagination run free!

Entertainment

Mosesian Center Hosts Heart Truth: Mental Health Stories from the Deaf Community

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The following announcement was provided by DEAFinitely, Inc.:

The Dorothy and Charles Mosesian Center for the Arts — DEAFinitely, Inc. and This Is My Brave (TIMB) present the groundbreaking show “This Is My Brave – Heart Truth: Mental Health Stories from the Deaf Community.” For one night only, 13 Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing storytellers will share their personal stories of mental illness and recovery to break down stigma, uncover access barriers in the mental health system and celebrate the resilience of the Deaf community using American Sign Language storytelling, art, and dance. Featuring storytellers not only from New England, but from across the US, Canada and Nigeria, this live stage production will center on the storytellers, their stories and the deep understanding that there is a significant need for an evening like this in the Deaf community. To achieve this production, the Heart Truth Production Team, led by DEAFinitely, Inc. Executive Director, Jamie Robinson and show Director, Shira Grabelsky, are working with The Mosesian Center for the Arts to design a theater experience for storytellers that is seamless in communication and accessibility. The show will be primarily in American Sign Language, with Deaf and Deafblind interpreting to ensure full access for the cast and audience members. Captioning and spoken language interpretation will also be available in English and Spanish.

Entertainment

Check Out This Week’s Small Saves Cartoon

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James DeMarco grew up in Watertown and became a goaltender at age 5. It’s his life’s passion to stand between the pipes and keep the puck out of the net. Combining this with the love of cartooning Small Saves emerged in 1991 and took on a life of his own. “To play goal–then come home and draw Small Saves — is my ideal definition of a good day.”

Entertainment

New Rep Holding Tryouts for Three Plays in 2023 Season

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New Repertory Theatre will hold auditions for Local Equity actors for roles in New Rep’s 2023 Season: The Normal Heart, June 21 – July 9, and A Raisin in the Sun, September 6 – October 1 in repertory with DIASPORA! September 13 – October 15, at Watertown’s Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown, MA.  

The audition dates are:  

Sunday, March 5: 11 am-7 pm, lunch 2:30-3:30pm 

Monday, March 6: 1 pm-9 pm, dinner 4:30-5:30 pm (Union Members Only) 

Sunday, March 12: 11 am-7 pm, lunch 2:30-3:30 pm (Union Members Only)

Call backs will be held on Sunday, April 2nd and/or Monday, April 3rd 

DIASPORA! Director: Pascale Florestal 

A Raisin in the Sun Director: Lois Roach 

The Normal Heart Director: TBA 

The auditions will be held at the Black Box Theater at the Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown.  Free parking is available in the garage next to the facility.  

Detailed information regarding the roles and a sign up available at: 

2023 Season Auditions

New Rep welcome Actors of all races and all gender identities, abilities, and body types. Please take this into consideration when auditioning. In addition to genders listed in character breakdowns, New Rep is ACTIVELY SEEKING TRANS AND NON-BINARY PERFORMERS for all roles. 

New Rep cannot provide local accommodations at this time, so performers must live within commuting distance of the theater.  

“We believe the themes of these works are as timely as they are powerful, and offer a beautiful reminder that history has given us plenty of answers on how to build our future. Addressing activism in the time of an epidemic, and an exploration of home and displacement, these plays enlighten us in how to love in the face of terror, how to forgive in the face of betrayal, and how to connect in a time of isolation.” 

      - Artistic Directors Michael Hisamoto, Lois Roach, Maria Hendricks 

New Repertory Theatre (New Rep) has been an award-winning professional theatre company for 39 years, staging productions and events that speak to the vital ideas of our time. New Rep has emerged from the pandemic with a renewed commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity, accessibility, and accountability (IDEAA) infusing every aspect of the company’s work as it seeks to build community collaborations and give voice to the diverse interests of those communities. 

More information on New Repertory Theatre at www.newrep.org. 

Entertainment

New Rep Theatre Receives 2 Mass Cultural Council Grants

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New Repertory Theatre has received two grants from the Mass Cultural Council (MCC), a state agency: one for $75,000 through its Cultural Sector Fund for Organizations Pandemic Recovery Grant Program, and a $5,000 grant Universal Participation (UPI) Innovation Grant.  

The Pandemic Recovery grant is part of MCC’s historic $51 million public investment into the Commonwealth’s creative and cultural sector to organizations impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2021 a $4 billion pandemic recovery package was approved by the Legislature and signed into law. This Act, Ch. 102 of 2021, directed Mass Cultural Council to develop and administer grant programs to assist cultural organizations and artists recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and operate more efficiently moving forward. Mass Cultural Council received $60.1 million in surplus state revenue funds to support this effort. These funds will provide critical support to offset significant losses incurred from necessary suspension of New Rep’s productions during the height of the pandemic. 

The UPI grant will enable access to artists from diverse communities to develop new works through New Rep’s Pipeline Project, which invests directly in local performing artists, writers and performance makers, providing concrete and tangible pathways at production at the professional level. The Pipeline Project embodies core principles of New Rep’s Renewal Vision, with a renewed commitment to diversity, equity, accessibility and accountability infusing every aspect of the company’s work as it seeks to build community collaborations and give voice to the interests of those communities.   

“The arts remain an essential way for us to strengthen our communities, and I am proud to support New Repertory Theatre in those efforts.