ARTS/NEWS PATR IC K S W EENEY
STAGE/ARTS
BRIGHT LIGHTS, SMALL CITY Broadway musicals at the Morrison Center HARRISON BERRY You don’t have to go to the Big Apple to experience the spectacle that is New York theater, you can stay right here in Boise and get a front-row seat with the Fred Meyer Broadway in Boise series at the Morrison Center. According to Richard Klautsch—Boise State University’s Theater Department chair and a regular on stage at Idaho Shakespeare Festival and Boise Contemporary Theater—Broadway in Boise adds “scale and scope.” “The great thing is that it brings us productions of a scale that none of us [in Boise] can produce,” Klautsch said. In the spirit of the Great White Way, Broadway in Boise recently announced a slate of ambitious shows for its 2013-2014 season.
HELLO, DOLLY! MARCH 4-6
Artists gather to reinvent Freak Alley.
PAU L KOLNIK
Dolly is a matchmaker angling for the affections of the curmudgeonly Horace, while assisting young artist Ambrose in winning the hand of Horace’s niece. Meanwhile, Horace’s clerks, Cornelius and Barnaby, leave Yonkers, N.Y., for the Big Apple in search of loves of their own. As the romantic ties between characters become increasingly tangled, the action and hilarity reach a crescendo, which spills from a fancy New York restaurant into the night court.
FREAKS AND FISH
WICKED APRIL 16-MAY 4
CHICAGO SEPT. 13-15
GREEN DAY’S AMERICAN IDIOT DEC. 2
Interracial love in 1950s Memphis, Tenn., was a lifedefining stigma. Then again, you could say the same thing about the early days of rock music. 208-426-1609 Huey Calhoun is a white radio shock jock who won his DJ job THE ADDAMS FAMILY spinning African-American rock DEC. 14-15 ’n’ roll on the airwaves. His secret love, the Before there was Wes Anderson and his musically talented Felicia—an African-Amerifilms about neurotic prodigies, there was can—is torn by her love for Huey and the fear The Addams Family. The forebearers of the that their relationship could doom them both. Tenenbaums include billionaire pinstriped Together they navigate racial tension and the paterfamilias Gomez; his beloved wife Morchanging face of rock ’n’ roll. ticia; and the Addams children, Pugsley and Wednesday (among other assorted oddball relatives). The story centers on Wednesday, MANNHEIM STEAMROLLER who has grown to adulthood and fallen in CHRISTMAS BY CHIP DAVIS love with a smart but conspicuously normal NOV. 27 young man whom her parents have never met. Chip Davis vehicle Mannheim Steamroller is set to bowl over Boise audiences Wednesday, When she tells her father about her secret love, she puts Gomez in the awkward position of Nov. 27. The group went big after its 1984 having to withhold information from his wife album, Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, about their daughter’s decidedly un-sinister, spawning 12 Christmas albums, including A non-murderous beau. Fresh Aire Christmas and Christmas in the Aire. At this Broadway in Boise event, the band will play Christmas songs from across its recording career.
JOAN MARCUS
Vaudevillian Velma Kelly and chorus girl Roxie Hart are stage performers serving time for murder in the Cook County Jail, hoping to turn their murderess-of-the-week notoriety into career reboots with the help of Billy Flynn, a lawyer with a knack for springing his clients and turning them into media sensations.
MEMPHIS OCT. 9-11
Dissatisfaction with blase suburban existence fueled the music of the 1990s, but few of the bands that mined loathing for perfectly manicured front yards have had the longevity of San Francisco punk outfit Green Day. American Idiot, a musical based on the band’s 2004 album of the same name, tells the story of the generation that came of age in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, through the eyes of seven people living in a chaotic world and in relationships that aren’t always what they seem. It’s a story about lives built upon— FRED MEYER BROADWAY and sometimes ruined by—sex, IN BOISE 2013-14 SEASON drugs and war, all set to the Morrison Center, anthems of American Idiot. 2201 Cesar Chavez Lane,
Everyone in Oz has a backstory, including Elphaba—better known as the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West. This musical explains Elphaba’s sympathetic origins. A loyal sister to the Wicked Witch of the East, she gave her sister her trademark ruby pumps. At first no ally to Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, the two become friends just in time to discover the treachery and corruption of the Wizard’s government.
The Broadway in Boise series is a coup for theatergoers—and for theater students at Boise State, whom the Morrison Center hires as stagehands for each show. When Wicked made its Boise debut in 2011, students spent weeks preparing the Morrison Center stage for this visually ambitious musical. “It’s a great opportunity for our students,” Klautsch said. But in true Broadway fashion, the emphasis is on the audience. The 2013-14 season has comedy, tragedy and everything in between— including reprises of record-breaking performances and new engagements of big-name shows. “This marks the biggest Broadway series in the Center’s history,” said Morrison Center Executive Director James Patrick.
Boise is a tidy city, with its forest of banks and well cared for downtown shops, but duck into the alley connecting Eighth and Ninth streets—between Bannock and Idaho—and you enter a labyrinth where pigs fly and hummingbirds dip their beaks into gramophone horns. From cartoons to fine art, the political to the fanciful, Freak Alley Gallery is a riot of colors and subjects—and a Boise institution since 2002, when Colby Akers and, as he said, a “couple of street kids” started painting in the old Moon’s alley access. Since then, the street art gallery—with its inimitable funk of Eighth Street restaurant Dumpsters—has grown to encompass the length of the alley. On Saturday, Aug. 3, artists descended on the space to paint over the old and paint on the new. This year marks the third annual Freak Alley reinvention, which culminates in a public showing Saturday, Aug. 10. Akers said as many as 65 artists will take part—fewer than in some years, but “I like it a little more manageable,” he said. Artists are curated by a committee comprised of Akers, business owners and maintenance staff. “Very rarely do we turn people away, unless it’s for space,” Akers said. Though the steering committee is informal, Akers said the plan is to save enough money to file for 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. Then Freak Alley can support its artists in other projects. It’s part of the communal spirit that animates Boise’s most social gallery. “I know it’s bigger than me, so I have to let it do [what it wants to do],” Akers said. In other gallery news, Ed Anderson—who started the Fulton Street Showroom in 2011 but bowed out after the birth of his twin daughters—is returning not only to his former gallery home (behind Renewal Furniture at 850 Fulton St.), but will curate for fellow BODO locations Solid and Front Street Brokers. On Thursday, Aug. 8, Anderson opens Fish Spots—a fishing-themed show to benefit Reel Recovery, which helps men deal with cancer through fishing. The exhibition will feature local art and photography from Josh Udesen, (who will receive an in-studio critique from Travis Swartz, aka “Hank Patterson,” of the YouTube fly-fishing comedy series), Bryan Huskey, Josh Prestin and Anderson, as well as several national artists. Work will be shown at Fulton Street Showroom, Solid and Front Street Brokers, with an opening reception at 7 p.m. —Zach Hagadone
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