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CULTURE
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If you enjoyed A Late Summer Night’s Stroll, catch A Walking Xmas Carol . | NICHOLAS COULTER
[STAGE]
The Ghost of Christmas Recast
St. Louis Shakespeare Festival announces new walking tour based on A Christmas Carol
Written by RILEY MACK
As St. Louis heads into the winter months and events move indoors, ways to socialize while still social distancing will begin to dwindle. However, the crew who regularly brings us the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is here to provide a little joy for your holiday season with a brand-new window-walk performance.
This year, instead of their normal hibernation during the winter season, the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival organizers have decided to create A Walking Xmas Carol. The free, twenty-stop, outdoor holiday window tour will take place in the Central West End from November 28 through December 23.
Attendees will walk past storefronts, each depicting a scene from the holiday classic A Christmas Carol. A windowwalk event is not new to the Central West End, as the neighborhood has put on a similar event for the past decade, but the Shakespeare crew plans to add their own twist to the tradition.
As Tom Ridgely, producing artistic director, says, “This is not just your grandmother’s Christmas Carol.”
In contrast to the classically beautiful Central West End, the story will be a modern telling of the beloved Dickens tale. The crew is adapting the original narrative to reflect our new normal, particularly focusing on our relationships throughout the pandemic. Another contemporary alteration involves QR codes at each display for visitors to hear the Q Brothers’ hip-hop adaptation of the soundtrack.
For the festival crew, the limitations of the coronavirus pandemic have actually served as a source of inspiration in creating the show. As office parties, Nutcracker productions, Christmas musicals, symphony orchestras and more are off the docket for this holiday season, Ridgely knew they had to step in.
“We just realized that so many things that make this time of year not just special, but bearable, won’t be possible — the gathering, the travels, the celebrations,” Ridgely says. “We had to find a way to still live out our mission — we had to use art and stories to spread joy and understanding.”
With COVID-19 emptying storefronts across St. Louis, the Shakespeare crew wanted to breathe some life into their city. In the Central West End particularly, they plan to incorporate the vacant spaces as part of their show.
“Rather than have them sit empty, we can turn them into something beautiful,” Ridgely explains.
So although usual holiday traditions may be canceled this year, a new and safe one can be made through the walking tour. Organizers believe everyone should come out to see the show and experience some well-deserved joy this winter season. “It just brings a little light,” Ridgley says. n
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In pandemic times, it’s challenging to find things to do that don’t put yourself or those around you in danger. And while we’re inclined to suggest that the safest event is no event, we also know that sounds a lot like abstinence-only sex ed, and you guys are probably gonna fuck anyway. So consider these recommendations your condoms: not foolproof, but safer than other options. Live-streamed events are the masturbation of events in this way, because — you know what, we’re gonna go ahead and abandon this metaphor before we get in over our heads.
2020 ST. LOUIS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
t’s been a long pandemic, and things are only heating up again. o you know what t’s time to make the most of this weird backwards opportunity you’ve been given. f you’ve always meant to actually go to the t. ouis nternational Film Festival but couldn’t This year’s FF is, of course, all online — which means you have a huge new batch of movies and shorts to tap into just as you get sick of poking through et ix yet again. The festival is a dazzling international smorgasbord, featuring over documentary features and shorts and more than 200 narrative features and shorts. t’s a giant and beautiful festival full of insight, comedy, magic, mystery, history, harrowing truths, life-affirming stories, enchanted animations and so much more. hich can be overwhelming — so we’ve put together this list of sug-
find the time Tada ere you go gestions to get you oriented. ost are available for viewing from now through unday, ovember , and virtual tickets can be purchased individually or via passes at cinemastlouis.org sliff festival-home. tay home, stay safe and stay entertained
Lucky Grandma
Grumpy Grandma ong Tsai hin is widowed and barely making ends meet in her tiny hinatown apartment when a fortune teller tells her that she’s about to hit a very lucky streak. She gets herself to a casino and finds out that her luck is real but not uncomplicated. efore long she has to hire a bodyguard, Big Pong siao- uan a , to protect her from a local gang’s predations.
Lucky Grandma. | COURTESY SLIFF
While the stakes are high and the consequences are real, first-time feature director Sasie Sealy has a sharp eye for details both funny and Hitchcockian that keeps it thrilling and mysterious, in part by deploying a fantastic score. hin’s chain-smoking Grandma ong is tiny but implacable, with real comic chemistry between her and the hulking but babyfaced Big ong. till, it is cramped hinatown, reeking of fish and mystical secrets, that really shines.
e Black Artists’ Group: Creation Equals Movement
The lack rtists’ Group G was founded in t. ouis in the fiery days of the late ’60s and lasted until — but in that time, they managed a fierce burst of cultural and artistic activity. They were on the cutting edge of the Black ower movement, and many of the members had F surveillance records to prove it. They brought an arts-focused, interdisciplinary approach to their Black cultural activism, built around music, particularly azz, in radical co-invention with experimental dance and theater. Though G hasn’t received nearly enough attention to date — even and especially in t. ouis — the work done here in the city reverberated through the Black corridors of the segregated merican experience. any of the artists went on to international music and theater careers, including such heavy hitters as liver ake, ulius emphill and amiet luiett, who formed the orld axophone uartet and became fixtures of ew ork’s artloft jazz scene of the ’80s.
This showing is of a work in progress Director ryan De atteis is still finishing it up. The film features archival footage of a wide variety of G members including ake, emphill, luiett, harles “ obo” haw, ortia unt and hirley eFlore as well as Dennis wsley of “ azz nlimited.” For t. ouis musicians, music aficionados and the theater crowd, this is a rare opportunity to see history literally in the making.
e Penny Black
ome of the strangest stories are the true ones, and The Penny Black is an immersive adventure in the unlikely. t a dinner party in , the filmmakers encounter ill, who tells them that he was recently asked to hold onto a couple of books of stamps by his neighbor, a ussian man whom he only met that one time. The man then promptly disappears, leaving the stamps with ill. The problem The collection, which includes an infamously rare “ enny lack,” is potentially worth millions, and ill has no idea what to do next, especially because he doesn’t even know the name of the mysterious guy who handed them to him. s weeks turn into months, ill has to decide what he wants to do about this potential fortune in his care — and remain ever mindful of the documentarians who are watching closely to see what happens.
Dramarama
t’s not a real movie about high school unless you’re squirming in your seat with discomfort on the kids’ behalf. Dramarama catches a group of senior-year drama nerds at their fever pitch throwing a murder mystery party together. True to type, they are as unbearably ridiculous as they are unselfconsciously delighted with each other’s pure nerd pageantry. ut Gene has his own drama e wants to come out as gay to his friends, even as he worries desperately about what that will mean for all of them. t’s a confidently directed debut by onathan Wysocki, and both he and the actors clearly revel in the mid-’ s world they create, free from the tyranny of social media but full of anxiety for anyone hiding the secret of their true selves.
Stardust
t would be a fool’s errand to convey the life of David owie, one of the world’s most mercurial and opaque artists, in a single film, and director Gabriel ange knows it. nstead, Stardust is set near the outset of owie’s long and glorious career, when he’s still a mostly unknown young folk singer strumming an acoustic guitar in a dress and widebrimmed hat, ba ing his record company and anyone who tried to get near him. ith the help of grizzled industry vet Rob Oberman played by a very recognizable arc aron , he’s got to figure out how to convince merica to love his new album, The Man Who Sold the World. He clearly has the skills, but he lacks a personality — “character,” it’s sometimes called. f only he could become someone else entirely... ead actor ohnny Flynn’s own star has been on the rise over the last decade — he was conspicuously gorgeous in this year’s Emma — and the fact that he’s a legit musician in his own right helps the physical manifestations of the musical moments in the film immensely. ut mainly, it’s ust an undeniable pleasure to watch the difficult birth of one of the estern world’s wildest ciphers iggy Stardust. n
