ICON Magazine

APRIL

JULIAN SCHLOSSBERG

Julian Schlossberg grew up in NYC with an early love of entertainment. He’s been through every avenue of the business: negotiating with Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, and Lillian Hellman; hosting Movie Talk, which introduced him to hundreds of stars; partying with Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Allen, Sid Caesar and Orson Welles. He once testified against The Beatles, yet Mike Nichols called him “the nicest man in show business.” His plays have won six Tony Awards, two Obie Awards, seven Drama Desk Awards and five Outer Critics Circle Awards.

TONY OURSLER

A pioneer of new media art, Oursler is best known for his eerie projections and multimedia works, which often explore the human psyche and its relationship with technology. His work is in the collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

James Feehan, Dialogue of Devotion. 16” h x 14 1/2,” acrylic and oil glaze. By appointment only: 267-885-3418. www.jamesfeehan.net. www.rosemoonstudios.com

WHEN DIRECTORIES RAN WILD

I THOUGHT OF PHONEbooks while lying in bed the other morning. Some of my best thinking is done in the early hours, or perhaps my most uncluttered. It’s a good time to wander the vast, dark, cobwebbed storage areas of my brain where I keep old stuff like sputniks and coonskin caps.

The reason I thought of phone books is that someone I know retired, and I wanted to send him a note. He lives locally, but I didn’t know exactly where. Back in the original digital age, when your fingers really did the work, you would go right to the “directory,” as it was called by the phone company, to get the address. There were operators then, but I’m trying very hard not to look nostalgic, so I’ll keep moving.

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Robert Beck is a painter, writer, lecturer and ex-radio host. His paintings have been featured in more than seventy juried and thirty solo gallery shows, and three solo museum exhibitions. His column has appeared monthly in ICON Magazine since 2005. www.robertbeck.net

exhibitions

12th Annual Juried Show

AOY Art Center

949 Mirror lake Road, Yardley PA

Hours: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 12–5

Reception & Awards, Friday, April 12, 6–8 April 13 –May 5

This diverse selection showcases work by artists in the region including paintings, sculptures, mixed media, and photography, in a range of themes from abstract to realistic depictions of everyday life. Over 141 artists submitted 372 pieces, and 110 were selected through a rigorous jury process, ensuring the highest quality of work. Leah Triplett Harrington, director of exhibitions and contemporary curatorial initiatives at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) curates this show

Cash prizes, and Honorable Mention Awards by Jerry’s Artarama of Lawrenceville.

For more information on the 12th Annual Juried Art Exhibition, please visit aoyarts.org

New Arts Program 50th Season

The Late Years: 2000-2024

New Arts Gallery

173 West Main St., Kutztown, PA

610-683-6440 napconn@gmail.com

April 12–June 23

Fri.-Sun. 10:00–1:00 and by appt.

Opening Reception April 12, 6–9p.m.

Farewell Reception June 23, 12–2p.m.

Join us at the 3rd of three major exhibitions celebrating New Arts Program’s 50th anniversary season.

The Art of the Miniature XXXII

The 32nd Invitational Exhibition of Fine Art Miniatures from Around the World. The Snow Goose Gallery 470 Main St. Bethlehem, PA 610-974-9099 thesnowgoosegallery.com

May 5–June 15

Collectors Preview: Sat., May 4, 12–5

Opening Reception: Sun., May 5, 1–5

Now in its 32nd year, The Snow Goose Gallery presents a new collection of fine art on a small scale. Most subject matter is portrayed at 1/6 life size or smaller, with the image size not exceeding 25 square inches, and the outer dimensions at 64 square inches or smaller. These works embody the spirit of miniaturism, and that is why the artists are all international award winners.

Fine Art Miniatures are the gems of our time, as shown by the increase in gallery and competitive shows, and their escalation in value.

Meet the attending artists at the opening reception, enjoy live jazz, and most of allenjoy the art. The entire show will be online by opening weekend. Please call or visit our website for more information.

Amanda Brun, Out of the black and Into the Blue, mixed media 24 x 14

Kirby Fredendall, Light Moments 2, oil on panel, 12 x 12

Christian Rzyski, Belgium, Treignes

Maxan Jean-Louis, Haiti, San Soleil Dance, acrylic on canvas, 16.5” x 12.5”

James F.L. Carroll, mixed media on handmade paper.

the art of poetry

Batter Up

Webbing frayed, thumb split, Same sweet spot I rubbed my spit— My old catcher’s mitt.

Whiff of neatsfoot fills my nose, I pound the pocket, eyes closed.

DAVID STOLLER

Ah, the arrival of spring; green growth pushing up through warming soil, birdsong suddenly alive at dawn, and, for many of us, the early reporting of pitchers and catchers, leading the annual migration of baseball teams to warmer climes called spring training, in preparation for a new season and that ritual call to action, “Batter Up!”

This ancient tradition (some say it is as old as baseball itself, beginning in the late 19th century) has worked its magic on me for as long as I can remember. I was a catcher from the moment my father shoved me forward to “volunteer” for the position and strap on the “tools of ignorance”—chest protector, knee pads, face mask, and an outsized glove that I would anoint each season with a magic elixir

called neatsfoot oil—a yellow oil rendered and purified from the shin bones and feet of cattle (called neat in old English).

The bronze catcher’s mitt presented here, entitled Batter Up, was sculpted by David Argyle (1945-2016), who was born in Utah and spent his youth working on a ranch, and is today celebrated in the western United States for his cowboy sculptures of saddles and boots. He was also a baseball fan and could often be found in the stands watching a local game when he wasn’t sculpting. This was a gift from my parents for my fiftieth birthday (many seasons past); it looks real enough to slip on and settle into a crouch behind the hitter, digging in as the umpire bellows “Batter Up.” n

David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner at Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet

CREATING MASTERPIECES

How does an artist create a masterpiece? For some artists, it seems effortless. The piece flows from their mind onto media like a river from mountain to sea. The time from start to finish is surprisingly short, suggesting that masterpieces are whole upon inception. We marvel at the artists' brilliance and good fortune. It is as if these are the qualities that set their work apart from ours.

Indeed, some artists tap into their talent more easily than others, and a fortunate few draw from greater depths. But raw talent is not enough. Imagine an ocean teeming with artists—each a captain piloting their craft, yet lacking wind to fill their sails. They progress slowly, if at all. They are stuck at the threshold of their potential. These gifted sailors are routinely surpassed by ‘lesser’ artists, dockworkers relentlessly harnessing their inspiration.

The secret to creating great artwork is to create a lot of art. Not all of it will be great, but with each piece comes a new discovery, a lesson learned. Wisdom grows incrementally. And when one has a lot of work to choose from, the best of the best stands the most likely chance of being great. n

Ricardo Barros’ works are in the permanent collections of eleven museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the author of Facing Sculpture: A Portfolio of Portraits, Sculpture and Related Ideas

PHOTOGRAPH AND ESSAY BY RICARDO BARROS

the list

VALLEY

GEOFF GEHMAN

The New Arts Program is capping its 50th-anniversary salute with a third straight retrospective, this one of works made over the last 24 years. Haiti and Romania are among the countries represented in a show showcasing a visionary place for exhibits, concerts, presentations, residencies and television interviews, a lo-fi, high-fiber creative incubator. (April 12June 23; 173 Main St., Kutztown; 610-683-6440; napconn@gmail.com; receptions opening and closing days)

Chuck D is an Original Original Gangsta. As a member of Public Enemy he helped make rapid-fire, bombastic, verbal bombing rap a revolution—musically, culturally, politically, linguistically, fashionably. He’s been fighting the power independently as a record-label head, a podcaster, a documentary producer and an activist for voting rights and police civility. On April 16 he’ll discuss his long legacy in a conversation at Northampton Community College, host of a campus-wide examination of hip-hop’s first half century. (Spartan Center, 3835 Green Pond Rd., Bethlehem; 610-861-5300; northampton.edu; free; reservations required)

The musicians in Old Crow Medicine Show roll like their hit anthem “Wagon Wheel,” an infectious barnburner written with Bob Dylan, who knows a lot about wheels on fire. They rock, they cajole, they break down crises (Covid, refugees), they pick licks with seamless sparks. Sometimes they cross the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with the Band; sometimes they sound like Nirvana on bluegrass. (April 13, State Theatre, 453 Northampton St., Easton; 800-999-7828; statetheatre.org)

The Go-Go’s varoomed through the 1980s, becoming MTV darlings with such bubbly, edgy ear candy as “Our Lips Are Sealed” and “We Got the Beat.” They lost their Beat due to ego clashes, excessive drugs and exhaustion. They cleaned up, raised families and reunited quite happily, all of which appears in a 2020 documentary. Their punkish bubble-gum numbers, as well as their cautionary story, drive the musical Head Over Heels, which transforms a 16th-century poem into a royal family’s quixotic quest to regain their Beat. A sub-

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CITY

A.D. AMOROSI

Since ICON is published just days after April’s start, I have no right trying to prank you with April Fools jibes—nothing funny about World War III, Aaron Rodgers getting his vice president hat on, or the potentially goofy ways that Trump might net that 464 million. Nope. We’re playing April without acting the Fool.

Except.

Speaking of Trump, on April 8, there’s a significant (partial) solar eclipse in the area. It’s the most visible in 40 years with over 90% totality. Didn’t Trump do this post-Covid without protective glasses? Isn’t that almost the stupidest thing he’s ever done?

WrestleMania 40 in Philly, April 6 and 7 at the Linc—is also an unironic event where, for the first time in 25 years, Philadelphia wrestling fans can… WHAT? What do wrestling fans do? For so long, I have had to consider guys like The Rock and John Cena beyond their acting careers. Yes, there’s even a WWE World at WrestleMania festival all week at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

This, by the way, should not be confused with April 4-14, 2024’s annual Philly Theatre Week or its WrestleBrainia: A Professional Wrestling Trivia Show. There are literally hundreds of dramatic, comedic, and experimental plays throughout the city. I just wanted to keep that wrestling thing going and confuse fans who might see this. All theater can use more asses in the seats by any means necessary.

Funny on purpose and poignant beyond compare is the Philly premiere (really, after all this time?) of Harvey Fierstein’s revolutionary Torch Song dramedy, performed through 1812 Theatre at Plays & Players April 25 – May 19. I was lucky enough to see Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy in its initial Off-Broadway run and was way-bowled over by its language, and frank takes on gay love, aging, and living freely. No matter how you or what you identify (as), Torch Song is still a potent read.

Funny but in a dryly humorous, often absurdist fashion is what you can expect from the experimental noise duo Wolf Eyes back-to-back

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James F.L. Carroll , Untitled , mixed media on paper.

Harvey Fierstein

film roundup

The Beast (Dir. Bertrand Bonello). Starring: Léa Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda. French director Bertrand Bonello’s latest is many things. At initial glance, it’s an anguished romance that traverses three time periods—1910, 2014, and 2044—and follows the same two lovers, played by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, whose identities shift with each rebirth. The 1910 tale is a loose riff on Henry James’s short, sharp, shock of a novella The Beast in the Jungle; the 2014 section is a Los Angeles-based thriller that provocatively treats the manifesto of spree killer Elliot Rodger as a kind of unholy text; and the 2044 story is speculative sci-fi, imagining a society “saved” by an artificial intelligence that has negated most human emotion. Bonello sees both the values and the disadvantages of each era, with the characters’ psy-

Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com.

chological and emotional constrictions shaped irrevocably by the forces of the respective cultural moments they happen to be living through. A recurring motif that likens the two protagonists to dolls is key; there’s a large degree to which the pair are the playthings of the universe, a toy for some unseen deity. But they are equally responsible for their own misfortunes, failing to ever adjust on their respective paths adequately until ruin becomes inevitable. This is among Bonello’s very best efforts and should not be missed. [N/R] HHHHH

Dune: Part Two (Dir. Denis Villeneuve). Starring: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson. Back we go to the desert planet Arrakis in director Denis Villeneuve’s follow-up to his brutalist blockbuster reimagining of the late Frank Herbert’s popular sci-fi book series. This finishes the tale of the first novel, as Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) continues his rise to reluctant messiah-hood and a holy war beCONTINUED ON PAGE 26

KEITH UHLICH

Javier Bardem in Dune: Part Two

Julian Schlossberg & friends

Joen Baez

Hillary Clinton

Dustin Hoffman

President Barack Obama

Meryl Streep

Quincy Jones

JULIAN SCHLOSSBERG HAS DONE IT ALL. NOW, HE’S DOING IT ALL AGAIN, ONLY MORE SO.

IF YOU WERE TOyell the name Julian Schlossberg in a crowded theater, everyone would expect not only a warming flame but many high-rising sparks. That’s because in his time (so far), the constantly-moving Schlossberg has either made or become the epicenter of several differing entrepreneurial charges.

[D]uring Covid everyone streamed and now realizes that they never have to go out for their entertainment They can stay home and see anything they want.And I think it is going to stay that way. The Hamiltonsof the world will always draw a majority of people, but I believe that Broadway will become like an impoverished country where the very rich can afford it, and the poor cannot.

As a theatrical producer (my favorite job of his), Schlossberg was behind Bullets Over Broadway: The Musical, written by Woody Allen and directed by Susan Stroman, Sly Fox, written by Larry Gelbart and directed by Arthur Penn, Adult Entertainment, written by Elaine May and directed by Stanley Donen, and countless other plays. As a television and film producer, he’s stewarded Orson Welles’ Othello, Elia Kazan: A Director’s Journey , and a handful of works around the life and laughs of Mike Nichols and Elaine May, such as the Emmy-nominated Mike Nichols: PBS American Masters , directed by May. Along with running Gold Castle Records with partner Danny Goldberg (a significant fount of new recordings from folk’s elders, as well as the new school band, The Washington Squares), Schlossberg established Castle Hill Productions, a film production and distribution company responsible for 500 first run and classic movies to theaters, pay TV, basic cable, home video, TV syndication and more; was a VP of worldwide acquisitions at Paramount; acted as a producer’s rep for legends such as May, Elia

A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dog-daughter Tia. “ “

Kazan, Dustin Hoffman, and John Cassavetes; and got his voice out to a hungry public as the host of Movie Talk, a four-hour nationally syndicated radio program where he talked with Hollywood’s stars for four hours at a clip.

“I do love to talk, what can I say,” Schlossberg said.

Now, the unstoppable Schlossberg is taking his showbiz yarns, old and new, to the podcast world with Julian Schlossberg’s Movie Talk, as well as publishing the new audiobook of his beloved memoir Try Not to Hold It Against Me: A Producer’s Life, and bringing his face to the small screen as a guest interviewer on TCM.

The guest interviewer slot at Turner Classic Movies was fascinating to me (you can still see it at TCM). Schlossberg chatted with comic genius Elaine May, screened her films A New Leaf and Ishtar, and discussed—at length—the highly intellectual magic of Nichols and May, a duo too few of us have ever witnessed in a live setting. And, of course, Schlossberg was there to see the mirthful majesty of N&M unfold.

“I remember that the New York Times claimed that they had mob and snob appeal,” he said of May, his close friend, and Nichols—whose work he represents. “They came from the University of Chicago and Second City and, of course, had an intellectual bent. But they also knew how to show the foibles of our society in a funny, funny way.” As Schlossberg recites several of the pair’s bits, you can tell how much he loves the brand of humor that Nichols and May made their own. As for his rare interview with May, Schlossberg admits how lucky he was to have her on TCM. “She’s the Greta Garbo of the 21st century.”

Schlossberg is hardly Garbo-esque in his willingness to be seen and be heard. Take his new Movie Talk podcast, which can be heard across all platforms. Like its radio version, the new show is a fount of rich, deep cinematic information and interviews with those who made the film industry percolate. “A lot of younger

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TONY OURSLER

Smoke & Mirrors and Magical Thinking

FOR A PRESENT-DAY GENIUSof immersive installation art and ominous post-modern multimedia touching on macabre magic realism and all things phantasmagoric, Tony Oursler is remarkably grounded and even a tad old-fashioned. During two lengthy conversations, the New York City-based artist is downright down to earth when discussing his freshly commissioned works found within a new group show, Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art, taking place in Palm Beach County at the Boca Raton Museum of Art (now through May 12), works that speak to (but refuse to converse easily) 21st century concerns such as deepfakes and the duplicity of A.I. while referencing the old school legerdemain of James Randi, the beloved Vegas stage magician, skeptical movement adherent and challenger of the paranormal and the pseudoscientific known as the Amazing Randi.

Then again, if you have followed Tony Oursler’s creations, large or small, in his wide variety of chosen mediums—sculpture, performance art, painting and the twin towers of video making and his signature video dolls—since his start in the 1980s, no matter how creepy or other-worldly his aesthetic, there is something tactile and fleshy about that which he exhibits. Along with warm and touch-able intimacy comes a willingness to collaborate, a playful conviviality he has shared with like-minded artists and collaborators such as Jim Gibbons, Kim Gordon, Tony Conrad, and, most famously, David Bowie.

palimpsest to look at the cultural moment has stayed with me from those early video tapes, from then until the present. Only now, my work has a wider range, looking at deep histories about the future and collapsing it all into one work, for better or worse.”

Thinking of suspending disbelief reminds me of where I came into Oursler’s work: that of the spectral video doll or “electronic effigies”— ratty, hand-fashioned cloth figures brought menacingly alive through genuinely creepy techy video projection, ragged totems such as Judy (1993) that looked deep into the close relationship between multiple personality disorder and mass mediation.

“It did turn audiences on its collective ear,” said Oursler regarding the magic moment of the video doll, “I had all but given up on the art world as I felt it would never accept the moving image of it all—and this was at the beginning of computer stuff in art. Photography, video art, computer art—it was all still segregated. But second-generation conceptual artists like myself don’t think that way, and the video doll allowed me to stop teaching in Boston. What did people respond to with those works? I think this little LED projector… I think the work I was doing freed the moving image from its cage. The dolls were electronic escapees that found their way into the world.”

The viewer automatically became a collaborator with the dolls, which was always my goal—to stimulate the most visual part of the brain. Plus, I think people were disturbed to have art that spoke back to them, literally. Really aggressive stuff, too.

Thinking about how the sinister spirit of initial videotape works such as The Loner (1980) and EVOL (1984) or primitive installations like Son of Oil (1982) touches on his newer pieces, Oursler is quick to connect the dots between his past and the present.

“The molecules in your body change every seven years, and I value evolution a lot, but there’s something about a primary visual base that I developed on the idea of willing suspension of disbelief where I trusted the viewers' interpretation of things over the canon,” says Oursler. “The early works were heavily in response to popular culture… like having EVOL look at romance and images from Hallmark cards to the psychedelic agent that the U.S. military used to experiment on the troops and freeform-ing the content at the moment.”

Exploiting pop culture through social phenomenon, examining the high-low relationships of industrial design, and turning mass media concepts on their head with frozen images and a playfully painted iconography going back to the caves of Altamira led Oursler to create kaleidoscopic, all-media installations. “That kaleidoscope vibe certainly carried into everything I do now,” he said of the idea of “using a

—Tony Oursler

With the line between media and the real world broken by Oursler’s dolls—to say nothing of their projection onto trees, cloth, and other textural, proactive landscapes—its interrupted projection created something that the mind’s eye could not easily process. “The viewer automatically became a collaborator with the dolls, which was always my goal—to stimulate the most visual part of the brain. Plus, I think people were disturbed to have art that spoke back to them, literally. Really aggressive stuff, too.” (As an aside, Oursler mentioned how he wished that younger, newer artists would interact with more friction toward the current norms of the internet, cellphones streaming, and TikTok rather than play nice with present-day multimedia “to utilize the outer edge more often… to use the internet, phone and streaming as a creative space rather than a null-and-void, passive space. We’re looking at screens for hours a day. It can’t be a corporate top-down situation.”)

Transgressively-minded audiences were thrilled with Oursler’s work. So, too, were old and new-found collaborators, who, like William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, created a thirdmind aesthetic. One such collaborator was David Bowie, with whom

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Tony Oursler. Photo by Edouard Caupeil

film classics

Fantastic Planet (1973, René Laloux, France/Czechoslovakia)

No way a science-fiction feature about human beings living on an alien world populated by towering blue extraterrestrials would ever make a pop-cultural dent. (Laugh, Jim Cameron, laugh.) But long before the Na’vi took box office gold, there were the Traags, a technologically and spiritually advanced race with azure skin who keep Earthlings, known as Oms, as pets. In the French animator René Laloux’s cult classic, the divide between these two species deepens to the point of rebellion. As the Oms come to grasp the Traags’s knowledge, the oppression they’ve been subjected to for generations becomes clear. Violence results, much of it surreally unsettling because of the cardboard-cutout quality of the imagery—like a reli-

gious origin story told in herky-jerky motion and diorama-esque visuals. There is hope to be found at the end of this clash between nations, a vision of peaceful coexistence that seems very much of its time while being simultaneously aspirational enough that it resonates with the seemingly ceaseless horrors of our own era. (Streaming on Max.)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953, Howard Hawks, United States)

They’re just two little girls from Little Rock: Perky blonde Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and sassy brunette Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell), two showgirls on the eternal lookout for love and money, not

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KEITH UHLICH

Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers

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plot revolves around gender fluidity, a topic quite rare during Elizabethan times and very popular during Boy George’s heyday. (Baker Center, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown; 484-6643333; muhlenberg.edu/seeashow)

Dionne Warwick knows the way to Easton. In 1989 she sang “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” and other hits she minted while christening the conversion of the State Theatre from sorry movie house to sparkling arts center. She knows the way to Bethlehem, too. On April 19 she’ll return to the Wind Creek Event Center to sing “Alfie” and “Déjà Vu” with her distinctive lathed phrases and cashmere/cognac tones. Maybe she’ll tell a back story or two about joining the “We Are the World” all-star famine-relief single, the subject of the new documentary The Greatest Night in Pop Music. (77 Wind Creek Blvd., Bethlehem; 610-297-7414; windcreekeventcenter.com)

Rob Thomas has had a remarkably fruitful career as the song-writing frontman for Matchbook Twenty, as well as the lead singer/composer of the dance smash “Smooth,” a union with Santana that won him three Grammys. He and his wife Marisol use their good fortune to aid unfortunate animals condemned to kill shelters, raising funds and awareness through Sidewalk Angels. On April 11 Thomas and the Sidewalk Angels band will perform Matchbox tunes—“3 A.M.,” “Street Corner Symphony”—at the Wind Creek Event Center, site of last year’s gig with his Twenty comrades. (77 Wind Creek Blvd., Bethlehem; 610-297-7414; windcreekeventcenter.com)

The war over reproductive rights rages all across America—in court rooms, in bar rooms, in living rooms. The tumultuous rise and fall of Roe vs. Wade is explored in This Emancipation Thing, a multi-disciplinary, living-media of a play. Author/director Sara Lyons specializes in feminist themes and revisionary plots; one of her Kafka-esque characters morphs overnight from White American Trumpster to Black American liberal. (April 12-14 and 17-20, Zoellner Arts Center, Lehigh University, 420 E. Packer Ave., Bethlehem; 610-758-2787; zoellnerartscenter.org)

The Three Musketeers abounds with intrigue, betrayal, revenge, brotherhood, sisterhood, sword play and rapier wit. Ken Ludwig’s stage version is amped up and wickedly funny, as one would expect from the author of the most excellent farce Lend Me a Tenor. The play will be performed at the Pennsylvania Playhouse, Ludwig’s home away from home. (April 5-7, 12-14, 19-21, 390 Illick’s Mill Rd., Bethlehem; 610-865-6665; paplayhouse.org)

The Allentown Symphony is building a mighty fortress around Beethoven’s mighty “Ninth Symphony.” Veteran opera singers will solo during Ode to Joy while the orchestra will debut three joyful fanfares, including one that riffs off “Amazing Grace.” (April 13-14, Miller Symphony Hall, 23 N. 6th St., Allentown; 610-432-6715; millersymphonyhall.org)

Joe Pera describes his comedy as “slow and steady.” The producer/podcaster/author has crafted a sizable audience with sly, wry, lulling tips on slumbering, buying a Christmas tree, and escaping in the bathroom. He’s a disarmingly charming mash-up of the Andys—Griffith and Kaufman. (May 1-2, Musikfest Café, 101 Founders Way, Bethlehem; 610-332-1300; steelstacks.org) n

Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry) He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net

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events at Ars Nova Workshop’s Solar Myth space on South Broad St. in Philadelphia, April 19 & 20, with avant-garde saxophone colossuses Anthony Braxton and Marshall Allen, respectively, and forcefully.

Funny kind-of on purpose: April 12-13’s Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest with Biohazard, Crowbar, Yards, 3 Floyds, Attic (which are bands and which are beers—GOT YOU) at the Fillmore.

Lastly, funny only if you don’t have cold, hard cash for weed or vinyl, is April 20’s (yes, that’s International Marijuana Day) Record Store Day across the world and at every participating indie record shop around the city and state. Schmoke up and stock up.

Can I just say that the woman-hating, dick-joke-loving stand-up “comedian” (I meant the air quotes) Matt Rife is not only playing four soldout shows at The Met Philadelphia late in April, he’s managed to sell out each day and night gig. There is nothing funny or prank-worthy about that at all. Sad. n

TONY

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Oursler crafted everything from live video backgrounds for Bowie concerts to Oursler’s own video shorts (e.g., the now-rare Empty using Bowie as its eerie bighead narrator) and the video for Bowie’s Berlin-inspired ballad Where Are We Now?

Bowie was different than any of Oursler’s collaborators. “First off, my parents were vexed,” the artist laughed. “He was intelligent, friendly, funny, and he really knew what he wanted and would call the shots here and there. We used to trade stuff—my material for his stage shows and his appearance in some of my short films. No money changed hands. And there is one unreleased project that Bowie and I did with Glenn Branca that has yet to see the light of day…. In many cases, such as Where Are We Now? it was Bowie’s imaginings of my studio and my work that fueled our collaboration.” A recent Oursler collab with Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters (which started at Bowie’s 50th anniversary

concert at Madison Square Garden, where Grohl played in tribute to his inspiration), “The Teacher,” carries the DNA of Where Are We Now? as the specter of losing his mother and his drummer, Taylor Hawkins, haunts the new, 10-minute video.

How Oursler got to his newest work—the five-plus pieces and installations of Smoke and Mirrors: Magical Thinking in Contemporary Art at the Boca Raton Museum—is a continuation of the artist’s love of pseudoscience and the paranormal.

“There are a lot more of my friends who are…. on the other side, so to speak, than when I started out,” said Oursler of those who have died. “Your relationship to death changes as you get older. Memories change. In my earlier work, I was happy to look at things more abstractly. With time, when you think about how many of your friends are gone, the images and the work derived from it all become much more poignant… the idea of being able to connect with those who are gone. It would be great to create a telephone connection to the other side or a séance table that worked.”

Until then, there are Oursler’s haunted works such as the spiritually iconographic mAcHiNe E.L.F, the vaporous Cardiff Giant sculptures, the cartoon horror of the Creature Features gallery (one where a ragged, talking Alice Cooper exists), the further adventures in levitation magic and menageries of Imponderable’s film-and-flowchart-filled installation, and the colorfully jagged crystals that line the Boca exhibit. “I’m very interested in how people are re-enchanting the moment

by using newer high-tech approaches and back-to-nature, older power of sound and color vibrations, these binaural beat meditations and new age vibrations,” he said. “The utopian world has shifted from a technological place where, in 2000, everyone thought the internet would free us to now where people are horrified with what’s on the internet – and utopia now has its back-to-nature paradigm, one with druidic activity. I’m not debunking anything. I’m trying to identify and chart it through psychedelia.”

Biblical literalism and petrified dinosaurs (at least in the case of the ancient-yet-modern Cardiff Giants) are part of Oursler’s recent mindset in creating for the Boca Museum commissions. But he laughs,

thinking about the fact that Mike Johnson, the new Republican Speaker of the House, is indeed a Biblical literalist. “Here we go, right…. It’s more relevant than I thought it would ever be,” Oursler said with a laugh. “My “time traveling” giant exists in several different dimensions and is a great public artwork for our time with all of its conspiratorial stuff from the internet and the footage I shot in front of the courthouse where Trump is being tried… this stuff is what I live for.”

The Amazing Randi—the late, legendary magician who was unafraid to portray the form’s deepest secrets—too is a big part of why and how Oursler crafted the installations and films of Smoke and Mirrors. The Great Debunker, as he was known, was also a part of Alice Cooper’s stage shows, so I vectored off that in talking about illusions, horror, and comedy.”

As for how the genuinely enthused Tony Oursler plays well with others during the Boca group show—29 additional acclaimed artists such as Urs Fischer, Alfredo Jaar, Sarah Charlesworth, Christian Jankowski, Faisal Abdu’Allah, Mark Thomas Gibson, Kristin Lucas, Jane Hammond and more—the artist is pleased by the company he’s keeping and how they’re all taking to the notions of deception, deepfakes and duplicity. “It’s a great group of artists, all kindred souls with a love for magic and the creative process,” said Oursler. n

OURSLER

Empty using Bowie as its eerie bighead narrator

TC: The Most Interesting Man Alive (film still), 2016. Chrysler Museum of Art.

I/O underflow, Oude Kerk, Amsterdam, Netherlands

FILM ROUNDUP / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 14

tween the blue-eyed rebel Fremen and the fascistic Harkonnens crescendos. Somehow every dollar is evident onscreen and yet the movie still feels cheap, constrained by its fixation on plotty palace intrigue and never conjuring anything as memorably visual or aural as in David Lynch’s fascinatingly flawed 1984 version. Paul’s hesitant ascension to religious figurehead is conceptually interesting, but Chalamet never sufficiently illuminates the character’s struggle—he always seems constipated as opposed to genuinely pained. And the few decisions that should work like gangbusters, such as casting Christopher Walken as a grizzled and grim Emperor of the known universe, never feel like anything other than fan fiction. Villeneuve treats Dune like a holy text, which paradoxically grounds it in the realm of the prosaic. [PG-13] HH

Evil Does Not Exist (Dir. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi). Starring: Hitoshi Omika, Ryo Nishikawa, Ryuji Kosaka. For the follow-up to his Oscarwinning Drive My Car, Japanese writer-director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi gifts us this chilling eco-parable about a rural village upended by a Tokyo conglomerate’s plan to create a touristy glamping site in a nearby forest. We’re primed to expect a city folks vs. country folks parable, with the easeful woodchopper and handyman Takumi (Hitoshi Omika) pitted David and Goliath-style against clueless big business representatives who are all willfully ignorant about how their project will negatively affect the environment. In truth, the English title gives away the film’s true intentions—to dispel the unhelpful binary of good and evil and instead cast everyone involved in this very human drama against the impartial backdrop of nature. It would be easy to describe where the film goes as bleak, though a better term might be cosmic, placing

Answer to TAKE A HIKE!

human concerns in harsh relief against those larger forces outside our control, that move on with a self-effacing dispassion whether we want them to or not. This is a humbling work of art and a peak in Hamaguchi’s estimable oeuvre. [N/R] HHHHH

GodzillaMinusOne (Dir. Takashi Yamazaki). Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada. WWII is over and kamikaze pilot Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), branded a coward for failing to sacrifice himself, returns home to a Tokyo riven by nuclear and economic devastation. If that wasn’t enough, the atom bombbirthed kaiju known as Godzilla is biding time offshore, waiting for just the right moment to stomp and smash an already traumatized metropolis. Director Takashi Yamazaki’s creature feature won an Academy Award for its special effects work, which is highly impressive, and not just because it was achieved at a fraction of the cost and with a much smaller team than your average Marvel behemoth. There’s a tactility to the G-Man here that makes his every earth-shattering step giddily thrilling and terrifying. Where the film falters is in its general aversion to the hopelessness of the setting. This is finally a very goofy end of days blockbuster that begs for a shade more darkness so as to counter its overall air of pop-disposability. [PG-13] HHH n

JULIAN SCHLOSSBERG

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celebrities I don’t necessarily know—it’s become a very tiny dancefloor. Then again, there are artists like David Mamet, whom I just spoke to, someone whose work I produced but hadn’t seen in years. It’s like that song in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum everybody has to have a podcast. I know there are four jillion podcasts, but I think mine sticks out. I just spoke to F. Murray Abraham and Richard Benjamin. Isabella Rossellini is coming on. Sandy Duncan. It’s a wonderful group of people who have agreed to come on and talk about their illustrious careers and what’s happening right now. And I’m going to take your advice, A.D., and put out a sign saying how much I would also like to speak to anyone under 40. It’s just always great to finish a show and know that what you’ve done is erudite, funny, and informative.”

Who could want anything more?

perience, though, because—as I did it months after it had been published, so much of it felt new. Like ‘Wow. What’s going to happen next with this guy?’ I couldn’t wait to hear the next story.”

That’s pretty much what happens when you listen to Julian Schlossberg talk—you love the story you’re hearing from him now and can’t wait to hear what he has coming next.

As for where his life stands on the stage at a time when Broadway and Off-Broadway are still waiting for a full recovery from Covid audience malaise, Schlossberg is caustically optimistic as to all levels of recovery.

“If I knew the answer to what could save the New York stage, wow, I would be rich,” he said with a laugh. “We are all having those troubles still. Streaming made things even more difficult, as during Covid everyone streamed and now realizes that they never have to go out for their entertainment. They can stay home and see anything they want. And I

Of course, there is more: Schlossberg’s historic memoir, Try Not to Hold It Against Me: A Producer’s Life, that he has finally gotten around to fashioning into an audiobook. “I’m an only child, so you just take things on yourself,” he said. “Besides, who knows my voice better than me? Perhaps someone else could act it out better, but no one will feel my life like I do. It was a strange ex-

think it is going to stay that way. The Hamiltons of the world will always draw a majority of people, but I believe that Broadway will become like an impoverished country where the very rich can afford it, and the poor cannot. Of course, I always hope for a resurgence on the New York stages—I just think that Broadway, too, must focus on plays that people want to see—where inclusion becomes a fabric of our society.” n

Julian Schlossberg.

FILM CLASSICS / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 20

necessarily in that order. In the hands of director Howard Hawks and screenwriter Charles Lederer (adapting a novel by Anita Loos that had been previously musicalized for the stage), this becomes a wicked satire of strategic passion and a sublime paean to female friendship. The dialogue is witty beyond belief: “If we can’t empty his pockets between us, then we’re not worthy of the name Woman.” And the musical numbers, choreographed and purportedly directed by Jack Cole, are in a class beyond heavenly. Everyone knows the pink-dressed Marilyn descending a staircase full of tuxedoed male suitors, crooning about diamonds being a dame’s bosom buddy. But Russell’s own showstopper, “Ain’t There Anyone Here For Love,” is every bit its equal, as she navigates a gymnasium filled to brimming with muscled hunks while casting cartoonishly lustful glances every which way before an unplanned dip in a swimming pool. (Streaming on Criterion.)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978, Philip Kaufman, United States)

The Don Siegel original is a classic in its own right, yet there’s something a little more disconcerting about Philip Kaufman’s remake of the pod-people-among-us perennial. The McCarthy-era paranoia of the 1956 film gets an environmental spin as the alien invaders are a plant species from a dying world now reconstituting themselves on our own little blue orb. Throw in a soupçon of New Age-speak lampoon courtesy Leonard Nimoy’s plaid suited and redturtlenecked psychiatrist and you’ve got a truly lip-smacking recipe for a smashing horror-comedy. At heart, though, this is a tragic romance, firstly between Donald Sutherland’s stalwart health inspector and his scientist colleague played endearingly by Brooke Adams. Their easy chemistry makes the literally transformative places the film goes to upsetting in the extreme. But looked at in a macro context, this is also a bittersweet valentine to/requiem for the tenuous human race, something captured brilliantly in the film’s final sequence via a spine-tingling point-and-scream that, once seen and heard, is impossible to shake. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)

Mélo (1986, Alain Resnais, France)

Known best for heady mindbenders such as Hiroshima mon amour and Last Year at Marienbad, the great French director Alain Resnais is less celebrated for those of projects that we might term cinematic theatricals. Typically adapted from plays and then reconceptualized for the screen, these works tend to bridge two very different mediums in gently provocative ways. The 1986 romantic roundelay Mélo, a reworking of a stage production by the French playwright Henri Bernstein, is one of Resnais’s finest achievements in this intentionally artifice-heavy vein. Amid the Art Deco-bedecked backdrop of 1920s Paris, the lives of two male violinists (Pierre Arditi and André Dussollier) are upended by Romaine (Sabine Azéma), wife to one, lover to the other. The tried-and-true ways the story plays out (friendship tested; suicide committed; secrets buried in an attempt at saving face) clash pointedly with the synthetic world that Resnais and his collaborators conjure. The sets look like sets. The eye-searingly saturated lighting is the opposite of natural, as are the heightened performances of all the actors, straddling some strange line between screen and stage. All this “falseness,” interestingly enough, helps us to better interrogate the “truths” of a tragic tale as old as time. (Streaming on MUBI.) n

WHEN DIRECTORIES RAN WILD / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5

At the height of their utility, phone books were so heavy and dense that bodybuilders would attempt to tear them in half as a test of strength. They were also thick enough that generations of Americans took their first regular seats at the grown-up’s table perched on one or two.

Telephone books weren’t a curiosity or a fad; they were a government-mandated necessity. Not only were they clunky, but you usually had a few. I lived in Central Bucks, so I had one for that location. I also had Hunterdon, Montgomery and Mercer Counties, and an old Philadelphia. That was ten inches and thirty pounds of phonebooks. They weren’t pretty, so people would stash them out of sight yet within reach of the phone. Maybe in a kitchen cabinet or desk drawer, but often on the shelf or floor of a closet. Some people kept them on top of the fridge. You used the book all the time, and doing without them was inconceivable.

In my youth, the books were half white residential pages and half yellow business pages. As the population grew, they became two separate volumes. The white pages listed everybody’s address and number unless they paid not to be listed. That’s phone company logic, a precursor to how they behave today. There were lines and lines of names, addresses, and numbers printed in tiny type—still enough to fill a couple of inches of tissue-thin paper. The addresses were highly abbreviated to save space, such as 813 Lwr Wshtn Ln Ap 3A Nw Hope.

The Yellow Pages were where you found where to get things, or someone to fix the stuff you already had. Both books were in most phone booths, with hard covers that would swing up onto a small shelf. They took an extra beating, as people would often write on the page and take it with them.

If there was something from your call that you wanted to remember, like a date, directions, or the name of somebody’s spouse, you would often note it in the margin while you were talking. Or circle the number in case you had to look it up again. Phone books were like family bibles, which made it difficult to get rid of them when the new ones came. They arrived solid and trim, but the pages were notorious for not holding up well. Once the cover was destroyed by being folded and crammed into too small of a space too many times, the pages surrendered with no fight at all. You would lose some each time you pulled it out of the cupboard. After two years of service, the book was ragged, boneless, and missing Abbat, Aaron through Dumfit, Deborah

That’s about when the new one showed up. This was before computers and digital typesetting, so there were originals somewhere that needed to be constantly updated. I suppose it’s like painting a bridge. You don't wait and start anew from scratch; you continue adding and removing addresses as soon as the last edition of books leaves the loading dock.

Today, you take your chances searching online, knowing people are finding out more about you than you are about your friend. And just when you're about to get the information you want, you have to sign up and pay for it. No problem; just enter your credit card number. It’s a lovely time we live in.

The phone book was one of many cultural underpinnings that digital technology removed from the stage, and it happened in one generational sweep. My smartphone can get me much of the same information and is lighter and portable, but it comes with search optimization that skews results, a lack of accountability, dubious information, and the harvesting of personal details. However, I do appreciate the extra room in the closet. n

harper’s

In 2023, the hottest year on record, the number of unprovoked shark attacks remained level, and researchers warned that, as temperatures rise, humans should prepare for more diarrhea. The diurnal asymmetric warming of the earth has reversed course since 1991, with daytime temperatures rising faster than nighttime. The warming of low-elevation tropical forests is driving lianas to strangle trees. The skeletons of Caribbean sea sponges may suggest that the planet surpassed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming more than a decade ago. Depression in humans is correlated with higher body temperature, and cold-water swimming mitigates menopause symptoms. H5N1 was suspected or confirmed in the deaths of such birds as black-browed albatross, brown skuas, and Antarctic terns found at locations including Penguin River, Right Whale Bay, and Sea Lion Island. Anatomists examining rosy-faced lovebirds found that parrots’ ability to swing by their beaks constitutes a unique form of locomotion. Long calls of wild flanged male orangutans feature rhythmically isochronous sequences nested within further isochronous sequences. The disruptive sound in a Tampa neighborhood that was previously blamed on aliens, and the military might actually be the sound of the black drum mating.

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Astrophysicists determined that at least half the volume of the Saturnian moon Mimas consists of an ocean beneath its icy crust. Martian ice deposits under the Medusae Fossae Formation are up to two miles thick, and young thrust faults on the moon may imperil human and robot explorers. Scientists unveiled new tools that help robots recognize fruits easily and pick them delicately. The average radius of curvature in week-old halved carrots was found to decrease from 1.61 to 1.1 meters. A soundscape of 80 decibels played over five days to Trichoderma harzianum fungi— and soundscapes of 70 decibels and 90 decibels played over fourteen days to green tea bags and rooibos tea bags—significantly accelerated their decomposition. Genomic analysis indicated that psychedelic mushrooms emerged around the time of the Mesozoic–Cenozoic mass extinction.

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The semen microbiome may influence sperm motility. The playing speed of a metal guitarist directly correlates with his intrasexual competitiveness but not his mating success. Americans and Canadians with a history of sugar dating perceive sugar babies as having more power than their sugar daddies, mamas, and nonbinary benefactors. Dementia appears to have been exceedingly rare in classical antiquity, as in the present-day Tsimane tribe, leading researchers to hypothesize that its modern prevalence may be linked to air pollution. Twenty-three percent of witchcraft accusations against Scots between 1563 and 1736 involved fairies and elves. A teenage boy whose body the police recovered from a Bellaghy bog was determined to have died between 2,000 and 2,500 years ago. “The kidney,” said a detective, “was malleable to the touch.” Forty-two percent of Gen Z consumers commit charge-back fraud, and 61 percent of health-care workers said they have concealed having an infectious disease. Violence was found to be contagious in the Mafia. n

% by which Biden voters are more likely than Trump voters to have read a history book in 2023: 5

By which they are more likely to have read a young-adult novel: 350

% of U.S. voters who would be more likely to vote for a 2024 presidential candidate if Taylor Swift endorsed them: 18

Who say that immigrants “poison the blood” of the country: 45

Factor by which children poisoned by marijuana edibles have increased since 2017: 13

Portion of cocaine users worldwide who live in the United States: 1/4

% by which Americans working in the food-service industry are more likely than average to die of a drug overdose: 180

By which Americans who work in mining are more likely to do so: 286

% of Americans who have died by assisted suicide who attended college: 72

Who were white: 96

% of Americans over 50 who have set aside money for long-term care: 37

Factor by which the U.S. centenarian population is expected to increase over the next 30 years: 4

% increase since 2019 in the number of plastic-surgery procedures in the US: 19

In Botox and other neuromodulator injections: 73

Average minutes it takes to drive to the nearest emergency room: 17

% of Americans who live within a 10-minute drive of a firearms dealer: 88

Average starting salary for a new police officer in San Jose, California: $111,000

In New York City: $58,000

Factor by which Americans are more likely to oppose defunding the police than to support doing so: 5

% of American adults who say their interactions with police officers in the past year were positive experiences overall: 77

Of black American adults who say so: 68

% of adults who believe that black people experience discrimination today: 34

Portion of LGBT men who say that discrimination is a major barrier to their adopting a child from foster care: 1/2

% of American women who say getting married and having children makes women’s lives happier and more fulfilling: 32

% of American women under 30 who say this: 24

Portion of women worldwide who experience physical pain on a daily basis: 1/3

Portion of women who were unable to afford shelter during the past year: 1/3

Estimated number of years until the world’s first trillionaire emerges: 10

Percentage of U.S. wealth inequality that is accounted for by inheritances: 61

% by which American adults under 35 are more likely to say their parents’ role in their lives is too small than too large: 144

% of American boys and men aged 13–39 who say that sports are interesting only if gambling is involved: 39

Portion of internet users who believe they are living in a simulation: 1/2

Portion of adults under 30 who believe the Holocaust did not happen: 1/5

% of Americans who are waiting for an apology from someone in their life: 46

Estimated percentage by which participants in workplace mental-wellness programs are more likely to report greater well-being: 0

SOURCES: 1,2 YouGov (NYC); 3 Redfield & Wilton Strategies (London); 4 YouGov; 5 American Academy of Pediatrics (Itasca, Ill.); 6 United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Vienna); 7,8 National Center for Health Statistics (Hyattsville, Md.); 9,10 Elissa Kozlov, Rutgers University (New Brunswick, N.J.); 11 KFF Health News (Washington); 12 Pew Research Center (Washington); 13,14 American Society of Plastic Surgeons (Arlington Heights, Ill.); 15 RAND Corporation (Santa Monica, Calif.); 16 Los Angeles Times; 17 San Jose Police Department; 18 New York City Police Department; 19 YouGov; 20,21 Gallup (Washington); 22 YouGov; 23 Gallup; 24,25 Survey Center on American Life (Washington); 26,27 Gallup; 28 Oxfam International (Nairobi, Kenya); 29 Pedro Salas-Rojo and Juan Gabriel Rodríguez, Complutense University of Madrid; 30 Pew Research Center; 31 YPulse (NYC); 32 Neal.fun (Fairfax, Va.); 33 YouGov; 34 Preply (Brookline, Mass.); 35 William Fleming, University of Oxford (England).