Speaking of the Arts

The opportunities to enjoy the arts from the comforts of home continues. First up on this week's show, Skylark Bookshop's Alex George reviews two new novels, 'Golden State' by Ben Winters about a dystopian future where telling a lie puts you in jail, and a new comically toe-curling essay collection by Samantha Irby called 'Wow, No Thank You' plus Alex gives a little insight into how artwork is chosen for a book cover; Columbia Art League's Kelsey Hammond looks at their new online photography show by Dan Farnum called 'Young Blood' (https://columbiaartleague.org/virtual-gallery-shows); Talking Horse Productions' Adam Brietzke and The Stable Boys' Kathleen Johnson give Diana another improv lesson that involves a poop joke; Ragtag's Barbie Banks tells us how we can binge watch a Columbia-made soap opera, 'Nettle Pointe' by Sasha Goodnow; and finally the Missouri Symphony's Trent Rash takes us a tour of George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue'.

Listen to this week's Speaking of the Arts to hear from Ragtag's Barbie Banks about a new documentary looking at gerrymandering called Slay the Dragon and a Romanian heist thriller, The Whistlers, the inspiration for which comes from a real life whistling language used on La Gomera, one of the Canary Islands; Skylark Bookshop's Alex George chats about two books that look at different aspects of the second world war - Erik Larson's new book about the London Blitz. The Splendid and the Vile, and Jennifer Rosner's novel about enforced isolation 'The Yellow Bird Sings'; Bingham gallery director Catherine Armbrust and artist Dianna Temple talk about Dianna's digital art show 'Wheelchair tornadoes and Other Things Our Eyes Cannot See'; Adam Brietzke and Kathleen Johnson give Diana Moxon another improv lesson; and the Missouri Symphony Orchestra's Monica Palmer gives us the down and dirty on Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. And it's all neatly packed into 1 hour.

We are all in the same boat right now. Separated by oceans, borders, and now sequestration, we are all in this new normal together. We can't travel physically but we can travel in our imagination. So come fly with me, Diana Moxon, for one hour as we digitally fly around the world and listen to audio postcards from London (Audrey Gillan), Stockholm (Katarina Zetterberg), Sydney (Corey Zerna), Auckland (Glenn White), Shanghai (Richard Choke), Bangkok (Chris Stafford), and Geneva (Ine Bjolseth). Plus we have music from each destination. Thanks to Spankin Rufus for providing the theme music, and the fabulous Loose Loose (www.looseloose.org), who allowed me to shamelessly sample music from their albums Candor and Sanguine. You can hear all their tracks in full on Spotify and via their website.

On this week's Speaking of the Arts Diana finds out about this week's Extra Credit movie available at RagtagCinema.org from Barbie Banks; Trent Rash from the Missouri Symphony Orchestra reveals which naughty 18th century composer cut the pigtail off a chorister; Adam Brietzke and Kathleen Johnson from Talking Horse Productions teach Diana the first building blocks of impro; Hannah Reeves takes us behind the scenes of the new Contemporary Cuban Art exhibit at the Sager Braudis Gallery; AND Alex George tells us what new book is flying off the shelves this week at Skylark Bookshop. And we manage to fit it all into just one hour.

As we're all practicing social distancing and going to an arts event is off the menu, this week we track what's available to us at a distance and check in with some of Columbia's arts makers and distributors. Ragtag Cinema's Barbie Banks tells us what movies are streaming through their website; Skylark Bookshop's Alex George talks about the new Emily St John Mandel book 'The Glass Hotel' and Hillary Mantel's 'The Mirror and the Light'; the Missouri Symphony Orchestra's Monica Palmer gives us new insights into Ravel's Bolero; we get an improv lesson from Talking Horse theatre's Adam Brietzke and Kathleen Johnson; and Hannah Reeves gives us a sneak peek at two of the artworks in their new Contemporary Cuban exhibit.

These are strange and unprecedented times for all of us. With all arts and culture events canceled, all venues shuttered and no end in sight, this week Diana chats to Michael Donovan, the Executive Director of the Missouri Arts Council (MAC) about what resources are available for artists and arts organizations, and what conversations MAC is having with funders and organizations around the state. In Act Two, Monica Palmer, the Development Director for the Missouri Symphony Orchestra talks about why the arts are so important to the public good and some of the ideas that she is working on to keep us all engaged during our quarantine time. And in Act Three, the Columbia Art League's (CAL) Executive Director, Kelsey Hammond, discusses what online events CAL is planning and how she's trying to navigate organizing Art in the Park whilst uncertainty abounds.

France in the late 1700's was a bad time and place to be an ex-Queen, a political activist, a civil rights fighter, or even a playwright, but America's most produced playwright, Lauren Gunderson, takes us back to that era with her play 'The Revolutionists'. The comedy about the meeting of Marie Antoinette, assassin Charlotte Corday, playwright Olympe de Gouge and the fictional freedom fighter, Marianne Angelle, was to have been performed at Stephens College this weekend, but an abundance of COVID19 caution has put the show on hold. But the play's director, Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri, and two of the actors, Fiona Bleu and Julia Vuolo dropped in to chat about their production anyway.

In Act Two of this week's show, America's best-selling and favorite tupperware lady, Dixie Longate, graced the studio with her southern Alabama charm and chatted about her 20-years in the tupperware show business, her admiration for party-plan genius Brownie Wise, and her Dixie's Tupperware Party that plays March 12-14 at Capital City Productions in Jefferson City.

Every year for 4 days the True/False film fest transforms Columbia, Missouri into the epicenter of documentary film excellence. This week's Speaking of the Arts show is dedicated to the fest. In Act One, Diana talks to director David France ('How to Survive a Plague') about his new documentary, 'Welcome to Chechnya' (https://www.welcometochechnya.com/) - a searing exploration of the purges being committed by the Chechen government against its LGBTQ community and the work being done by the LGBTQ network in Moscow to rescue people whose lives are at risk. As well as chatting to David, one of the subjects of the documentary, Max Lapunov and cinematographer/translator, Igor Myakotin, talk about Max's experience as a victim of torture by the Chechen police. In Act Two, musician Yasmin Williams (http://www.yasminwilliamsmusic.com/), talks about her music, and how her custom-made Skytop guitar is a result of molluscs and fungi. Plus she plays her music live in the studio.

2020 is the 100th anniversary of something that American women take for granted - the right to vote. But the history of women's fight for equal voting rights was long, and a new play by University of Missouri Professor, Cheryl Black, delves into the history in a series of vignettes that highlight the theatricality, the pageantry, the personalities and the nay-sayers who are scattered along this path to enfranchisement. In the Second Act Diana chats to author Phong Nguyen, author of a new lipogramatic novel called 'Roundabout', which the book cover describes as a ‘slapstick meta-romp through art, literature, metaphysics and modern America – all written without a single letter e’. Why would anyone want to write a whole novel without the letter e? Find out on this week's show.

Morality plays and Robin Hood first appeared in the middle ages - and Diana explores both on this week's Speaking of the Arts. In Act One Director Brooke Grno and actor, Paige Hudson, talk about their production of the morality play 'Everyman', one of the oldest works in the English dramatic canon, in which Everyman is summoned to God for his final reckoning but must first cast off his earthly attachments to his many allegorical friends. In Act Two, we stay in England to hang out with Robin Hood, Friar Tuck and Sir Guy aka actors Jon-Michael Rutter, Dave Bond and Mike Azar, whose production of Ken Ludwig's 'Robin Hood' is at The Little Theatre of Jefferson City, and Diana tests them on their English accents.