YOLO! (with thanks to AEC) Best of 2012: Visual Art

Much like my disclaimer on theater, didn't get to see as much visual art as usual - I hit about 45 exhibits all year - and in looking back I'm really surprised to see how much photography's in this top 10. And both heartened and dismayed to see how many of these exhibits are retrospectives - the fact that Alina Szapocnikow or Rineke Djikstra haven't hit my radar before is kind of shaming to me but once I saw their work that string in my heart started vibrating.As always, everything is in Columbus unless otherwise specified.Cindy Sherman, Cindy...

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Best of 2012: Theater and Dance

I know, it's been a while, trying to get my groove back. Please bear with a few posts of me stretching and shaking the rust off. This is the first of five posts highlighting art that shook me like a rag doll. This year really saw a flourishing of interesting Columbus theater which luckily coincided with my not getting out of town quite as much or for quite as long (the first year since I was 18 where I didn't get to Chicago once and one of my two New York trips was mostly for the fantastic wedding of two very dear friends, so no regrets but I was...

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Uncle Vanya, Soho Rep

"The future hasn't arrived. It is all stillA dream, a night sweat to be swum offin a wonderland of sand and bread.When we woke afterward, the houseswere still standing, the green just as green,but the seaweed had thickened and the lampat the end of the dock had cracked."-Meghan O'Rourke, "Twenty-First Century Fireworks"Apparently it was the summer of the Vanya revivals in New York this year, but my schedule only let me have a trip that overlapped with Annie Baker's re-imagining. I've read a couple of translations since I fell in love with Chekhov...

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God of Carnage, New Players Theater

“Man dug up demons' hoaxes there, Considered his lust heaven,His illusion he decreed creative,He assumed the moment deathless. Life to him is an enormous weightAs down there the dead bee's wingTo the ant that drags it.”-Giuseppe Ungaretti, “Prayer” trans. Andrew Frisardi Few things are better when you love the culture of a town than seeing the heavyweights continuing to do big things and newcomers making their presence felt with full authority at the same time.  And I'm happy to report, that in a week also including Available Light announcing...

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Moises Kaufman, 33 Variations – Available Light

The day is full of noise and I am grateful, it’s full of grace and light that takes me up and out.  I am serious again, forsythia bloom early this year, I am going to New York, goodby.  Intense experience of pleasure has never moved me as much as expectation of an end to it.  Seems real, is real.  Hello. -Tim Dlugos, untitled Before I get into minute details of plot and incident and technicality – go see Available Light’s production of Moises Kaufman’s 33 Variations. ...

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Records of the Year, 2011

There are always great records getting made, no matter how bad it gets.   This year I felt a little disconnected, got a little caught up in trend chasing and my motto for 2012 is fuck that noise.  I still found stuff that knocked me sideways and this is only a sampling. 1.  Blueprint, Adventures in Counter Culture – Long Columbus’s best producer, maybe Columbus’s best rapper for the last handful of years, but as big a fan as I am?  This record is a full-on motherfucker, breaking through to new clarity and new truth and...

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