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The Boston Theater Marathon - 50 Plays in 10 Hours...The Review

13th Annual Boston Theater Marathon
Produced by The Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
May 22, 2011
12 Noon  – 10 PM Sunday
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA

Noon. They’re off and running. Fifty theater- companies, fifty directors, fifty writers, fifty ten-minute plays – five plays an hour for ten hours. Wowza!

The thirteenth running of the Boston Theater Marathon is out of the gate.  The seats are predominantly filled with a Whitman sampler of veteran play goers and first timers who’ve come to cheer a friend, family member, neighbor, lover, teacher, student and lord knows what other configuration of association.

Each play has a writer, director, actors, technical staff, and represents a Boston theater company…you do the math. That’s enough to keep the 360 seat Virginia Wimberly Theatre at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion filled for ten hours. Every ten minutes is punctuated with anything from polite applause to whoops of delight, the former for a WTF was that all play all about to a spontaneous ignition of cheering for ten minutes that touched your heart, made you laugh out loud, or made you marvel at the ingenuity of what a playwright can achieve in one sixth of an hour.

In the world class Boston Marathon from which the afternoon takes its title, runners go by in a blur. Some of the competitors lodge in your memory with their outfits, outlandish or aerodynamic, an irrational smile that belies the challenge of 26.2 miles of non stop running, the sign that they’re focused on the dream of a lifetime, or a cause that motivates them to push themselves to the limit.

The same thing happens when I watch twenty plays speed past me from noon to 4 PM. Twenty plays in four hours is a personal best for me today. Every so often, just when I' m beginning to loose focus, a play grabs me by the collar and recharges my attention.

Remember how you used to play act when you were a kid? Your father’s overcoat could be a magic carpet, a teepee, or cape to make you invisible. And the cardboard carton could be a desk, a treasure chest, a brick wall?  That’s how the props are here. A pair of cushiony seats that look like they were lifted from a Greyhound Bus, a tall wooden frame that is a doorway, a cart on rollers that could be a desk, an ice cream cart, a filing cabinet, or a bar and a few dinky folding chairs are about 80% of the props today. It so gloriously reminds me that all you really need to stir an audience is a good story and good acting.

The key is how the ten minutes grabs you. “When the actors are in the moment, reaching inside to breathe their characters, we in the audience go from voyeurs to participants who have affinity for the actor’s experience,” Ann Baker says. Today, Ann, with her pal Jack Welsh, are in their customary seats, last two seats in the last row of the theater. Ann’s taking notes that help her cast actors for future Boston plays. Jack, a veteran reader who’s one of many who’s helped Kate Snodgrass winnow around 400 entries to the fifty that we see today is right next to her. I don’t know how they do it but they’re here for the duration.

It’s refreshing to me that agreement on a play’s actors or story is still a subjective art form, that their assessments are not uniformly similar. Yep, As Shakespeare says, “The play’s the thing,” and it’s impossible to separate the viewer from his/her own interpretation.

The Marathon’s first hour is a terrific sampler of what’s to come: “Share This World,” (Libretto, music, Lyrics by Ronan Noon, sponsored by Emerson Stage, Directed by Rebecca Bradshaw) as much of a sweeping play as you can fit in ten minutes, all the elements of a musical with seven ensemble characters filling the back story for the two principal actors. Four plays later, a mini morality play, “One More To Go in Beantown” (by Debbie Weiss, Sponsored by New Repertory Theatre, Directed by Kate Warner) finishes the hour. We're off to a great start.

During the quick break between hour one and two, I’m horrified to see that my notes look more like a Picasso sketch on a napkin that anything useful to transcribe. Now I know why Jack sits at the end of the row. The light fixture illuminating the stairway emits just enough to permit legible note taking.  

All five of the next hour’s plays are “World Premiers.” Twenty-three other world premiers follow, terrific exposure for new writers in particular. The cast members run from heavy hitters who headline local productions to first timers who might be the writer’s lawyer or plumber. I’ll tell you, if they’ve got a running chance with good writing they can make a big enough splash to be noted by people like Ann Baker and other scouts in the audience.

“A good hour,” Jack Welsh observes as he passes us his homemade ginger cookies after hour three.  The three play titles beside which I draw a star (by now I’m reduced to inscribing symbols rather than writing in the margin of the program) are for “The Resurrection” (by Catherine O’Neil, sponsored by Actor’s Shakespeare Project, directed by Michael Forden Walker, acted by Steven Barkheimer and Sarah Newhouse) and “Birdbaths, Twilight” and other Sundry Items” (by March Shrader, sponsored by The Village Theater Project, directed by Barlow Anderson, acted by Jeff Mahoney and Victor Shopay) and “Uncommon Ground,” (by John Zarouf, sponsored by Hovey Players, directed by Mike Haddad, acted by Robin Gabrielli and Tracy Nygard).

“Good acting, good writing, good beats,” Jack says as “Uncommon Ground” actors take their bow.

“Their sense of timing is right on the mark,” Ann says. It occurs to me that when a play sucks me in, I hold my breath without realizing it, and experience joy, grief, hilarity, uncertainty, delight, whatever the actors are intending, and completely forget that this is play acting. For those moments I'm living in their shoes. Miraculously, this happens once, twice, sometimes three times an hour.

The sets show in spades that you don’t have to have a zillion dollar period set to tell the story. “Waiting for Godot” demonstrated that decades ago. Boston veteran actors Barkheimer and Newhouse, perched on two of those Greyhound Bus seats, a couple with a complicated past, manage in half sentences and oblique references to tell us they’re going to repair their relationship.

Jeff Mahoney and Victor Shopay as Mick and Dec, two life-long townies sitting on a park bench, delight us with an over the top play that shows the bond of friendship can overcome stereotypes even in hard nosed South Boston. “Just because we’re talking about guys who are gay doesn’t mean we’re gay, does it?” Dec says. A zigzag conversation later, a dream sequence ensues, the lighting bathes him in pink and he performs an endearing, life altering, joyous, dance to the pounding sound track of “Dancing Queen” that makes me – and the rest of the audience - want to cry and cheer at the same time with his spirited bolt from his “closet.” When the lighting reverts from a pinkish hue to daylight, Mick’s “What the hell was THAT?” is followed by, “I know, Dec, I know,” with an arm around his pal, an act of indelible friendship.

Hour four for me is like what runners call hitting the wall on the rolling hills of the Boston Marathon. My effort to categorize plays and sketches is fuzzy. 

“Park and Ride,” (World premier by Michael Ennis, sponsored The Publick Theatre Boston, directed by Megan Gleeson, with Maureen Keillor, Barlow Adamson, and Marie Pollizano) is a bravura performance by Keillor and Pollizano that jump-starts me for the rest of the hour.

Imagine a scene in which a married couple (not to each other) drives to a secluded spot, and begins to wrestle off clothing for a passionate afternoon tryst. And that one of them accidentally pushes the OnStar Assist button in the process. “Mrs. Everson, is everything alright? Do you need assistance?” booms a concerned voice through the car’s speaker system. The twists and turns in the story that follows are full of speed bumps and surprises. The staging, with the couple in the car (those same bus seats) and twenty-something OnStar phone rep Becky Sharp (Pollizano) on a spotlighted raised dais in the left corner of the stage, is perfect.

Great writing, fabulous acting, a very satisfying play. This happens two or three times an hour. It reminds me I'm living in a darn good town for theater and that lots of it flies under the radar.

The Theater Marathon has the feel of a Mardi Gras parade. Like Mardi Gras, it doesn’t matter that every float dazzles. What matters is that you’re in the moment with the creators and the crowd. The energy sparkles like a handful of Mardi Gras beads arcing through the air from a float and into the eager hands of people who love and respect the tradition – and are having a hell of a good time.

Plays and Playwrights of BTM XIII (alphabetical order by playwright)
All net proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund which provides financial support to theatres and theatre artists in times of need.

Doll Hospital by Jeanne Beckwith
Pentagon Mashed Potatoes by Cliff Blake
Rox-N, Miss Thang by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich
Sarah in Blunderland by Robert Brustein
Mirror Touch by Michael Burgan
Late, Lamented by Lynne Cullen
The Curator by Jennifer Diamond
Boy-Man by Diane Di Ianni
The Fudgicle Thief by Bill Doncaster
Procession by William Donnelly
Wasted Kisses by Thomas G. Dunn
Park ‘N' Ride by Michael Ennis
A Ballad for Peggy by Stephen Faria
Oops by James C. Ferguson
Escape to Wonderland by Patrick Gabridge
Game On by Gary Garrison
Our Part to Change by Susan Goodell
Big Squirrel Lick by Gregory Hischak
10 Years After Paradise by Israel Horovitz
The Mouse by Colleen Hughes
Every Seven Seconds by Dan Hunter
Beep...Doot by Aaron Kagan & Seth Soulstein
Slugger by Terrence Kidd
M. Riverside by John J King
Little Boys by Margaret Lagerstedt
Crickets by Emily Kaye Lazzaro
Trust Fall by Steve Lewis
Stuck by Christopher Lockheardt
Downward Facing Dog by Melinda Lopez
Squirrelly by James McLindon
Teddy Ballgame by Caitlin Mitchell
Casting Amanda by Jack Neary
Share This World by Ronan Noone
Cat in a Box by Julian Olf
The Resurrections by Catherine M. O'Neill
Birdbaths, "Twilight", and Other Sundry Topics by Rick Park
Backfire by Leslie Powell
Those Still Living by April Ranger
Open House by Theresa Rebeck
Camberwell House by Amelia Roper
Uncommon Ground by John R. Sarrouf
Bible Study by Daniel Sauermilch
There's an App for That! by Richard Schotter
A Handy Man by March Schrader
Rogue River, Oregon by Phil Schroeder
Perfect Strangers by Peter Snoad
Welcome to the Hate Store by Jan Velco Soolman
Ms. Connections by Erin Striff
One More to Go in Beantown by Debbie Wiess
A Tall Order by Sheri Wilner

The Atchafalaya Swamp and the Raging Mississippi River

The Atchafalaya what? You’ve probably never heard of the Atchafalaya Swamp, the largest swamp in the United States. And never would have if the Mississippi River hadn’t been running wild and high from Memphis all the way down to New Orleans. Neither had I until July, 2008, when I took a boat tour through this magnificent, enormous wilderness.

The future of the swamp is in question. Water from the Mississippi is being diverted into the Atchafalaya Swamp from the Morganza Spillway up north and is spilling hundreds of cubic tons of water into the swamp to minimize the effect the cresting river will have on the levees farther south in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

150 miles long and more than 20 miles wide, the swamp stretches from the mid-state prairies all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico. Its 595,000 acres, mostly wilderness, are home to cypress forests, swamplands, bayous, and lakes and includes farmland.

Over 25,000 people are being affected by the diversion of water. That number is sure to increase. Thousands of acres of land are being flooded. Wildlife, including deer, turtles, and endangered black bears, are seeking higher, safer, ground.

This is what the area of the swamp around the Henderson levee looks like now. What it will look like next year is anyone’s guess.

A boat tour of the swamp was one of the highlights of my first trip to Louisiana in 2008. It was conducted by Coeurte Voorhies, who at the time ran the Bois des Chenes Bed and Breakfast with his wife in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Salty, knowledgeable, and somewhat of a media star, his expedition has been featured on The Disney Channel and European TV. The man has homing pigeon instincts. No compass or GPS aboard, but no matter whichaway we meander in the wilderness, he knows exactly where we are. He’s logged about 20,000 hours on the swamp, approximately 1000 a year, for the past 20  years.

 

Coerte Voorhies saddles up his 15-foot, 315 marine-gauge aluminum, olive drab skiff fitted with five swivel bucket seats plus one for the captain and a big assed Mercury 4 stroke that he will crank flat out every so often when the mood strikes him. 

 

With few exceptions, you go around the swamp, not through it. Interstate 10, built on concrete pillars, runs across an 18-mile east/west stretch of the swamp. The only other roads are the dirt ones on top of the levees built around several sections of the basin. Will water rise to the height of the road?

The swamp is habitat to beavers, birds, black bears, turtles, deer and scores of other wildlife.

Coerte says the Atchafalaya Swamp was 50 miles wide before the levees were built after the flood of 1927. The swamp is 150 miles long and anywhere between 5 feet and 100 feet deep.

Coerte points out a half-dozen extinguished gas/oil rigs in the swamp, one capped off as recently as a year ago.

How will this scene look next year?

Snowy  egrets, great blue herons, and osprey rise up to fly as we glide through the swamp. Coerte points out a path worn from the muddy shore to a secluded spot several yards inland, a path momma alligator makes from water to her nest. How will elevated waters affect habitats of all the creatures that live here?

Coerte says the center of the swamp was heavily logged from about 1890 to 1915 or so after which logging was banned. Deteriorating cypress stumps standing like tombstones above the surface dot the area of the swamp as far as the eye can see around Henderson.

Left to its own devices, i.e. without the levees, Coerte says the Mississippi River would flow through the Atchafalaya  Basin at its lowest  point. Interesting because that's pretty much what an editorial in the Christian Science Monitor wrote on May 19.

 

“Snakes like to eat the hands of people who drag’em in the river,” Coerte says as he watches me lean over to fill my hand with a fist full of duck grass.  I thought he was kidding. I don't put my hand back in the water, just in case.

The robustly healthy man is nothing if not opinionated, and impervious to arguments counter to his point of view about race, politics, religion, geology, human nature and the economy that he’s formulated in his 79 years.

Toward end of tour, Coerte slips into a more densely forested section of the swamp, cooler and quiet, with no discernable trails, it’s part of 1500 acres of virgin cypress now preserved.

The fate of places like McGee's Landing (above) and Whiskey River Landing (below) on the swamp side of the twenty foot levee in Henderson, Louisiana, is an unknown quantity.

 

If water creeps up to the tops of the levees here, attractions like these would be history.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Boston Theater Marathon - 50 Plays in 10 Hours! - Sunday, May 22, 2011

13th Annual Boston Theater Marathon
Produced by The Boston Playwrights’ Theater
May 22, 2011
12 Noon  – 10 PM Sunday
Stanford Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts
527 Tremont Street, Boston, MA
TICKETS: $25 in advance / $35 at the door. To purchase tickets please visit www.bostonplaywrights.org or call 617-933-8600.


Fifty different 10 minute plays written by fifty different New England playwrights, performed by fifty New England theater companies…how do you spell lalapalooza!

If you want to have your play-loving brain scrambled by the wildest assortment of themes, actors, directors, and playwrights, this is the ticket for you. Stay an hour, stay two! Stay until you get hungry, find a nearby place to eat or drink, and head back to the theater and find a general admission seat. You’ve got all day, baby!

The fifty ten-minute plays have been chosen from about 400 entries according to straightforward submission guidelines.There are no restrictions on subject matter. This is as wild and wooly a batch of little plays as you’ll ever see. I’ve been to several “marathons.” Trust me, I mean that.

Boston Theater Marathon Artistic Director Kate Snodgrass writes a fabulous letter explaining the decision-making process that begins after the November 15th submission deadline.  The plays are read and scored by an extraordinary range of readers. The cream usually rises to the top.

“More years than not, over half of the chosen marathoners are new to the BTM–and this is a good thing!” Ms. Snodgrass writes.

If you’re like my friend Ann Baker (formerly known as  “The Queen of Casting” in Boston), you get the most brilliant bang for your buck. She packs a lunch, arrives before noon to secure her annual perch in the back row, in a seat near her pal Jack (who is one of the "readers" in the BTM play selection process), and stays for the whole shooting match. Cost? Fifty cents a play.

Ann knows theater. I asked her for a little ‘guide’ to help me get a handle on what feels like a Niagara Falls of plays spilling out one after the other.

“The Marathon is a mix of sketches and plays,” Ann said. “A sketch/skit is situational.  A play is character driven.”

“In a sketch/ skit, it is the action, the situation, and little or nothing to do with the actors involved. There is no change, growth, development of any kind that takes place with the actors in a sketch/ skit.  The actors simply react to the action taking place. After the action ends, they go right back to who they are. They are the same character at the end of the action as they were in the beginning.”

“In a play, there is a beginning a middle, and an end… exposition, climax, resolution. There should be a change in the development of the character or a change in the degree of the character's being. For example - the shy character may come out of his/her shell, or become more shy, or become a raving lunatic. Something happens to the characters that alters their being by some degree. The thing that happens might be as little as a tone of voice of another character  - which changes everything.”

The Boston Theater Marathon program lists the entire day’s timetable (five ten minute plays each hour), play titles, playwrights, actors, directors, technicians, and theater companies. Most plays have two or three actors and two or three props – essential because while we’re applauding the ten-minute piece, those actors take a brisk bow and remove the props while the stage crew and next actors arrange the next play’s set in one minute flat. There’s a very brief breather at the end of each hour and the show rattles on.

Audience members can change seats or enter/exit between plays. I’ve never managed to stay longer than three hours (thirty plays!).

“If you come to BTM next year, plan to stay for the WHOLE ten hours,” Ann exhorts me.  Last year was one of the best I've seen in the last 5-7 years. The writing was better and they used more of the best actors. It is sometimes hard for me to see, while the play is being performed, if I'm seeing a good piece of writing, or a very good performance of an average piece of writing. So I need time to mull over what I've seen.”

I’m packing a lunch for The Boston Theater Marathon this Sunday. I know I could never finish the fabled 26.2 mile Boston Marathon even if I walked from Hopkinton to Copley Square…but, with any luck at all, I’ll be able to break my own personal best record and sit through more than three hours of this entertainment marathon.

Come on down and join me, I’ll be in the back of the pack, somewhere around Ann and Jack.
+++++++++++++
Plays and Playwrights of BTM XIII (alphabetical order by playwright)
All net proceeds from ticket sales will benefit the Theatre Community Benevolent Fund which provides financial support to theatres and theatre artists in times of need.

Doll Hospital by Jeanne Beckwith
Pentagon Mashed Potatoes by Cliff Blake
Rox-N, Miss Thang by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich
Sarah in Blunderland by Robert Brustein
Mirror Touch by Michael Burgan
Late, Lamented by Lynne Cullen
The Curator by Jennifer Diamond
Boy-Man by Diane Di Ianni
The Fudgicle Thief by Bill Doncaster
Procession by William Donnelly
Wasted Kisses by Thomas G. Dunn
Park ‘N' Ride by Michael Ennis
A Ballad for Peggy by Stephen Faria
Oops by James C. Ferguson
Escape to Wonderland by Patrick Gabridge
Game On by Gary Garrison
Our Part to Change by Susan Goodell
Big Squirrel Lick by Gregory Hischak
10 Years After Paradise by Israel Horovitz
The Mouse by Colleen Hughes
Every Seven Seconds by Dan Hunter
Beep...Doot by Aaron Kagan & Seth Soulstein
Slugger by Terrence Kidd
M. Riverside by John J King
Little Boys by Margaret Lagerstedt
Crickets by Emily Kaye Lazzaro
Trust Fall by Steve Lewis
Stuck by Christopher Lockheardt
Downward Facing Dog by Melinda Lopez
Squirrelly by James McLindon
Teddy Ballgame by Caitlin Mitchell
Casting Amanda by Jack Neary
Share This World by Ronan Noone
Cat in a Box by Julian Olf
The Resurrections by Catherine M. O'Neill
Birdbaths, "Twilight", and Other Sundry Topics by Rick Park
Backfire by Leslie Powell
Those Still Living by April Ranger
Open House by Theresa Rebeck
Camberwell House by Amelia Roper
Uncommon Ground by John R. Sarrouf
Bible Study by Daniel Sauermilch
There's an App for That! by Richard Schotter
A Handy Man by March Schrader
Rogue River, Oregon by Phil Schroeder
Perfect Strangers by Peter Snoad
Welcome to the Hate Store by Jan Velco Soolman
Ms. Connections by Erin Striff
One More to Go in Beantown by Debbie Wiess
A Tall Order by Sheri Wilner

What's Special About New Orleans: Jazz Fest Version

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival:

What's Special About New Orleans? Jazz Fest Version
Sunday, May 8, 2011

If these kinds of things were to happen once in a while, I’d write them off as random acts of kindness. In New Orleans, I have a new category: “Frequent acts of kindness.”

I’ve been writing for a couple of years about the people responsible for these persistent small acts that happen the way an unexpected afternoon breeze cools the thick summer air or a fabulous street singer pulls out a music case and begins serenading passersby in Jackson Square.

Is it something in the water down here? A secret ingredient in the gumbo, jambalaya, po’ boys, and other foods unique to this part of Louisiana? Maybe secret messages in the mix of Cajun, zydeco, swamp pop, even hip hop that’s making it’s way into traditional music.

Whatever it is, it’s real and it still surprises me every time it happens. Sunday afternoon at Jazz Fest those kindnesses got sprinkled through the hot afternoon like pecans in pralines.

Juggling my camera, notebook, and a bottle of cold water on the way to the Gentilly Stage, I lose my grip on the bottle. Onto the dustiest part of the infield, of course. Dirt coats the bottle’s condensation like iron filings on a magnet. I stuff camera and notebook in my pack, begin to wipe the mess off the bottle, and keep walking.

Five steps later, a black hand waving a white napkin floats up from a man in a camp chair. Just that. Not a “Do you need this?” Or “Here, take this” Just a wordless gesture to solve an obvious problem.

I am floored.

I take the napkin. I stop and kneel next to his chair. And for the umpteenth time blurt out how often this sort of thing happens around here.

“My name is John Bernard. That’s the way we are here,” he says. That’s another thing about “here.” More often than not, people introduce themselves when they begin to talk to me. Don’t remember that happening in my neck of the woods.

“I’m retired military, used to serve in the Air Force up around Boston, “ Mr. Bernard volunteers in an accent so thick I ask him to repeat what he said.

“I love your city and the people in it,” I say, smile a thank you, and walk away. Once again, kissed on the cheek by New Orleans.

A gray haired man who’s been sitting next to me way in the back of the Jazz Tent during the Irvin Mayfield show decides to leave. The closure strings at the top of the narrow nylon carry case for the camp chair he’s just folded up keep getting caught in the legs of the chair as he tries to slide  it into the case. After his third unsuccessful attempt, a young woman sitting on the ground next to him leans over and holds the strings aside. The man smiles a silent thank you. The woman smiles back.

 On the way out of the Blues Tent, I stop to snap a photo of two women, telling them I’m taking photos of the glorious variety of hats on display. They oblige. We begin to chat. Soon we’re joined by two of their friends, Juan (who happens to be one of the sound stage technicians) and Sidney.

“We’ve lived in New York City and Boston. Boston is a cold city, not just the temperature,” Sidney’s lady friend says. “We welcome your presence here, it helps to make the city what it is.”

“It always surprises me that people here look you in the eye and greet you on the street,” I say to Sidney when he joins us.

“When we say hello to you, we’re acknowledging your presence,” Sidney says.

Simple as that. And it happens all the time.

Sunday, 7 pm, the last concert has finished, my traveling companion and I are heading for the exit.

“What are those girls eating?” I ask her.

“Fried green tomatoes,” she says. I turn on a dime and approach them.

“How do they taste?”

“The bomb!” the first girl says, holding a small paper container with four lightly fried delicacies inside. “You can get them right over there,” she points with a plastic fork.

Two minutes later I pass the girls again. “You got the last bombs, they’re sold out,” I say, disappointment writ large on my face.

“You want one?” says one of the young ladies, holding out the tray with two left.

“Yes!” I’ve never sampled fried green tomatoes – I’m dying to taste one.

She carefully lifts a golden round from the container. “Swipe it into the remoulade sauce before you eat it… and don’t forget to share with your girlfriend!” she laughs.

My first taste of fried green tomato is a fabulous blend of light batter, soft, slightly sharp tang of tomato, and rich hit of remoulade sauce. But the lasting memory is of the ‘frequent acts of kindness’ showered on me randomly on this sunny New Orleans day at the Fairgrounds.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: Brass Bands, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Mardi Gras Indians

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival:
Brass Bands, Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, Mardi Gras Indians

2011 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
Saturday, May 7, 2011
 
Unique to New Orleans, a brass band is a sassy, brassy magic carpet that you’ll jump on and fly wherever it takes you. I don’t care what you’re doing at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival - if you get in range of a social aid and pleasure club parade with a brass band right behind it, you’re gonna be late for whatever you were aiming for.
 
That snappy beat from snare drums, joyful peals from trumpets, glissandos from slide trombones, and tharumping bass beats of sousaphones jubliantly leads you away from your intended stage destination like a befeathered Pied Piper.




One moment I was on my way to hear DL Menard at the Fais Do Do Stage and the next I was strutting along with the Undefeated Divas and the New Generation Social Aid and Pleasure Club with the Baby Boyz Brass Band firing on all cylinders right behind them. There were five such parades that wound through the walkways in the infield both Saturday and Sunday.
 
Their brassy calling card drew people from food tents, crafts and merchandise areas. Bystanders jockeyed for position to get a good shot of the hip shaking, attitudinous, merrymaking procession with men of the New Generation Social Aid and Pleasure Club sashaying down the paths and waving the brilliant magenta feathers that are their trademark .

And this doesn’t count the processions of Mardi Gras Indians in their wildly spectacular feathered costumes who marched in their own parades.

The Mardi Gras Indians create new ensembles every year for Mardi Gras – hand sewn beaded work for the front and rearranged or brand new features with electrifying colors for the outer costume that resembles an earthbound bird of stunning plumage and proud demeanor. They march on Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, and often on St. Joseph's Day.
 
DL Menard would have to wait a few minutes. He’d understand. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

More photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 
 
Parades
Saturday
12:20 PM
Undefeated Divas and New Generation Social Aid and Pleasure Club
1:30 PM
Trouble Nation and Mohawk Hunters Mardi Gras Indians
2:50 PM
Cherokee Hunters and Wild Red Flame Mardi Gras Indians
4:10 PM
Haitian Rara Parade featuring RAM
5:25 PM
Westbank Steppers, Valley of Silent Men, and Pigeon Town Steppers Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs with Kin Folk Brass Band

Sunday
12:20 PM
Lady Rollers, Nine Times Ladies, and Original C.T.C Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs with Da Souljas Brass Band
12:25 PM
in Economy Hall - Secondline Jammers Social Aid & Pleasure Club
1:25 PM
Wild Tchoupitoulas and Wild Apaches Mardi Gras Indians
2:25 PM
Haitian Rara parade with RAM
4:15 PM
Original Lady Buckjumpers and Prince of Wales Social Aid & Pleasure Clubs with TBC Brass Band
5:10 PM
Apache Hunters and Buffalo Hunters Mardi Gras Indians

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: The Big Picture

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival:
The Big Picture
Saturday, May 7, 2011

Let’s clear something up from the jump. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is a misnomer. A more precise but impossibly convoluted title would be the New Orleans Jazz, Blues, R&B, Gospel, Cajun, Zydeco, Afro-Caribbean, Folk, Latin, Rock, Rap, Country, Bluegrass, Americana and everything in between and Heritage Festival.

This is one of the biggest lawn parties in the known world. Being that it’s in New Orleans, this is not a typical lawn. It’s the 140-acre Fair Grounds Race Track in the Mid city neighborhood.
 
Win, place, or draw, you’re going to have a good time.
 
Over the course of ten days from April 29 to May 8, 400,000 people from every state and most continents will wander between 12 stages, a few of them gigando outdoor affairs with speakers the size of FEMA trailers and giant video screens that cast performers’ images onstage to spectators a thousand yards away, more stages inside huge tents with hundreds of rows of folding chairs, and still others at smaller stages tucked inside the Fair Grounds Grandstand. Pretty big difference from the first festival that attracted an audience of 350 at nearby Louis Armstrong Park in 1977.

People begin streaming in when the weekend opening acts begin at 11 am and don't leave till the party's over at 7 pm.
 
I must digress. This is the Mt. Olympus of locations to see New Orleanians and their blood brothers and sisters from every corner of America and several continents in the wild, in their natural habitat – outdoors, in the sun (or, in the rain, no matter), a rambunctious series of rainbows arching over the most glorious jambalaya of music loving humanity on earth.
 
 A nation of music lovers, densely packed together in affiliated tribes, or spontaneously formed ad hoc groups, they sit/stand inches apart, in camp chairs, on blankets and bed sheets, with a discernable camaraderie, quite possibly the result of an unseen Tinkerbelle tapping her feet and dispensing feel good fairy dust over the multitudes. This is a harmonic convergence of chords, rhythms, and meters just short of a religious experience.
 

Food? Two food areas sell tons of mostly Louisiana specialties made with crawfish, alligator, trout, catfish, pork, artichokes, and shrimp. I can speak with authority on the servings of catfish almondine with crawfish rice, shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes, red beans and rice, crawfish bisque and Trout Baquet.
 
Drinks? Beer is sold in astronomic quantities in concession stands and from a small army of guys pulling ice chests of iced down beer to every nook and cranny of the grounds. Oh, and mango smoothies and frozen daiquiris and margaritas. And ice cream.
 
Festival organizers take pride in the “heritage” aspect of The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Three crafts areas display and sell original art, sculpture, porcelain, glass, jewelry, and ceramics created by the African-American, Cajun, and Native American people of Louisiana. Four cultural villages schedule dances, seminars, food tastings, and demonstrations representing the same groups plus, for the first time, a Haitian pavilion.
 
And of course there’s festival merchandise. A raft of souvenir tents selling official Jazz and Heritage souvenir T shirts, bags, bandannas and godknows whatall are scattered all over the place. I have a T-shirt and a couple of mementos to prove it.
 
The audience is as eclectic as the music, a kaleidoscopic blend of age, class, race and social status. Music matters to them. They know the lyrics to songs written by Professor Longhair, Alan Toussaint, Irma Thomas, James Booker, hymns from the Gospel Tent, and iconic local bands like The Radiators, like the rest of us know the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner.

This isn’t like a baseball game when many fans leave in the seventh inning. They cheerfully empty the place just before sunset after the biggest acts have finished blowing everyone away. The mass exodus is astonishingly orderly. Everybody knows the area will take a while for foot and auto traffic to drain. No one is jockeying to get ahead of me, I don't hear car horns bleating. They obey the police at crossings. They strike up conversations with each other. They come to outdoor concerts all the time. They know the drill. It feels like the party's still going on.
 
From inspirational to funky to traditional, the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival is THE place to hear a showcase of America’s own music…and hang out with the most engaging, fun loving, diverse, share the love people in America.

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Standing or sitting, tens of thousands cheer singer/songwriter Marcia Ball at the biggest stage, the Acura Stage, at 12:30 PM Saturday afternoon.

My traveling companion and I planted our two camp chairs at noon. When we returned to hear Marcia Ball at 12:30, finding them in the crowd was a challenge, but they were still there!
  

"Tribes" plant pennants in the ground so their friends can find them.

Merchandise for every taste...

 
Several stages are undercover: The Blues Stage here (The Gospel Tent, Jazz Tent, and People's Health Economy Hall Tent are other covered temporary stages erected for Jazz Fest). The Lagniappe Stage and the Alison Miner Music Heritage Stages are located inside the Grandstand.

The Gospel, Jazz, and Blues Tents have an ingenious systems of "misters" that help keep temperatures cool inside the tents. "Cool" is a relative term in New Orleans but these covered stages are the only places to find shade and the only places with seating (first come, first served, stay as long as you like). Good thing because outside it's usually pushing 90 degrees F and the sun beats down on us like co-founder of Treme Brass Band Uncle Lionel Batiste's bass drum.

 

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: Saturday, May 7, 2011

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
Saturday, May 7, 2011

Greetings from pt at large and about 100,000 festival goers. Stories to follow...

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 


 

 

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival: Marcia Ball at The Music Factory

2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival
Thursday night, May 5, 2011
The Music Factory, 201 Decatur Street, New Orleans, Louisiana 70130

My, my, my, what do we have here? We’re smack in the middle of the 2011 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival - two weekends of music surrounded by unofficial music jams and offerings all over New Orleans.

One of these gems between weekends is Grammy winning singer Marcia Ball playing a free concert in the tiniest, skinniest, most unassuming record store in the French Quarter – The  Music Factory. An elevated section in the middle of the stacks of CDs and racks of memorabilia and T shirts is the “stage.”

Fans from Boston to San Francisco jam this little boxcar of a store, which specializes in Cajun and zydeco music and New Orleans jazz from seminal recordings to emerging artists. Lynn Drury preceded Marcia and young Amanda Shaw followed her in packed one-hour sets.

New Orleans lives and breathes music. Witnessing it in a teacup of a setting like The Music Factory is a sublime treat.