CT Culture Corner is a weekly look inside the culture, arts and entertainment world in Greater Waterbury, Litchfield County and beyond.??
Who doesn’t relish a little Southern Gothic?
TheaterWorks Hartford will produce the world premiere of “The Cannibals of McGower County,” by Drew Larimore July 30 through Aug.30. This is the opening chapter of Larimore’s Southern Gothic trilogy, according to a news release.
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Gus Birney will star in a world premiere of “The Cannibals of McGower County” at Theaterworks Hartford.
“In The Cannibals of McGower County — as is the case in much Southern gothic work — beauty and rot exist in the same breath,” Larimore said in the release.
“The Cannibals of McGower County” takes place in McGower County, West Texas — “a ghost town lost to time,” according to the release. When two veteran salvagers casing an abandoned barbecue restaurant encounter an unexpected guest, sparks fly and a long-overdue darkly comic reckoning takes place, according to the release.
Cathy Annulli, Missy Cowan, Amanda Glover, and Maurita Gregor (left to right) in rehearsal for “Babette’s Feast” on the outdoor stage at the Abbey of Regina Laudis. The theater is presenting its first outdoor performance since the pandemic.
Revolutionary War soldier’s moment
If you’re still basking in the glow of the country’s 250th anniversary, you may want to pick up a copy of Connecticut’s own Joseph Plumb Martin’s memoir of joining the Revolution as a teenager and staying until the war officially concluded in 1783.
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Although he was born in Becket, Mass. in 1760, he spent the majority of his youth living with his grandparents in Milford, Conn., where he later enlisted in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, according to the U.S. Army Center of Military History.
Patriot Revolutionary War uniform (circa early 20th century reproduction). Dyed most likely with easily obtained indigo, blue represented loyalty and perseverance, and blended into the battlefield background more than Loyalists’ red coats, according to the Mill Museum.
Martin’s memoir provided critical source material for Ken Burns’ “The American Revolution” on PBS. This month, historian Rick Atkinson named Martin’s book as one of the five best books about the war in the Wall Street Journal. And earlier this month The New York Times produced a graphic version of his tale in its Sunday Magazine. “The memoir is unsentimental and often indignant—at the schemes of war profiteers, the lapses of ineffective officers and the neglect of soldiers who were ‘turned adrift like old worn-out horses’ after winning independence for the rest of the country,” Atkinson wrote. The book is still in print and available online, according to the National Park Service.
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Silk scarf handwoven by Peggy Church, who first hand-painted silk fibers before weaving, using cochineal natural dye.
In Willimantic, learning how wool changes color
Meanwhile, have you ever wondered how your clothes got their color? A new exhibit at the Mill Museum in Willimantic, “Dyed in the Wool” is looking at the history of textile through Aug. 23.
Visitors can discover the different natural materials that can be used to dye textiles, and about the dyeing process itself, according to a news release. They’ll also learn about early synthetic dyes “and the ways they changed the world of textiles, including the fashion industry and the overall ecology of the factory processes,” senior curator Quinlan Kearney said in a release.
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Trivia Question
Although Pulitzer-prize winner Horton Foote was born in Texas, he had a long association with Connecticut. Where did the award-winning playwright die?
New Britain showcases women sculptors
To be a woman artist was never easy. To be a woman sculptor, was even more difficult.
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On July 30, the New Britain Museum of American Art will present an exhibit of two of the finest architects of the 20th century. “Architects of Being: Louise Nevelson and Esphyr Slobodkina,” organized by the Arkansas Museum of Art, will run through Nov. 1.
The exhibit will brings together nearly 80 artworks across sculpture, painting, collage, textile, fashion, jewelry and design—placing pioneering Nevelson and Slobodkina in dialogue for the first time, according to a release.
The Abbey’s Theater is Back
For the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, The Gary The Olivia Theater at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem is performing again. It will present “Babette’s Feast,” set in the mid-19th century in a remote fishing village on Norway’s coast. “The play portrays a small austere Christian community, which is led by a severe but loving pastor and his two daughters, Martine and Philippa,” according to the release. Their strict, austere life changes when a mysterious French woman arrives at their doorstop one night, after escaping political turmoil in France, according to the release.
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Performances will take place on the weekends of July 31 through
Trivia Answer
Horton Foote died in Hartford in 2009 at 92, according to The New York Times.
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