One of the most fascinating and generous people I’ve ever met in Phoenix is Fatimah Halim, who will be performing at the “Playhouse on the Park” (part of the Phoenix Museum Complex) June 11th. Purchase Ticket Here –Be there if you can!
Storyteller and writer Fatimah Halim sees women as complex and fascinating beings; juggling personal beliefs of what is expected of them with who they truly want to be in the world. This juggling sometimes pushes them over the edge, forcing them to create personas that help them cope with what life throws their way. This conflict is at the crux of this one woman show about a woman who lives in her own archetypal world.
All of us are so impressionable when we are young or until the age of sixty. Our lives seem simple, boring and without direction. We believe that is a shortcut to living the extraordinary life and find out eventually that life is to short for there to a easy way to live it.
Two films that give us a look at our desire to have our lives be “storybook” are An Education and Revolutionary Road. Both films deal with the same subject with very different endings. One is a downer and the other offers hope and neither suggest that there is ever shortcut.
I have this sense that 2011 will be a year filled with great and inspiring art exhibits that I will travel to see. Exhibitions that move away from traditional and/or shock, but rather whose intent is to honestly educate and invites the viewer to participate in a conversation about the art and the artist.
What My Mother Told Me: The Art of Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons at the Harvey B. Gantt Center – until June 19, 2011
Adele has an engaging stage presence without any gimmicks. Not putting down gimmicks, they can be fun, but its refreshing to get a glimpse of something that appears to be genuine. Watched this recent video performance and got such pleasure in watching Adele enjoy and have fun with herself and the audience. Because there were not fifty thousand people there, she could see them. And they could easily see her.
Looking for humor and discovered more. Some parts of the film are very funny and it does a great job showing us how flawed we all are. Great performances by all the folks we know, Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, Mark Ruffalo and a beautiful portrait of a young lady by Mia Wasikowska (Joni) who I did not know.
The film is a portrait of a contemporary family, (same-sex parents and sperm donors etc.) with an expanded storyline that includes the question that we are always asking of ourselves, how did we become who we are, are we our mothers and fathers and could we have been different. And can our kids escape our flaws and become something totally different, their own person?
Be there if you can!
