Arts & Events

MONDAY, MAY 26 -more-

Berkeley’s Wilde Irish Productions is banding together this Wednesday with the Irish arts community in a benefit to ‘Save Tara,’ the legendary hill in Ireland, “one of the most culturally and archaeologically significant sites in Northern Europe,” threatened by a new motorway. -more-

Singing “Trouble in Mind,” an old janitor with a pushbroom introduces himself and the school he’s sweeping up, Malcolm X Vocational High in the Bronx, and a cast of characters who range from a broker-turned-new teacher (“she saw an ad in the IRT, offering a lifetime of glorious purpose”) to various “at-risk” African-American and Latino students, their driven principal and the visiting teaching artist for a drama project, Nilaja Sun. -more-

I trust most of us aren’t fool enough to go hiking the range in the hot spell we’re enduring as I write this. It’s the stuff of the grimmest neo-Old West movies: merciless sun, tantalizing shimmer of mirage (“Don’t you listen to him, Dan/He’s a devil, not a man/And he paints the desert sand/With wa-ater…”), hot wind blowing dust from the east; wait, haven’t we done that rather recently? -more-

I never talked about my appearance until I got on stage. Pretending I was normal, it took a long time faking to make it,” said David Roche, the facially disfigured inspirational comedian, who will perform a benefit show, The Best of David Roche, Thursday May 22 at 7 p.m. in the Redwood Gardens Community Room on Derby for the upcoming SuperFest International Disability Film Festival. “I found out disfigurement, and carrying around feelings of inadequacy, are fairly normal experiences.” -more-

If the Indiana Jones films were never exactly realistic, they were at least grounded; they were rooted in archaeology, in the earth—in the discovery of things ancient and mysterious, yes, but always terrestrial. Jones himself was grounded too, an unlikely hero by turns deft and incompetent, benefiting from equal doses of intelligence and dumb luck. And that made him all the more charming and his adventures all the more appealing. For the wide-eyed child in the audience, there was no need to conjure images of outer space, of aliens or monsters or supernatural powers; all you needed was a hat, a jacket and a rope. The fantasy was all the more effective for containing the illusion that it was within reach. -more-

Sick and tired of bad news? Longing to read something uplifting? Not feel-good sentimentality or fantasy but the story of a crisis faced with integrity, resourcefulness, and unity by victims who win, not a fairy tale “victory” but understanding and progress and influence beyond what anyone expected? That’s the story I just finished reading in DES Voices: From Anger to Action by Pat Cody. -more-

Chora Nova, under the artistic direction of Paul Flight, will present Brahms’ German Requiem in a rarely performed chamber setting, along with the composer’s “Four Serious Songs” and his short choral piece, “Begraebnissgesang,” 8 p.m., Saturday, May 24, at the First Congregational Church, Dana and Durant streets. Tickets are $10-18, available at the door or at www.choranova.org. -more-

Ours is an fluid landscape and all its houses, merely mobile homes. For those of us who live in the hills, it seems as though we live upon soils that have long been bored with their current circumstances and long to see the world. They just won’t stay put. -more-

MONDAY, MAY 26 -more-