The 24th International Festival of Arts & Ideas picks up the pace in New Haven starting next Saturday, June 8, with more than 200 events including theater, dance, music, talks, tours and family activities in two weeks. Its heart is the Green, but the blood pumps citywide.
To keep up, check out the festival website, where the Events tab showcases headline acts and the Calendar tab tells you what’s happening hour by hour, with filters and tags to help you really zero in. For those who want to do it all, there’s a “See Everything Package” for $343 ($487 premium), which lays out a daily schedule of two events on weekdays and three on weekends for you to follow, including several ticketed shows. But even if you’re strapped for cash, you can play: 80% of Arts & Ideas events, including the tentpole concerts on the Green, are free of charge.
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Need help finding your route? Try one of our five themed itineraries below.
For Goers and Getters
Garba360 promises to get you on your feet for Indian folk dancing. Circa, which is also staging a show, gets you on your feet, too, and also your head, hands and more as it workshops circus skills “from acrobalance to handstands and tumbling.” Go for brisk walks in Westville, Fair Haven and other city locales, or maybe one of 11 different bike tours is more your speed.
For Sound Minds
Music is sound, and sound can be music. Lend your ears to “other-worldly” warbling by Canadian Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq, spoken word accompanied by live jazz, compositions based on local children’s heartbeats and even music built around the sound of a “single moving electron.” If you’ve ever wondered what sound looks like, composer Jay Alan Zimmerman has some ideas. Or, if your kind of sound has more to do with water than music, take a trip into the Long Island Sound to check out a U.S. Fish and Wildlife island.
For Futurists
You’re always looking ahead and curious about what comes next. Enjoy a meal of tomorrow today by eating a Feast of the Future inspired by up-and-coming foods like seaweed, insects, wild meat and weeds. Help construct a future city out of cardboard boxes on the Green. Or just give the future some thought. Learn how other New England communities are repurposing their old industrial buildings for new uses; consider how theater can address the “very serious future we may face”; and change your own future by learning how to eliminate “just one habit.”
For Justice Warriors
You long for a better world. Vote for your favorite canned goods sculpture in support of Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen; gather on the Green to think and write about “our diverse yet unified community” with Congolese playwright Toto Kisaku; and hear from some of New Haven’s youngest activists—high school students working to “combat gentrification, racism [and] over-surveillance downtown.” Need inspiration from out of town? Learn how communities across the country are “addressing… inequalities in bold ways” and celebrate the music of folk legend and activist Pete Seeger.
For Grownups
Assert your maturity, then keep growing. Gain unique perspective into homemaking, taste your way through the “History of the Cocktail” and attend a sunset gala at the Canal Dock Boathouse. Follow one same-sex couple’s “chaotic” attempts to decide whether to have kids—and if you’re the kind of grownup who needs to act more like a kid, bring your own children to a “drumming hoot”, a “drum and sing jamboree” or Loosey LaDuca’s telling of PG-rated drag queen fairytales.
Whatever path you choose, set your own pace and go!
24th International Festival of Arts & Ideas
Saturday 6/8 to Saturday 6/22
Website | Calendar | Contact
Written by Kathy Leonard Czepiel. Photos provided courtesy of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas. Image 1, photographed by Alex Brenner, depicts a moment in Ad Infinitum’s No Kids. Image 2, photographed by Hillarie Jason, depicts a moment in Beth Morrison Projects’s HOME. Image 3 depicts Tanya Tagaq in action. Image 4, photographed by Anne Whitman, depicts Garba360 in action.
