Authenticity meets theatricality, sometimes at the same event.
Monday, April 17
It’s Earth Week at Yale, spanning tours, workshops, talks, a clothing swap, meals and more.
It’s also New Haven Restaurant Week.
Tuesday, April 18
A night of Authentic Relating—“the practice of freely expressing your true experience in the company of others,” allowing you to “create connections in the world based on who you really are”—happens at Gather East Rock from 7 to 10.
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Wednesday, April 19
At 5 p.m. in Yale’s O.C. Marsh Lecture Hall, Yale anthropologist Jessica Thompson delivers this year’s Edward P. Bass Distinguished Lecture, titled “Cinderella’s Secrets: The Unexpected Story of Human Evolution and Ecosystem Change in Africa”—specifically Malawi.
A free 6 p.m. Patio Pizza Party at MakeHaven “celebrate spring, the approach of Earth Day, community, and our own SLICE of heaven here in New Haven! … Please register and bring a pizza topping and/or libations (drinks) and/or dessert.”
At 7 in Woolsey Hall, the Yale Glee Club joins forces with city high school choirs for the New Haven High School Choral Festival.
Thursday, April 20
At 7 p.m. in the cabaret theater at Yale’s Grace Hopper College, members of the UConn Puppet Arts program perform Ramayana: A Tale of Trees and Wood. “Ramayana is one of the main story sources for theatre and dance throughout South and Southeast Asia. This epic, which has been told and re-told in countless variants, normally centers on the relationship between Rama, a prince of Ayodya and incarnation of the god Vishnu, and Sita, a princess of Manthili.”
Tobie, Yale Cabaret’s final production of the season, begins a three-day, five-show run at 8. The Cab bills it as “an adventure-romance of quasi-Biblical proportions. A Symbolist fever dream. A poetic celebration of object performance. Freely translated and adapted from Maurice Bouchor’s 1889 puppet play, Tobie is a story of growing up, of falling in love and finding yourself, and of defeating the fish demon trying to sleep with your girlfriend.”
Friday, April 21
Can’t get enough cabaret? At the Milford Arts Council at 7:30 p.m., Pantochino Productions opens a three-weekend run of And Away We Go!, an original musical that might also be a farce. “It’s Miami Beach in the 1960s. Jackie Gleason rules the strip. And a wanna-be-famous-not-quite-Steve-and-Eydie singing duo attempt to make their mark in a formerly swanky hotel night club room. What could go wrong? Oh, everything! Missing persons, mistaken identities, Italian nonnas, showgirls, mobsters and more.” To go with cabaret-style seating, the show also offers cabaret-style dining and drinking, if you bring your own.
Meanwhile, a “mesmerizing” and award-winning contemporary production of Jesus Christ Superstar comes to the Shubert for the weekend starting at 8 tonight.
Saturday, April 22 – Earth Day
A Facebook group called Keep New Haven Weird has organized a competitive picnic—in which “participants form teams around their chosen theme with a picnic food and picnic game, sometimes a picnic drink and interact with each other. Judges award prizes for best costumes, game, food and other categories”—at 1 p.m. As for the location, you have to sign up to find out.
“Acclaimed independent recording artist, performer, artist advocate and sonic survivor” Will Dailey brings his “Venn diagram of multiple genres,” “rich vintage vibe” and “authentic and energetic” performance style to Cafe Nine for a 9 p.m. bill opened by rockers Joey Wit & the Definition.
Also starting at 9, the next Sanctuary party at The State House promises the usual mix of goth, industrial and darkwave dancing—plus “worldly (and otherworldly) twists” and “witchy/fae/nymph” dress guidelines to honor a theme of Gaia, a.k.a. Mother Earth.
Sunday, April 23
At 1 p.m., it’s right back to The State House for the eighth Elm City Folk Fest, featuring Goodnight Blue Moon, Stephen Rodgers, Frank Critelli, Alexandra Burnett, Pyramid Rose and Pat Dalton.
The Connecticut Foraging Club leads a 2 o’clock walk—“an opportunity for foragers with some foraging experience to hike and share their knowledge of foraging and plant/mushroom identification” with newbies—around Lake Wintergreen in West Rock Ridge State Park.
Finally, from 3 to 6, Kehler Liddell Gallery hosts a reception with a talk by former Artspace curator Sarah Fritchey. The occasion is the opening of Mind Fibers & Typologies: Memory and Ingemination, a memorial exhibition of works by longtime gallery members Edith Borax-Morrison and Keith Johnson. “Both artists’ work exhibit an extraordinary meditative quality, the product of careful observation and rigorous attention to process and presentation. Edith’s intricate meditative drawings, created at all hours of the day and night, immerse the viewer in her trance-like creative state. Keith’s typological photography amplifies the range and complexity of repetitive images and adds his unique voice to this photographic lexicon.”
Written by Dan Mims. Image 1 features, presumably, a scene from Malawi. Image 2 features a moment from Jesus Christ Superstar. Image 3 features Goodnight Blue Moon. Image 4 features work by Edith Borax-Morrison. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations, prices and other details before attending events.
