Cultural and bodily nourishment come together this week. The latter means food: eating it, learning about it, then working off the excess. The former means history and the arts: reading Viking rune stones, wading through dramatic quandaries and eyeing massive designs projected onto the side of a library.
Monday, April 6
Today begins Branford Restaurant Week, when 19 of the town’s restaurants offer three-course prix fixe lunches—typically $13—and/or dinners—usually $25—through Sunday, April 12. Standout participants include intimate, upscale Italian restaurant Campania; Venezuelan joint Jojoto, led by “The Singing Chef” Neil Fuentes; and G-Zen, the organic, vegan, sustainability Mecca where the phrase “good food” covers a lot more ground than usual.
Tuesday, April 7
“… the forest—that is our teacher,” says a rural farmer. “Nature’s the best thing we got. Point to something else that’s better,” says an urban gardener. “Agriculture today is a destruction, a depletion, an extraction of soil. It’s closer to mining,” says an intellectual. They and many other figures make the case for permaculture—agriculture that works with ecosystems, not against them—in the lovingly shot documentary Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective (screencapped above), showing at 7 p.m. tonight in the Loria Center for the History of Art (190 York St, New Haven). It’s the latest feature film to show during the fifth annual Environmental Film Festival at Yale (EFFY), which got going last Friday and continues through this Saturday, pairing diverse sets of features and shorts. All screenings—see the full schedule here—are open to the public and free to attend.
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Wednesday, April 8
Tonight in room 317 of Yale’s Linsly-Chittenden Hall, Henrik Williams, a Scandinavian languages professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University, asks, “What Were the Vikings Thinking?” The talk’s subtitle, “Cracking the Runic Code,” suggests it’s a rhetorical question, as does the description: “Learn about lawmakers, warriors, death poems, cryptograms and autocrats. And above all, find out what the Vikings have to say on their mighty rune stones.” 63 High St, New Haven. 5:30 p.m. Free.
Thursday, April 9
Two women and a child form the respective bedrocks of two very different plays tonight. Yale Rep’s production of satire The Caucasian Chalk Circle, entering the final three days of a three-week run at the University Theatre (222 York St, New Haven), tells tale of an abandoned baby in the politically unstable country of Grusinia. Born to a deposed governor, then raised by a servant, “Years later, the ruler’s wife returns to reclaim her child—and the two mothers bring their case before a cynical, battle-weary judge.” 8 p.m.; $59, with discounts available for seniors, Yale employees and students.
Across town in Erector Square (315 Peck St, New Haven), also starting at 8 p.m., the Collective Consciousness Theatre opens a 11-day, nine-performance run of Gidion’s Knot, which tackles knotty subjects indeed. During a meeting between the grieving mother of Gidion, who’s committed suicide, and the troubled boy’s schoolteacher, “the women try to reconstruct a satisfying explanation for Gidion’s act and come to terms with excruciating feelings of culpability.” Tickets for tonight’s opening performance are “pay-what-you-can”; for the rest of the run, which includes some matinees, tickets cost $25, or $10 for students.
Friday, April 10
Yale gets heavy on light, or “lux,” today. First, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m., the school’s West Campus Urban Farm (137-141 Frontage Rd, Orange) hosts “Maple Fest 2015: Lux et Syrupas,” a free tasting of saps and syrups along with live demos and “tours of the campus sugar bush.” Then, at 8 p.m., back on Yale’s main campus, LUX: Ideas Through Light takes visual representations of research underway in various corners of the university and projects them onto the outside of the Beinecke (121 Wall St, New Haven). Projections will be happening Saturday and Sunday nights, too, presumably also starting at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 11
From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. near City Hall, Get Healthy CT claims a portion of the New Haven Green for its second annual “Get Fit Day.” Offering Zumba from 11:15 to 11:45, “Title Boxing” from noon to 12:30, “Insanity Workout” from 12:45 to 1:15, hip hop from 1:30 to 2 and kid-oriented Zumba from 2:15 to 2:45, it’s a chance to explore different fitness paths and maybe even inspire some onlookers to join in. Free.
Sunday, April 12
Thanks to Elm Shakespeare Company, a “reading circle” of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing is on the menu today at The Trinity Bar & Restaurant (157 Orange St, New Haven; 203-495-7736). Led by company members Jeremy Funke and Raphael Massie, anyone can join the go-around, where “parts are assigned by the seating order at the table and held for only one scene at a time.” RSVP on the Facebook event page, or by emailing kate@elmshakespeare.org. $5 suggested donation.
Written by Dan Mims. Image depicts a shot from the film Inhabit: A Permaculture Perspective, showing Tuesday, 4/7, during the Environmental Film Festival at Yale. Readers are encouraged to verify times, locations and prices before attending events.
