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Frank Oz Expands on Comedy Career as Puppeteer, Director and Actor

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From left, Executive Producer and Showrunner of the CNN documentary series “The History of Comedy” Stephen J. Morrison interviews director, producer and performer Frank Oz about his comedic career Tuesday July 30, 2019 at the Amp. SARAH YENESEL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Laughs are not given, they’re earned. But Frank Oz, a man who has received more laughs than he could count, couldn’t tell anyone how to earn them; he doesn’t know a thing about comedy, and honestly, he doesn’t want to.

Oz, a director, producer, writer, actor and Muppet performer, gave his lecture, “I Don’t Know Anything About Comedy,” at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in the Amphitheater, continuing Week Six, “What’s Funny? In Partnership with the National Comedy Center.” A majority of Oz’s lecture was moderated by Stephen J. Morrison, Emmy-nominated executive producer and showrunner of the CNN documentary series “The History of Comedy.”

“If one knows, one cannot discover,” Oz said. “Knowing could mean uninspired, so on purpose, I approach things not knowing.”

As someone who doesn’t know anything about comedy, to be comedic, Oz said he had to acquire a “toolbox.”

“Your craft in that toolbox is years of trying things and failing, trying and being embarrassed and humiliated; trying, trying, trying,” he said. “The larger that toolbox is, the more able you are to stand on the cliff of the abyss and just trust that you don’t know. That’s where the good stuff comes from.”

Oz has performed with or directed stars such as Steve Martin, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Morrie Schwartz, Julie Hagerty, Joan Cusack, the Smothers Brothers, Whoopi Goldberg, Joan Rivers and Carol Burnett — and the list goes on, and on and on.

“Why did I tell you that?” Oz said. “It’s because I realized that all of these people that I’ve worked with take their comedy very seriously. The other reason is, I was trying like hell to impress you.”

Oz believes in the “seriousness of the preparation” of comedy. According to him, the underlying intent is always to get a laugh, and rigor is needed before that laugh is earned.

“If one knows, one does not go the distance, one stays safe,” he said. “I always say to my actors, ‘If you don’t make a fool of yourself, you’ll make a fool of yourself.’ I also say, ‘The safest thing is to be risky, the riskiest thing is to be safe.’ ”

Morrison started the discussion with the week’s theme, asking Oz, “What’s funny?”

“If I could tell you, that means I would know, and by knowing, it would not be as funny,” Oz said.

“Got it,” Morrison said.

The two could agree on one thing: Comedy is subjective. But Oz needed to make a clarification — comedy is not just “one thing.”

“It always bothers me, especially selling comedy, when people think comedy is one thing,” he said. “Comedy is from high wit to low buffoonery, and everything in between. It’s odd to me when someone says ‘comedy’ as if it’s a car — there are a lot of cars.”

Oz started in comedy at 10 years old, using puppets as armor from judgment.

“I was a kid with very low self-esteem. I didn’t think much of myself at all, and puppets allowed me to take a chance, a risk, and not feel rejected,” Oz said. “The puppet would be rejected; I would not be rejected. I didn’t have the courage to be rejected.”

Oz performed with puppets until he was 18, and stopped to focus on becoming a journalist. However, six months into journalism school, he was approached by Jim Henson, who saw Oz perform years prior. Henson needed a fourth person for his Muppet group and thought Oz would be a perfect fit.

“Somehow, whatever chemistry that was between Jim and I, Jim somehow brought out the comedy in me, and that was the beginning of how I got into comedy,” he said.

For the first four years of working with Henson, Oz was too scared to perform in different voices. Eventually, Henson forced him to try it out.

“In the dressing room I was so frightened that I looked in the mirror and told myself an old anecdote in show business, ‘If you can’t be funny, be loud,’ ” he said.

Oz went on to voice characters such as Miss Piggy, Cookie Monster, Grover, Bert, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam the Eagle and Yoda, all unique in their sound and backgrounds.

Working on shows like “Sesame Street” gave Oz an opportunity to try things over and over until he got them right. But with the trial came error, and Oz said he has a collection of “dead Muppets,” or characters that didn’t work.

With Bert, Oz said it took him over a year to think of a storyline because the character was so “boring.” Eventually, Oz decided to run with what made him boring: Bert’s favorite color is gray, he loves collecting bottle caps and all he wants in life is to be left alone.

With every character Oz creates, he said it’s important for them to have a “want” like Bert’s. For example, Cookie Monster was originally called “Monster,” until a segment aired where he won a quiz show, and when presented with the choice of $10,000, a new car, a Hawaiian vacation or a cookie, he chose the cookie.

“It’s not intellectual, it’s in (your heart),” Oz said. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be happy with just one thing?”

In terms of creating the characters’ voices, Oz said there’s no code to crack — the voices come on their own.

“I’m a peasant, like everybody here. We all have our basic, universal feelings,” he said. “You don’t go for a voice, you get the character right and the voice comes — period.”

Out of the many mistakes he has made throughout the years, Oz said he has learned the worst thing a comedian can do is write out their material.

“What I used to do with characters is totally ad-lib,” he said. “I would have no lines whatsoever, but I would start with a strong attitude, and from that attitude we could riff. It’s a different kind of rigor — it’s a rigor of prepping yourself with something so you can feed off of it.”

As Oz got older, he realized he no longer needed the puppets that used to protect him, and so he tried his hand at a lifelong dream: directing. Morrison played a clip from “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” a film Oz directed in 1984.

In comedy, Oz said reactions are more important than actions. In “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” Oz was trying to get Joan Rivers to laugh at his character, Miss Piggy. When Rivers couldn’t produce the guffaw Oz wanted, he bought four gin and tonics — two for Rivers and two for himself — and said the rest of the scene came “naturally.”

“Necessity is the mother of all invention, right?” Morrison said.

According to Morrison, directors are many things — they are storytellers, problem solvers, producers and therapists. More than any of that, Oz said directors are “hopers.”

“You have all of these casts you put together, you have all the crew you put together, you have decisions as a director, you have decisions in wardrobe, you have decisions every single day,” Oz said. “At the end of the day, you don’t know if it’s going to work, so when it says, ‘Directed by Frank Oz,’ it should say, ‘Hoped by Frank Oz.’ ”

In addition to directing, Oz has acted in many films. Oz said he takes roles to become a better director.

“The reason I do those roles is not for acting; the reason I do those roles is to remind myself how frightening it is for an actor to be on camera,” he said. “I realized how naked one feels and how frightened one feels as an actor.”

Morrison played a scene from Oz’s 1988 “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” The scene involved three characters: Freddy, played by Steve Martin, Lawrence, played by Michael Caine, and Inspector Andre, played by Anton Rodgers. In the scene, Freddy is in jail and trying to recall Lawrence’s name for Inspector Andre. The entire scene was improvised by Martin as Oz was crouched out of camera range. When Oz felt that Martin had gone as far as he could with the improv, he tapped Rodgers on the foot to signal him to interrupt.

“A very high-tech and scientific solution,” Morrison said.

“What it says about the process of comedy is that it’s so much by feel,” Oz said. “It is so much from inside, so that’s why I don’t work intellectually.”

Morrison played a clip from “Bowfinger,” a film Oz directed in 1999, that taught him about the importance of rhythm in comedy. Oz said he made the mistake of interrupting his actors too many times.

“My biggest tool as a director is rhythm and to not think,” he said.

Morrison said he couldn’t imagine trying to direct Marlon Brando, Robert De Niro and Edward Norton in one film.

To that, Oz said: “Next.”

As Oz reflected on his extensive comedy career, he said there are still things he wants to accomplish. But there are no specifics; as long as it’s “good work,” he’s in.

“Number one, whatever I do is honest,” Oz said. “I like being a bit rebellious, to go underground and be a bit dark at times.”

Morrison closed by saying that some refer to comedy as “tragedy plus time.”

“I never understood what that meant,” Oz said.

“No, the tragedy is that we are out of time,” Morrison said.

Tony and Jo Jo Muir Become Chautauqua Fund Volunteers and Join the Bestor Society

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Jo Jo and Tony Muir, members of the Bestor Society and some of the newest volunteers for The Chautauqua Fund, sit on their sofa in their home for the summer on July 22, 2019. This is their sixth year staying on the grounds, but their 38th year coming to Chautauqua Institution. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Longtime Chautauquans Tony and Jo Jo Muir are happy when reminiscing about their Chautauqua experience.

“Over the years, we’ve brought many people to Chautauqua,” Jo Jo Muir said. “I think we feel like that’s the biggest contribution we’ve made, and also all of our children and grandchildren have come over the years.”

The Muirs have been visiting Chautauqua for nearly 40 years. They used to spend only one week on the grounds, but have recently begun to stay for the entire season. When they first arrived many years ago, they weren’t sure what to expect.

“We came kind of not knowing anything about it,” Jo Jo Muir said. “It rained every day and it was really cold and (yet) we’ve came back every year since.”

Jo Jo Muir said that it’s the close-knit community and access to the arts that keeps them returning year after year. She appreciates all of the programmatic experiences they have and the range of events that are offered.

“Mainly the community feeling of Chautauqua and of course the learning, the music, dance, … (it) has all meant so much to us and to our children,” she said.

The Muirs are giving back to Chautauqua by becoming Chautauqua Fund volunteers this year, advocating for philanthropic support of the annual fund and the spectrum of activities it makes possible.

“We’re happy to do it,” Tony Muir said. “The thing that makes this place really tick is that people are so generous. I mean, philanthropy is all over the place.”

They were asked to become volunteers while speaking with Tim Renjilian, co-chair of the 2019 Chautauqua Fund. Renjilian said that they happily accepted the offer to join the Chautauqua Fund team of volunteers, and are looking forward to supporting the Fund this year through their outreach and efforts in the community.

“Tony actually reached out to me in the off-season and suggested some areas that could use some improvement and I said, ‘Since we’re talking about all this (investment), would you be interested in being a Chautauqua Fund volunteer?’ and he immediately responded that he and Jo Jo would love to do that,” Renjilian said.

The Muirs’ relationship with Renjilian and his wife and fellow co-chair, Leslie, influenced their decision to become volunteers. After observing the Renjilians’ contributions, the Muirs were encouraged to do the same and contribute both their time and treasure to Chautauqua.

“We’ve gotten to know (Tim and Leslie Renjilian), and I think knowing them and how they’ve contributed, we wanted to give back,” Jo Jo Muir said. “We thought of (volunteering for) the Fund as also a chance to meet some other Chautauquans and talk to them.”

Being a Chautauqua Fund volunteer gives team members the ability to not only become more involved in the community, but to also help sustain the value that Chautauqua holds.

“I think that being a Fund volunteer really adds a lot to your Chautauqua experience because you just become that much more personally invested in it,” Renjilian said.

Renjilian has known the Muirs for many years, and he said that they are ideal volunteers because of their active engagement in the Chautauqua community.

“They are always going to events, helping to organize things; they’re very active and engaged here and just super-friendly, nice, pleasant people to be with,” Renjilian said. “I knew that it would be a good fit for them. I also think they’re perfect people to be Chautauqua Fund volunteers because they are so good at conveying their excitement about this place.”

The Muirs are also new members of the Bestor Society with their personal gift to the 2019 Chautauqua Fund.

This year, the threshold for membership in the Bestor Society increased from $3,500 to $5,000. Renjilian said that there are two main reasons the level increased.

“The level has not increased in quite some time, so part of making the move up to $5,000 was really just keeping up with inflation,” Renjilian said. “Some of it is about keeping pace with the cost of the program that we’re putting on every year.”

The other aspect is to invest in the quality of the overall Chautauqua experience. Keeping up with programming and quality experiences offered at the Institution to patrons of all ages requires financial support.

“As you look forward, it’s really critical for Chautauqua to stay relevant and for Chautauqua to have an impact in our communities,” Renjilian said. “It’s not inexpensive to design this program, to attract the best and brightest speakers, to put the information out there in various ways like we do through the website, through our social media and through our printed publications, so helping to maintain and enhance the program also requires additional investment.”

Aside from the financial support they provide, the Muirs believe that simply introducing people to Chautauqua is one of the best ways to support the community.

“The monetary contribution is important, but to us the most important thing is that we’ve exposed a lot of people to Chautauqua, who in turn probably give their time, talents and contribute, too,” Jo Jo Muir said.

Wholeheartedly supporting Chautauqua is the Muirs’ overall goal. Their love for the community and everything the Institution represents is why they have gone the extra mile in their involvement. Tony Muir said there are an abundance of reasons why they love Chautauqua, but that a quote by Daniel L. Bratton, former president of Chautauqua Institution, said it best.

“President Bratton, back in 1995, gave a talk, and the topic of the speech was ‘everything I value is here,’ and he said, ‘I value family education, beauty, culture, the blending of the sacred and the secular,’ ” Tony Muir said. “ ‘I value the inclusivity of all people as being one in the human race. I value a place which unites everyone as one, as being a Chautauquan.’ That sums up why we love Chautauqua.”

For more information on how to join the Bestor Society or volunteer as an advocate for the Chautauqua Fund, contact Tina Downey, director of the Chautauqua Fund, at 716.357.6406 or tdowney@chq.org

Rev. Susan Sparks to Discuss Connection with Laughter & Holiness

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Reverend Susan Sparks, begins her six day series of “Christmas in July,” during morning worship on Sunday, July 28, 2019 in the Amphitheater. Rev. Sparks starts her talk by saying “We are living in the chaos of barn yard and the noise is deafening.”
MHARI SHAW/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Why not let out a peal of laughter while in a religious sanctuary?

While the renowned theologian, ethicist and professor Reinhold Niebuhr would say that there’s no place for that sort of chicanery in a church setting, the Rev. Susan Sparks has a distinctly different view on the subject.

“The irony of this is that I went to Union Theological Seminary, and Niebuhr was a great voice that came out of that institution,” said Sparks, an author, Baptist minister and stand-up comedian. “And I lived on Reinhold Niebuhr Boulevard. It’s kind of funny because I ended up writing a thesis on humor and religion, which boiled down to ‘Niebuhr was wrong.’ ”

According to Sparks, Niebuhr believed that laughter had no place in “the holy of holies,” and that “humor was not appropriate in the presence of God.”

At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Sparks will voice her dissent to Niebuhr’s views in her interfaith lecture, “What’s So Funny about Religion from a Christian Perspective: Reinhold Niebuhr Was Wrong.” Sparks’ lecture is the third in the Week Six interfaith lecture series, “What’s So Funny About Religion?”

“My lecture is about the power of humor, not only within the world and religious sanctuaries themselves, but most importantly within the holy of holies: humor with God, in the presence of God,” Sparks said. “And I’ll go through all the reasons for that, whether it’s the history of the church or Scripture. I end up talking about the practical, healing power of humor.”

That healing power comes in “many different levels,” according to Sparks.

“I’m a breast cancer survivor,” she said. “I found that (humor) was an incredible healing tool not only psychologically, but also physically. There are articles that talk about how the oxygen it takes to laugh lowers blood pressure, increases endorphins and accelerates healing.”

But that healing power isn’t only limited to the physical — Sparks said that humor helps with spiritual healing, too.

“It’s ‘love your neighbor as yourself,’ ” she said. “Humor helps us reconcile with others because it helps us find the commonalities we have with our brothers and sisters. It’s the one thing where, if you laugh with somebody, if you share something, it brings perspective and reconciliation.”

According to Sparks, her career as a trial lawyer developed from an initial desire to be a preacher.

“I grew up in a Southern Baptist church, and they do not ordain women to this day, in 2019,” she said. “So when I was about 7, that got shut down. I ended up taking the same skill set and putting it in a different job. Because really, preachers and lawyers are the same job, just different clients. It’s all about counseling, persuasion, defending or supporting a cause and communication skills.”

Sparks eventually realized she had been denied a life as a preacher not by God, but by God’s “P.R. reps.”

“I started studying stand-up as a trial lawyer,” she said. “I realized I was the only woman doing trial law in Atlanta at that time, and the ‘good ol’ boys’ were able to get a jury’s attention because they were funny. So I started studying stand-up in order to be a better trial lawyer.”

Sparks said that when she arrived at the seminary, things got more complicated for her.

“I don’t know that those professors were ready to teach theology to a comedian,” she said. “And as we say in the South, ‘bless their hearts.’ I was a big believer in the power of humor not only in terms of the power of rhetoric, but also trust, intimacy and truth.”

James Geary to Examine Power of Wittiness in Humor & Humanity

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James Geary thinks wit can serve as a tool to navigate the world’s complexities — just one way Geary has come to understand the “serious business” of joking around.

Geary, deputy curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, and the author of Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It, will speak at 10:45 a.m. today in the Amphitheater. Geary will continue Week Six’s theme, “What’s Funny? In Partnership with the National Comedy Center.”

“Wit, strangely, is timeless and timely,” Geary said. “Wit is something that has always been around. I don’t think wit changes much because it’s an innate characteristic and quality of the human mind. But I think what has been lost in the understanding of wit is the more serious side of it and the role wit plays in innovation, discovery and in society.”

Geary has been fascinated with reading and writing since he was a child, and has since written several books on various elements of language, such as The World in a Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism and I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World.

“I try to use my books to understand and explain these things in a broader sense, such as how metaphors operate in daily life,” he said. “Everybody uses metaphors all the time; it’s astonishing when you see how many metaphors are in even the simplest sentences.”

Geary said the same “everyday aspect” also applies to the use of wit. According to him, being witty is within anyone’s grasp.

“When we think wit, we think of Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Fallon, and yeah — those people are witty, but actually you and I are very witty, too,” he said. “Wit is a fundamental form of intelligence that we innately have as human beings. We are constantly living by our wits, which is what I will explore in my lecture.”

More than making jokes and spurring laughs, Geary said wit is about making connections. 

“If you understand wit from that perspective, it’s a form of intelligence rather than just a sense of humor,” he said. “It’s more a state of mind than a sense of humor. Humor and laughter is definitely a part of it, but it’s not all of it, and in some respects, it’s not even the most important part of it.”

For as long as Geary can remember, puns have been considered the lowest form of wit, a “painful fall from conversational grace.” However, after further examination, Geary said he considers puns an essential aspect of the art.

“Puns, for me, are a very high form of wit,” he said. “A pun shows the human mind’s amazingly nimble and quick ability to make connections. If I were to make a pun right now, you would get it immediately. I wouldn’t need to explain it to you. The mind is a pattern-making machine and a pun is a form of pattern.”

The person on the receiving end of a pun is just as witty as the person telling the pun, Geary said. To understand a pun, one must unfold the primary meaning of a word or phrase and quickly connect it to the secondary, underlying meaning.

“People think only special people can be witty, but if you get their joke or pun, you are making the same connections as the person who made the joke,” he said. “So, that will be an argument in my lecture: The person who gets the joke is just as witty as the person who made the joke because they are both completing the same creative, intellectual work.”

Geary worked for TIME magazine from 1993 to 2006, first as a Netherlands-based stringer, then as a writer, senior editor, deputy editor and then editor. Since moving to the Nieman Foundation full time, Geary has contributed to publications such as The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The Huffington Post. From a journalistic standpoint, Geary said wit acts as the foundation for “good, thorough work.”

“Wit is about making connections, which is what journalists do; they report on stuff, they find stuff out and then they connect the dots,” he said. “Journalists are using their wits all the time to report, discover facts and connect the things that reveal the connections that often remain hidden — or at least what people hoped would remain hidden.”

From the three points in his book, Wit’s End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It, Geary said he hopes Chautauquans take away the message behind “why we need it.”

“ ‘Why we need it’ has to do with the biggest challenges we face today: the environment, the economy, race relations, this sort of partisanship that’s out of control — those are really complex issues and to address them, you need to connect a lot of dots and you need to make a lot of connections,” he said.

But Geary said making connections is a lost art in modern-day America. He said people have been retreating into “silos of thought and information,” when instead, they need to step outside of those silos and open themselves up to information from all sources.

“Wit is an essential part of doing that,” he said. “There is a lot riding on how we address, or fail to address, some of the biggest challenges as a country, as a society and as a planet. We shouldn’t be scared out of our wits. We need to be scared into our wits.”

Interfaith Amigos Highlight Importance of Humor in Faith

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The Interfaith Amigos, from left, Imam Jamal Rahman, Rev. Don Mackenzie, and Rabbi Ted Falcon, mix comedy and faith during their afternoon lecture on the spirit of observing and exploring other faiths as well as how their group came to be formed. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

When the Interfaith Amigos first came together, they shared the “riches of their traditions,” each bringing their sacred text to read from.

“My companions have brought their books; I brought the original tablet and we shared sacred words,” Rabbi Ted Falcon joked.

To start off Week Six’s interfaith lecture series, “What’s So Funny About Religion?” Interfaith Amigos Falcon, Imam Jamal Rahman and Pastor Don Mackenzie presented their lecture, “What’s So Funny About Religion? Laughter is Her Language of Hope,” Monday in the Hall of Philosophy.

The group formed after 9/11. After the tragedy, Falcon thought it would be good to invite Rahman to the Shabbat service Friday.

“People had to see a different face of Islam than the one that was blasted at us through the media,” Falcon said.

After listening to each other teach, the two became friends over time and started working together. Eventually, they recognized that they needed the third faith of the Abrahamic family — Mackenzie joined the group six months after 9/11.

“We shared an intuition that if we could penetrate the barriers that have separated our traditions historically,” Mackenzie said, “we might be able to help get to a place where cooperation and collaboration would be possible, and addressing the great moral issues of our times.”

The group began meeting weekly, giving presentations and eventually writing books. However, the Amigos’ beginning was difficult, according to Falcon.

“The truth is, it’s really a risk to open ourselves to the treasures of another’s tradition,” he said. “Sometimes, we feel that our own identity will somehow be watered down or somehow we will be drawn to forbidden territory. And it takes a level of trust to really allow ourselves to hear and to appreciate the treasures of spirit wherever they arise.”

At the dais in the Hall of Philosophy, the three then shared verses from each of their sacred texts. The point of doing so was to demonstrate how similar the messages were, despite that the verses come from different faiths.

Falcon said, in the Book of Micah, people forgot that worshipping God requires one to follow through and apply teachings to everyday life — that performance ritual was not accomplishing anything by itself.

“And so Micah said, ‘It has been told you humankind, what is good and what the eternal one asks of you, nothing other than doing justly and loving kindness and walking with integrity in the presence of your God,’ ” Falcon said. “And the prophet was urging, walking with the fullness of who we are.”

Mackenzie quoted from John 15, in which Jesus was trying to direct his disciples with his wisdom.

“ ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another even as I have loved you,’ ” Mackenzie said. “ ‘No one has greater love than this; to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends. If you do what I command you, I do not call you servants any longer because the servant does not know what the master is doing. But I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything that I’ve heard from God; you did not choose me. But I chose you.’ ”

Rahman then quoted the Quran: “Repel evil with something which is better, so that your enemy becomes your intimate, close friend.”

Rahman said that the largest overarching problem for all three Abrahamic faiths is exclusivity.

“Brother Jamal, I hear you saying that, but the fact is we Jews are the chosen people from all the peoples of the planet,” Falcon said. “God chose us as God’s treasured people. Deuteronomy 14:2.”

“Excuse me, Rabbi — in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to God except by me,’ ” Mackenzie interjected.

“Not my Bible,” Falcon replied.

“My dear brother, my dear friends, here is the real truth,” Rahman said, interrupting Falcon and Mackenzie. “The Quran says, ‘If anyone chooses religion other than Islam, he too will not be accepted of Him and he’d be a loser here and in the hereafter,’ 3:85. Please make a note for your sake.”

“So that’s it. That’s where our program ends,” Falcon joked.

The three laughed and explained the purpose of their demonstration: to show that exclusivity is a problem.

“At some point, something like that rises (when we see that) our (faith) really is the way,” Falcon said. “It’s just a little bit truer unless we recognize that as a symptom of our straying, unless we recognize that as a symptom of how we’ve forgotten the essential spiritual teachings of inclusivity, of oneness, of love and compassion that are at the heart of each of our traditions.”

Falcon said when one thinks their faith alone is the chosen faith, the consequence will always be violence.

On the other hand, when faiths can come together, as the three Interfaith Amigos have, humor can flourish. The three men explained the role humor plays in their faith and presented jokes as examples.

“Jewish humor is often self-deprecating,” Falcon said. “And Jewish humor is often some attempt to talk about the struggles in generations, … is often some way of enduring hardships and enduring times of suffering, … (and) is often some way of helping us identify ourselves as a minority in most cultures in the world.”

In particular, the Jewish jokes Falcon likes to tell are those that can only be told by a Jew.

“There were three (people) who were traveling across a desert environment — a German, a Frenchman, and a Jew,” Falcon said. “At a certain point, the Frenchman says, ‘I’m so hot, I’m so tired. I must have wine.’ A little bit later, the German says, ‘I’m so tired, I’m so hot, I must have beer.’ And sure enough, a little bit later the Jew says, ‘I’m so tired, I’m so hot. I must have diabetes.’ ”

Mackenzie said Christian humor is funny when it prods at the idea of Christianity being the superior religion.

“The guy takes the train into Penn Station in New York, runs up, gets into a cab, and tells the cabbie to take him to Christ Church,” Mackenzie said. “The cabbie takes him to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The guy says, ‘No, no Christ Church, I said.’ The cabbie turns around and says, ‘Look, Mac, if he’s in town, this is where he’ll be.’ ”

Rahman said that Sufis, a group of Muslim mystics, wrote humor into poetry, conveying stories that “open hearts and minds, and to really counter the rigid and negative ideologies of these very conservative, self-serving clerics.” Death also plays a role in many of the poems.

“The Mullah is gravely ill — on his deathbed, some think,” Rahman said. “His wife is moaning and lamenting. And now here comes the authority, the allopathic doctor who examines the Mullah at length. Then, he turns to the Mullah’s wife and says, ‘Oh, honorable wife of the Mullah, the Quran says, ‘Only Allah is immortal.’ Your husband’s soul has flown to the bosom of God. He’s dead.’ But, the Mullah is not dead. He’s feebly saying, ‘I’m alive. I’m alive. I’m alive.’ What does the wife say? ‘Quiet. Don’t argue with the doctor.’ ”

Some of the jokes the Interfaith Amigos told during their lecture are based on stories that actually happened to them. For example, Falcon was approached at the end of an interfaith program by a woman who wanted him to sign her book.

“And I said, ‘Sure, I’d be glad to.’ And she hands me … a Bible,” Falcon said. “And I said to her, ‘I didn’t write this.’ ”

Through the humor, the three said they learn from one another. And, through humor and the lessons that accompany it, it is clear to Falcon, Mackenzie and Rahman that laughter is the language of hope.

Rahman told another story, of a Mullah who is on a train traveling to India. He sees the ticket conductor approaching, and the Mullah begins looking into other people’s pockets and bags for a ticket, Rahman said.

One annoyed passenger finally says, “What are you doing?” The Mullah says, “I’m looking for my ticket.” The man says, “You’re crazy. Look for your ticket in your own pocket.” The Mullah replies, “Yes, I know I could do that. But if I do that and if I don’t find my ticket, I shall lose all hope.”

“We need our hope, our deeper wisdom, our greater awareness unto others as if seeking in other people’s pockets what actually belongs to us,” Falcon said. “And such a story is meant to remind us that the laughter we seek, the hope we seek, the wisdom we seek, the connection we seek is waiting to be found within our own pockets, within our own hearts, within our own minds, within our own souls, and to take the time to honor that which each and every one of us carries into each moment of our lives.”

“The need for hope is universal and this is a time when sometimes we have trouble holding onto hope. … Hope has moral value,” Mackenzie added. “It hopes for something good. It engages us, heart, mind and soul, and moves us to act, thanks be to God.”

The Interfaith Amigos ended their lecture with an original song, involving all three singing key verses from each of their sacred texts in Arabic, Hebrew and English.

Guest Critic Review: ‘One Man, Two Guvnors’

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Guest Critic by Andrea Simakis

There are moments in the entertaining, but uneven One Man, Two Guvnors, now playing at Bratton Theater through Aug. 11, that are so utterly goofy, you can’t stop smiling.

Most are courtesy of one Francis Henshall, a dim but irresistible clown played with elastic proficiency by Alex Morf.

In this freshened-up version of The Servant of Two Masters, an Italian play by Carlo Goldoni that was reportedly all the rage in 1753, Francis attempts to haul an employer’s leaden trunk offstage, using a wall as leverage and, in a great bit of gravity-defying buffoonery, walks up it — backwards.

British comedian Richard Bean adapted Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte concoction for the West End in 2011, and brought it to Broadway in 2012.

The show was a hit on both shores, but its landing at Chautauqua is rockier.

The production uses improvisation, broad characterizations and wild physical and verbal comedy in service of a downright ridiculous plot.

It’s 1963, in the seaside town of Brighton, and Francis, having been fired from his gig as a trombone player in a skiffle band, is in search of a new job. (It’s useful to know that one late 1950s skiffle band grew into none other than the Beatles.)

Francis, hungry and broke, lucks into being hired by Rachel Crabbe, played by Kayla Kearney, a woman posing as her dead gangster twin, Roscoe, who has been dispatched by Rachel’s sadomasochistic lover, Stanley Stubbers (Rishan Dhamija, who’s built for comedy, with eyes that pop like an evil toon’s from “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”).

Rachel is trying to extract the payment promised to Roscoe upon his marriage to Pauline Clench (María Gabriela Rosado González), the daughter of shady businessman Charlie “The Duck” Clench (Daniel Pearce). She and Stanley need the cash to escape the long arm of the law by fleeing to Australia. But Pauline is heartbroken when a disguised Rachel appears to claim Pauline as “his” bride. That’s because Pauline has fallen for Alan Dangle (Kieran Barry, chomping scenery with glee), a young man everyone pegs on sight as the pompous actor he is.

The cast of Chautauqua Theater Company’s “One Man, Two Guvnors” performs during a dress rehearsal Thursday, July 25, 2019 in Bratton Theater.
MHARI SHAW/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

The trouble for our hapless hero starts when, while in the employ of Rachel, Francis runs into Stanley, on the lam and seeking a man to haul his trunk around and fetch his mail. So Stanley, unbeknownst to Rachel, also hires Francis.

Are you still following? It hardly matters. What counts are the unhinged happenings as poor Francis tries to serve two masters, sneak in a meal and woo Dolly (a fetchingly curvy and rather spectacular Kelsey Deroian) while he’s at it. In a recurring comic trope in the first act, everything that can get in the way of his filling his belly does, forcing him to desperately chow down on one of Stanley’s letters. (“It’s a bit dry,” Francis observes. “Could do with a bit more ink.”)

“You’re not exactly a Swiss watch, are you?” Stanley notes at one point.

In one marvelous sequence, a perpetually confused Francis has an internal battle with himself that begins as a war of words — “You’re a role model for village idiots everywhere,” Francis tells himself — and quickly escalates into a schizophrenic brawl as Francis not only throws punches at and nearly strangles himself, but drags himself across the stage by his ankles. (It seems impossible, I know, but I promise you, it happened.)

It’s during live-wire scenes like this that the Chautauqua Theater Company production, directed by Andrew Borba, really sings, humming with gonzo possibilities.

And speaking of singing, a top-notch quartet (let’s call them the Fab Four for fun), with music director Tommy Crawford on lead guitar, provides rollicking musical interludes. The musicians bust out Beatles-like favorites using a mixture of traditional instruments (banjo and upright bass), and household items (washboards and spoons). They capture the period’s skiffle sound, a fusion of jazz, blues and American folk, and lend spontaneity and joy to the production.

These strengths almost mitigate the show’s unevenness, borne out in its overall pacing and some of its physical comedy.

The cast is more than up to the rapid-fire wordplay and comic timing required to pull off the ba-da-bing one liners. Take, for example, this exchange between Stanley and Alan:

“Are you an actor?” Stanley asks.

“Does it show?” Alan responds hopefully.

“The way you stand, at an angle. As if there’s an audience, over there,” Stanley answers, pointing at the audience.

But the choreography of the actors’ bodies rarely matches the nimbleness of their tongues. The play should be a whirlwind of fisticuffs and pratfalls, the gags unfolding with the precision of that Swiss watch Stanley mentioned. Here, the gears of this farce machine are gummy and move too slowly.

This is especially evident in fight scenes and a scene involving Francis and two waiters, one of whom is Alfie, an elderly chap with a pacemaker (Alex Brightwell). At first, Alfie moves with the sluggishness of a bad Wi-Fi connection, his hands shaking dangerously as he delivers a tureen of soup. The joke is that when Francis or others turn up his pacemaker, Alfie transitions in an octogenarian whirling dervish. But the sequence feels far longer than it should and forced rather than freewheeling, never living up to its breakneck promise. (Broadway had the services of a physical comedy director, an expense that paid great dividends.)

Another rough patch: The night I saw the show, I caught ensemble members walking around backstage.

Delightfully, One Man, Two Guvnors often has actors breaking the fourth wall to address the crowd, and audience participation is encouraged. But I don’t think actors randomly strolling past the wings were what Goldoni, or Bean, had in mind.

Andrea Simakis is a theater critic and columnist for The Plain Dealer.

Comedic Tallman Concert to Leave Audience ‘Rolling off the Bench Laughing’ Today

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Jared Jacobsen. SARAH YENESEL/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

As much as he likes to help people sing and pray, Jared Jacobsen also likes to make people laugh.

“This week is just a gift for me,” said Jacobsen, Chautauqua’s organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music. “I went to the corner of my music files to see what I could come up with for the program, where we could have some fun.”

At 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 30 in the Hall of Christ, Jacobsen will present “ROTBLOL! (Rolling Off the Bench Laughing Out Loud!),” on the Tallman Tracker Organ.

One piece to be played is “Pop! Goes the Weasel” by American organist Fred Feibel.

“Fred Feibel wrote a lot of music for movie theaters because he was one of the best American cinema organists,” Jacobsen said. “You used to play the organ in the theater to reflect what was going on on the screen, and you shamelessly manipulated people’s emotions. If you can make people cry, or be worried when the girl’s tied to the railroad tracks, you can also make them laugh.”

Because of Feibel’s history as a movie organist, Jacobsen said playing one of his tunes is “a very good way to begin this program.”

But not all the music to be performed today is comedic in nature.

“This song isn’t rolling-off-the-bench funny, but it’s an interesting little corner of the organ world,” Jacobsen said. “It’s called ‘Fireside Fancies,’ and it’s an attempt by a very well-known and very straightlaced church musician named Joseph Clokey to write music that tells stories in acoustical pictures.”

According to Jacobsen, the first song from “Fireside Fancies” involves “people just sitting around near a fire and listening to the crackling.”

The third piece on Jacobsen’s setlist is “Shall We Gather at the River?” which, according to Jacobsen, “never fails to get a laugh at Chautauqua.”

“It’s by Virgil Thomson, one of the great teachers of music and music composition in the mid-part of the 20th century,” he said. “He had this funny side to him that most people don’t know. ‘Shall We Gather at the River? for organ (Variations on Sunday School Tunes, No. 4),’ was written by him to imitate what it would sound like for a very old lady who is very much past her prime to play the tune on the organ.”

The song starts normally, according to Jacobsen, but very quickly goes awry as the “old lady” in question begins to make mistakes with the music.

“She gets lost, and then picks up the thread of the tune and sort of keeps on going,” he said. “And then she abruptly changes keys, as though she’s kind of browsing. She clearly gets totally lost at the end, and she begins to play one tune in the right hand and one tune in the left hand.”

The best part of performing music like Thomson’s “Shall We Gather at the River?” are the stories behind each piece, according to Jacobsen.

“These songs are like vignette pictures with sound,” he said.

Van Cliburn Medalist Christopher Taylor to Perform in German and Russian Piano Recital

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Taylor

Romanticism, jazz and classical grandeur are in the cards for recital-goers today.

Van Cliburn Bronze Medalist Christopher Taylor will give a piano performance of lively compositions from German and Russian composers at 4 p.m. Tuesday, July 30 in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall.

“None of them are easy works,” Taylor said. “They all push pianistic techniques kind of to the limit.”

Taylor will start off with a piece by contemporary Russian composer Nikolai Kapustin, from his 24 Preludes in Jazz Style, Op. 53. Kapustin’s work is something of a hybrid between jazz and classical piano; Taylor described it as “halfway between Rachmaninoff and Oscar Peterson.”

“They show his basic personality and a couple of different facets of it,” Taylor said. “(It’s) generally very engaging and certainly virtuosic music — lots of work for the fingers.”

Next, Taylor will launch into Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36, transcribed for single piano by Franz Liszt. Liszt transcribed all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies, and it has been an ongoing project for Taylor to learn all of them. The distillation of a piece written for a whole orchestra into one instrument makes for a massive and spirited work, and a great challenge for the pianist. Symphony No. 2 is one of the lesser known of Beethoven’s symphonies, but it is full of youthful agility and high speed.

“Beethoven symphonies have this sort of unstoppable energy to them,” Taylor said. “There are not huge opportunities to relax and breathe when you’re up on stage.”

The recital will then take a turn into the Romantic, as Taylor performs Johannes Brahms’ Four Ballades, Op. 10. Though Brahms wrote this piece in his early 20s, it has maturity and weight comparable to the sort of works he composed near the end of his life. Though not as spectacular and demanding as the Beethoven symphony, it necessitates disciplined playing.

“It certainly requires a great deal of control and an understanding of the instrument to create these rich and colorful and evocative effects,” Taylor said.

Finally, Taylor will finish his performance with Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Moments Musicaux, Op. 16. Though it was written early in Rachmaninoff’s career, it has the characteristic bittersweetness that is typical of his style. It is a poignant piece, Taylor said, that begins as haunting, melancholy and bleak, but moves toward triumphant at the end.

“It will make for a nice rousing and sort of satisfying conclusion,” Taylor said.

Most of these pieces are relatively new to Taylor, but that newness makes them exciting to him. One of the best things about playing piano, he said, is the near limitless repertoire that always provides something new to learn.

“It’s always fascinating and exhilarating,” Taylor said. “It’s a constant learning experience, and that’s what keeps me going in this job.”

Since the pieces are off the beaten path of the common piano repertoire, the recital will provide the audience a chance to discover some pieces they may not have ever heard live before.

“I hope that not all the music will be familiar,” Taylor said. “I hope to introduce (the audience) to something fresh. … I hope to cover a broad emotional territory and show some of the things that the piano is capable of.”

As a guest member of the School of Music faculty, Taylor will also be giving a public master class to piano students at 4 p.m. Wednesday, July 31 in Sherwood-Marsh Studios.

Raheleh Filsoofi to Speak on Multi-Disciplinary Projects and Invites Participants

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Filsoofi

From Tehran to Texas, artist Raheleh Filsoofi has always incorporated communities in her work.

“My work is … always community-based; the audience becomes part of the work. The process of creating my work involves community of some sort,” she said. “My belief in community work and involvement of people around me is part of my practice as a teacher, as an educator (and) an artist.”

Filsoofi is an assistant professor of ceramics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, and one of the core faculty members at the School of Art this season.

She will be speaking at 7 p.m. tonight in the Hultquist Center, as part of the Visual Arts Lecture Series.

In her lecture, “The Intersection of Sound, Space and Solidity,” Filsoofi will discuss her artistic practice and some of her recent projects.

Filsoofi is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses elements like video and ambient sound in her work to create immersive experiences.

“My goal is to create an environment that is a holistic sensory experience for the viewer,” she said. “I’m going to talk about why I use sound in my work as a visual artist.”

Much of her work centers around borders, immigration and intercultural communication. As an Iranian-American woman, these concepts have deep, personal resonance.

Filsoofi immigrated to the United States shortly after 9/11.

“(That) was a very interesting experience as an Iraninan,” she said. “It took me a few years to find myself comfortable talking about or expressing (my culture) without somehow associating that kind of conversation to 9/11.”

She splits her time between South Florida and Texas, where she finds inspiration in the diversity and intersection of immigrant experiences.

“I dealt with immigration issues for years before I became a citizen,” Filsoofi said. “It was a long process, a very complicated, complex process. I’m kind of a witness to … the stories we share as immigrants, and also stories that, for me, are new. … Being close to (other immigrants), hearing their stories, has such an impact on my work.”

She hopes to use her lecture to kick off further interaction between Chautauquans and her art.

One of the projects she will discuss, “Imagined Boundaries — Episode 2,” is a continuation of a 2017 project, for which Filsoofi filmed videos of American and Iranian volunteers looking into a camera. She displayed the videos in parallel art shows in Hollywood, Florida and Tehran, with the Iranians looking at videos of the Americans and vice versa.

“(In this project,) we try to cross the boundary that separates people from different cultures, from their religions, from getting to know each other,” she said. “There’s no dialogue in those videos, it’s just looking, because taking a look and being curious is the first step.”

In her remaining time at the Institution, she invites Chautauquans to contribute to “Episode 2” by volunteering to be in her next group of videos. From 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday in the faculty studios at the School of Art, she will be filming videos, and encourages anyone who would like to set up a different time to film, to contact her at
raheleh.filsoofi@utrgv.edu.

“I’m hoping with this work, especially with the involvement of the people around me, to create this collective dialogue about what it means to cross our boundaries, what it means to communicate or have a willingness to communicate,” she said. “I’m inviting everybody to join in this project.”

It typically takes about one minute to film each volunteer for the project.

“But the impact of that one minute is very important,” she said.

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil Talks Dusk and Dawn in Brown Bag Lecture

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Aimee Nezhukumatathil

In “The Woman Who Turned Down a Date with a Cherry Farmer,” a poem from Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s 2003 book Miracle Fruit, a narrator remembers a day swelling with “umbrellas of fruit,” “flip-flops and fishhooks” and “ice cubes made of lemonade and sprigs / of mint.”

Within this colorful summer, a cherry farmer approaches the unnamed speaker for a date, receiving what must have been a gentle rejection. What a mistake that was, the narrator admits, looking back.

“I just know my summer would’ve been / full of pies, tartlets, turnovers — so much jubilee.”

The author of five books, including At the Drive-In Volcano, winner of the Balcones Prize; Lucky Fish; and Oceanic, Nezhukumatathil is a poet of natural and common jubilees: mosquitoes, oysters, the names given to people and things. Her work has appeared in the 2015 and 2018 Best American Poetry series, The American Poetry Review and New England Review, and she is currently an English professor specializing in creative writing and environmental literature at the University of Mississippi, where she was the 2016-17 Grisham Writer-in-Residence.

With her children and Dustin Parsons, her husband and fellow writer-in-residence, in tow, Nezhukumatathil has returned to Chautauqua Institution as poet-in-residence at the Chautauqua Writers’ Center for Week Six. She will give her Brown Bag lecture, “Who Said Nights Were for Sleep: The Power of Aubades and Nocturnes,” at 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 30 on the porch of the Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall.

It is around those liminal moments — just after the sun sets and before it rises — that Nezhukumatathil finds the time to “still (her) mind and write.”

“Dusk and dawn are two times of day where the natural world comes alive; as a writer of the outdoors, it serves as a rich backdrop for my own source material and writing,” she said.

“Thrilled” by Nezhukumatathil’s “repeat visitor” status, Atom Atkinson, director of literary arts, was doubly pleased she was willing to travel from Mississippi to the Institution during the week themed “What’s Funny?”

“(Nezhukumatathil) is a really exciting person to have at any time, but especially in a week where people are looking towards the question of where we find the lightness in life,” they said, citing the Week Six Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle pick, My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite, as a literary example of finding “the lightness even in the most dark or troubling of subjects.” 

“But with Aimee, I think what she reveals is things we don’t necessarily think of as dark, yet also don’t necessarily think of as funny but can have a lot of lightness inside of them,” they said. “Something like a nature poem — it’s not automatically something we think of as, … maybe a source of joy, but not a source of that particular kind of lightness.”

In a 2015 interview with Divedapper, Nezhukumatathil recalled to writer Kaveh Akbar how her scientific background affected her nature-centric poetry.

“I loved the precision of naming compounds, that everything in biology had specific names, but what I was also drawn to was the musical language and diction of science, and in the margins of my notes for lecture, I’d start scribbling what I know now to be metaphors, or getting distracted by the music of these compounds,” she told Akbar. “I didn’t know it then, but I was actually kind of creating a rhythm from this new vocabulary.”

Her parents, she explained in the interview, worked often, leaving her and her younger sister ro read science books and flex their curiosity for the world outside their home.

“I can remember my father taking me and my younger sister on a hike in the mountains around the Phoenix suburbs, pointing out the names of each of the various cacti and desert flowers we encountered,” she told Akbar. “We’d stop and find bits of quartz crystals or geodes hidden on the trails: such treasures! Saguaro, ocotillo, yellowbell, shrubby bulbines, chuparosa — just try to say those names out loud without smiling. So my ‘writing’ started off, I think, just as a love and a wanting to record what I see in nature. Science will always be one of my very early loves, but I think my greatest gift to humanity was not becoming a doctor.”

Rabbi Bob Alper to Give ‘Surprisingly Affirming’ Definition of Religion

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Alper

If nothing else, Rabbi Bob Alper wants his lecture audience to know the meaning of the word “religion.”

“I’ll be talking about the importance of life-cycle events and the importance of humor in those life-cycle events,” said Alper, an American author, stand-up comedian and practicing clergy member. “The fact is that we need to recognize life-cycle events like moving out of a home or children going off to college or retirement. We don’t approach those elements of our lives ritualistically, but we should.”

At 2 p.m. Tuesday, July 30 in the Hall of Philosophy, Alper will be “Defining ‘Religion’ (You’ll Be Surprised) and Making It Meaningful through Humor,” the second lecture in Week Six’s interfaith theme, “What’s So Funny About Religion?”

“I often use a phrase by Maya Angelou, who said: ‘People forget what you say and they forget what you do, but they never forget how you make them feel,’ ” Alper said. “And comedy makes people feel good. It’s critical to healthy living.”

Alper said his life as both a full-time comedian and a rabbi comes with a lot of “colleague envy.”

“One of the lines in my routine is: ‘I always use jokes and funny stories in my sermons, which has given me 47 years of experience performing in front of a hostile audience,’ ” Alper said. “The truth is, I’ve always used humor as part of being a rabbi. It’s enormously important. It establishes relationships between me and my listeners.”

Alper said he uses comedy the most, at least in rabbinical settings, when he officiates weddings.

“It’s not always happy or a piece of cake,” he said. “People are nervous, people aren’t happy with their child’s choice of a spouse, things like that. And to do a little humor at the beginning of a ceremony opens people up and relaxes them. It suggests to them that they’ll be able to get through it.”

Alper said he’s often asked if he’s still a rabbi, given his career in comedy.

“I realized that my practice as a rabbi is making people laugh,” he said. “That’s what I do. And that’s every bit as legitimate as a congregational life or teaching. I often say, ‘When I give a sermon, I hope I’ve moved people spiritually. But when I laugh, I know I’ve moved them spiritually.’ ”

For his lecture today, Alper said he hopes to impart “a surprisingly affirming definition of religion” on his audience.

“I want people to understand how critical humor is in a religious life,” he said.

Artist Paige Hernandez to Combine Culture & Confidence in Musical FES Performance

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In a time of Snapchat filters and social media scrutiny, inspiring self-confidence in children isn’t always an easy task. But that’s exactly what artist and director Paige Hernandez has been doing since 2008, with her original show “Havana Hop: A Children’s Tale of Culture and Confidence.”

“Havana Hop” comes to the Chautauqua stage at 5 and 7 p.m. tonight, July 30, in Smith Wilkes Hall, as part of the Institution’s Family Entertainment Series.

Taking the stage solo, Hernandez takes on the personas of three generations of women. The story follows a young girl named Yelia as she musters up the courage to attend an audition for a chance to dance at the White House, only to be told she isn’t unique enough to make the cut. 

Yelia turns to her mother for inspiration, and in turn, her mother decides to help Yelia connect with her cultural roots, via a trip to visit her grandmother in Cuba.

According to Hernandez, the show was inspired by her own experiences growing up. Her father is partially of Cuban descent, and Hernandez said that living in the United States and not being able to connect with her heritage in Cuba was something she struggled with.

The show was commissioned in 2008, as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative and inspired by President Barack Obama’s message of hope and change.

Now, Hernandez is using “Havana Hop” as a way to encourage young audiences to embrace their cultural heritage and to help them find more confidence in who they are. Hernandez said through art, children can discover how to be themselves.

“Arts are the best way for them to express themselves,” Hernandez said in a 2017 interview with The Huffington Post. “I can sing a song and do a dance and all they have to do is clap their hands and tap their feet. They feel so accomplished. It empowers them.”

Hernandez’s performance is highly interactive. The show features a number of call-and-response segments, and the children in the audience are encouraged to sing along and engage with the show as much as possible.

By connecting with her young audience, Hernandez said she hopes to leave them with an understanding that if they believe in themselves and embrace who they are, they’ll be rewarded many times over.

“I want all of the audience to walk away knowing that identifying who you are and what makes you unique, even if that means digging within your own family background and culture, can really help you feel grounded and find your ultimate confidence,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez said being able to provide that message of confidence and empowerment is something incredible. But she also said that her relationship with her young audience isn’t just a one-way street.

“Performing for children is really great,” Hernandez said. “What the children who are watching me might not know is that they inspire me as much as I hope I inspire them.”

Ivory Keys, Ivory Doors: JoAnn Falletta and Soloists Orion Weiss and Shai Wosner to Premiere Gill Composition and Perform Beloved Classic

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Members of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra perform Bedřich Smetana’s Bohemian Forests and Meadows from Má vlast (My Fatherland) Tuesday, July 9, 2019 in the Amphitheter. VISHAKHA GUPTA/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

 

Shai Wosner
JoAnn Falletta
Orion Weiss

 

 

 

 

 

At first glance, tonight’s two pieces have nothing in common. One is a brand-new, world premiere, and the other is a beloved 19th-century classic. But they begin at the same place: the ivory keys of a grand piano.

The Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra and three guests will perform Modest Mussorgsky’s and Maurice Ravels’ famous “Pictures at an Exhibition” — one of the most well-loved orchestral pieces of all time — at 8:15 p.m. Tuesday, July 30 in the Amphitheater. The concert opens with a world premiere of New York composer Jeremy Gill’s “Concerto d’avorio” (Concerto of Ivory). Pianists Shai Wosner and Orion Weiss will share one piano in Gill’s rare “piano-four-hands” concerto.

The two pieces form a striking contrast, according to Guest Conductor JoAnn Falletta, whose many hats include director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, director of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor of the Brevard Music Center.

“There’s a contrast between an old favorite and something brand-new,” Falletta said. “ ‘Concerto d’avorio’ is completely unknown, completely new and very modern — that’s contrasted by a beloved piece that’s been around since 1874.”

Both pieces, Falletta said, are rooted in piano.

“ ‘Pictures at an Exhibition’ was originally written for solo piano, and ‘Concerto d’avorio’ is tied in every movement to a composer who played the piano,” she said.

“Concerto d’avorio” is a musical study of the piano’s very nature, rooted in ancient stories of deception and ivory. Gill, who wrote the piece as a commission for the Buffalo Philharmonic and Chautauqua Institution, said he was fascinated with Virgil’s Aeneid.

“I love that image from the Aeneid, when Aeneas is leaving the world of the shades and going back to what we consider the real world,” Gill said. “He can go through two doors: one of horn, and one of ivory.”

Gill explained only true dreams can pass through the door of horn, and only false dreams can pass through the door of ivory. But a surprising choice brings Aeneas back to reality.

“But when Aeneas leaves, he goes out through the door of ivory — the door of false dreams,” Gill said.

That puzzling image, Gill said, led him to think about the nature of the ivory-keyed piano — and of the uncommon “piano-four-hands” style, which features two soloists at the same piano.

“The idea is that the piano is always pretending to be something else,” Gill said. “For example, if you have a very fluid, legato-seeming right hand, you’re imitating the voice. In four-hand music specifically, a lot of the repertoire is arrangements or transcriptions of orchestral music.”

Ivory keys, ivory doors — are they deceptive? “Concerto d’avorio” explores the versatile mimicry of piano music through an orchestra, two soloists and one set of keys. The piece’s four movements, Gill said, explore the piano’s mimicry of each part of an orchestra and take inspiration from pianist composers.

Gill said the first movement features “characteristic” sounds from each instrument: fanfares from the brass, melodies from the strings and “windy” scales from the woodwinds.

“You have the orchestra separated very clearly into parts — and the piano imitates all of that,” Gill said. “The piano takes scales from the winds, it plays fanfares like the brass does, and in the middle of the piece, the long string melody is played by the bottom part of the piano.”

Each movement, Gill said, continues to explore the relationship between piano and orchestra. The second movement features only brass, percussion and piano — all imitating ancient instruments and signals. The third movement features strings and piano, both imitating the human voice in song. Every instrument plays in the fourth and final movement, bringing the disparate elements of the composition back together.

The piece’s roots in piano are mirrored in its influences, Gill said. Each movement is inspired by a famous pianist and composer: Franz Lizst’s orchestral piano work, Béla Bartók’s percussive piano compositions, Frédéric Chopin’s graceful melodies and György Ligeti’s complex, machinal pieces.

After opening with “Concerto d’avorio,” the CSO will play one of the most beloved pieces in the orchestral repertoire: “Pictures at an Exhibition,” a powerful retelling of its composer’s love and loss.

Mussorgsky originally wrote the piece for solo piano after the death of his close friend, artist Viktor Hartmann. After Hartmann’s death, Mussorgsky spiraled into a yearlong depression. The composer found no outlet for his grief until 1874, when he attended a memorial exhibition of his friend’s paintings.

Falletta said the piece, which allows listeners to walk through the exhibit with Mussorgsky, is beloved for its musical and emotional power.

“He went to the exhibition and saw all the paintings, and that inspired him to write the piece, … a powerful testament of love and grief,” Falletta said. “There are little sketches, little sections, that are exactly the pictures that he saw from his friend. All of Viktor Hartmann’s paintings are memorialized there; Mussorgsky very lovingly created a musical picture of every painting that he saw.”

Years later, composer Maurice Ravel orchestrated the piano piece, Falletta said.

“It’s the original piano piece, now in dazzling orchestra garb,” Falletta said. “It has become one of the best-loved pieces in the orchestral repertoire.”

Director Frank Oz to Recount Film Career in Talk With Stephen J. Morrison

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Frank Oz

The title of Frank Oz’s morning lecture — the second of Week Six’s “What’s Funny?” programming — is “I Don’t Know Anything About Comedy.”

“It’s true,” Oz said. “It’s absolutely true.”

It’s a dubious claim from the man whose expansive career includes puppeteering Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Grover and Cookie Monster; performing Jedi Master Yoda in four “Star Wars” films; and directing “The Muppets Take Manhattan,” “In & Out” and the 2007 “Death at a Funeral.” Armed with such a resume — he’s also won two George Foster Peabody awards, the American Comedy Awards’ Creative Achievement Award and the Art Directors Guild award —  Oz still professes he isn’t the one to ask about comedy. But he does know what makes him laugh.

“Things that are honest (make me laugh),” he said. “It could be from a movie by Steve Martin or a puppy dog.”

Morrison

In a brief break from current projects, Oz will appear in conversation with Stephen J. Morrison, Emmy-nominated executive producer and showrunner of the CNN documentary series “The History of Comedy,” at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday, July 30 in the Amphitheater. Morrison is also the executive producer of exhibit media for more than 50 interactive and personalized exhibits in the National Comedy Center, Chautauqua Institution’s partner for Week Six.

Matt Ewalt, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, said he was “struck” by a theory from a Smithsonian Magazine article by Patrick Sauer, in which Sauer posits that “more people on Earth have borne witness to Frank Oz’s characters, be it puppet or person, than any other artist in recorded human history.” After all, as Sauer points out, “Oz has had a part of three of the biggest entertainment juggernauts of the last-half century”: The Muppets, the “Star Wars” franchise and “Sesame Street.”

“Welcoming Frank Oz to Chautauqua’s Amphitheater provides the opportunity for us to hear from an artist whose work has touched the lives of millions, across generations, but just as importantly, to go well beyond the frequently asked questions and dig into the broader theme of the week,” Ewalt said. “His filmography as a director and writer is astonishing, cutting across genres of comedy, musicals and fantasy with such classics as ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ‘What About Bob?’ and ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.’ ” 

For Oz, the classic 1980 parody disaster film “Airplane” remains one of his gold standards in a contemporary industry that is tilting, on average, toward “manufactured comedy,” and away from honesty. This is in part, he said, because corporations own the studios, creating a culture obsessed with the bottom line and forcing directors to work faster, with less capital and more constraints.

“There’s less subtlety,” Oz said. “I’m a huge fan of ‘Airplane,’ which is not very subtle — it’s very broad — but it is honest.”

He remembers many characters of his own filmography fondly, including “Bowfinger” ’s oblivious but kind Jiff Ramsey, played by Eddie Murphy, and the wide-eyed American heiress, played by Glenne Headly, of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” And of course, there are the Muppets — Gonzo, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, Beaker, Dr. Teeth — puppets who originated with another actor, but who still occupy a special place in Oz’s heart. 

“They’re not mine, but I love them,” he said.

Although being a good father and “bringing moments to life on theater and screen,” are, according to Oz, the two most significant aspects of his legacy, he finds it difficult to specify exactly what inspires him.

“It’s unknowable,” he said. “If I knew what it was, I would latch onto it and create. Creativity in every sense is quicksilver. It’s hard to catch. I’d probably bottle it if I knew it. All these things come from a very flawed human place. It’s not something you can package.”

Gardening Expert Mike McGratch to Discuss Insect-Eating Allies in BTG Lecture

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Mike McGrath

Mike McGrath has spent the last 40 years writing and speaking about gardening. But, he never intended to get into gardening in the first place.

When he was a young man at a party in Philadelphia, a woman caught his eye. They got to talking and she mentioned that one of her favorite childhood memories was picking raspberries at her grandparents’ house.

To impress her, McGrath said he had raspberry bushes at his house. The truth was that he had never grown any raspberries — or anything, for that matter — in his life.

“I had no interest whatsoever in gardening, but I had a tremendous interest in the young woman,” he said. “I said, ‘I can do that.’ ”

McGrath dove into gardening and soon began to teach others what he had learned. He was editor-in-chief of Organic Gardening magazine from 1991 to 1997. He appeared as a regular gardening expert on Saturday morning editions of “The Today Show” from 1993 to 1997. Now, he hosts “You Bet Your Garden,” a nationally-syndicated radio and TV show.

And Kathy, the woman at the party, became his wife.

McGrath will give a talk about attracting insect-eating “allies” to a garden at 12:15 p.m. Monday, July 29 in Smith Wilkes Hall, as part of the Bird, Tree & Garden Club’s Monarch Moments & More lecture series.

McGrath does not use any chemical insecticides, herbicides or fungicides in his gardens. All of his gardening advice explains how people can nurture their gardens naturally.

“When I first started growing food for (Kathy), I realized how easy it was if you had the right sight and leaned into nature,” he said. “I felt compelled to tell everybody to put down your Miracle-Gro and Roundup.”

Using those types of products will only cause more problems than they solve, he said, and create a vicious cycle of using one product to fix a problem created by another, while producing another problem the gardener will have to take care of.

“Feed the soil, don’t feed the plants,” he said. “If you build raised beds, if you continually improve the soil with compost, you’re good. You’re done.”

At his talk today, McGrath will discuss how to attract birds, toads and beneficial insects to a garden. All of these eat insect pests, and serve as a natural pest control.

He said people often ask him a question expecting a quick answer.

“There are no quick answers,” he said. “That’s the issue with gardening in America today. There’s no shortcuts. The more you use these products, the bigger your problems will become, and your problems will increase exponentially.”

Everything McGrath teaches through his many platforms is something he has learned himself through his own gardening experiences. To captivate the audience, he peppers jokes throughout his talks.

“Your approach to gardening has to be fun,” he said. “If it’s not fun, why would you do it?”

Elise M. Besthoff Charitable Foundation Underwrites Club Plus Season

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After last summer’s successful pilot year, the Chautauqua Boys’ and Girls’ Club Plus program has returned for another season.

Complementing the traditional Club experience in morning sessions, Club Plus gives children the opportunity to experience interdisciplinary curriculum — in the arts and sciences to inspire academic curiosity — during the afternoon. The program’s themes this year range from National Geographic GeoChallenge Camp to filmmaking and comedy writing.

The Elise M. Besthoff Charitable Foundation is underwriting the full seven weeks of Club Plus in 2019. Last year, the foundation sponsored an initiative at Chautauqua for the first time, providing underwriting support for the final week of the 2018 Club Plus curriculum. The Foundation was pleased with the successful outcome and has increased its investment.

“The Elise M. Besthoff Charitable foundation invests in charitable grants that we think that Mrs. Besthoff would’ve supported,” said Christina Worley, president of the Besthoff Foundation and longtime Chautauquan. “All the board members knew her well, and we’ve sponsored children’s schools and events in the past.”

Worley said the Besthoff Foundation honors the late Elise M. Besthoff by supporting programs  she would’ve liked, and that sponsoring Club Plus would be the perfect way to support Chautauqua this year.

“We love supporting children because that was one of her passions,” Worley said. “So we thought Club Plus would be an interesting way to sponsor this year at Chautauqua and see … what the outcome was to see if the program was successful.”

Due to the Institution’s extensive offerings in the arts, education and more, Worley said she trusts that Institution staff will make good decisions around choosing which topics and curriculum are offered at Club Plus through partnerships with local educators and other experts who serve as instructors.

“The Institution is a first-class organization,” Worley said. She said the Besthoff Foundation is happy to have invested in the program’s expansion in 2019 and is looking forward to Club Plus’ success this season.

“We’ve invested well and we’ve had some fabulous projects that have had good success,” Worley said. “We’re really into seeing the long- term benefits of charitable giving and we’re interested in working with the Institution and this program to see where they can take it.”

For more information on underwriting opportunities, contact Megan Sorenson, director of community engagement, at 716-357-6243 or
msorenson@chq.org.

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