This is the last weekend to catch Valhella and you can still buy tickets at the door if you get there early!!!

UPDATE: The BROS have just added a Midnight showing for Saturday night (5/19/2012)!!!

Ivar, played by Ryan Dunne

As I sat in the audience at opening night of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society’s newest production, Valhella, I found myself realizing that BROS are officially one of my favorite things about living in this city. Baltimore is home to several amazing theater companies, one might even argue that the city is rediscovering its love affair with the theater. But you can’t compare BROS to other companies in Baltimore. They’re pointed in an entirely different direction. And one thing that sets BROS apart is that they set the stakes high and go big every time. It’s as if they don’t know any other way. Maybe part of BROS popularity stems from the fact that many of us would like to imagine ourselves living that “all or nothing” ethos. And maybe that’s the underlying gratification that supporters and audience members get when interacting with the BROS. We want to go big too, so thanks for letting us participate.

Valhella is the latest in the BROS ongoing bid to obtain immortality. After seeing it twice I will attest that they’re one step closer. Upon entering the theater one is immediately struck by the set. Twice I heard comparisons to Jim Henson’s, The Dark Crystal, which in my mind is a fitting compliment. The entire stage was transformed into an ancient tree that feels impossibly real. While the audience files in, a lone pixie, dressed in white, serenades the audience with bitter sweet songs accompanied by banjo. By the time the lights dim, you’ve been well prepped to live the myth soon to unfold on stage. If you partake in the home brew being served in the lobby you might just find yourself convinced that you’re a viking too. The show opens with a moving chorus delivered with striking harmonies. The music accompanies an animation that sets up the narrative. So as not spoil the show, here are some highlights.

Ivar, Kar & Har: Ryan Dunne, Robert Bradley & Keith Becraft

The piece feels like a morality play set against a Grimm’s Fairy Tale with a healthy dose of modern cynicism about theology for good measure. The gods, Loki and Odin, sit on top of either side of the stage, as if they were a devil and angel perched upon shoulders. The action centers around a village that is in desperate need of saving. The protagonists are three handicapped brothers sired in secret by Odin. Loki tests each of the brothers while in search for a way to feed their fellow villagers after their last hunter dies.

Loki, played by Greg Bowen

Loki, played by Greg Bowen, stares the crowd down for what seems like an eternity between lines. His patience is potent and when he finally rises to speak or sing a true demon emerges. Loki’s main number is punctuated by a performance of the movement team that have been an integral part of this show and past rock operas. The team incorporates elements of dance into elaborate sequences that elevates these productions to another level.

Loki, played by Greg Bowen

Dying villager: Jared Margulies

Fenrir: Jack Sossman

Minions of Loki

Kris Hanrahan as Asta, Kerry Brady as a Maiden

Hel: Danielle Robinette

Throughout the middle of the opera the three brothers are tested by mystical creatures in the forest. Danielle Robinette, playing the part of Hel, gives a riveting performance and scares the bejesus out of one of the bumbling brothers. The conceptualization for each of these creatures was excellent. The costuming and gadgetry were captivating. BROS productions are accentuated by the technical wizardry of Chuck Green whose animated wolf mask is one of the most memorable parts of the show.

Kris Hanrahan as Asta

Har: Keith Becraft

Hel: Danielle Robinette

Kar: Robert Bradley

Kar: Robert Bradley

On to the climax. Meet Robert Bradley who could very well be the long lost love child of King Diamond and Rob Halford. Bradley plays Kar, who ends up being the coolest of all the brothers when he’s given a singing voice that literally blows everyone away. His is a heavy metal falsetto not to be toyed with. Bradley could have ruled absolute over Los Angeles in 1982. It’s not difficult to imagine him strutting up and down the Sunset Strip in leather chaps, hair teased to the stratosphere, fronting a platinum-selling metal band while fostering a ridiculous coke habit that would have been kicked by the time he was ready for his VH1 Behind the Music episode and subsequent comeback tour in the 90’s. Yes, he’s that good. The BROS always seem to find at least one superstar for each of their productions. This time Bradley fills those shoes nicely.

Kar: Robert Bradley

Valhella culminates in a battle between good and evil played out with guitar solos, giant painted puppets (which I want to see more of), banshees, demons, and all manner of mythological, theatrical goodness. It was awesome. Worthy of the standing ovation it received. As I walked out of the theater the look on the faces of those who had just witnessed Valhella spoke to its awesomeness.

BROS: Cast and Crew

Overall, the quality of Valhella illustrates the evolution of the Baltimore Rock Opera Society. There are several things about this production that are noticeably better than the last one. And therein lies one of the reasons why we love these guys. This is a work in progress and we’re watching them build something amazing. The story unfolding onstage is just part of a larger story that we feel privileged to get a peek at whenever we sit in on a dress rehearsal. Every time I go to the Autograph Playhouse, the theater they’re restoring, I see progress. Every time they put on a production, the whole experience is that much more professional. Put these observations into the context of the scale at which they’re operating and you can’t help but realize that the BROS phenomenon has the potential to grow into something epic.

It’s hard enough to start a project with a group of people and maintain it for any period of time. These guys have a huge team that work incredibly hard, and they’ve got great traction. I’m calling it right now, the Baltimore Rock Opera Society is gonna be huge. You can feel it when you’re sitting in the audience and you can see it in the dazed look on the faces of the crowd as they file out of the theater that the BROS built.

I fully believe that in years to come they’ll be filling theaters like the Hippodrome and selling action figures, soundtracks, cinema quality features, and tickets to sold out world tours. This is your chance to say you saw them when…

Johnny Marra and The Truth

This is the last weekend to catch Valhella and you can still buy tickets at the door if you get there early!!!

UPDATE: The BROS have just added a Midnight showing for Saturday night (5/19/2012)!!!

*Please leave a comment with names of folks who we couldn’t easily identity in the photos (and any corrections) and we’ll make it right.

The convention featured artist seminars, tattoo contests, and sideshow entertainment (think a tattooed reptile-man and a dreadlocked woman in fishnets slicing apples in their mouths with chainsaws.), and included a “Comedy Magic Variety Hour” at Illusions downtown. There were sexy ladies from famous tattoo TV shows and industry pros in the flesh, decorating flesh. People had some sick tattoos.

Anyway, enjoy this photo story by Valerie Paulsgrove and get inspired to get that Phish tattoo you’ve always wanted.

Liaa Walter of Cirque Du Rouge tattoos draws the design for Susa

Blue Comma of Baltimore

Blue Comma of Baltimore

Scott Marshall tattoos Shawn Caldwell

Gerald Feliciano finishes Tim Emig’s tattoo

Tania Adamow (left) and Kristen Piocirillo 

Baltimore Tattoo Convention

Jewelry by Vicious Charm

Chris Reeves, first place winner for best traditional tattoo

Abby shows off her extrodinary tattoo

Harley shows off her head piece

Chad Lenjer oh Ohio works on a piece on Sergio Kindle

Goodies for sale from the Gemini Company

Faith Broache and Karma Jane pose as they wait to be judged duri

Artworks by All for One from Richmond Virginia

David Nguyen is tattooed by Duong Nguyen

How do you respond when the City attempts to privatize recreation centers, the “Superblock” looms as a “revitalization” effort that doesn’t support existing businesses or communities of the Westside, and the reality for many inner city children is that they’re more likely to go to prison than graduate school? These issues, endemic of a larger national crisis, speak to structural failings that begin first at home in community.

One beginning response is with Greenpants, an arts collective, which immerged this fall from Occupy Baltimore’s Arts & Culture Committee. These artists have started to find their individual and collective voices as they engage these deeper issues. Greenpants members: Erin Barry-Dutro, Hannah Brancatto, Jen Liu, Gerry Mak, Mike McGuire, Olivia Robinson, Jenny Graff Sheppard, Jessica Wyatt & Dan Zink have been inspired to make art and work towards social change. Possessing a variety of skills amongst themselves in organizing, educating, illustrating, writing, and creating video and electronic media, this collective has begun to address these issues with their recently funded Kickstarter project, Luminous Intervention, which has allowed Greenpants to purchase a projector, so they can illuminate the city with messages aimed at liberating and transforming both public space and consciousness.

Whether it’s the lost history of anonymous buildings set to become “Superblock” or the closing and privatizing of the city’s recreations centers, there’s a public shutting down of collective space, vision, and future in favor of private interest. Greenpants’ intervention is simple, to shed light where there’s darkness, to speak truth to power, and in the words of collective member, Jenny Graff Sheppard, “to ‘occupy’ non invasively and non violently many spaces … over a long period of time.”

The first Luminous Intervention was projected on May 4^th as promotion for the anticipated United Workers march to GGP, General Growth Properties, this coming Saturday, May 19th. To raise public awareness, Greenpants chose to project on the side of the GGP-owned Gallery mall in the Inner Harbor. Shoppers walking past the installation became then active participants in the space, some people giving the thumbs up and shouting appreciation for the installation.

When asking Greenpants, “How do projections transform space?” Jenny said, “When people come upon something out of the ordinary in their own regular environment, there is a potential for a small shock to the circuitry of the brain. When those with the smallest voice in society (those with limited economic power or mobility) see their words, thoughts, voices amplified through light onto the architecture of a city that is a powerful thing and one that can be affirming.”

And collective member Mike McGuire shared, “Projection allows us to temporarily transform visual space in a large way. Our culture is incredibly visual. We are bombarded with commercial images almost everywhere we go. Our interventions will liberate some of the visual field from the gross consumerism and commercialization that dominate public visuals. It will hopefully be refreshing for most of the unexpecting audience.”

Like the people’s mic used to amplify the voice of protestors at general assemblies, art has the power to amplify the least heard voices in society and strike through opaque institutional power. It can be a tool for social change that’s very nature is utterance. These projections, a visual amplification, emerged as a response to the dearth of imagery that still needed to be developed and grown from Occupy Baltimore. Mike has said that art has the potential to make the revolution irresistible, and likens artists to the white blood cells of society. With the freedom and mobility to navigate to areas of crisis, artists can call attention to societal problems and encourage others to work towards long-term solutions.

Mike also said, “Art (defined broadly) is a fantastic communication tool. The more creative we are, the harder we are to box in and be ignored. Art engages people in a way that often goes deeper than argument, debate or even conversation. Projections like the iconic 99% ‘bat signal’ inspire people; street theater like The Tax Dodgers strikes a nerve. All movements generate culture. All protest is theater. The more we recognize that and learn to work with it, the better off we are.”

The next Luminous Intervention is scheduled for the Transmodern Festival this week. And future Luminous Intervention sites will be chosen for different reasons, “One site might be a great space or wall that is visible to foot or car traffic, another might have a particular historical significance that relates to uprisings against different forms of oppression, and other sites might just be orphans in need of some TLC” says Jenny. From inert commercial space to living art space and potentially caring for abandoned space, Luminous Intervention is a fluid art project that has the ability to speak to many different audiences by engaging the receptivity of all space in an array of image/messages. Erin Barry-Dutro said, “I know that I am looking to jog an audience out of the everyday, to make them rethink the history of spaces around them and the way they interact with these spaces, with people, and with their government.”

In addition to Luminous Intervention, Greenpants has other projects in the works such as some potential puppet theater and a series of Occupy Trading Cards  that’s open to all artists for submission.

Working together as a collective to find community and share skill sets between each other to engage the larger community seems to be the growing answer to how to combat the structural failings and darkness of our cities and larger world. We need to start first with a microcosm of interconnection that works.

When I asked Greenpants what their wildest dreams might be, what they hope to achieve through this collaboration. Jenny seemed to articulate the zeitgeist of the community:

“To incite insight, to awaken people, to forge alliances with a variety of now separate groups, individuals and organizations. To enable new voices to be heard and considered.

To engage a range of types of people with the creative process of collaborating on a projection project. To get people out of their houses, neighborhoods and onto the street. To relieve our throat chakras, blocked from years of being disregarded by the city’s practices and policies.

To make people feel proud of this city and of their own contributions.

To entertain, to educate, to inspire.

To make Baltimore a safe, sustainable, healthy place for all to thrive.”

Transmodern Festival 2011

Puppet Tyranny. High-stakes silent disco. Performance-based dinner served with dinner-based performance. Crowd-surfing art exhibits. Mickey Free.

It’s that time of year again: the 9th Annual Transmodern Festival begins Thursday night outside the Current Space and runs through Sunday afternoon, bringing you four days of high-caliber, w.t.f. performance art, because there ain’t shit on T.V. tonight.

If you’ve experienced Transmodern before, you’ve probably cleared your calendar already for this weekend. If not, prepare to have your brain opened wide.

From Transmodern’s website, the festival is “a cultural phenomenon presenting radical, experimental, expectation-defying work from local, national, and international artists.” For a good preview of the candy your brain can expect, check out our coverage of last year’s festival.

Transmodern 2011 – Rooms Play

Past years have included N.E.S. dance performance, Rooms Play by the Copycat Theater, eight-legged monster drummers, and squirrels feeding pizza to humans. And don’t expect the folks at Transmodern to run out of ideas any time soon.

Among this year’s highlights: F.E.A.S.T., an extravaganza of food, drag, art, talk, and music designed to impress every sense you possess. The Body X-tended featuring Eric F. Avery, The Dandy Vagabonds, Lurch and Holler re-imagines the fashion  show through variations on the theme of human form. Crowd Surfing views art at an arms-length, passed over the heads of the audience to the sounds of local band Weekends. All the while, projections, performances and installations will be taking place at Alley OOOOPs in Tyson Alley, featuring Bethany Dinsick, Meg Rorison, Sam Shea, and more.

Transmodern 2011

Check out the schedule below for a complete list of times and locations, and get stoked for what looks to be the best Transmodern Fest yet

Thursday, May 17

Current Space (421 N Howard)

7:30  – 10:30pm

-The F.E.A.S.T Dinner Theatre

-Curse

-VINYLLA

Friday, May 18

Alley-OOOOOPs! (Franklin and Saratoga Streets)

7:30-12pm – Projections/Performances

D:center @ MAP (218 W. Saratoga St.)

8-9:00pm – Effervescent Collective

The 14Kt Cabaret (218 W. Saratoga St.)

9-11:30pm – The Body X-tended

11:30pm – The Body Pageant

Current Space (421 N Howard)

7:30 – 10:30pm

-The F.E.A.S.T Dinner Theater

-Carl Marx

-Zodiacal Light

-Dazzlestorm

-DJ -Jason Willet

Saturday, May 19

Alley-OooooooPs! (Franklin and Saratoga Streets )

7:30-12pm

-Projections/Performances

D:center @ MAP  (218 W. Saratoga St.)

8-9pm

-Effervescent Collective

10:30-12pm

-Crowd Surfing featuring Weekends

The 14Kt Cabaret (218 W. Saratoga St.)

8-12pm

-The Quiet Show.. Ear Lappers

Current Space (421 N Howard)

7:30 -10:30pm

-The F.E.A.S.T Dinner Theater

-Puppet Tyranny

-Tabat Monroe

-DJ – Josh Van Horn

Sunday, May 20
Pedestrian Service Exquisite @ Baltimore’s Farmers Market and Bazaar (Jones Falls Expressway at Holliday & Saratoga Streets)

9:00am-noon

-The Compliment Fairy

-Never Bird Theatre

-Seasonal Affected Disorder

-Daniel Van Allen

-The FM Milkmaids with Andrea

-Barrage Marching Band

Noon

- Fluid Movement’s LOVE PARADE!

Transmodern 2011

Peter Crellin: wood man

Last week, while What Weekly was busy writing about Melissa Moore and the Maryland Film Fest, one door away furniture maker Peter Trumbull Crellin was crafting the conference table for the G8 summit in Camp David. He finished Saturday morning.

The table took Crellin ten 14-hour work days. At the same time, he was completing final projects for his semester’s end at Corcoran College of Art + Design, where he’s pursuing an M.A. in museum exhibition and design. The oak G8 table has an eight-foot diameter. Crellin still looked pretty tired Tuesday.

“[The G8 project] was probably, from contract to completion, three weeks,” said Crellin, sitting on a milk crate in his sawdust-coated studio. “If I were quoting a private client, I would probably have set [the timeline] in the region of several months.”

Everything in Crellin’s studio is one color: wood color. Boards, planks, metal rods and hand-tools cover the tables and hang on the walls. Menacing power-tools loom in every corner, powdered with sawdust. There are no chairs, presumably because Crellin doesn’t sit down. It reeks of the sort of creative intensity that has no time to sit, vacuum, or comb its hair. It needs to create.

“My studio work is just my own expression,” said Crellin. “I use a lot of bent laminations and marquetry patterning.” Of the latter technique, Crellin says “a lot of people think it’s the same as inlay, but inlay would be when you insert bits of metal and wood [into the piece]. Marquetry is when you build up pieces of veneer to make a pattern.” The technique is responsible for the beautiful colors and checker-patterns displayed in Crellin’s work. “I hate to use the term ‘old school,’” he said, “but I cut things out on my table saw, I use my drill press.”

Usually, Crellin just designs his fluid, sculpture-like work for residential interiors. And, in the last year, he’s been so busy studying at Corcoran College in D.C. that even his studio work has been pushed to part-time.

But last October, Crellin landed a contract through Hargrove, Inc., an event service based in Lanham, to craft the table for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit November in Honolulu. The table was to serve a luncheon for the first spouses of the member-countries, and Crellin thinks that gig led to his latest commission for the G8.

“Once you show people you can do jobs like that, they start calling you for special projects,” said Crellin.

Crellin designed the G8 table to reflect the meeting’s setting. “They wanted this to have a rustic feel to it,” he said. “Because Camp David is off in the woods, they wanted it to reflect that.” Towards this end, Crellin made the eight-foot circular table with a dark, coarse-grained oak. It features a main, donut-shaped tabletop and a centerpiece, separated by a 2-inch gap so wires can be run down through the table (to power pencil-sharpeners, or something).

It is apparently common fare for tables to be custom-made for events like the G8 summit–the sort of thing world leaders can afford to worry about. Crellin said he’s unsure whether this gig will lead to more high-profile conferences, but he hopes so. “I try to make [the price] as reasonable as I can, because it’s an honor to be asked to do these things.”

An honor it may be, but Crellin has certainly worked for it. Originally from Massachusetts, he got his B.A. in archaeology from the University of Sheffield in northern England in 1997. Afterwards, he and his wife returned to Rockport, Mass. where Crellin started to work with antiques dealers, doing small restorations and nurturing an interest in craftsmanship he’d held since growing up. It wasn’t long, however, before Crellin moved on from restorations.

“A friend of mine said to me, ‘If you want to learn how to restore things, you should learn how to build them.” So in 1999 Crellin found an apprenticeship with Syron & Bishoff, furniture makers in Rockport known for their colorful incorporation of poylmer clay into their woodworks.

After working with Syron & Bishoff, Crellin said he was no longer interested in restoration. “I thought, if I could build my own designs, why would I want to restore someone else’s?” he said. “I apprenticed with them for 18 months, and then, probably too soon for my own good, I stepped out on my own. But, of course, those were different economic times.” He started making the craft market circuit, going to fairs like the Philadelphia Invitational Furniture Show, Craft Boston, and the Baltimore American Craft Council Show.

When his wife landed a job in Baltimore, Crellin said, “I had been in Massachusetts for ten years. It seemed like a good time to leave. I had no idea that I wanted to go back to school… I wasn’t even sure I was going to open up shop until I saw an ad for the space in Load of Fun.”

Thank goodness he did. In June 2010 Crellin moved into his current space. About three days a week he has to commute from his home in Federal Hill to D.C. for class, but the rest of the time he’s here. “I’m sure I could live in a condo in Silver Spring and all that, but I like to be able to walk down to whatever pub’s on the corner. I’m a city kid.”

Single Carrot Theatre‘s Gold Rush Gala, their sixth annual fundraiser, went off without a hitch Saturday night.

The event, catered by Joe Squared with music by The Moonlighters and The Manly Deeds, was (what else?) 1840′s-themed, replete with string-ties, cowboy hats, overalls, and beers.

“It’s an opportunity for us to get to know our patrons, to raise a glass with them, to dance with them,” said Single Carrot’s managing director Elliott Rauh. “Plus, it’s so much fun to take over the first floor of Load of Fun and transform it completely for a couple of hours.”

Last year’s gala theme was “les bon temps roule,” and the year before Load of Fun Space was turned into a 1920′s speakeasy. “We chose ‘gold rush’ so that, if you couldn’t come dressed up as a saloon wench, there would be a color theme you could be a part of,” said Rauh. Saloon wenches were in no shortage, but the event also hosted its share of casual cowboys, and even regular suit-and-tie gala-goers.

With its collaboration of local food, music, and theatre, Rauh said the event exemplified the energy of Station North.

“It’s great seeing what this neighborhood has evolved into in the last 5 years,” said Rauh. “Before, it was unthinkable that people would come to North Avenue dressed in a tuxedo for a gala.”

Enjoy these photos courtesy of Breck Jones