The Arts Fuse Newsletter, June 18
Help end the Spring Appeal! Reviews of Berkshires theater, Boston Dance Theater, and the Sam Grisman Project with Peter Rowan. A preview of White Snake Projects and an appreciation of Brian Wilson
Also on the magazine this week: Reviews of the film “Lavender Men” and two art exhibitions in New York that should be seen multiple times. Each will deepen your appreciation of a great artist.
From The Editor's Desk:
The magazine is very near to making our match of $2500 for this Spring Appeal. We need to balance our books. Please support the kind of arts journalism that is dedicated to independent critical thought — not the blather of promotion. These are — and will be in the future — difficult times for the arts and humanities, whose commitment to the imagination will be instrumental in defending our democracy from authoritarian shutdown. The Arts Fuse has plans to expand — not contract — its commitment to the kind of incisive coverage that is crucial in the fight for truth, justice, and equality in the arts.
Arts journalism like this is possible only because arts lovers join together to fund it.
The encomium is overused, but Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who died on May 28 at the age of 87, was indeed a giant whose writings and actions fused the political and the literary. His iconoclastic perspective, as a novelist, dramatist, activist, and social critic, created the groundwork for debates on the decolonization of literature and thought (in Africa and elsewhere), a commitment that runs through the essays in his latest book, Decolonizing Language and Other Revolutionary Ideas (published last month). “A people can be deprived of wealth and power,” Ngũgĩ argues in the title piece, “but one of the worst privations is depriving them of the means of perceiving and articulating their deprivation, and thereby developing a vision and strategy and tactics for fighting it.”
In America, Ngũgĩ is better known as a novelist than as a dissident dramatist. That is unfortunate, particularly now, given that his stage productions are powerful examples of defying autocracy. In 1977, he and Ngũgĩ wa Mirii co-authored I Will Marry When I Want, an anti-government script produced by the Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre, an experimental theater — built in a Kenyan village and maintained by peasants, factory workers, and primary school teachers — dedicated to presenting dialogue on cultural and political issues. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o was arrested and carted off to a maximum-security prison, where he would be kept without trial for nearly a year. During that period, he wrote, in secret (reportedly on toilet paper), two books: his prison memoir, Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary, and the powerhouse novel Devil on the Cross, a critique of capitalist corruption that demanded the end of dictatorship.
In 1982, Ngũgĩ’s musical Mother Sing For Me was set to be staged at the Kamiriithu Centre, but Kenyan dictator Daniel arap Moi forbade its production. The higher-ups took censorship a destructive step further: the Centre was demolished by the police.
Since Trump’s return to power in January, there has been scant protest against the threat of encroaching authoritarianism in America’s theaters. Ngũgĩ‘s risk-taking should serve as an inspiration for our stages to speak out, despite the pressures from corporations and various vested interests for them to remain silent — and complicit.
—Bill Marx, Editor-in-Chief
Archive: From the Editor's Desk 2025
Artist Remembrance: Brian Wilson — An Appreciation
By Jason M. Rubin
Brian Wilson’s clear falsetto voice may be stilled but his amazing trove of timeless music lives on.
Theater Reviews: Berkshires Roundup — In Touch With Reality
By Bill Marx
A trio of companies — Barrington Stage Company, Great Barrington Public Theater, and, to a lesser extent, Berkshire Theatre Festival — draw on the stage’s power to address our current political emergencies.
Opera Preview/Interview: White Snake Projects’ “To The People Like Us” — Understanding the Urgency of the Moment
By Jonathan Blumhofer
Our conversation touched—considerably, as it turned out—on the current political climate and the dispiriting response of the musical world to the rising tide of homegrown authoritarianism.
Dance Review: Boston Dance Theater — Inspired by Nature
By Jessica Lockhart
Boston Dance Theater is driven by the belief that a community is strengthened by an exchange of ideas.
Concert Review: Sam Grisman Project and Peter Rowan — Seizing the Moment
By Scott McLennan
There were unscripted song selections whose daring and heart made this concert so much more than a night of old beloved tunes.
Film Review: Dialectical “Materialists”
By Peter Keough
Director Celine Song beats the romantic comedy to death.
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Questions, comments, concerns?
Editor-in-Chief
Bill Marx
wmarx103@gmail.com
