We're celebrating St. Louis' vibrant cultural life with insider info on all the hot happenings this September. Check out this weeks best bets with our Editor's Picks Calendar or discover more about off-beat events, arts groups and the story behind the story in our Event Spotlight. And because it's so hard to play favorites just click "More Events" to get the low down on all that day's can't-miss culture fare.
Event Spotlight
September 30th
Top Ten Events for October
Thanks for checking out 30 Days of St. Louis Arts and Culture. Hope you got out and enjoyed the culture (and weather) this September. We don't want to leave you culture-less though, so here are the top 10 events for October. For more indepth local arts scene coverage be sure to check out our blog Look/Listen...read more »
September 29th
Review: "The Rabbit Hole" at Insight Theatre
David Lindsay-Abaire’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Rabbit Hole, (which was adapted into a movie of the same name starring Nicole Kidman), is about grief without any of the typical clichés. No one sobs into the clothes of the person who died, no one needs to be held, or has any angry monologue with God. This grief is quiet, fumbling, sometimes even humorous and full of silence... read more »
September 28th
What It's Like... To Be in the Addam's Family
Veteran Broadway performer Blake Hammond is used to playing crazy characters—he was recently Edna Turnblad in Hairspray. But he still finds it kooky to be Uncle Fester in the national touring production of the Addam’s Family, which begins at the Fox Theatre on September 27. Originally a one-panel cartoon by Charles Addams in The New Yorker... read more »
September 27th
Review: Wilco "The Whole Love"
The alt-country movement sometimes gets a free pass when it comes to the criteria by which it’s judged. After all, music genres aren’t exactly empty bottles waiting to be filled with creative juices. Genre equals style—musicians are playing instruments, but they’re also playing roles. When it comes to alt-country, many groups don a one-size-fits-all world-weariness, and blur the line... read more »
September 26th
Review: "Ross McDonnell: Mine," at the Lemp Brewery
We’ll look for any excuse to poke around the creepier corners of the old Lemp Brewery—just spare us the latex zombies and fog machines. If you need proof that there are subtler ways to set your spine a-tingling than a fright from a Freddy Krueger lookalike, then check out.... read more »
September 25th
Autumn at the Arboretum
It’s fall. I say this insistently, to spite the lingering heat. I am desperate to hike at the Shaw Arboretum and feel the golden sun on my back as a benediction and not a curse. It’s time for the primal delight of the prairie fires, the gentler fire of red, gold, and orange as the trees change, the joy of 2,500 acres of ponds, hills, and oak-hickory woodlands.... read more »
September 24th
STL Improv Anywhere Seeks to... Well, Facilitate Improv Everywhere
Even a quick tour through YouTube will turn up countless examples of public demonstrations meant to not only entertain, but to prove a point, no matter how serious. From the intense to the whimsical, groups around the country (really, the world) have massed, performed and drifted into the night... read more »
September 23rd
Review: The Man Who Fell to Earth
Nicholas Roeg and cult classic—one seems to follow the other, at least when discussing his best films of the 1970s. Director of Walkabout (1971), Don’t Look Now. (1973), The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), and Bad Timing (1980), Roeg directs often unconventional actors navigating striking physical landscapes with tantalizing results... read more »
September 22nd
Enough of Calvin Trillin? Impossible
Humor is Calvin Trillin’s default mode—yet his civil-rights reporting back in the ’60s and his murder coverage for The New Yorker are formidable. He can skewer publishers, politicians, and political reporters; poke gentle fun at social quirks and foibles; and make street food sound fit for a saint... read more »
September 21st
A Perfect 10: An Interview with 10 out of Tenn
10 out of Tenn is not a Super Group. Not that the ten artists on the current two week tour aren't exceptional. The decet of Nashville singer/songwriters includes Amy Stroup, Gabe Dixon, Katie Herzig, K.S. Rhoads, Tyler James, Matthew Perryman Jones, Trent Dabbs, Butterfly Boucher, Jeremy Lister, Andrew Belle, and Will Sayles... read more »
September 20th
For the Birds, and Also, the Cicadas: HEARding Cats Harmonizes on Terry Riley’s In C
Minimalist music can be, as they say, an acquired taste. People who have not heard a classic minimalist piece like Terry Riley’s In C might give it a listen and find that at first, it sounds like a depressed goose hitting its head against the hood of a car in a steady rhythm of smacking honks... read more »
September 19th
Of Moonshine, Temperance, and Scofflaws: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick Talk about Prohibition
Is there a sexier time in American history than the 1920s? Flappers, bootleggers, speakeasies with passwords and secret knocks, the Jazz Age and the Lost Generation, it all seems so ebullient almost tipsy. It's not the domain of history class, where the decade may get... read more »
September 19th
Hey, Look What I found!: Marueen Stanton's Killer Stuff and Tons of Money
The emotional frisson offered by episodes of Antiques Roadshow usually takes one of the following forms: a) The relic is proven to be nearly worthless, and its owner is shamed on national television... read more »
September 19th
Boucheron: The Scene of the Crimes
Bouchercon is the world’s largest mystery and crime-fiction convention, and it draws fans as varied as the cast of an Agatha Christie movie. The women I keep noticing, though, are me in 10 years: gray, deliberately frumpy Jane Marple wannabes you just know are secretly hoping a murder will occur... read more »
September 18th
Review: Gitana Producitions "Inalienable Rights"
Few shows have confounded my writing process like this one. I think a looming factor in my difficulty finding an inroad to discussion of this show is that it left me conflicted; not by the subject matter or its treatment, but by the fact that I didn't find it to be an especially outstanding play. I've had issues with productions in the past without hesitating to commit my thoughts to paper, but, quite simply, those shows weren't about 9/11, and this one is... read more »
September 17th
Review of "Reflections of the Buddha" at The Pulitzer
The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts kicks off its 10th anniversary season with not a bang, but a serenely meditative om. The art world may be filled with casually tossed-off references to “sublimity,” but curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra has actually managed to pull it off, thanks in no small part to... read more »
September 16th
Bonnie Jo Campbell and Danielle Dutton
On September 19 Bonnie Jo Campbell and Danielle Dutton, two rising American authors, will read from their work at Duff's Restaurant as part of the River Styx reading series. Campbell has been described as "Michigan Gothic" writing about ill-fated heroines in rural Michigan Meth country. Danielle Dutton is more postmodern re-purposing classical female heroines like Jane Eyre and Hester Prynne in her short stories....read more »
September 15th
Interview with Dick Valentine of Electric Six
Maybe the best introduction to Electric Six is to go home pop in your copy of Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (what do you mean you don’t own Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle?) and watch the scene where Cameron Diaz comes up from the ocean onto the beach accompanied by the hyperbolic singing of... read more »
September 14th
Seeing Red: A Review of "Red" at the Rep
In front of me, a little girl squirms, and her dad tries to quiet her. Behind me, a dowager makes no secret of her disdain for abstract expressionism. Scattered throughout the Rep, jaded media types have dulled their deadline nerves with free champagne. But in the first five minutes, Red has all of them rapt...read more »
September 13th
A Conversation with Nate Mendel of The Foo Fighters
Riding the success of their new album, Wasting Light—not to mention the documentary Back and Forth, which follows the creation of that record—The Foo Fighters haven’t lost the rock ’n’ roll chemistry that continues to pack stadiums around the world...read more »
September 12th
Masterpieces in Miniature: Museum of Pocket Art
In the words of Steve Martin, “Let’s get small – really small.” Robert Jackson Harrington, inspired by a quote from, of all people, mystery novelist Walter Mosley, decided to create a tiny mobile-art-exhibition system as clever as it is cute...read more »
September 11th
Falling
Brace yourselves: I've somehow managed to get away with (milk?) this here thee-ay-tur beat for just about a year now. Look, Ma! My collegiate pursuits didn't amount to a colossal, crippling waste of time and money after all! Snark aside, I've truly enjoyed the opportunity to actively engage in our impressive local theater scene in my own little way.... read more »
September 10th
An Interview with Black Moth Super Rainbow
When it comes to ordinary, Thomas Fec (a.k.a. Tobacco) is anything but. The mastermind behind the electronic synth-pop band Black Moth Super Rainbow and his solo-project Tobacco, Fec uses analog synthesizers and tape machines to capture his unique, genre-bending sound... read more »
September 9th
The Best Chess in the West
In J.C. Hallman’s 2004 book, The Chess Artist, the author tells the true tale of controversial millionaire Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who built an entire city devoted to the glories of the game of chess in Kalmykia, the remote former Soviet republic in which he also served as president for 17 years, up until 2010...read more »
September 8th
First Look: Dances of India's "The Magic Grove"
Teen girls are lined up along one wall of a Dimensions Dance Center studio gossiping, whispering, and giggling. It feels just like the backstage at a high school musical. But this is the Dances of India dance troupe. One of the choreographers, Theckla Mehta, who everyone calls by her Indian name Ila...read more »
September 7th
Preview: MOMIX in Botanica
We caught MOMIX in Botanica when Dance St. Louis brought the show to the Touhill Performing Arts Center back in April and were excited to hear they're bringing it back for a well deserved encore this month. Our review from April is below. MOMIX in Botanica seems specifically geared toward people who think dance is basically.... read more »
September 6th
An Interview with Union Tree Review
UTR has been busy. The St. Louis sextet released their first full-length album in July, the mournful but hope-tinged Death and Other Forms of Relaxation imbued with lead singer Tawaine Noah's haunting, twangy vocals and orchestral arrangements. They had a CD release show with Bo & the Locomotive at the Firebird and created a one take video for their song "44,"...read more »
September 5th
"Tree" at Plaza Frontenac Cinemas
Writer-director Julie Bertuccelli’s sophomore narrative feature, The Tree, functions capably as both a contemporary fable and neatly-drawn work of familial portraiture against a tragic backdrop. Unfortunately, the film exhibits little affection for narrative risk or trenchant observation, preferring to drape itself in soggy spiritual awe and the admittedly striking environs of its dusty, sun-kissed Queensland, Australia setting...read more »
September 4th
Folk Sisters: An Interview with Larkin Poe
The Lovell Sisters took the bluegrass scene by storm in 2005 with their tight harmonies and melodic singing. When eldest sister Jessica left the band in 2009 to get married and go to college, the bluegrass scene thought it had lost one of its brightest stars. But Rebeca and Megan Lovell weren't ready to hang up their mandolin or drobro just yet... read more »
September 3rd
A Conversation with Amy Granat
She paints, writes and makes monographs, but the core of Amy Granat’s artistic practice is film. Sometimes it’s narrative; T.S.O.Y.W., a collaboration with artist Drew Weitzler, follows a modern version of Goethe’s Young Werther as he crosses America by motorcycle and disappears into the desert... read more »
September 2nd
Poems from Debra Allbery and Stephanie Schlaifer
We all know the complaints against poetry. It's esoteric, boring, snobbish. But we still use it. We read it at weddings, graduations, funerals– the moments when we're rendered mute by joy, or pain, or loss. Then to the poets who can say something that personally sums up the universal. So, as much as we "don't get it," we still need it, and The St. Louis Poetry Center is keeping it alive...read more »
September 1st
Queeny Art Fair Sculptor Demonstrates the Advantage of Upcycling.
The large stack of credit card company come-ons, flyers for yard services, Internet and cell phone offers, and sundry other junk mail dross slides through the shredder, becoming thin slivers of paper... read more »
