At Dress for Success and Women of Wardrobe's annual Summer Soiree, generously hosted by Tootises, fashion-forward attendees dressed in pretty pastels, bold patterns and lots of ruffles — many designed by Houston's Hunter Bell, who showed off her fall line alongside jewelry by Claudia Lobao. Chairs Karishma Asrani, Courtney Campo, Allie Danziger and Melissa Sugulas welcomed guests to the event, which toasted the 20th anniversary of Dress for Success, and raised more than $20,000 for the org.
FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS, AND the sometimes-fraught dynamic between fathers and sons, is the subject of Pictures from Home, a poignant and humorous “memory play” written by Sharr White based on photographer Larry Sultan’s 1992 photo memoir of the same name.
Now running through Feb. 11 at the Alley Theatre, Pictures stars Zachary Fine as Larry Sultan, who takes it upon himself to capture the inner lives of his aging parents by casting them in a series of artfully staged photographs doing ordinary things, like reading the newspaper or fixing the vacuum cleaner. Alley Resident Acting Company member Todd Waite plays against type as Larry’s macho dad Irving, whose emotions and vulnerability are exposed over the course of his son’s project; the role was played by Nathan Lane on Broadway in 2023. Susan Koozin stars as Larry’s loving but comically sharp mother Jean; and Rob Melrose directs. In a brilliant bit of meta-staging, photos of the real Larry Sultan’s mom and dad are projected onto screens that drop in and out of the set, prompting the characters onstage to comment upon and critique the images.
Todd Waite as Irving and Zachary Fine as Larry Sultan
Pictures from Home is enjoying a homecoming of sorts, as the work was initially developed and presented as a reading to enthusiastic audiences at the Alley All New Festival in 2020. A fully realized Houston production for the Alley’s Hubbard Theatre stage was preempted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the play found its way to Broadway for a February 2023 run starring Nathan Lane, Zoe Wannamaker, and Danny Burstein. Given that Pictures began as a work-in-progress in Houston, White was keen to have the Alley be the first to present the play post-Broadway.
“The Alley’s audiences will witness a production that’s both unique and different from the Broadway rendition,” said Melrose in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to share this special experience with them.”
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WHAT IF ANYONE could be an artist? Or, to put it another way, what if the tools of creativity — regardless of the medium, be it dance, writing, music or visual art — were accessible to all of us, and more often than not, simply lay dormant due to circumstance, socio-economic challenges, and self-doubt?
These are not the questions Houston artist NEGRASSO is dealing with in his solo exhibit Macrocosm, which goes up Feb. 3 at Art Is Bond Gallery, but they come to mind after one learns a bit more about his biography.
Born in 1952, raised in the Third Ward, and now settled in the Heights, NEGRASSO was compelled to acknowledge and honor his creative calling relatively late in life after a health scare in 2001. The details about this awakening are few in the show’s press release, and there’s no information about the man’s provocative all-caps moniker. What we do have is his transcendent, highly tactile art, including paintings that date back to 2016, and recent explorations in pure abstraction evoking the totality of existence as seen through the eyes of our elders. Charming, figurative works like “Jazz Man” and “Lady in Waiting” are more straightforward, even as NEGRASSO’s brush strokes seem to vibrate like air molecules stimulated by breath through the bell of a saxophone. In fact, the viewer might consider looking at NEGRASSO’s paintings the same way one listens to and experiences music.
Macrocosm is evidence that in each life there is always time for a creative renaissance, so long as one is willing to pick up the proverbial brush.
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