Celebration of The Land of Hidden Gems, by Amanda Browder

UNLV Department of Art Transformation Fellow Amanda Browder Installation

Installation Drawing and photos courtesy of Amanda Browder, 2019, and the UNLV Department of Art

The Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is delighted to announce the installation of “The Land of Hidden Gems,” a public sculpture by its inaugural Transformation Fellow, Brooklyn-based artist Amanda Browder (amandabrowder.com). The installation will be on view from Tuesday, April 2, to Friday, April 12, 2019, on the East side of UNLV’s Archie C. Grant Hall on Maryland Parkway between and Harmon and East University Avenues. On Saturday, April 6, The Department of Art will host a public celebration of the project from 1:00 - 4:00 pm. Come by, take a picture, and post it with the hashtags: #landofhiddengems #unlv #unlvtransformationfellow.

The April 6 event will include: public remarks by the artist, representatives from the Department of Art, and community partners; a Grant Hall Gallery exhibition documenting Browder’s 7-week Las Vegas project; and other surprises. Free parking nearby.

Over 150 volunteers have participated in this project by donating fabric and pinning and sewing fabric. The following organizations have hosted or participated in free sewing workshops led by Browder: Charleston Heights Art Center, Clark County School District, Core Contemporary, HELP’s Shannon West Homeless Youth Center, Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, Left of Center Gallery, Liberty High School, Pincushion, The Arts Factory, West Flamingo Senior Center, Winchester Dondero Cultural Center, UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute, the UNLV Department of Art, and the UNLV Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art.

The Land of Hidden Gems is a collective portrait of our community in Las Vegas. It uses only recycled and donated materials from Southern Nevada, and it has brought together Las Vegas residents and the students, staff, and faculty at UNLV. This large-scale fabric installation also reflects the expansiveness of the surrounding desert and mountain-scape and the various micro- and macro-environments within and around the city. Browder is deeply invested in the power of socially engaged art to strengthen community. During and after the installation, participants have shared personal and collective thoughts and memories through audio interviews, some of which Browder will share, along with process documents and photographs, on April 6 in the Grant Hall Gallery.

Fabric donated and prepped at Charleston Heights Cultural Center, Las Vegas.

Faculty and students in the Department of Art selected Browder from a competitive pool of over one hundred applicants. Browder’s work reflects the mission of the College of Fine Arts at UNLV to boldly launch visionaries who transform the global community through collaboration, scholarship, and innovation.

Born in Missoula, MT in 1976, Browder received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She is an Art Prize Winner participating in the first edition of the ArtPrize biennial in Grand Rapids, Michigan this coming fall. She has exhibited widely in the US, and also in Canada, The Czech Republic, and Japan. Exhibition venues include White Columns, the New Museum, and the Spring/Break Art Show in New York, The Dumbo Arts Festival in Brooklyn, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2016, she received a National Endowment for the Arts grant and worked with the Albright Knox Art Gallery to drape three buildings in Buffalo, New York. She is a founder of the well-loved art podcast Bad at Sports: Contemporary Art Talk Without the Ego. Photos and reviews of Browder’s work have appeared in The New York Times and Fibers Magazine.

To keep up-to-date on this dynamic project, please follow “UNLV Department of Art,” and “Amanda Browder: Transformation Fellow with the Department of Art at UNLV” on Facebook, @unlvtheear on Instagram, and the hashtags #LandofHiddenGems and #unlvtransformationfellow. Contact Marcus Civin marcus.civin@unlv.edu or Holly Lay holly.lay@unlv.edu for inquiries.

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EMAV Review: Nevada Conservatory Theatre’s Bloody Good 'Wedding' ★★★★

Alexander Vincent Sireci (Leonardo), Amanda Guardado (Bride). Photo by Richard Brusky.

★★★★☆ - Delicious

Perhaps Nevada Conservatory Theatre's  vibrant, fluid, fidgety, committed version of Lorca’s Blood Wedding is the production I have been waiting for all my life.

Let me elaborate: Somehow over the years, I have missed either reading or seeing this classic drama. What a joy then to finally discover this masterpiece in such a riveting, evocative staging.

Director Allegra Libonati has assembled quite a thrilling cast of lithe, intense young actors and welded them into a superb ensemble. Ms. Libonati has staged the piece as an unfolding ritual, with undulating stage pictures that are constantly morphing into ever more menacing character relationships, with victims trapped against their will on an unavoidable journey.

Photo by Katie Dennis.

She has masterfully interwoven Latin dance into the story telling and the large cast of characters often scrutinize the drama as it unfolds, silent sideline judges of the morality of the protagonists. She has made excellent use of the thrust space, managing to keep the actors in well-motivated motion to allow for all audience members to have a maximal vantage point. From first to last, Liobonati created a crescendo of inexorable tension that exploded into rewarding dramatic fireworks in the play’s climactic moments.

Set Designer Cat Dixon succeeded admirably in providing a suggestive, symbolic playing space. A swagged drape, a lone platform, a fanciful moon, all were perfectly judged minimalistic touches that mirrored the highly theatrical directorial concept. The set pieces were meticulously chosen, each one making an important artistic statement.

Photo by Katie Dennis.

Brittney Nicole Price lit the proceedings with a brooding, ominous presence, underscoring the impending tragedy. Her uses of color and her spot-on cues were thrilling in their exactitude. I will not soon forget the lights-on, lights off strobe effects as the (spoiler alert) double murders occurred. Theresa Ramos’ sound design was another fine contribution, although there were times I wish the recorded whispering was being done live by the observant actors.

Costume designer Katie Dennis provided handsome, characterful attire that ably supported the actors’ efforts by helping to visually define their stations. The red dress on the flamenco dancer was a stunning visual accent. Ryan Baker and James Whiting contributed original music that resonated with the telling of the drama, although I wish more of it had been performed live.

Photo by Katie Dennis.

The acting was of a high standard throughout and the cast was evenly matched in their stylistic approach and experience. Anchoring the show, Amanda Guardado gave a wonderfully complex, beautifully internalized performance as the Bride. Ms. Guardado was able to remain sympathetic even through all of her vacillations between the acceptable marriage in her grasp and the forbidden affair that entices.

Jacob Sidhom was certainly engaging as the Bridegroom. Puppy dog appealing, handsome and engaging, he wins our emotions and rallies us to his side in his quest for his fatally indecisive Bride. As the sexually alluring malcontent Leonardo, is every inch the bad boy, a shiny bauble that emanates the kind of dangerous charisma that makes us understand why the hapless Bride would risk her marriage for him. The three were perfection as an imperfect love triangle.

Ryan Baker (Moon). Photo by Katie Dennis.

As the Bridegroom’s Mother, Gabriella Holbrook proved to be a consistent, scolding, domineering presence. She cannot be blamed for being too young for the role, but her excellent instincts and honesty will surely be more fully manifest in 20 year’s time. The same applies to Keach Siriani-Madden’s blasé take on the Bride’s Father. He manages to find all the complicity in the role without quite achieving the mature gravitas.

Bela Marie, as a yenta of a neighbor was appropriately meddling and opinionated, even if she was a mite caricatured. No matter, the actress was assured and relentless in her pursuit. As the opinionated maid, Alyssa Tortomasi turned in a solid traversal, making a minor role into a major presence. Ryan Baker was a lucid, lurid, intoxicating presence as the Moon, both vocally and physically. Ruliko Cronin, as Death, commanded our attention.

Photo by Katie Dennis.

Aviana Glover effortlessly becomes the most likeable character in the piece as the troubled, pregnant Wife of Leonardo, the unwitting victim of his lusting for someone else’s Bride. Juliana Renee Martin was a suitably pitiable, hang dog Mother-in-Law to Leonardo, a key figure in the plot’s deadly twists and turns.

The three Woodcutters had a memorable turn as they brandish the roots of fate that entangle the love triangle All three were excellent in their focused, determined performances: Karsyn Wilson, Dawson Mullen, and Marcus Martinez.

Thanks to director Libonati, every singer cast member has their shining moment, as she created a triumphant ensemble performance of white hot concentration and abiding emotional truth.

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EMAV Review: 'The African Company' at NCT was funny, furious and uniquely American ★★★★

Maurice-Aimé Green as 'James Hewlett'

Images by Josh Hawkins, UNLV Creative Services

★★★★☆ - Delicious

Did you know that there was an African Theatre Company in 1821 America?

During Nevada Conservatory Theatre’s (NCT) delicious 4-Star production of "THE AFRICAN COMPANY PRESENTS RICHARD III”, we learn that 6 years before New York abolished slavery and 40 years before the beginning of the Civil War, this theatre company existed. William Henry Brown, a free black American, organized a production of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

What do the words of a dead White poet mean to a group of Black actors? Everything, actually. After all, these are artists forced to spend their days disguised as maids and waiters. Hiding their gifts along with their feelings, until the sun sets and the time comes to discover themselves in Shakespeare's poetry. His writing demanding that everyone find their own way through his words, haters be damned. A backstage story like no other -- funny, furious and uniquely American.

Breanna McCallum as 'Sarah'

Shakespeare is the chosen cultural battleground in this inventive retelling of a little known, yet pivotal event in the history of America’s first black theatre company. Knowing they are always under prejudicial pressures from white society, and facing their own internal shakeups, the African Company battles for time, space, audiences and togetherness. The Company presents classic plays at a theatre in downtown Manhattan for both black and white audiences. But they are challenged when they dare to put on Shakespeare’s Richard III at the same time as the powerful and popular Park Theatre. Carlyle Brown’s humorous and touching play, based on real-life events, dares to ask the question: does Shakespeare belong to everyone?

Brandon Dawson as 'The Constable Man' and Cameron Stuart Bass as ' William H. Brown'

Their competition, Stephen Price, an uptown, Broadway-type impresario, is producing Richard III at the same time that the African Company's production and has promised a famous English actor overflowing audiences if he plays Richard in Price's theatre. Fearing the competition of the African Company's production, which is garnering large white audiences, Price manipulates the law and closes down the theatre. The Company rebounds and finds a space right next door to Price's theatre. At the rise of curtain of the next performance, Price causes the arrest of some of the actors in a trumped-up riot charge. The play ends with the Company, surviving, its integrity intact, and about to launch an equally progressive new chapter in the American theatre: They'll soon be producing the first black play written by black Americans of their day.

Maurice-Aimé Green as 'James Hewlett' and Riyadh as 'Papa Shakespeare'

The very capable cast included Cameron Stuart Bass as William H. Brown; Maurice-Aimé Green as James Hewlett; Brandon Dawson as The Constable-Man; Nate Marble as Stephen Price; Breanna McCallum as Sarah; Riyadh as Papa Shakespeare; and Lauren Washington as Ann Johnson.

Lauren Washington as 'Ann Johnson'

Director Melissa Maxwell did an admirable job keeping the action moving and getting the ensemble comfortable and confident in their transitions between the play-within-a-play. The designers created an intimate and authentic proscenium stage, with an exposed backstage above the curtain line and an ample apron in front of the proscenium arch.

The production and design team includes scenic designer Trevor Dotson, lighting designer Andrew Killion, co-sound designers Megan Thompson and Lina Lim, costume designer Hailey Eakle, technical director Ryan Pope, dramaturg Dr. Lezlie Cross, and production stage manager M. Sohaa Smith.

Carlyle Brown is a writer/performer and artistic director of Carlyle Brown & Company, based in Minneapolis. He is a Core Writer of the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis, and an alumnus of New Dramatists in New York. He has served on the board of directors of The Playwrights' Center and Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the nonprofit professional theatre and is a member of the board of the Jerome Foundation. He is the 2006 recipient of The Black Theatre Network's Winona Lee Fletcher Award for outstanding achievement and artistic excellence, a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow, a 2010 recipient of the Otto Rene' Castillo Award for Political Theatre, and 2010 United States Artists Friends Fellowship.

The next production at NCT is Federico García Lorca's Blood Wedding, directed by Allegra Libonati and running March 8th through March 17th.

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