Travel without a passport at Ringling College of Art and Design, where the latest exhibition from American painter and illustrator George Pratt catalogues the artist’s two-month odyssey through the sands and cities of Morocco and the Sahara. From old city markets and the Atlas Mountains to Bedouin camps and the famous Blue City, Pratt captures it all in striking color through near 100 ink sketchings, oil paintings, watercolors, photographs and more, bespeaking an artist still inspired and still exploring, all those years later. Entitled George Pratt: Carnet de Voyage – Maroc, the exhibition runs through March 22 at the Selby Foundation Gallery.

“I just wanted to immerse myself in the experience and whatever was going to happen, was going to happen,” says Pratt of those eventful two months travelling through Morocco in 2016, following the footsteps of his heroes, Eugene Delacroix, Arthur Melville, and John Singer Sargent, all of whom found inspiration in the Kingdom of Morocco. He walked the markets of Marrakesh and the old walled medina in Fes; he traveled from the coastal city of Essaouira to the mountainside city of Chefchaouen, known as the “blue pearl of Morocco,” because all the buildings are painted a vibrant blue. “And I’m a blue junkie, man,” Pratt says. “It was unbelievable.” The more he explored, the more comfortable he became, eventually giving up his hotel room in Marrakesh and staying with a local shopkeep for a week or so, being shown “all the nooks and crannies'' of the city, much of which appears in Carnet de Voyage, in oil paintings of watersellers and jewelry makers, stall merchants and busy streets.

And when the man said he knew a driver who could take them 13 hours south to the Sahara Desert, where the Bedouin tribes were encamped, Pratt agreed to meet them outside the walls in two days’ time.

“We didn’t do the typical tourist stuff,” says Pratt. Living with the Bedouins for a week, he smoked hookah and drank tea with them, ate madfouna, a sort of Berber ”pizza” baked in the sand, and listened to the music by the campfires at night. He met a holy man and saw the women at work on the looms. “And we rode camels in the desert, climbed the dunes, and watched the sun set over the Sahara,” he says.

Through it all, Pratt was sketching and painting, doing quick studies during the day and drawing long into the night, filling his notebooks, one after the other, many of which are also on display in the exhibition. “It really opened a spigot,” Pratt says, and he’s spent the years since making so many watercolors and oil paintings from the experience that they couldn’t all fit in the show. “I’m exploring color more than I ever have,” he says, and it spills forth in both urban portraits painterly and bold, all slashing brushstrokes and slabs of paint, as well as delicate watercolor landscapes where pink sands meet blue skies in something like paradise.

“I absolutely did not plan this trip out,” Pratt says today with a chuckle. “But it turned into a journey.”

On display in the Selby Foundation Gallery at Ringling College, George Pratt: Carnet de Voyage – Maroc runs through March 22. 

Pictured: Merchant - Blue City by George Pratt. Photo by Phil Lederer.

Shelby Finnie has always loved to perform. As a dancer growing up in North Carolina, the stage became her home. Eventually Finnie graviated toward ballet, where she landed her first professional job out of high school dancing with the Sarasota Ballet. Now, Finnie is returning to Sarasota as a cast member of the touring production of the Broadway musical Jagged Little Pill, which stops at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall next Tuesday.

“I got to dance professionally with the Sarasota Ballet as my first professional job, which was really life changing and an amazing opportunity for me. My time spent with the organization really shapes who I am as an artist today,” says Finnie.

In Jagged Little Pill, a musical based on Alanis Morisette’s groundbreaking music, Finnie has plenty of opportunity to showcase her dance training. The musical, which focuses on “a perfectly imperfect Connecticut family”, sees Finnie play a special version of the main character, Mary Jane Healy. “I’m technically in the ensemble but I do step out frequently as what we call an avatar. I’m kind of the physical embodiment of what’s happening on the inside of MJ Healy,” says Finnie. “It’s really cool that we get to tell that story through dance and through movement which is something that I haven’t ever seen before and is super unique to the show. I get to personify her innermost feelings through movement.”

Doing so not only allows Finnie to showcase her dancing, but gives an even deeper look into the mindset of the characters. “With musicals we often say, when the words aren’t enough, we break out into song. It’s kind of a similar thing with this production, where dialogue and acting isn’t enough and the emotions are so raw, we get to see that come out in a physical way through a dance,” says Finnie. “I think it’s something that audiences really resonate with and it’s a beautiful way to tell stories.” 

Pictured: L to R- Julie Reiber, Allison Sheppard and Shelby Finnie in the North American Tour of Jagged Little Pill. Photo is by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.

Since my equal passion to books is film, like any thought provoking international film, Irene Graziosi’s debut novel The Other Profile has given me quite a book to ponder. The Other Profile should be a major hit with anyone in their 20’s or 30’s as a more intellectual translation in which the story surrounds an influencer named Gloria written in the POV of the woman, Maia, whom she hires to be her assistant. Even though I’m well past 30, I appreciated the bird’s eye view into the younger set’s trials and tribulations which at their core, are actually ageless and universal.

Both Gloria and Maia, though living in different economic circumstances, are both trying to establish their worth in a technology obsessed environment that diminishes our humanity. Gloria deals with shallow followers who only want to be seen with her for their own online popularity. Maia is living with an older man and vacillates between love and repulsion, side gigging at a bar to make end’s meet.

The women attempt to learn from each other, and while Maia secretly thinks Gloria’s soul is empty, Maia reveals certain actions of her past that make the reader wonder who, if anyone, has any moral high ground. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them navigate their separate lives and attempts at friendship, vicariously experiencing life from both sides of the wealth track. While Mean Girls is a successful comedy, I would compare The Other Profile as a darker and intriguing look at female relationships.

The Other Profile by Irene Graziosi Translated by Lucy Rand, Publication Date:  February 6, 2024 ISBN: 9798889660026.

Asolo Repertory Theatre, currently celebrating its 65th Anniversary, teams with one of the world’s most produced playwrights, Ken Ludwig, for his newest play Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, based on the detective stories by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. The partnership will launch with a closed reading of the thriller/comedy on Sunday, March 10, 2024. Asolo Rep Producing Artistic Director, Peter Rothstein, will direct. Rothstein, stated “Asolo Rep has a long and successful history of producing Ken Ludwig plays: Crazy For You, Three Musketeers, Murder on the Orient Express, The Games Afoot. It is an extraordinary honor that one of the most celebrated playwrights of our time has chosen the Asolo to develop and produce his latest play. “Asolo Rep has staged such wonderful productions of my work over the last several years that I knew there was no theatre in the country better suited to developing Lady Molly of Scotland Yard,” stated playwright Ken Ludwig. “I couldn’t be more thrilled to be working with Peter Rothstein, whose expertise and experience will bring this play so joyously to life.” In this world premiere reading, Ken Ludwig brings his signature theatricality and brilliant comic flare to a high-octane thriller in which the fate of the world is at stake. London, 1940: the war rages across the Channel. German bombs drop on the city nightly. Scotland Yard detective Lady Molly Robertson and her partner Peg just want a good cup of tea. But when they witness a murder at the swanky Savoy Hotel, the seemingly simple case leads them deep into the British war effort and the top-secret code-breaking operation at Bletchley Park. Going undercover as cryptographers, they discover that Bletchley has more secrets than scientists and uncover a plot that will strike at the very heart of Britain. Lady Molly and Peg must race against time to avert disaster, narrowly avoiding death at every turn, and they ultimately prove that no problem is too difficult for brilliant women to overcome. Five actors play more than 20 characters in this tour-de-force new comedy-thriller. The reading cast, in alphabetical order, will include Matthew Amendt, Trezure Coles, Dylan Godwin, Aneisa J. Hicks, Adelin Phelps and Sally Wingert. 

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The Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall is excited to welcome Jimmy Failla to Sarasota on Saturday, May 11, 2024 at 8pm. Tickets for the Everybody Calm Down Tour go on sale this Friday, February 23 at 10am EST. Jimmy Failla is an American stand-up comedian, TV Pundit, Author, and Host of the syndicated FOX Across America with Jimmy Failla, which airs 12-3 EST Monday-Friday on Fox News Radio and streams on Fox Nation, Radio.Com and TuneIn. The show is also available as a podcast on iTunes. Failla was raised in Levittown, New York. A former New York City cab driver, Failla was named Outstanding Male Comedian of the year at the 2014 New York City Nightlife Awards. His one-hour standup special, "State Of The Union," is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. He has also made multiple standup appearances on AXS TV's "Gotham Comedy Live." He played himself on "The Jim Gaffigan Show" on TV LAND. In addition, he appears regularly on Kennedy on the Fox Business Channel as well as "America's Newsroom," and has made multiple appearances on "The Greg Gutfeld Show," "The Ingraham Angle," "Watters World," and "The Story with Marth MacCallum." He has also appeared on Strange Inheritance: Unpacked as well as Redeye on Fox News. He has served as spokesman for the Flipps Mobile App.In addition, he is the head writer for A-List Comedy, a national comedy service that supplies topical humor and audio sketches to over two hundred radio stations. Tickets start at $20.70 and can be purchased at www.VanWezel.org, by calling the box office at 941-263-6799 or by visiting the box office Monday through Friday between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Groups of 10 or more should contact 941-263-6726. Pre-show dining is available through Mattison’s at the Van Wezel which is located inside the theatre. Reservations can be made on VanWezel.org or through the box office. 

After two painful delays due to COVID-19, Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe is thrilled to finally bring to the stage the world-premiere musical, “Ruby.” The show is a musical retelling of the true story of a shocking killing of a White doctor in Live Oak, Fla., and the Black woman, Ruby McCollum, who was accused of his murder. “Ruby” is a homegrown affair: the book was written by WBTT Founder/Artistic Director Nate Jacobs and his brother, Michael Jacobs; lyrics by Michael Jacobs; music by Nate Jacobs, Brennan Stylez and Antonio Wimberly, with additional music by Nehemiah Luckett; directed by Nate Jacobs. “Ruby” was originally planned for the 2019–20 season and then, again, in the 2021–2022 season, but was delayed both times due to COVID-19. In 1952, when the killing happened, Ruby and her husband, Sam, were quite prosperous for the time and place, due in part to gambling and liquor sales. Ruby was, in fact, described as the wealthiest Black woman in town and the couple was well respected in the community. It was one of their four children – the youngest, Loretta – that Ruby McCollum later said was the product of a forced relationship with the shooting victim, Dr. C. Leroy Adams. She claimed that the reason for the killing was because Adams refused to leave her alone. But there is more than true crime to this story, which became so notorious that famed writer Zora Neale Hurston was sent by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the trial. In segregated Florida, where Black people were essentially disenfranchised, unable to serve on juries or hold political office, the history of White men taking sexual advantage of Black women without repercussions was long. Ruby’s testimony at trial was limited to exclude much of her defense, and the judge imposed a gag order on her as well, preventing any press interviews. Ruby's is a fascinating, powerful story, one that’s been touched upon in books and documentary films. Now it finally takes the stage live in what promises to be an emotional musical drama. The cast includes: Catara Brae (Ruby McCollum), Maurice Alpharicio (Sam McCollum), Larry Alexander (Dr. Adams), Ashley Elizabeth Crowe (Zora Neale Hurston), Sieglinda Fox (Olivia), Benjamin Brandt (Sheriff Gary) and David Sitler (Judge Adams); members of the ensemble are: Matelyn Alicia, Lee Hollis Bussie, Shawn Cacciola, Jazzmin Carson, Nya Chambless, Eliza Engle, Sarah Haun, Ilexis Holmes, Sarah Middough, Shena Renee, Patric Robinson, Ned Averill Snell, and Rickey Tedesco. There is live musical accompaniment, with orchestrations by Nehemiah Luckett and Dan Sander-Wells. Music director and main keys for the show is Sander-Wells. The band also includes Jamar Camp, auxiliary keys; Dan Haedicke, guitar; Isaac Mingus, bass; Henley Connor III, drums; and Richard Philbin, reeds. Kevin White is production manager, Lizzi Nehls is production stage manager, KaCie Ley is assistant stage manager, Susan Haedicke is dramaturg, Jeffrey Weber is scenic designer, Patrick Russini is sound designer, Ethan Vail is lighting designer, Andrea Herrera is costume designer, Austin Jacobs is projection designer, Braxton Rae is intimacy director, and Annette Breazeale is properties master. In addition to its show sponsors, the production is supported in part by a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts. Performances take place in WBTT’s Donelly Theatre (1012 N. Orange Ave., Sarasota). Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, and 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $50/adults, $20/students and active military (prices include all applicable ticket fees). For more information or to purchase tickets, visit westcoastblacktheatre.org or call the Box Office at 941-366-1505. 

 The Circus Arts Conservatory (CAC) and Key Chorale are thrilled to come together again for an all-new production of Cirque des Voix®: Circus of the Voices, a one-of-a-kind performing arts experience. There will be three performances, with shows taking place March 22-23, 2024. Fourteen years ago, CAC co-founder, President & CEO Pedro Reis and Key Chorale’s Artistic Director Joseph Caulkins joined forces to create a unique and special arts presentation, as they combined the more-than 100 voices of Key Chorale and the 40-piece Cirque Orchestra with live circus artists. This season’s three performances will feature acts choreographed to exciting and unforgettable compositions. Circus artists of national and international acclaim, as well as youth performers from the CAC’s Sailor Circus Academy, will dazzle audiences with acts performed to exquisite musical accompaniment. This year’s show will feature brand new music, with all of the circus artists making their Cirque des Voix debuts. The show will include music from works such as “Game of Thrones,” the James Bond movie “Skyfall,” video games “Fortnight” and “Assassin’s Creed,” and other powerful and dramatic works by renowned composers. This year’s featured acts and music include: Nichlas Allard, duo straps, “Fortnight: Main Theme” (Rom Di Prisco), Evgeny Kurkin, Chinese pole, “Dies Irae” (Z. Randall Stroope), Tersit Asefa Dersu, speed juggler, “Untraveled Worlds” (Paul Halley), Angelica Bongiovonni, cyr wheel, “Assassin’s Creed II: Ezio’s Family Suite” (Jesper Kyd), Garrett Allen, rope, “By Night” (Elaine Hagenberg), Buyankhishig & Erdenesuvd Ganbaatar, contortion, “Assassin’s Creed Suite” (Jesper Kyd), Ganbaatar Sisters, duo aerial, “Skyfall” (JAC Redford), Sailor Circus Academy students, “Jenny of Oldstone” and “Main Theme” from Game of Thrones (Ramin Djawadi), Orchestra and Chorus solo, “Dragonborn – The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” (Jeremy Soule). Performances this year will take place at the CAC’s Sailor Circus Arena (2075 Bahia Vista St., Sarasota) on Friday, March 22 at 7 p.m., and Saturday, March 23 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Tickets for Cirque des Voix are $50-$100. Visit CircusArts.org or call 941-355-9805 to reserve your seats. 

Pictured: Circus Arts Conservatory co-founder, President & CEO Pedro Reis (left) and Key Chorale’s Artistic Director Joseph Caulkins introduce the 2023 performance of Cirque des Voix

Twelve visual artist alumni of the Hermitage Artist Retreat, including two past Hermitage Greenfield Prize Winners, will have their works shown at Sarasota Art Museum in two groundbreaking new exhibits this spring. Impact: Contemporary Artists at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, curated by former Hermitage Curatorial Council member Dan Cameron, opens in March, and The Truth of the Night Sky, a collaboration between Hermitage Fellows Anne Patterson and Patrick Harlin, opens in April. 

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SCHOOL OF ROQUEFORT | At Artisan Cheese Company's classes, participants let their noses, taste buds and instructors guide them through the ABCs of cheese, February 2024. 

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