Review: IceHouse Tonight’s “Dogcatcher”

As national news outlets highlight the efforts of lawmakers to protect voting rights, artists and activists from Bethlehem’s IceHouse Tonight have created a thought-provoking virtual play that responds to these attacks on democratic processes and the racism that still shapes election and voting participation. The seven part series, called Dogcatcher, follows a small-town PA football…

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BAPL Feature Movie of the Month: A Review of “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”

Joe Talbot’s debut film, “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” is a whimsical love letter to Talbot’s childhood friend Jimmie Fails and Talbot’s home, the San Francisco Bay Area. Closely mirroring the life of Jimmie Fails, who played himself in the film, the story takes up considerations of male friendship, toxic masculinity, identity, home…

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Iso/Nation Presents: A Radio Play by Touchstone Theatre

As part of their digital events series during the Covid-19 period, Touchstone Theatre is offering “deep listeners of the Lehigh Valley and beyond” an absurd, hilarious, and suspenseful radio play called “Iso/Nation Presents.” The radio play is part of Touchstone’s “Fresh Voices” program and is made by Sean Patrick Cassidy and Adam Ercolani, Touchstone Theatre’s…

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Chaos Controlled in Jet Black Sunrise

“When the war began, Whitman was despondent, but the violence of those years seemed to strengthen and clarify his faith in democracy, a faith that would take on a transcendent dimension.” I read this passage from Jet Black Sunrise’s playbill, quoted from Ed Simon’s New York Times article “Why We Will Need Walt Whitman in…

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