Celebrating Bethlehem's Southside Culture
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…
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…
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…
I have this fear that the Sayville Theater and many others like it won’t be here on the other side of the pandemic. Capitalism uses crises to enact austerity measures and art is always one of the first industries to get the axe.
This season Lehigh University’s Department of Theatre presented the famous British play Blithe Spirit, written by Noël Coward. Director Augustine Ripa brought to life an amazing comedy filled with banter, wit, and physical humor. The play follows a novelist, Charles Condomine, as he conducts research for a new work by inviting a medium, Madame Arcati,…
Students at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts captivated audiences in the Black Box Theatre with their performance of Vanishing Point, a musical written by Rob Hartmann and Liv Cummins. The musical comedy consisted of three performers, Reagan Frankhouser as Aimee Semple McPherson, Katie Conlon as Agatha Christie, and Marcella Karam as…
“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…
Twenty years ago in 1999, Bethlehem’s Touchstone Theatre created an arts and cultural festival to help the community through the devastating closure of Bethlehem Steel. “Steel Festival, The Art of an Industry” aimed to celebrate everything Bethlehem had become during the years in which the plant was in operation. Two decades after the first Steel…
To open the recent Festival UnBound, Touchstone Theatre staged the play Prometheus/Redux at Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Arts from Oct. 4-6. Long term residents of Bethlehem will know that this production connects with the play Steelbound produced in 1999. Touchstone Theatre created the 1999 production to give residents the opportunity to process…
“My childhood dream was that I would be able to ride a bike.” Frozan, Afghanistan National Cycling Team When I ask my younger family members to tell me their dreams, I get significantly more exciting and unusual responses than a more simplistic “to ride a bike.” Attain superpowers, become the president, save the world, win…