Culture Calendar: 21 Things to Do in September 2017

September 1 - October 8

So-called “jukebox” musicals (using the catalog of an artist as their score) are always a bit of a gamble—will the story live up to the music’s quality, and will the two mesh well enough to make compelling onstage drama? But Ain’t Too Proud, the new musical about the Temptations, sounds like a pretty sure bet.

The story of the group, from its fairy tale Detroit street corner discovery to its professional struggles and successes against the backdrop of the civil rights era, is one prime for a stage adaptation. The creative team is top notch: director Des McAnuff is a veteran showman, writer Dominique Morisseau a prizewinning playwright with a keen understanding of working Americans’ strife; and the choreographer, Sergio Trujillo, an expert at giving vibrant life to iconic songs (see: Jersey Boys, On Your Feet). 

Needless to say, the songs aren’t half bad either, and with a premiere at Berkeley Repertory Theatre (opening night is Sept. 14)—a major regional spot known as one of Broadway’s incubators—it’s safe to say this show’s ambitions are more eastward-leaning. 2025 Addison St.; berkeleyrep.org.

September 1 - 7

Thirty years ago, a very young Gary Oldman and Alfred Molina starred in Stephen Frears’ groundbreaking film about the life and death of playwright Joe Orton (Oldman) and his lover Kenneth Halliwell (Molina). Frears’ portrait of the couple negotiating 1960s London social mores was a revolutionary one that feels ever more relevant today. Whether to see two of the greatest living actors in their early days or to remember how the past is never truly past, catch one of the 30th anniversary screenings at one of New York City’s newest cinephile meccas, the Metrograph. 7 Ludlow St.; metrograph.com.

From September 2

Over Labor Day weekend, a monumental new installation by painter Julie Mehretu will debut in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s atrium: an expansive diptych called HOWL, eon (I,II). Mehretu, born in Ethiopia, focuses her attention on the American west and the dueling impulses of destruction and preservation underlying colonialist ideals that fueled the 19th century’s westward expansion.

In her giant canvases, viewers will see distorted images of modern race riots, protests, and images of the 19th-century West, all overlaid with thick scribbles and abstract shapes in paint and ink. Part of the museum’s new public-art commissioning program, it’s both chaotic and vibrant—much like the subject Mehretu explores. 151 Third St.; sfmoma.org.

September 5 - October 8

Swiss playwright Max Frisch wrote The Arsonists in 1953 as a response to the rise of Nazism and Communism. Read as a morality play, it’s clear enough: the story of a businessman ruthless in his career but desiring only of a simple, respected life at home as a family man (or so he says), ready to help his fellow man until disaster truly strikes. As the world increasingly and frighteningly starts to resemble the one in which Frisch wrote his play, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s new production seems particularly essential viewing — in the words of artistic director Howard Shalwitz, who also stars in the show, “No one will miss its shocking relevance for our nation today.” 641 D Street NW; woollymammoth.net.

September 7 - March 4

Since they married in 1992, artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov have collaborated in their work, creating installation-based works directly confronting the censorship and oppression they endured under surveillance in the Soviet Union. The resulting pieces—intricate maquettes that constitute miniature theatrical environments complete with casts of characters, lighting, music and more—are whimsical but poignant visions of escape and life in a better world, some realized and some still existing only in the Kabakovs’ imaginations.

Over 20 of them will be on view in the Hirshhorn’s exhibition spanning the artist duo’s career from 1985 to the present and offering a rare glimpse into their ultra-creative hive mind. Independence Ave SW; hirshhorn.si.edu.

September 8

Three years after Anna of the North released the single “Sway,” the Norwegian-Kiwi pop duo launches its first full-length album. Lovers is Anna Lotterud and Brady Daniell-Smith’s vehicle for exorcising the demons of heartbreak. –The Editors

September 8 - October 15

The story of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along is one of the great coulda-been-a-contender tales. The story of Franklin, Charley, and Mary, three creative friends trying to make it in New York, boasts some of Sondheim's most haunting and whip-smart music but famously and spectacularly flopped in its original Broadway production (audiences didn't go for its unusual, reverse-chronological narrative, introducing the characters in their jaded older form first). 

In recent years, the show has received belated recognition as a too-quickly-closed masterpiece, including in a roundly acclaimed London production by director Maria Friedman. She'll bring it to Boston along with her London stars Damian Humbley (Charley) and Mark Umbers (Franklin), plus magnetic Broadway vet Eden Espinosa (Mary). 264 Huntington Ave.; huntingtontheatre.org.

Through September 10

Known best for his slender bronze figures, Alberto Giacometti was an artist of many more facets: a Surrealist unafraid to engage directly with brutality and sadism, an experimenter with perspective, a sculptor interested in texture who also worked extensively in plaster and clay.

Thanks to unprecedented access to Paris’s Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, the Tate Modern’s far-ranging exhibition presents over 250 of his works, including rarely seen and never-before-exhibited plasters and drawings along with iconic bronze pieces, presenting the full five decades of the artist’s work and asserting him as a master in the pantheon. Bankside; tate.org.uk.

September 13 - 17

Now in its sixth year, the international contemporary and modern art extravaganza increases its global reach, including 135 galleries from 25 countries and 58 cities around the world. In addition to established exhibitors from Brazil to Greece to Luxembourg and Singapore, this year’s exposition will feature an Exposure section dedicated to solo and two-artist presentations from younger galleries, and the inaugural Expo Profile section, highlighting single artist installations and thematic presentations from international galleries. Navy Pier Festival Hall, 600 E. Grand Ave.; expochicago.com.

September 13 - December 23

The Italian design collective Memphis is having a moment: its bold graphics, vibrant colors, and playfully abstract, figurative works feel especially beloved among design aficionados right now. So it’s an apropos time to pay tribute to one of Memphis’s founding members, Nathalie Du Pasquier, who worked closely with curators from the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art and Vienna’s Kunsthalle Wien to conceive this exhibition featuring over 30 years of her work. Her paintings, sculpture, wallpaper designs, drawings, and more among the over 100 pieces showcased here spotlight du Pasquier’s imaginative way with space—and how design can reconfigure it completely. 118 S. 36^th St.; icaphila.org.

From September 14

Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Ayad Akhtar’s financial thriller comes to Broadway. Set during the 1985 mergers and acquisitions boom, Junk follows an unscrupulous bond trader bent on rising to the top of Wall Street. –The Editors

September 14 - 17 and 20 - 24

Aesthetes headed to South America this month will find Buenos Aires in artistic bloom. First comes Puro Diseño, a design fair which began 15 years ago as an attempt to stimulate the city’s failed economy—and has since become the continent’s biggest, bringing in over 400 exhibitors in fashion, jewelry, décor, graphic design, textiles, and more.

This year’s theme, #SomosCuriosos, focuses on products breaking design paradigms and innovating the everyday. A few days after the fair closes, new music, dance, theater, comedy, and more explode on the streets of Buenos Aires as part of the free Ciudad Emergente festival, dedicated to the diverse local artistic talent. feriapurodiseno.com.ar; festivales.buenosaires.gob.ar.

September 14 - November 26

Downton Abbey star Elizabeth McGovern will play a magnetic matriarch in a different tale of British family fortunes changing with the tides of history in J. B. Priestley’s Time and the Conways. She’s an at first optimistic woman presiding over her daughter’s 21st birthday; then the play skips 19 years in to the future, calling into question ideas about destiny and choice.  

The play, by the writer of An Inspector Calls, is rarely revived, and it’s in presumably great hands: Rebecca Taichman, recently a Tony winner for Indecent, directs, and the cast led by McGovern includes Steven Boyer, Anna Camp, and Gabriel Ebert. American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42^nd St.; roundabouttheatre.org.

September 15 - 27

Last fall, the gloriously genre-defying performer Taylor Mac proved to New York theater audiences that the most singularly original piece of theater in the city was far from Broadway when his 24 Decade History of Popular Music played at Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse.

Mac’s long-evolving project — a multi-year effort to tell a “subjective history” of the United States through over 240 popular songs spanning 1776 to the present day—was finally realized as both a series of evenings divided into discrete time periods and themes, and one epic 24-hour marathon performance (not for the faint of heart, but life-changing according to anyone who went).

Mac’s show (including his dazzling array of costumes by Machine Dazzle) travels west to San Francisco’s newly-restored Curran Theater for four performances of different “chapters” in the odyssey; on Sept. 27 at Stanford University’s Bing Concert Hall, Mac will present a special three-hour abridged version of the entire piece. The Curran, 445 Geary St.; sfcurran.com.

September 15 - January 2018

The Getty spearheaded the second sweeping Pacific Standard Time initiative, this time uniting an unprecedented 70 cultural institutions across California in a wide-ranging exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles. pacificstandardtime.org.

To learn more, read the article »

Through September 17

The prescience of Andy Warhol’s piercing observations on the American obsession with celebrity and the darker side of media-driven culture has been long recognized, but as a new survey of the first decade of Warhol’s work emphasizes, the artist’s ideas take on greater weight when considered in the context of the U.S.’s place in world politics: in his lifetime, taking on an increasingly interventionist role globally, and, now, taking a more strongly imperialist stance towards Latin America in particular.

The Museo Jumex’s “Andy Warhol: Dark Star” will present more than 150 of Warhol’s multimedia pieces — an unprecedented showcase of the artist’s work in Mexico and an opportunity for audiences to consider just how much has changed (or not) from the 1960s to today. Miguel de Cervantes, Saavedra 303, Colonia Granada; fundacionjumex.org.

September 16 - November 12

The 15th Istanbul Biennial, with “A Good Neighbor” as its theme, is curated by Elmgreen & Dragset, the puckish Scandinavian artists known for their immersive installations. Its exhibitions will explore the global rise of nationalism. –The Editors

September 22

When the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa opens, the art world will not only gain a much needed collection—one entirely devoted to art from Africa and its diaspora—but a monumental new edifice as well.

Designed by architecture firm nonpareil Heatherwick Studio, the museum is housed in nine floors within Cape Town’s historic Grain Silo Complex, once the tallest building in Africa and a testament to Cape Town’s industrial past, disused for nearly 30 years and now reinterpreted as a column of tubular honeycomb with 80 galleries of exhibition space. The museum will showcase the collection of Jochen Zeitz (who partnered with the V&A Waterfront to create the new institution) along with a sizeable, edgy permanent collection, all making a strong argument for the South African city as one perennially at the vanguard of culture. zeitzmocaa.museum.

September 23 - October 15

One of the most classic of romantic tragedies, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is a beloved opera by Gluck, but it’s never been seen quite like this. Insightful modern choreographer John Neumeier’s new production for the Lyric Opera of Chicago is the first collaboration between the Lyric, LA Opera, and the Joffrey Ballet, and it imagines the hero as a choreographer and his beloved as a ballerina.  

Sung in its original French but translated to a contemporary setting, the production is meant to be an exercise in lyrical simplicity, a refreshing thought for an opera opening night.

After its Chicago run, the production opens at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles in March 2018 and heads to the Staatsoper Hamburg in February 2019. 20 N. Wacker Dr.; lyricopera.org.

September 27

The driving logic behind programming classical music concerts these days sometimes seems to be “the weirder the locale, the better,” which doesn’t always result in performances that look, sound or, well, feel good. But The Crypt Sessions in New York proves that an ostensibly creepy location can make for an unforgettable performance: set within the crypt underneath Harlem’s Church of the Intercession, each program is specially tailored to the intimate and unique sonic atmosphere (evenings also feature food and drink pairings created with the music in mind).

Israeli pianist David Greilsammer’s “Labryinth” should be an especially evocative evening, taking listeners on a winding journey through works by Janacek, Mozart, and CPE Bach, plus North American premieres by Ofer Pelz and Jean-Fery Rebel. Broadway at W. 155^th St.; deathofclassical.com.

September 28 - October 1

If the uber-creative hippie energy of Burning Man appeals but the desert festival’s grand scale feels too immense, head to Marfa, west Texas’s remote cultural mecca, for the 12th annual Trans-Pecos Festival, a similar fusion of art and community but on a far more intimate scale.

Across the grounds of hotelier Liz Lambert’s El Cosmico—a kind of glam campground replete with vintage trailers, teepees, yurts, and more—desert pilgrims will find welding and crafting workshops, yoga, vintage vendors, art installations, and food trucks aplenty, plus a lineup of musical performers led by Wilco.  802 S. Highland Ave.; elcosmico.com.