Aurora Theatre will remount its all-time biggest hit, “Les Miserables,” along with three other musicals, a drama and a comedy for its 2014-15 season.
The Lawrenceville theater is one of three major outside-the-Perimeter troupes to make season announcements (also detailed here) in recent days. The lineup for its 19th season:
July 17-Aug. 31: "Mary Poppins," the family musical whose Broadway revival finished a six-and-a-half-year run in 2013.
Oct. 2-26: "Clybourne Park," the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-winner for drama about race and real estate in Chicago.
Nov. 20-Dec. 21: "Christmas Canteen 2014," Aurora's holiday tradition marks its 19th edition.
Jan. 15-March 1, 2015: Encore of "Les Miserables," which scored five Suzi Bass Awards (Atlanta's Tonys) in 2013, including best musical.
March 26-April 19, 2015: "The Explorers Club," Neil Benjamin's madcap comedy set in Victorian England.
May 7-31, 2015: "Hands on a Hardbody," the rockabilly musical set in truck-obsessed Texas.
Aurora performs in downtown Lawrenceville at 128 East Pike St. Season tickets: $95.04-$158.64. 678-226-6222, www.auroratheatre.com.
Georgia Ensemble to premiere ‘Homers’
Roswell’s Georgia Ensemble Theatre will mount a five-play season, its 22nd, that includes a world premiere by Atlanta actor Jacob York and a comedy by Lewis Black of “The Daily Show” fame.
Sept. 11-28: "Pump Boys and Dinettes," the musical about good times along the American roadside.
Oct. 30-Nov. 16: "The Elephant Man," Bernard Pomerance's Tony Award-winning drama.
Jan. 8-25, 2015: "One Slight Hitch," Black's farce about a lavish wedding that turns to havoc.
Feb. 26-Mar. 15, 2015: "Homers," York's world premiere, about a female Atlanta newspaper sportswriter and what happens in her relationship with her biggest fan, her father, when she's offered a dream job in Los Angeles.
April 9-26, 2015: "My Fair Lady," the Lerner-Loewe musical.
Georgia Ensemble performs at Roswell Cultural Arts Center, 950 Forrest St. Early bird subscription packages are available through May 16, $100-$140. Senior and student discount subscriptions, $85-$100. Flex passes (with limited subscriber privileges), $125 . Prices will rise on May 17. 770-641-1260, www.get.org.
Serenbe’s three-play summer
Serenbe Playhouse’s fifth summer season will include three site-specific stagings in the south Fulton County community of Chattahoochee Hills.
May 30-Aug. 2: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," a new adaption by Rachel Teagle, featuring original puppets from the Center for Puppetry Arts. Shows presented at 11 am. Friday and Saturday mornings at the Inn at Serenbe's Animal Farm. $15, $10 children.
June 12-29: "Ten Mile Lake" a world premiere from Los Angeles playwright Tira Palmquist about the road to reconciliation between a father and his daughter. Shows at 8:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays at Serenbe's Grange Lake Dock. $25, $20 students.
July 24-Aug. 10: "Oklahoma," the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. 8:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays at the Inn at Serenbe's Hay Barn. $30, $25 students, $15 children.
Subscriptions, $60. 770-463-1110, www.serenbeplayhouse.com.
VISUAL ART
Music memorabilia to be auctioned
The goods going on the block at the twice-yearly Slotin Folk Art Auctions in Buford have grown more eclectic with each edition as co-founder Steve Slotin seeks more unusual items, especially anything representing “disappearing America.”
The auction April 26 and 27 has plenty to fit that bill. In addition to prime pieces by highly collected folk artists including Howard Finster, Nellie Mae Rowe and Sam Doyle, the 1,151 lots include Southern-made furniture, political collectibles, religious items, quilts, Native American art, trade signs, weather vanes, hand-carved canes and erotica.
And for the first time, the auction will offer vintage rock posters as well as autographs, photographs and memorabilia of jazz and blues greats. They were collected by the late Walter Glenn, who for nearly three decades operated Geode Ltd., a handcrafted-jewelry store at Lenox Square.
Glenn and his wife Alice traveled widely to jazz and blues clubs, concerts and festivals around the South and beyond the region, returning with memorabilia and autographs that he took great pride in framing and displaying.
Bidding on April 27 will kick off with Glenn’s 138 lots, including a 1937 Robert Johnson recording of “Walkin’ Blues” and “Sweet Home Chicago” and photos and posters with signatures by the likes of James Brown, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Little Walter, T-Bone Walker and many more.
You can preview the auction anytime online or in person on April 24 (10 a.m.-5 p.m.) and 25 (10 a.m.-9 p.m.). Bidding starts 10 a.m. April 26 and noon April 27. Free. Historic Buford Hall, 112 E. Shadburn Ave., Buford. 770-532-1115, www.slotinfolkart.com.
FILM
Chinese premiere for Atlantan’s work
“A Binder of Women,” a film by Woodstock artist Maxine Hess, has traveled half way around the world for its world premiere. The 20-minute film is showing in the exhibition “Half the Sky: Intersections in Social Practice Art” at the LuXun Academy of Fine Arts Gallery in Shenyang, China.
Hess was one of 40 female American artists selected by Alma Ruiz, senior curator for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, to exhibit alongside Chinese women artists. The show is up through April 30.
With a title borrowed from the infamous comment Mitt Romney made during a 2012 presidential debate, the film captures five diverse women trying on a Frederick’s of Hollywood corset. The film, according to Hess, is “a metaphor for the various explicit and covert ways women have been and continue to be bound by male hegemony.”
To view it, search Hess' name at www.youtube.com. More on Hess' art: www.maxinehess.com.
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