Settled in at Cobb Civic Center, Atlanta Lyric announces 35th season

Atlanta Lyric Theatre, the metro area’s only professional musical theater company, has announced a five-show lineup for the 2014-15 season, its 35th.

The musicals it will mount at the Cobb Civic Center’s Jennie T. Anderson Theatre in Marietta are “Cats” (Aug. 8-24), “Chicago” (Oct. 24-Nov. 9), “Catch Me If You Can” (Feb. 13 - March 1, 2015), “Damn Yankees” (April 10-26, 2015) and “Barnum” (June 12-28, 2015). “Catch Me,” based on the 2002 Steven Spielberg film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, will be a regional premiere.

The 2014-15 season will be the Lyric’s second in the 600-seat Anderson Theatre after five years at the Earl Smith Strand Theatre, where capacity was roughly 100 less. Cobb Civic Center is less than two miles from the Marietta Square, home to the historic Strand.

Artistic director and general manager Brandt Blocker said the move, made after extended negotiations with the Strand stalled, has been a “blessing.”

“We are often playing to capacity crowds,” said Blocker, noting that patrons have praised the seating and parking, the size of the stage and orchestra pit. “Most notably, audiences are overwhelmingly thrilled with the acoustics and sound design.”

The bigger stage has allowed the troupe to present original Broadway designs, including Ming Cho Lee’s national tour version for “Annie,” which opens April 4.

Season subscriptions for non-subscribers will go on sale May 1: 404-377-9948, www.atlantalyrictheatre.com. Show descriptions: blogs.ajc.com/arts-culture.

VISUAL ART

Atlanta artist creates Derby posters

Susan Easton Burns fell under the spell of horses as a girl growing up in upstate New York, enjoys the equestrian life today and has found the powerful animals an inspiring subject for her paintings that merge motion with emotion.

The Kentucky Derby tapped the Atlanta painter as the official artist of its 140th running, and she has created posters for it and the preliminary Kentucky Oaks race.

Marietta’s Dk Gallery will host an art talk and poster signing event from 2 to 6 p.m. April 12.

"The artistic challenge for me was to remember what the day really represents and to convey that meaning as honestly as possible," Burns said in her Derby artist biography. "Thousands of people have spent countless hours establishing two small minutes as a reminder of some simple principles that guide us in the universe. Unity, the pursuit of excellence and honoring those who came before us are some of the principles that apply here."

Signed posters, $40. 25 W. Park Square, Marietta. 770-427-5377, www.dkgallery.us.

PERFORMANCE

Spano, Stallings, Stansell to collaborate

GloATL and the Goat Farm Arts Center have announced plans for the September world premiere of “Cloth,” a performance piece about man in dialogue with nature, to be created by collaborators including Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano, choreographer Lauri Stallings and filmmaker Micah Stansell.

The full-evening show will preview Sept. 10 at Goodson Yard, the Goat Farm’s 115-year-old former factory, then run Sept. 11-14.

Part I, the title work, unveils a Spano-composed piano score, played live by the maestro, written for Stallings and seven dancers.

Part II, titled “The Tower,” features an arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring for piano four-hands (Spano and Bosnian keyboardist Pedja Muzijevic), accompanied by a percussion ensemble lead by ASO principal percussionist Tom Sherwood. Stansell’s film will interpret the Stravinsky score. Stallings will direct and choreograph “The Tower,” featuring 48 dancers and other performers.

Tickets, at a pay-what-you-can rate, will be available through www.gloatl.org.

VISUAL ART

Foundation eyes Pasaquan

When outsider artist Eddie Owens Martin, known as St. EOM, died in 1986, he left behind a visionary art complex of painted concrete walls, totems and pagoda-like structures near Buena Vista. Named Pasaquan, the folk art site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. The Pasaquan Preservation Society has maintained the 7-acre site for more than two decades, but preventing deterioration has been more than the small, volunteer group could handle.

That’s where the Kohler Foundation may come in. The preservation of art environments, folk architecture and collections of self-taught artists is a major thrust of the Wisconsin foundation.

Kohler executive director Terri Yoho and a team of contractors and conservators assessed Pasaquan’s repair needs on March 25. Floors are collapsing in some of the buildings, and paint is fading and flaking off murals of giant flowers, wave patterns and geometric motifs.

The team then traveled to nearby Columbus, to a warehouse containing St. EOM’s eccentric hand-made clothes, works on paper and barrels of beaded hangings.

The foundation will decide in April whether to acquire the site. If it proceeds, renovation would be completed by late 2015, and Pasaquan would be given to an undisclosed nonprofit that would maintain it, Yoho said.

"Everybody's very pleased" at the prospect, said Fred Fussell of the Pasaquan Preservation Society. "We've all been wishing for something for years and years."

Pasaquan is currently closed. Details: www.pasaquan.blogspot.com. SALLY HANSELL

EVENT

Catch a cache before it goes on the block