Arts & Culture Newsletter: ‘Spittin’ Truth to Power’ at La Jolla Playhouse

Good morning, and welcome to the U-T Arts & Culture Newsletter.

I’m David L. Coddon, and here’s your guide to all things essential in San Diego’s arts and culture this week.

Society, indeed a world, cannot be understood in only 10 minutes. But it can, with all its crises and complexities, be placed in powerful perspective. In Alyce Smith Cooper’s and Shammy Dee’s “Spittin’ Truth to Power While Light Leaping for the People,” three short videos composed of storytelling, poetry and music coalesce to make an urgent intergenerational statement about where we are, where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

The three-part video experience is a La Jolla Playhouse commission and part of the theater’s virtual Without Walls (WOW) programming. Each three-minute-plus video was filmed around the UC San Diego campus, which is home to the Playhouse.

The origins of “Spittin’ Truth to Power” trace back to the early months of 2020, a year which has seen not only a global pandemic but rallying cries for racial and social justice.

“We conceptualized this right after the beginning of the COVID shutdown,” said Cooper, who is a poet, storyteller and community activist. “The summer helped us shape a lot of what we were doing. The recognition of what we were seeing happening in our social climate was not something we hadn’t seen before, yet here we were again.”

Added DJ Shammy Dee: “In relation to the social fabric of society, these problems have (long) existed. It’s just been an accelerant of things people have already known. They’ve exposed things to a boiling point to create an explosion that would not have existed otherwise.”

Each video can be appreciated in its own right, but watch them in sequence, for there’s a strong connection.

“The conception of each piece was very individual with a theme: sermon, communion and fellowship,” said Shammy Dee. “They all stem from church. This comes from Alyce’s background in ministry.

“This is our offering as artists-activists, something for you to take in and hopefully see something different. As long as you walk away with one thing that might shift your view even one degree from how you normally see things, our job is done.”

Classical music

Folger Consort

(Courtesy photo)

The solemn side of the holidays, often overshadowed by commercialism, is front and center in a virtual concert streaming from the Folger Shakespeare Library and Theatre in Washington, D.C. “Christmas with the Folger Consort” is an hourlong performance filmed inside St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in D.C. of early music (works by German composer Michael Praetorius), classical pieces (J.S. Bach) and more familiar Christmastime offerings.

The vocal segments are performed by soprano Crossley Hawn, alto P. Lucy McVeigh, tenor Robert Petillo and bass Edmund Milly, standing with their songbooks beneath stained glass windows in the hushed atmosphere of the church. As with the alternating instrumental performances by the Folger Consort musicians, the visuals are rather desultory. This is a concert (tickets $25 and up) that may be best enjoyed by sheer listening alone, giving yourself a break from the demands of the holidays and the anxieties of the times. The performances can be streamed through Jan. 5.

Theater

Lamb’s Players’ resident theater in Coronado.

More contemporary though possessing its own interludes of solemnity is “Lamb’s Christmas Celebration,” an 80-minute-long streaming concert of holiday favorites presented by Coronado’s Lamb’s Players Theatre. Performers familiar to attendees’ at Lamb’s’ theatrical productions, including Associate Artistic Director Deborah Gilmour Smyth, Caitie Grady and Charles Evans, Jr. collaborate on more than 20 festive numbers, with Cris O’Bryon accompanying on piano and Angela Chatelain Avila on violin.

Among the most entertaining moments are those featuring vocalist Leonard Patton, such as his collaboration with Bryan Barbarin on The Eagles’ “Please Come Home for Christmas.” (I actually prefer their version to The Eagles’.) Rebecca Jade, a standout on the theater’s still-streaming “Lamb’s Concerts: The Women,” injects energy into the well-worn “My Favorite Things” and delights with her own composition titled “Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.”

The tidings frequently are more pious than glad, but there’s plenty of musical variety in this warm and friendly show recorded on Lamb’s Players Theatre’s stage. Tickets to stream are $30.

Streaming

Sean Connery, left, as James Bond in a scene from the 1963 film, “From Russia With Love.”

(Associated Press)

“Bond. James Bond.” Multiply that famous movie line 19 times and you’ve got YouTube’s yuletide gift for the month of December: Free (with commercials intruding, however) viewing of the first 19 cinematic adventures of 007. Not included are Pierce Brosnan’s “Die Another Day” or any of Daniel Craig’s Bond outings. The channel, however, is offering a TV adaptation of “Casino Royale” and a Bond documentary in addition to the films featuring Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Brosnan as 007.

Given that most of the Bond films are available without advertisements on one streaming service or another and that many occasionally pop up in Turner Classic Movies’ rotation, I’m not sure why YouTube access is any big deal. But it is the holidays, we’re at home more than normally and Bond IS Bond.

For the record, I have my favorites in the canon, topped by Connery’s “Goldfinger” and “From Russia with Love.” If you’re interested in a Bond film you may not have seen or appreciated at the time, watch the underrated Dalton’s turn in “The Living Daylights” or Connery’s return to the role after 12 years in “Never Say Never Again.”

Streaming holiday concerts

Guitarist-singer Jose Feliciano

Saturday: The Mavericks’ “Hey! Merry Christmas” special

Saturday: Asleep at the Wheel’s “Merry Texas Christmas, Y’all!”

Sunday: Jose Feliciano’s “Feliz Navidad 50th Anniversary”

Books

Marilyn Woods, author of “The Orange Woods”

(Jarrod Valliere / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

When people finish reading Marilyn Woods’ memoir, “The Orange Woods,” a couple of things generally happen. They want to visit Orange Woods, the picturesque Pauma Valley farm where Woods and her late husband, Jack, planted a lavender field, made wine and grew a lot of oranges. They want to listen to Vince Gill, the country singer/songwriter whose music was the soundtrack of Marilyn and Jack’s loving life. They want to tell their significant others how they feel about them. Right now.

But mostly, they want a Kleenex. Because when people finish reading “The Orange Woods,” which tells the story of how Marilyn continued living and loving after Jack’s sudden death in 2015, they will have had several good cries over this beautiful, awful, awe-inspiring thing we call life.

Read more about Woods in this story by Union-Tribune columnist Karla Peterson.

UCTV

Hospitalman Aliah Kitsmiller, from Erie, Colo., prepares a patient for a computer tomography (CT) scan aboard the hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) April 11.

(Petty Officer 2nd Class Ryan Breeden/U.S. Navy)

University of California Television (UCTV) is making a host of videos available on its website during this period of social distancing. Among them, with descriptions courtesy of UCTV (text written by UCTV staff):

“Supporting Your Child’s Reading Skills”: According to educators, the importance of reading skills in a child’s development cannot be overstated. Whether parents are the primary educators or supplemental to learning outside the home, their active support is critical in encouraging a love of reading at an early age. Educators Shelli Kurth and Nicole Assisi talk about ways parents can nurture comprehension skills through such simple and practical activities as creating a “book basket” and exploring online reading options. They discuss resources available to parents, and also stress the importance of reading to a child and reading together as a family.

“Talking Over Social Media”: Georgetown University linguist Deborah Tannen’s research examines the discourse of everyday conversation, including cultural and gender differences in ways of speaking. Tannen explores how social media has influenced this discourse by changing and challenging relationships and common assumptions about human interaction. She discusses the unique ways in which social media amplifies both the risks and rewards of voice-to-voice conversations, and how it has created a condensed language of its own. Tannen also scrutinizes the ongoing “personal vs. impersonal” debate about social media’s merits and impact on society.

“COVID-19 – Reports From The Front Lines”: Not since the flu epidemic of 1918 has there been a global health crisis comparable to COVID-19, and the social and economic impact of the virus has been profound. Recent headlines have raised hope for a vaccine, but in the meantime hospitals and health care workers are feeling the strain of coping with the outbreak. In this program front-line health care workers and public health experts gather to discuss their first-hand experiences and the lessons they’ve learned in treating the disease. They also discuss the path to economic recovery, offering practical suggestions for returning to a safe work environment.

And finally: Arts in the Time of COVID

In this week’s edition of Arts in the Time of COVID, Pacific magazine editor Nina Garin talks about organ holiday concerts at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, a cabaret concert by Karyn Overstreet to benefit low-income students and the Old Globe’s sensory-friendly event. Watch it here.