THEATER
Last call: “Ghost Brothers”
The Stephen King-John Mellencamp gothic musical “Ghost Brothers of Darkland County” enters the final week of its Alliance Theatre run starting Tuesday night, with eight performances remaining through Sunday evening, including 2:30 p.m. matinees Saturday and Sunday. Saturday night’s show is close to capacity, but otherwise availability is good, according to an Alliance spokesperson. $45-$85. 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-5000. www.alliancetheatre.org. HOWARD POUSNER

FILM
Encore for ‘The Artist’
If you think Mom will enjoy the suave stylings of Jean Dujardin, there are a few chances left for her to see “The Artist” in metro area theaters. The Academy Award-winning film will be re-released Friday for one week. The film, which nabbed five Oscars, including best picture and best actor forDujardin, also stars Bérénice Bejo, John Goodman, James Cromwell and scene-stealing Uggie the dog. MELISSA …

Continue reading Culture notes: ‘Ghost Brothers’ in the home stretch; ‘The Artist’ back in theaters in time for Mother’s Day »

CLASSICAL MUSIC
Young talent shares stage with Gwinnett Symphony
Youth will be served at the Gwinnett Symphony Orchestra and Chorus’ final Masterworks program of the season, 7:30 p.m. May 15 at the Performing Arts Center at Gwinnett Center. Joining the orchestra and chorus will be the Gwinnett Youth Symphony Orchestra, Youth Honors Orchestra and winners of the GSO’s 2012 Rising Star Concerto Competition. Rising stars Alice Barbe, 11, and Riley Osborn, 15, will perform the second and third movements of Mozart’s Concerto No. 10 in E-flat major for Two Pianos, K. 365/316a.CQ $13-$25. 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway, Duluth. 770-813-7600, www.gwinnettsymphony.org. HOWARD POUSNER

VISUAL ART
New galleries

• Sight +cq Sound Gallery, a contemporary art gallery and high-end audio equipment retailer, opens at Studioplex with a 5 p.m. reception Friday. The debut exhibit is Terrell Clark’s photographs, “3 Feet Above Sea Level: A Pinhole Exploration of the French Quarter.” 659 Auburn Ave., Unit …

Continue reading Culture notes: Young talent shares stage with Gwinnett Symphony; two new metro galleries »

Atlanta Contemporary Art Center artistic director Stuart Horodner is a curator of art and a collector of thoughts about the art-making process, and the two interests dovetail in the just-published “The Art Life: On Creativity and Career.”

In the 184-page paperback published by the Contemporary ($25) via a grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, Horodner taps the thoughts of artists, curators, authors, filmmakers, musicians and others in creative fields, many of whom have taken part in exhibitions and programs at the center from 2007 to 2011. In solicited or selected passages, they address the philosophical and practical issues that affect art-making and the marketplace.

“This anthology is not a guide to professional practices. It will not tell you if or how to approach galleries or where to apply for funding,” Horodner writes in the introduction, recommending several titles that do just that. “Instead, I have tried to construct a meditation on why one makes art at …

Continue reading Culture notes: Artists of all types offer tips on ‘The Art Life’; gloATL rolls into next show »

By Howard Pousner
hpousner@ajc.com

In making its performance return to Piedmont Park this week, Georgia Shakespeare sought to make a super-sized splash.

Not only has it been a year since its popular and free Shake at the Lake series was canceled due to lack of funding, it’s also been just a little more than four months since its Save Georgia Shakespeare campaign eclipsed its half-million-dollar goal.

So while staging five performances of “The Tempest” starting Wednesday, the longtime Atlanta troupe wanted to present a show of strength.

“When we went through our big campaign just to save Georgia Shakespeare last fall, one of the things we said is, ‘We don’t just want to do this to survive, we want to come back in a bigger way,’ ” founding artistic director Richard Gardner said. “This, for me, is a big symbol of that.”

Indeed, rather than return to the site of former glories at the edge of funky Lake Clara Meer, Georgia Shakespeare is making a big move to a …

Continue reading Georgia Shakespeare to make splashy return to Piedmont Park this week »

By Rosalind Bentley

Georgia has a new top poet.

Judson C. Mitcham has been appointed Georgia’s newest poet laureate on Friday by Gov. Nathan Deal. Mitcham, a professor of writing at Mercer University in Macon, has won some of the more prestigious writing honors in the nation including the Pushcart Prize for the best work published by small presses. He has twice won the Townsend Award for Fiction honoring Georgia’s best novels and he has written three collections of poetry, as well as held fellowships through the Georgia Council of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.  The University of Georgia graduate has also been the psychology department chair at Fort Valley State University.

Mitcham succeeds the post after David Bottoms, who is the Amos Distinguished Chair of Poetry at Georgia State University. The poet laureate position is unpaid and largely a ceremonial position.

Continue reading Governor names new poet laureate »

By Rosalind Bentley
rbentley@ajc.com

A group of former employees and board members of the now-defunct Theatre in the Square in Marietta rescinded their request on Wednesday for a $50,000 grant from the Marietta City Council to start a new theater.

The group, led by former Theatre in the Square interim-managing director Susan Reid and former board chair Michael Russell, sent the letter saying it no longer wanted the grant just days after asking the council for the money.

Their initial request sparked outrage within the artistic community because the group, which incorporated as Trackside Theatre Company, seemed to purposely exclude Theatre in the Square founder and artistic director Palmer Wells.

Wells helped led Theatre in the Square for 30 years, until the theater’s board, led by Russell, voted in mid-March to close the Marietta institution because of financial trouble. But less than a month after the vote, on April 11, articles of incorporation for Trackside were filed by …

Continue reading Upstart Marietta theater company pulls back on funding request »

By Howard Pousner
hpousner@ajc.com

Here comes rhymin’ Simon.

Singer-songwriter Paul Simon will give the 2013 Richard Ellmann Lectures in Modern Literature at Emory University Feb. 10-12, the school announced Thursday.

Simon’s selection to deliver the lectures aims to “slightly open up the concept of what literature is,” said lectures director Joseph Skibell, an Emory associate professor of English and creative writing. The international selection committee discussed song as a part of world literature, and agreed that Simon was the obvious first choice, according to the school. Simon’s lectures will concern, in part, an overview of the historical antecedents of the music made between 1966 and 1970.

Simon, 70, last year released and toured behind “So Beautiful or So What,” a CD that made many critic’s Top 10 lists for 2012. In a review of his Chastain Amphitheatre concert last May, the AJC’s Melissa Ruggieri wrote: “Simon’s voice has never been about power or range. …

Continue reading Paul Simon to give series of Emory lectures in 2013 »

THEATER
New troupe in Marietta?
The board chairman involved in closing Theatre in Square after a 30-year run in March hopes to open a new theater in the downtown Marietta space.

Mike Russell has asked the Marietta City Council for $50,000, drawn from the city’s automobile rental tax that the council provides to cultural groups to promote tourism, to help open Trackside Theatre Company.

The council is expected to make a decision on the request before adopting its 2013 fiscal budget on June 13, the Marietta Daily Journal is reporting.

Marietta Mayor Steve Tumlin told the Daily Journal that he met with Russell and Susan Reid, who would serve as Trackside’s producing artistic director, and that they plan to raise $425,000. Tumlin was characterized as having reservations about their proposal based on Theatre in the Square’s financial collapse.

If funds can be raised, Trackside hopes to launch in October with the children’s play “Diary of a Worm, a Spider & a Fly” followed by …

Continue reading Culture notes: New theater to rise on Marietta Square?; NEA chairman to give Atlanta talk May 9 »

By Howard Pousner
hpousner@ajc.com

Today, the Atlanta Botanical Garden opens “Independent Visions: Sculpture in the Gardens,” an exhibit of 19 pieces by sculptors including Red Grooms, Magdalena Abakanowicz and Beverly Pepper, for a run through October. Organized with New York’s Marlborough Gallery, the show includes some works more monumental than the large-scale bronze sculptures in Henry Moore’s 2009 exhibit, including two by Kenneth Snelson that are 24 and 30 feet long. The works are theatrically lit 6-10 p.m. Thursdays during Cocktails in the Garden.

In conjunction with the sculpture show, Atlanta Fine Arts League opens an exhibit of botanical works with a meet-the-artists reception, 6-10 p.m. May 3. The works are on display in a gallery located between the Fuqua Orchid Center and the Edible Garden.

Botanical Garden hours: 9 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesdays-Sundays (until 10 p.m. Thursdays). $18.95; $12.95, ages 3-12; free, under 3. 1345 Piedmont Ave. N.E., Atlanta. 404-876-5859,

Continue reading Botanical Garden opens ‘Independent Visions’ sculpture show on Tuesday »

By Rosalind Bentley
rbentley@ajc.com 

They are 10 strong Georgia novelists, but in the end Thomas Mullen walked away with the 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction Thursday night during an awards dinner at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

“Sometimes you can get a little jaded when people aren’t reading as much as they did,” said Mullen as he stood behind the podium accepting his award in the packed Day Hall.

But the nearly two-foot long silver Townsend more than made up for it, he said.

Mullen won for his Depression-era noir novel, “The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers” (Random House),  a tale of two bank robbing brothers, who become folk heroes of sorts. His 2006 debut novel, “The Last Town on Earth,” won the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction and accolades from critics.

 With a Townsend field that included popular authors such as Joshilyn Jackson, Lynn Cull and Joseph Skibell, Mullen said it would have been uncouth of him to have …

Continue reading ‘Firefly Brothers’ author Thomas Mullen wins 2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction »