SARATOGA SPRINGS — The second annual Capital Region Thomas Edison Music Awards – aka the Eddies Music Awards – will be broadcast live at 7 p.m. May 2 from Universal Preservation Hall in Saratoga. 

The awards show has been twice rescheduled. It was originally planned to be held in front of an audience at the Proctors MainStage last spring and then was rescheduled due to the pandemic to be broadcast in December from UPH. A surge in COVID-19 cases late in 2020 resulted in further postponement. 

Scheduled performers and panelists will be announced in the coming weeks. 

The show will be broadcast live on Collaborative Studios’ Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Apple TV apps, its public access channels in Albany and Schenectady, and on YouTube and Facebook. It will be available on-demand for free after the event. 

Show highlights to include musical performances, and announcement of winners in 34 categories.  Broadcast and event details will be updated at theeddiesawards.com.

BENNINGTON, VT — Literature Evenings, Bennington College’s distinguished Wednesday night readings series, will highlight prestigious authors, faculty members, and student voices during its Spring 2021 series. 

All Literature Evenings readings will be presented remotely over Zoom. All events begin at 7 p.m. and are free, open to the public, and can be accessed and shared from the Literature Evenings webpage.

“Our Literature Evenings are normally held in the Franklin living room,” said Benjamin Anastas, a member of the Literature faculty. “It’s an intimate setting with a lot of history: writers like Bernard Malamud, Anaiïs Nin and poet Mary Oliver all read their work in front of that fireplace.”

“Temporarily,” Anastas continued, “we’ll have to gather at the hearth of Zoom.” 

On Wednesday, March 17, Literature Evenings celebrates the book launch of Small Bibles for Bad Times by Liliane Atlan and translated by faculty member Marguerite Feitlowitz. Visionary French poet/playwright/novelist Liliane Atlan was driven to “find language to say the unsayable . . . to (find a way) to integrate within our conscience, without dying in the attempt, the shattering experience of Auschwitz.” 

This event will begin with a staged reading from Mister Fugue (Atlan’s best-known play, also translated by Feitlowitz) performed by Drama Faculty Kirk Jackson, with students Joshua Goldberg, David Guzman, and Ruby Loewenstein.

On Wednesday, April 28, faculty member Paul La Farge will read. La Farge is the author of four novels: The Night Ocean (Penguin/Random House), The Artist of the Missing (FSG), Haussmann, or the Distinction (Picador), and Luminous Airplanes (FSG), which continues as a large Web-based hypertext. He has also written a book of imaginary dreams, The Facts of Winter (McSweeney’s). His stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Paris Review, Harper’s, and elsewhere.

The Literature Evenings series concludes in May with two events led by Bennington students. Details for both events are forthcoming and will be available on the College’s Event Calendar.

Literature Evenings are a hallmark of Bennington College’s active literary community. Literature and writing at Bennington are grounded in the idea that good writers are by definition good readers. 

Bennington College’s alumni include twelve Pulitzer Prize winners, three U.S. poets laureate, four MacArthur Geniuses, and countless New York Times bestsellers and National Book Award recipients. Learn more at bennington.edu. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS —James McBride’s most recent novel, Deacon King Kong, is a poignant and clever portrayal of 1960’s Red Hook Brooklyn. Saratogians with family ties to the city will find the setting and characters familiar and if not highly entertaining. 

The novel begins with the  shooting of 19-year-old, up and coming heroin dealer, Deems Clemens by the 71-year-old affable, drunk handyman/church deacon Cuffy Lambkin a.k.a. Sportcoat. This single act ignites the community that is the Causeway Housing Projects with unpredictable results. More than a solitary act of violence in a tough neighborhood, this shooting, and its aftermath, tells the story of a neighborhood, a way of life and the power of collective struggles and heartache with humor
and pathos.

Our shooter – Sportcoat – is fumbling through life as he is being pursued by the local police for the shooting for which he has no memory.  He is aided kindly by his friend, Hot Sausagewho provides him with homemade hooch he calls King Kong.   Sportcoat’s community includes his fellow project residents, his Five Ends Baptist Church members and clergy, his blind 20-year-old son Pudgy Fingers, and his deceased wife Hattie who mystically appears to him every day mostly to nag him from the great beyond.

Through great charm and irony, McBride intertwines competing drug gangs, Italian mobsters, devoted church members, sympathetic police and a handful of romances to produce a tale of morality in which the reader is not always sure of where the greater good lies. Throw in the government free cheese program of the time, some missing Christmas club church funds, a hidden religious relic and you have quite a story. This book is perfect fodder for endless conversations of right and wrong, struggle and practicality and personal and societal responsibility.

“I had the great pleasure of hearing James McBride speak at our own Northshire Bookstore this past March to discuss Deacon King Kong. It was the last public event I attended prior to shelter in place and am awfully glad he made it under the wire.  (Mr. McBride was way ahead of social distancing when he preemptively apologized for not shaking hands and instead waived to all attendees. He confessed that a downside of celebrity was the general public’s desire to always shake your hand.) Mr. McBride discussed his conveying of history through fiction as a preferable and more illuminating way to bring realities of a people and a place to life.  This was clearly evident in his 2013 pre-civil war John Brown novel “Good Lord Bird” for which he won The National Book Award for Fiction.  To fully appreciate the unique prism through which author McBride views the world, I would urge readers to get his nonfiction biographical “The Color of Water” which takes us through his Brooklyn upbringing with a white, orthodox Jewish mom, a Black pastor father and numerous siblings.

Through the foibles of each of his characters, James McBride brings us back to Brooklyn in the 60’s with the influx of the heroin trade, poverty, racism, neighborhood segregation all with relevance to today’s world.  His characters’ complexities nuance immoral acts in moral people, kind acts in seemingly immoral people and love of an individual versus bias of a group.  The themes of friendship through familiarity, acceptance and spiritual presence are throughout this wonderful read. 

If you want to be able to produce a smile on demand, read this book and keep its characters ever ready in your memory bank.”

Elise Gotimer is a Saratoga resident and avid reader. She is a mother of three grown children and a practicing attorney in the social service field. She may be reach at egotimer@verizon.net 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Domestic violence and abuse is so prominent in cosplay culture and comics, especially in the origins of Harley Quinn. 

Some fans and readers look past the abuse she has gone through and choose to ignore it, because ignoring it is better than facing the reality of violence. As a Harley Quinn cosplayer who is a survivor of domestic violence, I would be doing the character an injustice if I turned the other cheek. 

Twenty people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner and over 10 million people yearly suffer from domestic violence. 

To bring awareness to the issue, I am holding a raffle to raise funds for the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence which helps people escape tormented situations as well as rehabilitating to stop the cycle of violence. 

Stephanie Phillips, the current Harley Quinn Future State and Infinite Frontier author, donated signed issues of DC Presents: Harley Quinn Future State. 

There will be two raffle winners, each receiving issue 1 and issue 2 of Harley Quinn Future State signed by the author. 

The raffle runs until 11:59 p.m. EST on Feb. 28, and $10 is 10 entries.  Link to raffle: go.rallyup.com/comicsagainstdomsticviolence

For more information about the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, go to: ncadv.org

Whether you know someone who has suffered or you yourself have suffered, this is one step to helping stop the cycle so no one has to live through what survivors have.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Northshire Bookstore Saratoga presents two Northshire Live events this week. 

At 6 p.m. on Feb. 23, Ali Benjamin presents The Smash-Up in a conversation with Steve Sheinkin, to celebrate the publication of “The Smash-Up,” celebrating the debut adult novel Ali Benjamin in a wide-ranging literary conversation with NYTimes bestselling author Steve Sheinkin.

Benjamin is the author of the young adult novel “The Thing About Jellyfish,” an international bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. This is her first adult novel.

At 6 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 25, Theo Padnos presents Blindfold: A Memoir Of Capture, Torture, And Enlightenment. 

Northshire Bookstore to celebrate the publication of Woodstock, Vermont author and award-winning journalist Theo Padnos’s revelatory memoir about war, human nature, and endurance Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture and Enlightenment, the searing, extraordinary account of being kidnapped and tortured in Syria by al Qaeda for two years. Joining us for this conversation is New Yorker staff writer and author John Seabrook.

In 2012, American journalist Theo Padnos, fluent in Arabic, Russian, German, and French, traveled to a Turkish border town to write and report on the Syrian civil war. One afternoon in October, while walking through an olive grove, he met three young Syrians—who turned out to be al Qaeda operatives—and they captured him and kept him prisoner for nearly two years. On his first day, in the first of many prisons, Padnos was given a blindfold—a grime-stained scrap of fabric—that was his only possession throughout his horrific ordeal.

Both live events will be on Zoom, and a link is available upon Eventbrite registration. For more information on the events, go to: northshire.com. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS —Saratoga Jewish Community Arts, in partnership with Temple Sinai and with a grant from the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York, presents its seventh Annual Jewish Storytelling Event featuring both local and regional storytellers at 7 p.m. on Feb. 21. 

Experience the storytelling program by Zoom this season.

For the Jewish people, “Storytelling has been a means of defining the Jewish identity, the ethnic distinctiveness as a Jew,” said Phyllis Wang, Coordinator of the Saratoga Jewish Community Arts. “To hear a Jewish story is to share the humor, wisdom and angst, earthiness and Spirituality of an ancient and thoroughly modern, diverse, and irrepressible group of people bearing an extraordinary history.” 

Included in the storytellers for the event are Shawn Banner, artist, teacher of art, and educator; Sylvia Bloom, educator, professor of voice, actress, opera singer, and recitalist; Jeanine Laverty, teacher of ESL and Storytelling; David Liebschutz, management consultant, life coach, and college professor; Beth Sabo Novik, facilitator, teacher, and transformational speaker; Sandy (Sandor) Shuman, storyteller, musician and educator; and Martina Zobel, Jewish educator. 

This Annual Saratoga Jewish Community Arts Storytelling program has been renamed in memory of Matthew M. Neugroschel, a frequent contributor to Community Arts and the Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival, and whose life was cut short this past year. 

To register and access the Zoom link, email sjca.sjcf@gmail.com. Follow us on Facebook and www.saratogajewishculturalfestival.org  or www.saratogasinai.org. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — From creative and personal highs to extreme lows, the documentary “Making and Unmaking” chronicles several years in the life of filmmaker Shaun Rose.

Born in Saratoga Springs and currently a resident of Ballston Spa, Rose co-directed the 60-minute documentary with partner Andrea Stangle. 

“It took four years to make,” Rose says. “It’s a detailed film covering the difficulties making my previous film ‘Upstate Story.’ It has won 8 awards at festivals/ award venues thus far and I’ve just been trying to get it out there more.”

You can view the 60-minute doc on YouTube, and find it via a search for “Making and Unmaking.” 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Yaddo hosts an evening of conversation featuring writer, artist, and filmmaker Tanya Selvaratnam, in discussion about her new book, “Assume Nothing: A Story of Intimate Violence,” with acclaimed writer Andrew Solomon. The event, free via Zoom, takes place 7 p.m. Tuesday. Go to: yaddo.org. 

LAKE GEORGE — The Courthouse Gallery will present a Live Online Talk with artist Scott Brodie at 4 p.m. on March 6.

Brodie will be featured in an exhibition of his most recent work, observations of daily life, ranging from still life to landscape, and all created within the last year. 

Through the immediacy of his loose brush work, the deftly painted works capture the intimacy of meditative moments of observation of light and color. Depending on his subject, Brodie alternates his palette from bold saturated colors to warm soft light, accentuated with flecks of a warm ground color peeking through. Any object, such as a glass, a can, a chair, a plant, or a lawnmower, can be transformed into a celebration of painting.

 “The series titles, ‘Plague Spring,’ ‘Beached in the Backyard,’ and ‘The Waiting’ do refer to the pandemic, or more precisely to the state of existing during the pandemic, but they are open-ended and don’t dictate the subject matter… In terms of subject, there is only a tangential connection. I generally don’t favor ‘topical’ work, it tends to be newsy, literal, and has a short shelf life. But the staying-at-home and the waiting-for-it-to-pass have had an effect. For one, it got me out of the house to do some plein air work, but alas, only as far as my back yard,” Brody says. 

The exhibition takes place March 6-April 9. For more information, go online to: lakegeorgearts.org. 

ALBANY —­ Capital Repertory Theatre (theREP) welcomes four talented individuals into the 2021 class of Associate Artists – Gordon Greenberg, Barbara Howard, Stephanie Klapper and Jean-Remy Monnay. These four individuals join the members of the 2019 Class of Associate Artists, Kevin McGuire, Yvonne Perry, Freddy Ramirez and Josh D. Smith. 

Associate Artists serve three-year terms where they act as ambassadors for theREP in the local and national theatre community.  As part of the program, Associate Artists will participate in at least one production per season.

Gordon Greenberg is a director and writer living in New York, who has directed 11 productions at theREP. He has directed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in London’s West End, written for television and stage, and developed, directed and produced new works for arts institutions across America. 

Barbara N. Howard was born and raised in Albany and is currently the Storyteller of theREP’s virtual STORY HOUR program for elementary children and a teaching artist for the theatre’s education programs at Arbor Hill Elementary School. 

Stephanie Klapper is a New York based award-winning casting director who has served as theREP’s Casting Director for almost three decades. Her work is frequently seen on Broadway, Off-Broadway, regionally, internationally, on television, and film. 

Jean-Remy Monnay is the Founder and Producing Artistic Director of the Black Theatre Troupe of Upstate NY, Inc. Monnay produced the region-wide collaboration, 8:46, in which theREP participated. 

To learn more about all of the Artistic Leadership team visit capitalrep.org/artistic-leadership.