Arts Season Preview: Don't Miss These!

 Freddie Ashley

ACTOR’S EXPRESS, one of Atlanta’s smaller, edgier and most consistently good theater companies, turns 20 this season, but not without a few growing pains. The company is on its third artistic director in a year. The new man, Freddie Ashley, formerly a dramaturg at the Alliance Theatre, took over in June. He succeeds Bill Fennelly who, after being on board for only months, left to direct a Broadway-bound project. Fennelly succeeded Jasson Minadakis last spring. Minadakis, who did mostly excellent work for three seasons, left to become artistic director at the much larger, much better funded Marin Theatre Company in California.

Ashley, 34, is determined to stay – and improve on – the course set by Minadakis.

"Actor’s Express will continue to be the bravest theater in town," he says, "the theater where you can go and see things you won’t see anywhere else. It’ll be a place where, if I have my way about it, no one will ever be bored." He cites Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia, directed by Minadakis, as the kind of theater he plans to keep doing.

Ashley directs the season opener, dark play or stories for boys by Carlos Murillo (Sept. 6-Oct. 6), the runaway hit at the most recent Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky. In it, a teenage boy’s fictional Internet identity begins as a harmless game but takes on a frightening reality when his real and virtual worlds collide (contains adult content, nudity and strong language).

Next comes a musical that’s been begging to be done by one of the city’s major theaters. The Last Five Years by Jason Robert Brown (Parade), tells the story of one couple’s relationship. The woman tells it backward, from end to beginning; the man tells it chronologically, from beginning to end. Directing is Kate Warner of Dad’s Garage (Oct. 25-Nov. 24).

"I’m interested in work that packs a punch emotionally, viscerally and aesthetically," Ashley says, "and always doing it boldly."

The Express gig brings the new artistic director full circle. When he first came to Atlanta and saw William Inge’s Picnic there in 1994, he told himself: "I want to work at that theater some day." And he has. After a 13-year relationship as an actor and director at the Express, he’s become top dog. "I think it’s the best theater in town," he says, "and I always have."

Details: www.actors-express.com.

 Center for Southern Literature

Margaret Mitchell called the place "the dump"; today the refurbished apartment building on Peachtree Street is a literary hotbed, housing, among other entities, THE CENTER FOR SOUTHERN LITERACY. The center, which has been open almost five years, works to preserve Mitchell’s legacy through weekly literary events, creative writing classes for adults and young people, and the statewide Poetry Out Loud program. In 2005, Atlanta magazine named the center the best local literary salon.
At the center, based at the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum, authors and journalists discuss their most recent releases. They talk about the inspiration behind their books for about 30 minutes. A Q&A session and book-signing follow. The center has hosted such best-selling writers as Alice Walker, Pat Conroy and Tom Wolfe.
Its biggest event this fall is the Nov. 3 world premiere party for Donald McCaig’s Rhett Butler’s People, a Gone With the Wind prequel. "The book won’t even be out yet," says Melanie Eisenhart, programs coordinator.

The lineup of almost 60 events for 2007 includes: authors Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History) on Sept. 19; Robert Fulghum (What on Earth Have I Done?) on Sept. 25; Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Tretheway with Stephen Dunn on Oct. 17; Susan Faludi (The Terror Dream) on Oct. 24; newsman Lou Dobbs (A New America) on Nov. 4 at the Atlanta History Center; Jan Karon (Home to Holly Springs) on Nov. 5 at the Carter Center; and Terry Kay (To Whom the Angel Spoke), a holiday show on Dec. 13. Most events can accommodate an audience of at least 300 and include a reception with free appetizers and a cash bar, along with the talk, for $10.

The Lit, as the center is called, will hold two classes this fall, an advanced short fiction writing workshop for young people runs Sept. 30-Oct. 28. Fiction Shop, an adult creative writing class, runs Oct. 15-Dec. 3. The short fiction course is limited to 16 and will be taught by Anne Stanford, who has a masters of fine arts in creative writing from Emerson College in Boston. Fiction Shop will be taught by award-winning novelist David Fulmer (Chasing the Devil’s Tale, Rampart Street). Both classes are $250 for those who aren’t members of the Margaret Mitchell House and Museum.

Details: www.gwtw.org, (404) 249-7015.

 IKAM PRODUCTIONS and Carletta S. Hurt are one and the same. The film, TV/video and theatrical producing company is her baby, and she’s its sole employee, although she partners with others on a project-by-project basis.

IKAM – named for nieces and nephews Isaiah, Keenan, Armani and Maya – quietly began making ripples in Atlanta’s theater community last October with a critically praised staging of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, Ntozake Shange’s 1976 Broadway choreopoem. Earlier this year, it staged Crowns, Regina Taylor’s musical about African-American women and their love affair with hats. Next up is The Colored Museum by George C. Wolfe, running Oct. 11-21 at Theatrical Outfit. The drama takes a satirical look at what it means to be black in America, with 11 exhibits, ranging from "Cookin’ With Aunt Ethel" and "The Hairpiece" to "The Gospel According to Miss Roj." Directing is Andrea Frye, an Atlanta native and longtime member of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, who has a national reputation as an actor and a director. Look also for IKAM’s The Vagina Monologues in April.

By 2008, Hurt wants to stage a five-show season.

She is obviously ambitious and a workaholic, usually with three or four projects going at once. On Oct. 19, IKAM again sponsors the Atlanta Teen Film Festival (in association with National Teen Read Week), an event open to teens from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida. They can submit, at no charge, any film of 30 minutes or less. The fest is free to attend. Hurt and IKAM also teach teens the ins and outs of TV production.

Hurt, 31, has been a middle-school teacher, a high school counselor and has worked at a youth detention center in southwest Atlanta, but none of those jobs fit her as well as this one. It combines everything she loves to do with her passion for young people.

"Everyone," she says, "should have something to do that is creative."

 Gabriel Wardell

At IMAGE (Independent Media Artists of Georgia, Etc.), it’s been a year of changes –and optimism. Since August 2006, the nonprofit has hired Gabriel Wardell as its executive director and Dan Krovich as the latest in a line of directors for its signature events -- the Atlanta Film Festival, and Out on Film, a celebration of films by and about the gay, lesbian and transgendered communities.

"It’s so exciting to be just one piece of this microcosm," Wardell says, referring to a film community that’s buzzing with possibilities. He cites everything from the film and TV work of Tyler Perry to local production companies like Rainforest Films to The Signal, the Sundance-winning sci-fi/slasher/dark comedy written and directed by Atlantans David Bruckner, Dan Bush and Jacob Gentry, and due soon for a commercial release.

Wardell, 36 and originally from Baltimore, has programmed festivals from California to Maryland. His interest in film began early – his mom appears in John Waters’ Female Trouble, having her monster beehive hair-do teased. He even worked at IMAGE for a year in the late 1990s.

IMAGE began in 1976 as a way for local independent filmmakers to network and find resources. It’s part of a national network of media arts centers, but the only one that still exists in the Southeast. Through much of its history, it has concentrated on getting films made. Now, Wardell says, that emphasis is shifting slightly toward developing audiences for indie films.

"How do people find the new and great filmmakers that aren’t necessarily involved in the commercial world?" Wardell asks. The answer: in independent films, he says. "People can access films they never knew about before."

Although IMAGE holds screenings and workshops for filmmakers and fans, it’s two big events are its festivals: The Atlanta Film Festival, which turns 32 this April, and Out of Film, scheduled for Oct. 11-18 at Landmark Midtown Art Cinema and Theatre Decatur. Wardell just wants people to know that those events aren’t the only mission of the nonprofit, which has its own space inside the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center on

Means Street. Details: www.imagefv.org.  

 Kristen McGary

WOMEN IN FILM AND TELEVISION ATLANTA is, you should know, not for women only. Although the nonprofit is dedicated to improving the status and portrayal of women in film, video and other moving-images media, men are welcome and among its 300 or so members, co-president Kristen McGary says.

WIFTA, as it’s commonly known, is a place for networking, for finding mentors, and for taking courses on everything from agents and acting to screenwriting and video gaming, entertainment law and sound design. Its events are open to members and nonmembers alike. Coming up Oct. 19-20 is a gala, a screening and Q&A session with 79-year-old film director James Ivory, known for his longtime personal and professional relationship with Indian-born producer Ismail Merchant (Howards End, The Remains of the Day, A Room With a View).

One of the group’s biggest projects is a PSA program, in which it writes and shoots public-service TV commercials for charitable groups. A 2005-06 piece titled The Intruder Within was done in conjunction with the Georgia Coalition Against Domestic Violence and won a 2006 CINE Golden Eagle Award, which acknowledges high-quality professional production in the industry. WIFTA’s 2006 "Dear John" campaign featured Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and took aim at child prostitution in Atlanta. It won a Southeast Region Emmy Award. WIFTA’s filmmakers are now in pre-production on a PSA series for the Georgia Ovarian Cancer Alliance.

At 33, the Atlanta chapter is the second-oldest in the country, after the chapter in Los Angeles. Its members include everyone from professional filmmakers (McGary owns CineVita Productions with her sister Amy McGary) to students and, yes, men. Co-president Bonnie Woods is a music publisher with Atlanta-based GOC Music.

"I think we’re doing some vital work," McGary says.