It's the Year of the Woman in the arts.
So sayeth gallerist Mike Dominguez.
Certainly Davis Dominguez Gallery is doing its part. This fall, co-owners Candice Davis and Dominguez are staging a monster show of five well-known Tucson women artists, all working in different media, beginning Sept. 26. A second exhibition Nov. 7 highlights the wood sculpture of Barbara Jo McLaughlin.
And the evidence for a women's art wave is strong even outside the Davis Dominguez fiefdom. Over at Etherton Gallery, Mayme Kratz will exhibit her poetic resin works—part sculpture, part painting—starting Sept. 14. And two of Tucson's powerhouse women artists—painter Bailey Doogan and photographer Ann Simmons-Myers—debut their experimental collaboration at Etherton Nov. 23.
Two campus museums are already staging solo shows of female photographers. Alejandra Platt-Torres's wrenching borderlands black-and-whites are at the Arizona State Museum until Oct. 19, and Patricia Carr Morgan's photographic dissection of myth and reality soldiers on through Dec. 1 at the University of Arizona Museum of Art.
Arizona State Museum's next show, of Edward S. Curtis' Arizona photographs, will be guest-curated by Aleta Ringolero, a woman who's both a doctoral candidate in art history and a member of the Pima tribe; she's expected to bring a welcome Native American perspective to Curtis' Indian portraits.
In the performing arts, UApresents kicks off its season with female rocker Melissa Etheridge Sept. 7, and the woman-run troupe Artifact Dance Project jump-starts the dance roster the same night with an edgy collaboration with DJ Sync at LoveSmack Studios. Hotshot violinist and Grammy nominee Jennifer Frautschi is the first guest artist of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra season, playing the Glazunov violin concerto Oct. 4 and 6. Female playwright Milta Ortiz is the new designated writer for Borderlands Theater's annual Christmastime charmer, A Tucson Pastorela. Writer Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking is on the boards at Winding Road. Comedienne extraordinaire Margaret Cho ignites the Rialto on Dec. 4.
All this is not to say that this explosion of female talent precludes appearances by artists of other gender persuasions.
Superstar pianist Lang Lang, just for example, turns up Oct. 22 at Centennial, to perform, at last, a concert sidelined by Hurricane Sandy last year. Todd Wilson of Breakout Studios adds his choreography to Artifact's at the DJ show. In theater, as always, Mr. William Shakespeare dominates, either writing or inspiring no fewer than five plays on local stages—though one of the Shakespeare variations is a woman-driven riff on Othello, written by the acclaimed contemporary playwright Paula Vogel.
And at the galleries, male artists rub elbows with the women. A leading Japanese photographer, Masao Yamamoto, and fellow male photographer Charles Grogg, are in the Kratz show at Etherton, and Doogan and Simmons-Myers share their space with the late, great Luis Jimenez. Albert Kogel's wood panels and Andy Polk's paintings will hang near McLaughlin's sculptures at Davis Dominguez.
Even so, Mike Dominguez will drive home his point about female prowess in a five-part lecture series through The Learning Curve (thelearningcurvetucson.com) beginning Oct. 31. Weary of clichéd ideas about women's art, he's given his talks the ironic title Beyond Georgia and Frida.
In this fall arts preview, like Dominguez, I've also tried to go above and beyond, highlighting the most provocative arts events. Space naturally limits what can be included. For a complete documentation of everything artistic this fall, peruse Linda Ray's lavish listings in the Weekly. For the skinny on all things musical, consult Stephen Seigel's always excellent music section.
Now onto the arts, fall 2013 edition.
ART
Gender isn't the only thing on the visual arts agenda. Border and Latino/a issues are a perennial concern here in the borderlands, and this year there's also a trend toward investigations of the New West.
The Luis Jimenez etchings at Etherton (Nov. 19 to Feb. 1, reception Nov. 23), companions to the Doogan/Simmons-Myer work, will happily bring this late, too-little-exhibited artist into view once again. In his prints, Jimenez made lively, compassionate scenes of Chicano life—and of border crossers—just as does Platt-Torres in her border photos at ASM. Contreras Gallery, a reliable purveyor of out-of-the mainstream artists, gives a show (Nov. 2 to 30) to Martin Quintanilla, a lively Mexico City-born painter who satirizes Latino/a life in the U.S., and another to Carmen Sonnes (Dec. 7 to Jan. 25), who last year exhibited the most tender painting of border crossers I've yet seen. This time around, Sonnes will show portraits of Native American and Mexican women.
The Tucson Museum of Art follows up its must-see Arizona Biennial with Common Elegance: The Still Life Paintings of William Shepherd (Oct. 12 to Jan. 12). Shepherd's works explore the contemporary West, through Native American and traditional Western artifacts and tourist kitsch. Bob Kuhn: Drawings on Instinct, from Oct. 12 to Feb. 16, exhibits Western wildlife drawings and landscapes by the late Tucson painter. Both shows make a nice counterpart to the historical exhibition of Curtis photos from early 20th-century Arizona.
Even the oh-so-contemporary fall show at MOCA evokes the mountain West. Artist Alois Kronschlaeger will bring the landscape inside by building mountains and valleys in Untitled (Basin and Range) in the museum's Great Hall. Mimicking the highs and lows of our terrain, the installation takes its title from a John McPhee work. Opening with a reception Oct. 4, the show also includes a separate exhibition of Tucsonan Dave Sayre's series of cartoon paintings, one of which hangs at the moment in the TMA Biennial.
Divorced from these Western preoccupations, the "prescient" photography of the late UA prof Todd Walker (1917-1998) hangs at the Center for Creative Photography in Todd Walker: Anticipating Digital. Walker pioneered all manner of tech-y techniques in his hallucinogenic work, using early Apple computers to manipulate images and developing alternative printing methods. Through Oct. 20. Charles Harbutt: Departures and Arrivals, opening Nov. 8, takes its title from the photojournalist's latest book of images. Also on display are photos Harbutt made of the young Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1959, and a slideshow of 150 works commissioned by magazines.
A number of exhibitions are wrapped around fun events. TMA's highly entertaining Arizona Biennial rolls through Sept. 29, exhibiting crazy cement wall sculptures, a graveyard installation and a kitchen rendered in pin pricks on paper, not to mention a bevy of beauties in oil, wood and pixels. At the closing Biennial Bash, at 5:30 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 29, exhibition artist Daniel Martin Diaz and his band, Blind Divine, will play. A silent auction allows you to buy the cement frame or paper refrigerator of your heart's desire.
Glass master Tom Philabaum went to Wisconsin in June to collaborate with Wes and Wesley Hunting. The three experimented with wrapping copper wire around hot glass. On Oct. 2 and 3, the trio will demonstrate their new techniques in Philabaum's fiery Tucson studio. The three will open their show, Wired, at the adjoining Philabaum gallery, from 5 to 8 p.m. Oct. 5.
The Wired reception coincides with The Big Picture, the Central Tucson Gallery Association's Oct. 5 season opener. A dozen galleries downtown and in the warehouse district at Sixth and Sixth will kick open their doors at the same time. Participants include Conrad Wilde Gallery, Sacred Machine, Raices Taller 222 and Davis Dominguez, which will open the aforementioned Focus: Five Women Artists. Among this group, UA prof Barbara Penn does edgy, exploratory paintings. Pima prof Claire Park is celebrated for her luminous weavings. Sculptor Julia Andres makes realistic bronzes bathed in beautiful patinas. Moira Geoffrion has been busily painting brushy avian and floral paintings since her retirement from the UA. And lithographer Kathryn Polk tackles feminist themes.
For the Open Studio Tour, Nov. 9 and 10, hundreds of artists all over town open their warehouses and garages and living room studios, and invite thousands of art lovers to see their works in progress. During this free, popular event, artist give out refreshments, do demos of their techniques—and sell their wares.
THEATER
The theater beat is one of the busiest on the Tucson arts scene, as troupes emerge, retreat and return. Just last week Harry Clark announced that he and Sanda Schuldmann, his partner and wife, are shutting down their critically acclaimed Chamber Music Plus company after a nine-year Tucson run. Audiences loved their concert plays' combination of celebrity actors, live musicians and original biopic scripts about the lives of great composers. Studio Connections, after a hiatus, is back on the boards this fall, and Broadway in Tucson has picked up stakes and moved from the downtown Music Hall to the UA's Centennial Hall. Arizona Theatre Company suffered some slings and arrows this summer in an artistic and administrative dust-up, and the peripatetic actor and director Christopher Johnson has popped up as the new artistic director of Winding Road Theater Ensemble.
Perennial favorite Shakespeare is the common denominator this fall; he's represented on five local stages, though one is actually a field in Himmel Park. For the Seventh Annual Shakespeare in the Park, The Merry Wives of Windsor will be performed in the outdoor amphitheater at the bottom of Hippie Hill, Sept. 20 to Oct. 6. The merry play romps through silly romantic entanglements, set in motion by the conniving Falstaff.
The serious Rogue Theatre, in its "Season of Lust," delivers the much darker Measure for Measure, a disturbing tale in which a judge offers to save the life of a novice's brother if the young woman will have sex with him. Nov. 7 to 24.
Michael Fenlason of Beowulf Alley Theatre has written an adaptation of Shakespeare's Scottish play, going to the heart of the matter—or murder—by calling it MacBeth's Knife. Acclaimed playwright Paula Vogel (How I Learned to Drive) turns Othello into a bawdy woman-centered drama in Desdemona: A Story about a Handkerchief. The two plays run in repertory at the downtown theater Sept. 6 to 22.
Finally, Live Theatre Workshop takes on all 37 of Shakespeare's plays in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), a comic parody that plays out in 97 minutes, covering everything from A Comedy of Errors to The Tempest, Oct. 10 to Nov. 17.
Beyond Shakespeare, the troupes take on a variety of playwrights and themes. Below is a quick look at the theatrical lineup, company by company. For smaller community theater offerings, check our listings.
The Arizona Theatre Company goes for laughs, opening its season with the funniest play in the English language: Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. Written in Wilde's sublime prose, the 1895 absurdist comedy details romantic mix-ups among the British upper crust. Sept. 14 to Oct. 5. The Mountaintop, Oct. 19 to Nov. 9, is set in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968—on the eve of Martin Luther King's assassination. Taking its name from the stirring speech King delivered the day before he died, the play imagines his thoughts on what would be his last night on Earth. Co-produced by the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, the play was written by Katori Hall. The musical comedy Xanadu—involving both a Greek muse and a disco roller derby—is a takeoff on the improbable Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly film from 1980. A frothy holiday offering, the play has plenty o' roller-skating, disco dancing and popular '80s tunes. Nov. 30 to Dec. 21.
The student actors at the UA's Arizona Repertory Theatre get all steamy Sept. 22 to Oct. 13 in the French bedroom farce Boeing-Boeing by Marc Camoletti, about a '60s playboy engaged to three stewardesses at once. Moving from sexy to sweet, the troupe performs the beloved musical The Fantasticks, Oct. 20 to Nov. 10. The classic 1939 George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner, comes to the theatrical table during Thanksgiving month, Nov. 10 to 24.
Following its month of Shakespeare variations, Beowulf Alley turns to The Little Dog Laughed, Oct. 4 to 20, a theater comedy from 2006 by Douglas Carter Beane. From Nov. 8 to 24, the troupe takes on Savage Bond by Steve Holiday, winner of the 2012 Arizona Playwriting Award.
Borderlands Theater opens its 28th season with Grounded, a new play by George Brant, about a female fighter pilot forced from the sky by her pregnancy. An up-to-the-minute story about women in the military, it runs Sept. 26 to Oct. 13 at Zuzi's Theater. The delightful annual Christmas musical, A Tucson Pastorela, now in its 18th year, gets a new playwright, Milta Ortiz, the company's writer in residence. Gertie and the T.O. Boys deliver live waila music, and the carols are in English and Spanish. Dec. 19 to 22, Leo Rich Theater.
Broadway in Tucson, presenter of traveling Broadway musicals, brings in Sister Act, the silly comedy about nuns and the diva who hides among them, Oct. 8 to 13. The punk band Green Day's album American Idiot was the springboard for a Broadway hit of the same name. Running Dec. 7 and 8, in a joint project with UApresents, the show tells the tale of three friends chasing their dreams. Mamma Mia!, the song-and-dance fest structured around ABBA's greatest hits, is squeezed in between Christmas and New Year's, running Dec. 27 to 29.
Good old Gaslight just keeps gestating goofy musical spoofs of popular movies. This fall it's Buccaneers of the Caribbean or "Don't Touch Me Booty" in which a pirate crew sings and dances and brawls its way across the sunny seas in a search for sunken gold. Aug. 29 to Nov. 10.
Invisible Theatre gives John W. Lowell's thriller The Letters its Southwest premiere. Set in forbidding 1930s Russia, the play runs Sept. 10 to 22. In Tom Dudzick's Miracle on South Division Street, a family in a run-down Buffalo neighborhood nurtures a fervent belief that the Blessed Mother once appeared in its barbershop. Nov. 12 to 24.
The ever-busy Live Theatre Workshop stages plays all year round, along with a roster of children's productions and late night theater. Visiting Mr. Green by Jeff Baron, closing Aug. 31, is a comedy about an unusual male friendship. Souvenir is Stephen Temperley's oddly affecting account of the strange real-life career of Florence Foster Jenkins, a tone-deaf society lady determined to sing. Staged in Tucson by ATC six years ago, it's onstage Sept. 5 to Oct. 5. Following the Oct. 10-Nov. 16 run of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), LTW moves onto Holiday Memories. The seasonal show is based on two Truman Capote stories, The Thanksgiving Visitor and A Christmas Memory. Nov. 21 to Dec. 29.
All Together Theatre, LTW's children's branch, presents original musicals on Sunday afternoons. The Great Zantini and the Magic Thief runs Sept. 15 to Nov. 24, and Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree: A Christmas Sing-A-Long is Dec. 1 to 22.
In its second season, Puppets Amongus adds nighttime adult fare to its usual child-friendly menu. Puppet Cabaret, Oct. 5 and Nov. 13, presents "contemporary short-form puppet theater," with experimental acts in a variety-show format. Puppet Films, Oct. 11 and 12, and Dec. 27 and 28, screens short films by assorted artists. In the kids' afternoon shows, Crumpled, inspired by The Paper Bag Princess, runs Nov. 9 through 17. Winterland—A Puppet Musical, about the melting of a magical place, is the holiday show; Dec. 14 to 22. (puppetsamongus.com).
The Rogue Theatre precedes Shakespeare's Measure for Measure with Mistake of the Goddess by Girish Karnad. Two friends besotted with the same woman cut off their own heads, and the goddess Kali puts them back together—but switches the heads. Complications, as they say, ensue. Sept. 12 to 29.
Studio Connections returns with a variant on Oscar Wilde. In the musical A Man of No Importance, written by Terrance McNally, a hapless Dublin bus driver who imagines the Irish Wilde as his confidant tries to stage an amateur production of his hero's Salome. But the play triggers a backlash against the "love that dare not speak its name." Cabaret Theater, Nov. 8 to 24.
Winding Road Theater Ensemble gives Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking its Arizona premiere. Toni Press-Coffman stars in the one-woman play about love and loss, based on Didion's memoir about the deaths of her husband and only daughter. Aug. 29 to Sept. 15. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Winding Road re-creates 1930s Weimar Berlin, in an "aggressive re-imagining" of the classic musical Cabaret. Dec. 5 to 22. Both shows are at the Cabaret Theater.
DANCE
Artifact Dance Project, known for its elegant literary ballets set to live classical music, parties down Sept. 7 with DJ Sync during wear.house at the LoveSmack Studios, 19 E. Toole Ave. During what you might call a participatory dance concert, ADP choreographers Claire Hancock and Ashley Bowman will set dances on the pro dancers on the floor. Todd Wilson of BreakOut Studios and ADP Shelly Steigerwald also contribute choreography.
The downtown Spanish restaurant Casa Vicente will resound with the rhythmic stomps of flamenco Sept. 19 to 22, during the fifth annual Tucson Flamenco Festival. The dancing and music will unfurl outdoors under the stars, and the restaurant will be offering up paella and other Spanish treats. Visiting flamenco stars perform, and locals can learn the steps and strums in dance and guitar workshops. www.tucsonflamencofestival.com.
Jazz comes to the UA Oct. 1 to 3 in jazz dance concerts given by the students at the UA School of Dance. Next, over two weekends from Oct. 24 to Nov. 3, the young dancers perform the annual Premium Blend concerts, demonstrating their skills in ballet, modern and jazz. The Arizona Choir collaborates. A highlight is "Duet Suite (The Sum of Us)," a compendium of work that modern prof Doug Nielsen composed and danced during his long career. In the semester's final concert, Seasonal Treasures—Student Spotlight, the students show off their own choreography and dancing, Dec. 4 to 8. All shows at the UA's Stevie Eller Theatre.
Dracula returns to Tucson just weeks before Halloween. The revival of the spooky ballet, choreographed by Mark Schneider, is a highlight of Ballet Tucson's 28th season opener, Oct. 11, 12 and 13 at Stevie Eller. The long and lanky Daniel Precup dances Dracula, the part he was born for. Now retired from romantic roles, Precup is turning out fresh new choreography. His Gemini premieres at the same show. The concert's third entry is Under My Skin, a new work by artistic director Mary Beth Cabana and assistant director Chieko Imada, set to Cole Porter's songbook.
ZUZI! Dance Company hosts its all-comers No Frills-Cheap Thrills Dance Happenin' Oct. 25 and 26 at the ZUZI Theater in the Historic YWCA. Local choreographers and dancers present works in progress in a lighthearted concert. Expect to see dances in the air and dances on the floor.
Diavolo Dance Theater, a 21-year-old troupe out of L.A., leaps onto the Centennial Hall stage on Nov. 9. With a penchant for the surrealistic, the dancers/gymnasts/athletes prance about—and fly—in "Trajectoire," and in "Transit Space" zip about like skateboarders.
French-Argentine tango, anyone? Mais oui. Unión Tanguera, improbably based both in Lyon and Buenos Aires, injects a français—and modern—flavor into the traditional South American dance. Its Nov. 30 concert at Centennial is called Nuit Blanche, or White Night.
Christmastime brings an armada of Nutcrackers to the Old Pueblo. Ballet Tucson's traditional version is Dec. 14 and 15 at Centennial Hall. Tucson Regional Ballet performs its Southwest Nutcracker the same two days, but at the TCC Music Hall. Keep an eye on the Weekly around Thanksgiving for Nutcracker news rolling in from all the other troupes.
The annual ZUZI Solstice Celebration—a modern dance riposte to the Nutcracker juggernaut—is Dec. 19, 20 and 21 in the ZUZI Theater. The theme this year is water: the glories of the bountiful oceans and the precariousness of the desert's H2O.
MUSIC
Give three cheers and one cheer more for the jolly HMS Pinafore, the Gilbert and Sullivan confection that opens Arizona Opera's season. The 1878 comic opera in two acts is sung in English, Oct. 19 and 20. After the cheerful light opera, the company continues with a much darker story of the high seas. Inspired by a real-life sturm-und-drang voyage in a tempest, Wagner created The Flying Dutchman—an 1843 maritime drama with a ghost captain, a spectral ship and a soul in need of redemption. Sung in German, with subtitles, Nov. 23 and 24. Both operas are performed with a live orchestra at the TCC Music Hall.
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra, as always, has a busy calendar, with four full-scale classical concerts with full orchestra and guest artists this fall, a crossover Pops! concert, two smaller Masterworks shows and a cascade of holiday offerings.
Among the highlights: the Oct. 4 and 6 season opener, Victorious Shostakovich!, featuring the composer's Festive Overture and Symphony No. 7, "Leningrad." In between these two Shostakovich favorites, guest violinist Jennifer Frautschi plays the challenging Glazunov Violin concerto. Classic concert number four, Dec. 6 and 8, offers up "Bach, Bees & Beethoven." The Pops! Concert goes Hot! Hot! Hot! in an Evening of Latin Music, Dance & Romance, Nov. 30 and Dec. 1. The traditional Messiah, performed with the TSO Chorus, brings Handel's glorious hallelujahs to Catalina Foothills High School concert hall, Dec. 14 and 15.
Year after year, the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music lures top international chamber music ensembles to Tucson's own Leo Rich Theater. In this fall's evening series, Jerusalem Quartet alights Oct. 16 and 17; the Vienna Piano Trio, Nov. 13; and Fry Street Quartet on Dec. 11. In the Sunday afternoon Piano & Friends series showcasing younger musicians, Ieva Jokubaviciute plays the ivories on Nov. 10. while Hye Jin Kim plays violin.
You never know who among these young players will shoot to superstardom. It was the Arizona Friends who first introduced a 17-year-old Lang Lang to Tucson audiences in a Piano & Friends concert. Now 31, Lang is one of the best-known pianists in the world. He returns to Tucson Oct. 22 to play Centennial Hall.
UApresents also brings in the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra Nov. 15 to perform a program of Bernstein, Copeland and Gershwin. For the pops component, the Boston belts out a medley of movie-music hits from E.T. to Superman.
Among the many local choirs and orchestras, the all-male Sons of Orpheus chorus has a devoted following, particularly for its Christmas-season concerts at Mission San Xavier del Bac, this year on Dec. 10, 11 and 12. On Dec. 4, the Sons sing a benefit for the Tucson Community Food Bank at the Berger Performing Arts Center, with the collaboration of the young students at the Arizona State Schools for the Deaf and the Blind.
Not to be outdone, the Southern Arizona Women's Chorus honors the festive season with A Celtic Celebration! Dec. 13 at Catalina Foothills High and Dec. 15 at Ascension Lutheran Church. Performing with the Seven Pipers Scottish Society, the women will sing Celtic songs of Scotland, England and Ireland. Don't be surprised if a highland dancer or two does a jig.
And speaking of the music of the misty northern isles, two Scottish bands (complete with bagpipes) parade into Berger Performing Arts Center Sept. 21. The well-known Tannahill Weavers headline. The young band Manran, which offers songs in Scottish Gaelic as well as an array of Irish and Scottish instruments, performs in Arizona for the first time.
The Fox Tucson Theatre has an impressively crowded lineup of classic rockers and folkies, along with a sideline in comedy. The funny folks include Las Lavanderas (Aug. 23) and the comics in Spank: A Fifty Shades Parody (Oct. 6). In the famed musicians category, look for Kenny Loggins (Sept. 26), Taj Mahal (Oct. 12), Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby with Kentucky Thunder (Oct. 20), Lyle Lovett and John Hiatt (Nov. 7), and Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey (Nov. 8).
At the Rialto at the other end of downtown, the schedule is likewise happily full. See www.rialtotheatre.com for the full monty, as well as Weekly music maven Seigel's pages. But let us not fail to mention comedy queen Margaret Cho, who stops by Dec. 4 to deliver what the Rialto is calling Comedy Gold.
BOOKS
Tucson is blessed with a bevy of writers, a vibrant literary scene and plenty of readings of poetry and prose in a multitude of venues. The UA Poetry Center, now under the enthusiastic leadership of Tyler Meier, late of The Kenyon Review, returns with its powerhouse (free!) reading series. First up—tonight, Aug. 22—are short story writer Polly Rosenwaike and poets Dexter L. Booth and Samuel Ace. UA creative writing faculty member Jane Miller and Joshua Marie Wilkinson kick off the semester with a reading Aug. 29. Readings continue every few weeks throughout the term, mostly in the lovely indoor-outdoor lecture room in the center's airy modernist building on campus. For a full schedule see poetry.arizona.edu.
Charles Alexander, a poet and publisher of Tucson's Chax Press, launches two of his own books, Some Sentences Search for Some Periods (Little Red Leaves, 2013) and Pushing Water (Cuneiform Press, 2011). The free reading is at MOCA on Sept. 13.
Look for a series of POG literary readings at The Drawing Studio downtown. The current schedule has POG & Friends on Sept. 21, Rachel Blau duPlessis and Johanna Skibsrud on Oct. 19, and Clark Coolidge and Tere Fowler-Chapman on Nov. 16.
Casa Libre en la Solana, located in a cozy former guesthouse/motel on Fourth Avenue, also stages frequent literary evenings. The Lamplight Reading Series, just for example, takes place the first Sunday of the month at 4 p.m. Book lovers' best bet is to keep up by checking the website often. One intriguing happening already posted takes its title from Tucson's original name. Scheduled for Sept. 14, it's called Stjukshon: an indigenous reading series.
Antigone Books, Tucson's excellent indie bookstore, has a heapin' helpin' of local author events in September. On Sept. 14, Adam Rex and Kate Bernheimer introduce their new illustrated books for tiny tots, Moonday and The Girl Who Wouldn't Brush Her Hair, respectively. On Sept. 20, performance artist Joanna Frueh reads from A Short Story about a Big Healing, her personal account of recovery from breast cancer. On Sept. 27, UA art prof Ellen McMahon introduces the collaborative book Ground Water, an artistic and environmental exploration of water. Three contributors read their essays.
ETC.
Odyssey Storytelling keeps gaining steam, winning more fans for its Thursday night storytelling sessions in which six Tucsonans tell real stories about their own lives. Housed at FLUXX Studio and Gallery, 416 E. Ninth St., Odyssey will presents stories about animals Sept. 5, about traditions Sept. 19, and revenge Nov. 7. Tucson Improv Movement collaborates on The Spontaneous! Show Oct. 3. Big Bad Words: The B*tch Show runs Dec. 5.
Tucson's beloved Loft Cinema fetes a pair of Hollywood's most innovative filmmakers in The Big Coen Brothers Retrospective, Sept. 5 to 28. Screened every Thursday and Saturday night during these weeks, the eight films include Raising Arizona, The Big Lebowski and No Country for Old Men. In the five-day Loft Film Fest 2013, the theater will show indie, foreign and classic movies, segueing between emerging and established filmmakers. Watch for filmmaker Q&A's, interactive events—and a whole lotta celluloid.
Don't forget Tucson Meet Yourself, the giant traditional art, music, dance and FOOD festival that occupies a large swath of downtown Oct. 11 to 13, and the All Souls Procession, a traveling cavalcade of art and ghosts and puppets and mourning that winds through downtown to the westside on Nov. 3.
