Fat Squirrel has announced its next production: Exhausted Paint: The Death of Van Gogh, directed by Carly Stroud and starring Drew Stroud in a one-man performance of an immersive theatrical journey, penned by local playwright Justin Maxwell. Grounded in the poignant personal writings of Vincent van Gogh, Exhausted Paint weaves together a sequence of monologues drawn from the artist’s letters, offering audiences intimate access to his mind and spirit through a shifting narrative.

• Dates: October 8-10 (Wed-Fri) and 16-18 (Thu-Sat)
  
• Venue: Big Couch, 1045 Desire St
  
• Creative Team:
  
  • Writer: Justin Maxwell (local playwright)
    
  • Director: Carly Stroud
    
  • Performer: Drew Stroud
    

Tickets & Information
Tickets are available on the company's website, fatsquirrelnola.square.site. The company’s tiered ticketing model ensures socio-economic diversity in attendance.

The NOLA Project theatre company is returning to Lafitte Greenway. Pete McElligott (THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, DRACULA) adapts FRANKENSTEIN, in a world premiere. Leslie Claverie (THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW, DRACULA) directs fellow NOLA Project members James Bartelle, Keith Claverie, Michael Aaron Santos, Matthew Thompson and Kristin Witt as well as local performers J’aiLa Christina, Noah Hazzard and Keyara Milliner. FRANKENSTEIN will be the third NOLA Project production to be staged at the Greenway Station. 

​“Partnering with Lafitte Greenway lets us turn a public space into a stage,” said NOLA Project
Artistic Director Tenaj Wallace. “Our hope is that neighbors, families, and audiences – whether
it’s their first play or their fiftieth – will feel like this type of community rooted theatre, that The
NOLA Project is committed to, belongs to them, too.”

FRANKENSTEIN will be presented October 2-17 at 436 N Norman C Francis Parkway. Seating is
bring-your-own general admission – camping chairs are recommended for the outdoor,
concrete venue. All performances start at 7:30pm. For detailed schedule, tickets and more, visit
NOLAProject.com.

Museum lovers of all ages are invited to a special Family Day celebrating The Trail They Blazed, HNOC’s exhibition about the Civil Rights Movement in New Orleans. Presented in collaboration with Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA), this free event will feature story times, live music, hands-on activities, gallery talks, and exciting surprises from special guests.

SCHEDULE OF ACTIVITIES10:30 a.m. Story time in The Trail They Blazed exhibition
Tricentennial Wing, 3rd floor
11 a.m. Organ demonstration
Seignouret-Brulatour building, 3rd floor
11:30 a.m. Gallery talk with a Trailblazer
Tricentennial Wing, 3rd floor
12 p.m. Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) presents Young Audiences Charter School Jazz Band
Brulatour courtyard
12:30 p.m. Young Audiences of Louisiana (YALA) presents Story Time with “Brother Roscoe,” featuring Dr. Leona Tate
Book: Small Shoes, Great Strides by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
Tricentennial Wing, 3rd floor
1 p.m. Gallery talk with a Trailblazer
Tricentennial Wing, 3rd floor

Click here for more information. 

On Wednesday, September 24th, Chef Nina Compton will host a very special Collaborative Charity Dinner at her award-winning New Orleans restaurant, Compère Lapin. Proceeds from the dinner will benefit the Sir John Compton Memorial Foundation (SJCMF), a non-profit organization established in honor of Nina’s late father, Sir John Compton of Saint Lucia. For this very special evening, Chef Compton will join forces with Top Chef winner (season 22) Tristen Epps-Long, 2025 James Beard “Outstanding Pastry Chef” semifinalist Camari Mick of The Musket Room and Raf’s, and Rawlston Williams, author and founder of Caribbean lifestyle brand The Food Sermon. Priced at $100 per person (excluding tax and gratuity), the four-course dinner menu follows:

SMALL BITES
Dasheen Puff/Geera/Cashew & Coconut Butter/Caviar, Gulf Oyster/Souskaye, Accra/Sauce Chien, Jollof Arancini
SAVORY
Coffee & Onion Ash Cured Cobia/Sauce Creole/Avocado - Chef Nina Compton, Vincentian Celebration of Corn - Chef Rawlston Williams, Whole Roasted Fish/Oil Down/Pigtails - Chef Tristen Epps-Long
SWEETS
Calypso Banana Foster Mille Feuille/Appleton Estate Rum Semifreddo - Chef Camari Mick
** Optional wine pairing available **
 
The benefit dinner takes place on Wednesday, September 24th, 5:30 PM - 9PM. Compère Lapin is located at The Old No. 77 Hotel, 535 Tchoupitoulas Street, in New Orleans. Seating is limited and requires advance reservations. For more information, please visit www.comperelapin.com and to make a reservation, visit https://www.opentable.com/r/compere-lapin

Dear Evan Hansen
Rivertown Theatres
Review by Beth D'Addono

If an anxiety-riddled teenager falls out of a tree, does anybody care? This is just one of the driving issues in the show Dear Evan Hansen, which won six Tony awards in 2017 including best musical. Eight years later, the story still resonates, a heartbreakingly raw tale of teen suicide, loneliness, social media fake news and ultimately, flawed redemption.

Dear Evan Hansen is a genre-bending musical, with Grammy-winning music and lyrics by Benj
Pasek and Justin Paul (the writing duo behind the songs in the films La La Land and The
Greatest Showman) and book by playwright Steven Levenson.

Set against the backdrop of the social media age, with ever-changing screens depicting the
relentless power of online “community,” Dear Evan Hansen manages to be both high tech and
low touch at the same time. The show tells the tale of an awkward and lonely teenager who feels
unseen and unimportant. When his classmate Connor Murphy dies by suicide, a misunderstanding about their relationship leads Connor’s parents to Evan, who perpetuates what starts as a little white lie, but blows up into a complex web of deceit.

Actor/singer Jacob Morris rises to the challenge as the show’s angst-ridden main character.
Morris has a strong, expressive voice, owning the show’s heart-tugging anthems while perfectly
embodying the nervous tics of a broken, isolated teen.

The stakes are high. While Evan manages to eventually do the right thing, it’s hard to cheer him on as he perpetuates the lie. He’s clearly embracing the charades limelight, but then again, this is a kid who nobody ever noticed. Morris mines Evan’s sensitive core, keeping it real through a roller coaster of emotions.

Morris is matched by a consistently strong ensemble, with shout outs to stirring performances by
Lewis as Connor and Ruby Rae Levin, as his tough yet vulnerable sister Zoe. Ryan Reilly is wonderful as the jammed up, grief-stricken dad Larry Murphy. When he sings To Break in a Glove to Evan, both characters are shattered by loss and wishing for what will never be. Ashley Lemmler delivers a strong performance as Evan’s mother Heidi, an over worked single mom who sings a showstopping version of the poignant ballad, So Big/So Small.

There were lots of sniffling and passed tissues on opening night. Dear Evan Hansen is a long and intense performance that rings true in an age where everybody else seems to be living their best
life on Instagram and TikTok, leaving so many of people of all ages “On the outside, always
looking in,” just one of the powerful lines in the first act anthem, “Waving Through a Window.” It's is a profound musical that rings true for anyone who's ever felt unseen in a crowded room.
​
That it’s onstage at Rivertown is a big deal. The licensing company reached out to the Kenner
theater, asking director Kelly Fouchi to present the first non-replica production in the U.S. Instead of this being a bus-and-truck traveling version of the original, Fouchi and her team were able to flex their own creative muscles. The company offered fresh aspects to the production, including stunning digital screens recreating school and home settings as the story unfolds. Scenic designer Ben Needham and lighting designer Gabby Brown created an eye-popping, high-tech context for a story that literally unspools screen by screen.

Bryce Slocumb co-directs with Fouchi, who also choreographs. Musical director Elise Spurlock
and the band of musicians did a bang-up job with this gorgeous score, with Mathieu Silverman.
conducting and on keyboard. Never mind if there were times when the balance of sound seemed off - hanging on every word goes with the territory for this gorgeous heartbreaker of a musical.

Dear Evan Hansen plays through Sept 28th at Rivertown Theatres. Click here for more information and ticketing. 

Beth D'Addono is a culture and food writer - her newest book, 'City Eats: New Orleans' - is out now. (Read our review)
​
Subscribe for your free weekly arts and culture newsletter:

​Out Cry: the Two-Character Play
Lower Depths Theatre at Loyola University
Review by Dorian Hatchett

The best way to turn a palace into a prison is to lock the doors.  Out Cry: the Two-Character Play by Tennessee Williams examines the compulsion of the artist to create art, and the inherent fragility of the human psyche.  

Endless poetry written in praise of the adaptability and kindness of the human heart completely discounts the truth. That for every love sonnet or ballad of fortitude, there's a sinister library of loss and depravity. Our hearts are monsters. That's why our ribs are cages.  

Tracey E. Collins is Clare. She's forceful and vibrant and hyperbolic and made of fear and bravado in equal measure. Her and her brother are trapped in the vicious cycle of the poor artist. The need to perform, to create, to produce is constant and endless. Without creating, there is no audience. Without an audience, the actor is alone and hungry with only their own thoughts to keep them company.  

Kyle Daigrepont is Felice. He is secretive and steadfast. He sees his sister's whimsy as weakness. His creativity stems from a deep well of responsibility, and like so many men, he considers himself rational. He's not, of course, but instead has convinced himself that his emotions are simply factual rather than facetious.  

Out Cry is among the most rarely staged of Williams’ work. He rewrote it constantly, from the first draft in 1966, to a second and third version in 1975. The demands of such intensity and deep range on a cast of two makes it difficult to cast and even more difficult to perform. Collins and Daigrepont are sublime in their roles.

At times hard to watch, simply overwhelmed in second hand desperation, the rapt audience seemed acutely aware that what they were watching was the active dissembling of two people, broken again and again on the wheel of creative license and expectation, and sharing something that may be folie à deux, or may just be aching truth.

The line between character and actor is blurred time and time again, as the play within a play flows back and forth between Felice and Clare and their character's needs on the stage within a stage, and the personal triumphs and sorrows of the actors playing them, on the stage that is their lives.

The final, quiet resolution to simply continue the play, because nothing ever ends, is distressing, but also allows the audience and actor alike to let go of the responsibility of knowing, and move on to acceptance. To get lost in this play is an honor, but also a pyrrhic victory of the highest order. The stage may be a prison for the actor, but Out Cry takes no prisoners.  

Out Cry: the Two Character Play runs through September 21st at the Lower Depths Theatre at Loyola University. Click here for more information and ticketing

We are one of the few places left doing reviews of local New Orleans theater! Subscribe for your free, weekly arts and culture newsletter: 
​

If you're a fan of Halloween, horror and escape rooms, then this new local experience will be for you. Delaporte Manor is a limited-run horror experience by the creators of Escape My Room. This limited-run experience is:

PART HAUNTED HOUSE: Gasp-worthy jump scares and macabre vignettes await around every corner
PART IMMERSIVE THEATER: Live actors slip between friend and foe, offering clues or leading you astray
PART ESCAPE ROOM: Solve cryptic riddles and explore secret passages

Tours run nightly and last between 45 and 60 minutes​.

The attraction opens on September 26th. Check out the Delaporte Manor website - click here

The New Orleans Film Society (NOFS)has announced its Closing Night, Centerpiece and additional Spotlight Films for the 36th annual New Orleans Film Festival (NOFF), taking place in-person October 23-27 and virtually October 23-November 2 through the NOFF Virtual Cinema (available globally). All Access Passes, Six Film Passes, Student/Teacher Passes and Virtual Passes are now available for purchase, with Individual tickets on sale to NOFS members October 9 (12 PM CST) and general public on October 16 (12 PM CST). To view the complete NOFF film guide, visit neworleansfilmsociety.org/lineup-events.  

• NOFF’s Closing Night Film, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (dir. Rian Johnson, prod. Rian Johnson, Ram Bergman, Katie McNeill), is the third installment of the Oscar-nominated Knives Out film series starring Daniel Craig as world-renowned detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), returning for his most dangerous case yet. The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week. 
• The festival’s Centerpiece Film is Jay Kelly, the latest from acclaimed director Noah Baumbach. Fresh off premieres at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals, where it drew ecstatic acclaim, the film stars George Clooney in a career-defining turn as legendary movie star Jay Kelly who is joined by his loyal manager Ron (Adam Sandler) as he embarks on an unexpectedly profound journey across Europe that blurs the line between public persona and private truth.
• Other high-profile Spotlight Films announced include Bradley Cooper’s Is This Thing On?, which follows Alex (Will Arnett), who seeks new purpose in the New York comedy scene as he navigates a divorce from wife Tess (Laura Dern); Hedda from director Nia DaCosta and starring Tessa Thompson in the titular role; and HIKARI’s Rental Family, starring recent Oscar winner Brendan Fraser. 
• The festival also unveiled 16 features and shorts that will screen out of competition in a Special Presentations section, representing festival favorites, notable new voices and films with deep connections to the city. Highlights include: World premiere of Shelby (dir. Daniel Fiore), which follows one Louisiana man’s adventures underwater logging and treasure hunting; North American premiere of In Hell With Ivo (dir. Kristina Nikolova), a profile of provocative Bulgarian queer artist and songwriter Ivo Dimchev; Lovers (dir. Taylor McFadden), executive produced by Nathaniel Rateliff, follows two women who return to their hometown for the funeral of a friend and includes New Orleans–based musician Sabina McCalla in a supporting role. *Special performance by Rateliff at screening.

READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH NOFF ARTISTSIC DIRECTOR CLINT BOWIE