Resistance Mic! Midterms Edition

Resistance Mic! is a series of intimate, curated evenings where a diverse collective of artists will take the stage to perform truth to power in these troubled times. This all-new midterm edition of Resistance Mic! picks up where the elections leave off, adding the human and moral dimensions to the political calculus.  Hear powerful voices, sample some Resistance cocktails, and prepare for an evening of insight, fun, and the power of word and music. Artists include Jennifer Jean, Regie Gibson, Tim McCarthy, Sarah Sweeney, plus the amazing talents of writers in the newly published Pangyrus Resistance Issue, including:  Sonya Larson, Fred Marchant, Grace Taulsan and more. Music by Atlas Soul.

“Writing About Politics” Reading & Open Mic

Participants from Writing About Politics workshop at GrubStreet read work from the class.

JODY CARLSON
ANNA LEE HIRSCHI
MARTHA MCCOLLOUGH
RAYMOND TATTEN
CARA BENSON – Instructor

Come out to hear creative responses to the current political climate! Short works inspired by Grace Paley, Omar Robert Hamilton, Claudia Rankine, and others. Bring your own 2 minute piece, and we’ll have an open read after.

Tyrant, Show Thy Face – A Benefit for Actor’s Shakespeare Project

How does a truly disastrous leader – a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant – come to power?
How, and why, does a tyrant hold on to power? And what goes on in the hidden recesses of the tyrant’s soul?

For help in understanding our most urgent contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no peer.
In the new book Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics, Pulitzer-prize winning author and Shakespeare Scholar STEPHEN GREENBLATT examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeare’s most famous plays — from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found in Measure for Measure and The Winter’s Tale.

WGBH’s Executive Arts Editor & Host of Open Studio JARED BOWEN will join Greenblatt on stage for a conversation about the relevance of these themes in today’s world.

ASP Resident Acting Company members and ASP Youth will collaborate with Greenblatt to illuminate Shakespeare’s tyrants, from the fierce to the funny, with excerpts from Shakespeare’s plays and devised interactive performance pieces.

 

 

STEVE ALMOND on “Bad Stories” at Porter Square Books

Join STEVE ALMOND and musician ALISTAIR MOOCK for an evening of reading, agitation, and protest music.

Like a lot of Americans, STEVE ALMOND spent the weeks after the 2016 election lying awake, in a state of dread and bewilderment. The problem wasn’t just the election, but the fact that nobody could explain, in any sort of coherent way, why America had elected a cruel, corrupt, and incompetent man to the Presidency. Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country is Almond’s effort to make sense of our historical moment, to connect certain dots that go unconnected amid the deluge of hot takes and think pieces. Almond looks to literary voices–from Melville to Orwell, from Bradbury to Baldwin–to help explain the roots of our moral erosion as a people.

The book argues that Trumpism is a bad outcome arising directly from the bad stories we tell ourselves. To understand how we got here, we have to confront our cultural delusions: our obsession with entertainment, sports, and political parody, the degeneration of our free press into a for-profit industry, our enduring pathologies of race, class, immigration, and tribalism. Bad Stories is a lamentation aimed at providing clarity. It’s the book you can pass along to an anguished fellow traveler with the promise, This will help you understand what the hell happened to our country.

STEVE ALMOND is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast “Dear Sugars” with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.

Cuando llegamos | Writing Immigration Stories

Immigration stories can be about origins, family separation, trauma, struggle, success, survival, secrets, personal and cultural reinvention, political upheaval and the search for home, freedom and country. Right now it feels especially urgent to make our own stories visible in all their complexity. But where to start? Your story might be remembered, imagined, or reconstructed. What does this mean for the process of writing memoir or fiction?

This short workshop is open to everyone, no matter your experience with writing. You will try out new ways to write or tell stories, discuss your work and ideas with others, and discover the work of other writers whose work deals with these topics.

Coffee and snacks provided. Families are welcome. The workshop is geared towards adults, but teens are welcome to participate with a parent or older relative. Simple activities will be provided for children.

This class takes place at the Boston Public Library’s Egleston branch, 2044 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury, MA 02119. If you have any difficulty signing up online, please call 617-695-0075.

Cuando Llegamos

Las narrativas sobre la inmigración pueden ser sobre los orígenes, la separación familiar, traumas, lucha, éxito, supervivencia, los secretos, la reinvención personal y cultural, las convulsiones políticas y la búsqueda de hogar, libertad y patria. En este momento hay un sentido especial de urgencia en cuanto a hacer visible nuestras historias en toda su complejidad. ¿Pero por donde empezar? Puede ser que tu cuento viene de la memoria, de la imaginación, o una reconstrucción de eventos en el pasado. ¿Que significa esto para el proceso de escribir crónicas o ficción?

Este taller corto está abierto a todos sin importar su nivel de experiencia con la escritura. Intentarás nuevas maneras de escribir o contar cuentos, conversarás con los demas sobre tu trabajo y tus ideas, y descubrirás la obra de otros escritores quienes escriben sobre estos temas.

Proveemos cafe y meriendas. Son bienvenidas las familias. El taller se orienta hacía los adultos, pero les damos la bienvenida a los adolescentes a participar junto con un padre o un pariente mayor. Habrá actividades sencillas para mantener a los niños ocupados.

La clase tomará lugar en el sucursal Egleston de la Biblioteca Pública de Boston, 244 Columbus Avenue, Roxbury. Cualquier dificultad para inscribirse en linea, favor de llamar a 617-695-0075.

Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today

Many of the political issues we struggle with today have their roots in the US Constitution.

Husband-and-wife team CYNTHIA and SANFORD LEVINSON join Porter Square Books with their nonfiction book Fault Lines in the Constitution: The Framers, Their Fights, and the Flaws That Affect Us Today.

They take readers back to the creation of this historic document and discuss how contemporary problems were first introduced—then they offer possible solutions. Think Electoral College, gerrymandering, even the Senate. Many of us take these features in our system for granted. But they came about through haggling in an overheated room in 1787, and we’re still experiencing the ramifications.

This event is free and open to the public.