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Now in its 37^th year, Charleston’s Spoleto Festival USA is a celebration of some of the most inventive works of performance and visual art worldwide that’s only invigorated by its quintessential southern setting. This year’s line-up boasts 153 performances from artists and ensembles from 14 countries across the city’s numerous historic and contemporary venues. Artists come here from Italy, the UK, South Africa, Japan, China, Spain, Russia, Korea, France, Brazil, Israel, Finland and India and throughout the United States.

From French acrobatics to Spanish Flamenco, traditional Indian Kuchipudi to a Chinese opera sung in German, Spoleto offers a diverse spread of shows of the highest caliber from emerging and established artists. What they share is the ability to transcend their genres in performances that, while brought to life in the picturesque Cistern Yard or the Dock Street Theatre, still somehow have a way of making you forget where you are.

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To see more of Kate’s work, visit her Tumblr page.

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Chapter One: Tips One — Three

SFUSA: How do you select the artists for each season?
Michael: I look for three things.  First, I seek lyricism.  In some way, musicians need to sing to people, whether it’s with their voice, piano, guitar, clarinet, whatever—the instrument doesn’t matter to me.  Second, there must be depth.  In some way, the music must touch people in their souls.  I don’t know why this happens.  I only know that it does, and that this level of experience is what we are in business to present for our audiences.  Finally, and third, if we are lucky, I hope for a few moments of transcendence, when the beauty of expression makes time stop.  Something extraordinary and mysterious and incredible happens in those moments.  Again, I don’t know why, but I know I want those moments when we can have them.

SFUSA: Do you look for a balance of genres—so much jazz, so much world music, so much Americana, etc.? Or is there some other commonality and/or contrast you look for?
Michael: Being a practical person, I pay a lot of attention to the balance of artistic diversity and financial viability.  The point is to present the best art you can find, but stay in business so that you can present it at all.  The particular way this works out for us has much to do with our history of presenting—I watch ticket sales assiduously—and an incremental approach to trying new things.  The numbers have to add up, but the performances need to add up, too—artistically—or the people don’t come back.

SFUSA: You’ve been programming the Wachovia/Wells Fargo Jazz series for 33 years. How have you seen the series change?
Michael: That period of time is about a generation-and-a-half, and has brought with it all that those words imply.  In the beginning in 1980, I had devotion for master jazz musicians who had been left behind, even though they remained at the height of their powers.  I’m thinking of people like pianists Mary Lou Williams, Roland Hanna, and Tommy Flanagan, saxophonist Dexter Gordon.  With time, these musicians passed on, and I began to understand new developments in South America and Europe.  Jazz in the 80s from Europe seemed lacking to me, but from the 90s on, creative powers outside the U.S. have surged.  This is a huge subject, but the short version is that the artistic freedom that gave rise to originality in the U.S. during the mid-20th century is now flourishing in Europe and South America.  Players are studying classical music, studying the 20th century developments in the New World, including jazz, Cuban, and Brazilian music, and are now making a third generation of work that has no name, except the name of the person creating it who, most often, is also composing the work as well as performing it.  Labels for genres of music have become ever less useful.  Duke Ellington’s thought, that there’s good music and the other kind, is as relevant as ever.

SFUSA: Where, geographically, do you see the most musical innovation coming from?
Michael: Norway, Italy, and Brazil are especially strong sources of new music, but great players are coming from Spain, France, and Poland, too.  I’m suspicious that there’s great work in Eastern Europe that I don’t know about yet, and maybe in Asia.  My antennae are on high alert.

SFUSA: How do bluegrass, zydeco, and other types of folk music relate to jazz?
Michael: American forms such as bluegrass offer the same opportunity as other musical histories.  Writer Albert Murray said that artists find things in their world that fascinate them, then extend, elaborate, and refine them into new work.  American folk forms are as free to be extended, elaborated, and refined into new work as any other body of work.  Artists such as Punch Brothers are showing the way.  So while it appears that we have more “roots” music in the Festival, I don’t see it that way.  I see it as a broader view of who is making genuinely new work, and offering them a place in our program.

SFUSA: You bring so many artists to the U.S. for the first time. Why do you think it’s important for the Festival to include artists who are not well known—or known at all—in the U.S.?
Michael: The world remains, thankfully, a big and diverse place.  If you really give it all you have to find the best you can find, it will inevitably take you global.  Our freedom to chase great work globally is a tribute to our audience, because they will support what we find with their willingness to attend performances and make financial contributions.  There remains a lot of great work to be found and brought to Charleston.  But you’ve got to keep your ears on straight, and listen for what counts—that the artist, from that stage, has got something to say.

Michael G.’s top eight things to like about Charleston:

|  The live oak trees at the Cistern, and at Middleton Place; to me, these are the Rocky Mountains of Charleston—rich with majesty.
|  The stone sidewalks downtown; I think that all sidewalks in the world should consider being like these.
|  The beach at Station 19 on Sullivan’s Island.  My children grew up loving that place on the beach, and consider it to be a place they need to go.  I try to go there at least once, even if only to just look at the ocean.
|  Going to SNOB and giving Frank Lee a big hug.  His kindness toward so many Festival musicians over the years, keeping his place open late for us, the good company we enjoyed together, was extraordinary and is cherished.
|  Going to Magwood’s and Wando Shrimp, talking with the people there and picking up a 5 pound bag, drinking red wine while I do the grunt work of preparing them to cook, then enjoying them sautéed with some good bread and a salad.
|  Going to the Mt. Pleasant Farmer’s Market and buying fresh beans, instead of dried beans.
|  That this city has such a profound history and people, and that I’m still learning about it.
|  The scent of the air.

Spoleto Festival USA will be back with special ticket offers and waived fees during this weekend’s Second Sunday on King Street. Stop by the Festival’s tent, located at the corner of King and George Streets, to chat with staff about the Festival program and pick up a brochure. Click here for a complete list of Second Sunday savings. These offers will be available for in-person sales at the Sottile Theatre and Charleston Visitor Center on Sunday, May 12, from 1:00pm–5:00pm only. Customers who purchase $100 or more of Festival tickets at the Sottile Theatre location will receive a free Spoleto gift.

As an added bonus, The Local Honeys will be tucked under the Sottile marquee to serenade you as you make your Festival selections. Band member Sarah Bandy will also be on stage at this year’s Festival Finale Beer Garden as a part of ‘Olu’Olu.

Don’t forget, this Sunday is Mother’s Day. Treat your mom to something she’ll really enjoy…Spoleto Festival USA tickets!

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Chapter Two: Tips Four — Six

“Charleston’s unmatched blend of Southern charm and Old World ambiance makes it a truly exceptional American city. For a photographer, it is a treasure trove of visual delights and a feast for the senses. I relish walking along the narrow streets and cobblestone alleyways early in the morning. This is when the city is most peaceful… when the birds warble, the church bells ring, and the blooming tea olives fill the air with sweet fragrance. And especially when the light of sunrise suffuses everything it touches with a golden patina.

Oh, I know, I wax poetic. But these are the circumstances that inspire me to search for iconic images of Charleston. There are plenty of stirring vistas of the city, especially on the waterfront Battery, along Broad Street, or in the French Quarter, but I am particularly enchanted by Charleston’s details… vignettes of color, texture and pattern… the sum of which makes the city so special.

I feel honored to have my photographs represent Charleston around the world, whether it’s in the Charleston Visitors Bureau national ad campaign, in the Historic Charleston Foundation’s promotional materials, or helping to set the stage for the Spoleto Festival with the ticket brochure cover image.”

You can see more of Doug’s work at Hue and Eye Photography and Design.

My fingertips were fizzing and numb, my breath fast and shallow. I tried to move but couldn’t. I felt like I was buried in sand with the tide coming in. I could see people in the distance and started to shout for help, but my voice was a whisper. It was the middle of the night and I was wedged between a garage and a wall, totally paralysed. I had an overwhelming need to sleep but I knew I had to stay awake to survive.

I broke my neck in the early hours of May Day, 2004. I was 37, soon to be a new dad and enjoying life. My girlfriend Katy and I were decorating our first house in Padstow, Cornwall after I’d recently finished a run of Tristan and Yseult. I’d been performing with the renowned Kneehigh Theatre Company for more than 20 years–everywhere from the National Theatre in London to Broadway and Sydney–while combining it with a career in TV and film.

Our DIY at the cottage had coincided with “Obby Oss,” a May Day festival that has been celebrated in Padstow for centuries. That evening I’d been in the Golden Lion, merrily toasting the birth of summer with friends; Katy was at home waiting for me to bring her back some chips. At 1:35am I was climbing the steep hill to our cottage when my mobile went. It was Katy, wondering where I’d got to. I sat on a nearby wall to take the call, and leant back. I thought there was a hedge behind but there was nothing but a 10ft drop.

The phone line went dead. Katy instinctively knew something was wrong. She woke our neighbour Andy, a former paramedic. It took them an hour to find me, lying at the bottom of the wall, about a quarter of a mile from the cottage. I remember hearing them searching in the darkness nearby, unable to feel most of my body or let them know where I was. I recall thinking–what a stupid way to die, wedged drunk between a garage and a wall. Finally they found me, having heard what sounded like an injured animal whimpering somewhere near the bottom of the wall. Andy spotted the reflective stripe on my trainer.

“Can you hear me, buddy?” he asked, shining a torch in my face. “You’ve had a bit of a tumble. Your girlfriend’s phoning the ambulance. They’re on their way, so you stay awake for me…”

When the ambulance arrived it took four paramedics two hours to get me out. They eventually managed to strap me to a spinal board, pumping up an inflatable “coffin” around me to stop any movement, and I was airlifted to the spinal unit at Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Strapped to the gurney with my neck clamped in a plastic vice, all I could see was a succession of ceiling tiles and strip lights. I was aware of my body but couldn’t feel it. X-rays, MRI scans, IV drips, needle tests, catheterisation, blood pressure, pain relief, machines that went beep and weird dreams all followed.

I woke up and the smell of boiled cabbage hit me. All my senses seemed to be in a state of heightened awareness–especially my hearing. If someone knocked into my bed it was like the Blitz. I stared at the ceiling tiles for hours on end, pain and panic creeping up in waves. The next day Katy pinned the first scan of our baby on the ceiling. All I could make out was a beautiful, tiny, perfect spine.

“You’ve a flexion teardrop fracture of the C5 vertebrae, roughly where your Adam’s apple is,” explained Tim Germon, the consultant neurosurgeon. “Imagine the cervical vertebrae is like a necklace of bone protecting the spinal cord. That’s been dropped to the floor and broken in three places.’’

He said the break site needed to be stabilised urgently as three fragments of bone were floating around my spinal cord, which was at risk of permanent injury. They couldn’t do anything immediately as the cord was bruised and had gone into spinal shock. The nervous system was unable to transmit any signals, which explained why I could not feel or move my body. Although spinal shock can last weeks, it is not the same as permanent paralysis (when the cord is severed or severely damaged). But at this point, the surgeon couldn’t tell what movement or sensation would come back, if any.

I had two options. The first was a halo brace (known as “the cage”) bolted to my skull to keep the vertebral column rigid, allowing the bone to heal naturally.

“The downside is you’ll have to wear it for 12-18 months, day and night,” said Germon. “And there’s still a chance your neck may ‘snake’ out of position because of your loss of motor and sensation control.”

The second option? “We operate, fuse the vertebrae together using surgical titanium bolts–then get you up on your feet as soon as possible. But working so close to the spinal cord, there’s a small risk it could be damaged further, which would mean tetraplegia or, worst case scenario, asphyxia and death.”

I asked what he’d do in my position.

“I’ve done this procedure many times,” he replied. “But there are no guarantees.”

I spent the next few weeks strapped to the bed, waiting for the swelling of the spinal cord to reduce. Every two hours I was examined: needle tests, blood pressure, catheter, heart rate. Not forgetting log rolls to prevent potentially lethal pressure sores. I was trapped in my own head, my dreams becoming my reality because my reality was a living nightmare.

Visiting time was wonderful–as was Katy, who was there every single day. But the lighter moments passed too quickly and I was back to the same grueling routine–and the pressure to make a decision. Halo or operate? Eventually, I made up my mind.

The operation, about three weeks after the accident, lasted six hours. When I came to, I could feel someone’s hand on my face and it was my own. I was lying on my side, a little hazy on morphine, but alive. The next day, the nurses helped me sit up for the first time in a month. The change in blood pressure was immense–it felt like I was balancing a dozen tables on my head. By the next week, I could swing my legs round off the bed. On the count of three, I was helped up onto my feet. I practised this for days until I was eventually able to take a step. First with a zimmer frame, then a wheelchair and finally, alone. The feeling in my legs came back slowly and it took many more weeks for me to learn how to walk properly. I vividly recall looking in the mirror for the first time since the accident and wondering: “Who is this old man with spaghetti arms and legs?” At first, even lifting my arms proved enough of a workout. I graduated to pesto jars, then books–from Frankenstein to Touching the Void. After three months, I was able to move into my parents’ home in Bodmin Moor, attending physiotherapy and massage at hospital as an outpatient. I went swimming to rebuild muscle and did resistance work involving large rubber bands, as well as performing detailed dexterous tasks such as turning screws.

Thanks to the efforts of the medical team who bolted and stitched me together, my recovery gathered pace. My son Hector was born in September and I was thrilled to be present. And 12 months later I was back on stage leaping around. It took months of rehab for feeling to return, very slowly, to most of my body–but not everywhere. Nerve damage has left me with permanent numbness and altered sensation in my fingers, arms, shoulders and feet, which will fizz like ice and fire forever. But I’m exceptionally lucky. More than 1,200 people in Britain are paralysed by spinal cord injuries every year, the majority confined to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives. My spinal cord, it seems, had not suffered permanent damage, thanks to the operation to stabilise the bone.

For years afterwards, I wanted to forget my accident, but then I began writing a show about Frankenstein that later evolved into Mayday Mayday, the story of my fall and its aftermath. I recently took a role in another true story involving disability, a BBC Two drama called Best of Men about the birth of the Paralympic Games. Ironically, I play one of the few able-bodied characters and one of my first lines is: “I don’t know anything about paralysis, sir.” Until May Day, 2004, that was true. But not anymore.

By Tristan Sturrock for The Telegraph, 30 Jul 2012. Reprinted with the author’s permission.

Tristan Sturrock will perform Mayday Mayday at Emmett Robinson Theatre at the College of Charleston May 32 – 27.

Mangold’s work frequently includes direct architectural references or has the feeling of being drawn by an architect’s hand. He almost always works in extensive series, often carried through both paintings and works on paper. “Angled Ring” is part of Mangold’s Ring Paintings, a series that highlights the artist’s expansive and reflective vocabulary, in which there is a continuous evolution from his early to his most recent works. The original piece is pastel and black pencil on paper, 31¼” x 29¾”. Pencil lines segment the image into even proportions, while heavier curving lines react to the ring’s shape and its divisions, pressing against the boundaries of its structure. Mangold’s work can be found in more than 75 public collections in the United States and abroad including The Art Institute of Chicago; The J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; and the Pace Gallery, New York.

To the casual observer the process of selecting each season’s poster is not obvious—there is no contest or juried art show or special commission (although original work has sometimes been created specifically for the poster). Redden says there is a connective thread that runs back to the beginning of The Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, with images that represent a succession of important contemporary artists working during the more than 50-year span of the Italian festival and Spoleto Festival USA. Each season Redden seeks to add to that list of great artists, but beyond that the selection process becomes fluid. The goal is to select—or create—a piece of art that represents the Festival in some way, but this is a goal that is open to a great deal of interpretation. Sometimes the artist will choose a piece, sometimes Redden makes the choice, sometimes it is a collaborative effort. And the results are as eclectic as the Festival itself: From the austere to the flamboyant, each poster reflects the distinctive aesthetic of the artist and his or her own idea of what the Festival means. To Redden, the unpredictability of the process is part of its appeal. “It’s important for the Festival to constantly surprise its audience,” he explains. “I think it’s wonderful that the posters don’t fall into any pattern. Some are very accessible, others are more difficult, but the poster always generates a lot of conversation, and any time we can start a conversation about art, it is a good thing.”

Own a piece of Festival history: Purchase the 2013 poster online or at the Box Office at the Charleston Visitor Center, 375 Meeting Street.

Steven Berkoff was born in Stepney, London. After studying drama and mime in London and Paris, he entered a series of repertory companies, and in 1968 formed the London Theatre Group. Among the many adaptations Berkoff has created for the stage (directed and toured) are Kafka’s Metamorphosis and The Trial, Agamemnon (after Aeschylus), and Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. He has directed and toured productions of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (also playing the title role), Richard II, Hamlet, and Macbeth, as well as Oscar Wilde’s Salome, which was performed by The Gate Theatre, Dublin, during the 1990 season of Spoleto Festival USA. Berkoff’s original stage plays include East, West, Messiah: Scenes from a Crucifixion, The Secret Love Life of Ophelia, Decadence, Harry’s Christmas, Massage, Acapulco, Brighton Beach Scumbags, and Six Actors in Search of a Director. He has performed his trilogy of solo shows—One Man, Shakespeare’s Villains, and Requiem for Ground Zero—in venues all over the world.

Mainstream film fans are probably most familiar with Berkoff via his portrayal of a trio of ice-cold villains in several big budget Hollywood productions of the 1980s: a rogue general plotting to launch a war in Europe in Octopussy (1983), a drug smuggling art dealer out to kill Detroit narcotics officer Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and a sadistic Russian commando officer torturing Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985). He also directed and co-starred with Joan Collins in the film version of Decadence and recently appeared in The Tourist with Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, and in David Fincher’s Girl with a Dragon Tattoo.

As a director, Berkoff is renowned for highly stylized, expressionistic physical theater. His adaptation of Oedipus, which has its American premiere at the 2013 Festival, is an outstanding example of an approach that is as much art installation as theatrical presentation. Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company, who brought A Burial at Thebes to the 2008 Festival, presents Oedipus under Berkoff’s own direction. It is rare for audiences to have the opportunity to see the work of such a major artist as the artist himself envisions it without the filter of another director’s vision.

In a recent interview, Berkoff talked about the Oedipus project:

Why this play?
Berkoff: I’ve always been drawn to epic stories, stories that deal with life and death, universal themes that affect all of mankind. Oedipus is the crowning glory for anyone seeking to create theatre, who wants to use a theatre as a place to heighten our understanding of the human condition—not a place to sit and see someone standing behind a kitchen sink washing dishes.

What is the most challenging part of this project?
Berkoff: Oedipus is an immensely tough and challenging text. The actor who plays Oedipus must bring great boldness to his performance but also connect with the audience so that we follow his descent into despair. This is tough for the actor and the piece as it is all too easy to rant and rave and roam about the stage needlessly. The key is find stillness and focus and trust the audience to come with you.

How is this piece relevant for audiences of today?
Berkoff: The human condition seeks knowledge, truth, understanding, and—ultimately—power. We seek to control and avoid our own fate at all costs. What drives this desire and our need to solve it is as relevant today as ever. Oedipus is the great experiment in the attempt to control our destiny—he failed, but we continue to try.

(Reprinted with permission of Nottingham Playhouse and Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse.)

The American premiere of Nottingham Playhouse Theatre Company’s production of Steven Berkoff’s Oedipus will be presented at Memminger Auditorium from June 4 – 8.

On Sunday, June 2, at 3:30pm, CBS News correspondent Martha Teichner interviews Steven Berkoff at the Charleston Library Society, 164 King Street.

Jazz/soul vocalist Gregory Porter was born in Los Angeles, raised in Bakersfield, California, and now lives in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. He got his start singing in small jazz clubs in San Diego, where he attended San Diego State University on a football scholarship until a shoulder injury sidelined his athletic career. Porter’s band came together in Harlem’s St. Nick’s Pub, and it was there that he finally decided to record his first record in 2010. “I grew up in California and now I live in Brooklyn,” explains Porter, “but even so, I feel that the spirit of the artists that came out of Harlem—from Duke Ellington to Langston Hughes—has so influenced my work that Harlem is as much a part of me as if I had lived there.”

At the start of 2010, the buzz about Porter was building, fueled by his performance in the Tony Award–nominated Broadway hit It Ain’t Nothin’ but the Blues, and his debut CD, Water, which was nominated for a Best Jazz Vocal Grammy. Along with earning another Grammy nomination, his second album, Be Good (2012), put Porter’s name on an extraordinary number of “Best of 2012” lists, including NPR’s “100 Favorite Songs of 2012,” iTunes’ “Jazz Album of the Year,” and Soul Train’s “Top 10 Albums of 2012.” Be Good was also named Soul Tracks’ “Album of the Year.” The track “Real Good Hands” was selected by iTunes as its Single of the Week, propelling Be Good to the #1 position on iTunes jazz chart for several weeks, and sending it to the Top 100 overall album chart the first week of release. Another track from the album, “On My Way to Harlem,” was selected by the Starbucks Digital Network as its Pick of the Week.

The year also found Porter gracing the cover of numerous magazines, including Jazz Inside, and France’s Jazz Magazine and L’Express, which lauded him as “the next great voice in Jazz.”  Porter has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, Jazz Times, and the UK’s Echoes and Blues and Soul, and Be Good has been reviewed by some 50 online and print outlets around the world, including the Huffington Post,  The Guardian, and the Irish Times. Critics have hailed Porter as a new “king of jazz,” and a “leader of the pack,” and compare him with such greats as Joe Williams, Nat Cole, Donny Hathaway, and Marvin Gaye.

Porter is a disarming performer with a voice of incredible virtuosity and a broad appeal as a songwriter. His lyrics often speak in the languages of image and emotion. His objective as a songwriter, he says, is “to create a sincere message about my feelings on love, culture, family and our human joys and pain.” He describes himself as more like a painter than a photographer. “My songs may start from a place of personal experience, but I try not to impose any particular perspective on the music. I want listeners to be affected each in his or her own way, and be moved as much by what can be read in between the lines as what the lyrics say.”

Gregory Porter performs in the College of Charleston Cistern Yard on May 24 and 25.