Immigrants’ Stories at Cape Rep
Nina Zoie Lam was drawn to direct Lloyd Suh’s 2023 play The Heart Sellers at the Cape Rep Theatre in part because it reminds her of her immigrant mother and her mother’s friends: women who left their families and all they knew for a new start in America.
The regional premiere tells the story of two immigrants — one from the Philippines, one from Korea — who discuss their experiences on Thanksgiving Day in 1973. How much might they lose of their roots and themselves? What did they give up? How do they fit in and become “American”?
The show’s title is a play on the Hart-Celler Act, also called the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, that allowed people from all over the world to come to the U.S. after decades of quotas that had largely limited immigration to Europeans.
A New York-based actress, director, and educator, Lam says she appreciates the play’s focus on women’s points of view. While it’s about immigrants, the story could speak to anyone. “It’s about being in a new place,” she says. “It could be my daughter going from middle to high school. It’s humanity-driven, character-driven, and heart-driven.”
Lam also co-founded the National Asian Artists Project, a nonprofit that provides training and performance opportunities for young Asian artists. She admires Cape Rep’s efforts to diversify stories that are told here and to produce work that reminds people “to take the time to breathe, take each other in, and listen to one another.”
This first Cape directing job for Lam came by recommendation from Phil Kong, a frequent Cape Rep lighting designer who, as a child, acted with Lam in her Broadway debut in Miss Saigon. Both lead actresses in the production are new to local stages: Joy Regullano is a Los Angeles-based writer (Sesame Street, Disney’s Monsters at Work) and actor (Barry, Modern Family), and writer and actor Zoë Kim also founded Seoulful Productions, a women-led nonprofit that creates artistic experiences celebrating the Korean diaspora’s culture and voices.
The Heart Sellers runs Wednesdays through Saturdays from Sept. 18 to Oct. 20 at Cape Rep Theatre (3299 Route 6A, Brewster). Tickets are $25-$40, with a “pay what you can” performance on Sept. 20. See caperep.org for information. —Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll
A New Season at Cape Symphony
The Cape Symphony’s season premiere concert, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” spans several centuries, traverses multiple genres, and even includes some unusual symphonic components. Led by guest conductor Jean-Claude Picard, the concert takes place on Saturday, Sept. 21 and Sunday, Sept. 22 at the Barnstable Performing Arts Center.
John Adams’s “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” which opens the program, features the woodblock: throughout nearly the entire four-minute piece, the instrument taps as steady as a metronome while strings flutter and horns call around it. Syncopation is the medium for this compositional painting.
Also on the program is Gabriela Lena Frank’s “Elegía Andina.” An abstract conversation among the sections of the orchestra, the piece explores “what it means to be of several ethnic persuasions, of several minds,” as described by the composer in a statement on her website. Next on the program are Richard Strauss’s “Four Last Songs.” Straus wrote them in 1948, at age 84, a year before his death. Every song but the first, “Frühling” (“Spring”), is about death. In an achingly beautiful and complicated tapestry of vocal and instrumental texture, a soprano and the orchestra express the artistry of a composer near the end of his life.
The concert will conclude with Modest Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Inspired by an 1874 exhibition of a late friend’s watercolors and drawings, Mussorgsky composed a series of musical depictions of 10 of the pieces for piano. The version most performed now is an arrangement for orchestra by Maurice Ravel. The piece is rich in color and action: children frolic, bells clang, animals dance, people talk, and mythical characters and mysterious places come to life through the music. Some sections of the piece are preceded by a recurring “Promenade,” a theme meant to evoke the image of the composer wandering heavy-footed through the artist’s gallery.
The concert will be a similar experience for listeners: a visit to an immersive sonic gallery, with each piece providing a glimpse of its composer’s inner world.
Tickets are $32-$75, plus fees, at capesymphony.org. —Dorothea Samaha
Comparing Queer Poetry and Prose
Poet Chen Chen, author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, and Santiago José Sanchez, author of the novel Hombrecito, will discuss their work and experiences in “Self and Otherness: Queer Life in Poetry and Prose” as part of the Provincetown Book Festival.
While Chen has previously taught workshops at the Fine Arts Work Center, this will be his first time at the festival. It will also be his first meeting with Sanchez. “I’m super excited to talk with them,” says Chen. “I love a cross-genre panel.”
The two writers explore similar themes, which Chen describes as “family, and love, and relationships.” He also feels they share a lyrical writing style. The discussion will be followed by a conversation with the audience.
Chen notes that this is an exciting time for queer writers of color. “I hope the audience will have fun,” he says.
The event, which will be held at the Provincetown Public Library, is free. See provincetownbookfestival.org for information. —Eve Samaha
A Photographer’s Favorite Photos at the Truro Library
Images by Truro photographer Nancy Bloom are currently on view at the Truro Public Library. The exhibition, which is on view until Sept. 28, includes photos from more than a decade of Bloom’s work.
The 20 photographs range in size, and all are strikingly rich in color. A sun hat and white dress flutter on a laundry line in Cape Cod Laundry. Bloom says the photo is her all-time favorite. In 2013, under deadline pressure for a laundry-themed photo contest at her camera club, Bloom drove down Route 6A in Truro and spotted a clothesline in someone’s backyard. “I knocked on the door, but no one was there,” she says. She retrieved an old hat and dress from her car, hung them up, and took the shot. Her photograph won first prize and proceeded to win awards at photo contests across New England, nationally, and internationally.
In her 2020 photograph Bluebell, a blue 1961 bubble-top Chevy is parked in front of Bluebell, one of the Days Cottages in Truro. A flock of European starlings flies dramatically over the scene.
Many photos in the show were taken during boat races. Bloom says she takes “no less than 1,500 photos” at every race she attends, and uses three different lenses — zoom, wide-angle, and regular — to capture the action. Bloom’s photograph Juno depicts young sailors on their boat of the same name during the 2024 Safe Harbor Race Weekend in Newport, R.I. The sky and water are arrestingly azure.
All photographs in the show are for sale. See trurolibrary.org for more information. —Eve Samaha
Miriam Levine and Judith Partelow at Snow Library
Miriam Levine and Judith Partelow were paired only by coincidence for their upcoming reading at Snow Library in Orleans. But it turned out they already had a lot in common, including longtime associations with Cape Cod: Levine, who splits her time between New Hampshire and Florida, visited Provincetown frequently when she lived in the Boston area, while Partelow, who currently lives in Dennis, has lived in various other towns on the Cape for 47 years.
Both poets were born and raised in northern New Jersey. And both are inspired by their lives as women. “I agree with the poet Adrienne Rich that ‘the personal is political,’ ” says Levine. A self-described “lyric poet,” she wants her lines to sing. “I write about celebration,” she says. “Also mourning, memory, elegy, and the beloved.”
Partelow writes about many of the same things, as well as aging. She says her inspiration to write about growing older was “the realization that time may be very short,” which relates to what she says she enjoys most about writing and sharing her work: “Discovering some inner truth that surprises me, and that others will also be stirred by.” Like Levine, she refuses to take life for granted. “When I’m writing, I feel that I temporarily root myself in the present moment,” says Partelow. “I feel very lucky to keep on writing.”
Partelow and Levine will read at the library (67 Main St., Orleans) on Saturday, Sept. 21 at 2 p.m. The reading, which is free, will be followed by an open mic for other poets. See snowlibrary.org/snow-library-events for information. —Hazel Everett
