When Buried Child was first performed in 1978 in San Francisco and New York, its hipster playwright, Sam Shepard, was a fixture of the downtown arts scene, best known for […]
FILM FESTIVAL
The Inimitable Film Craftmanship of Luca Guadagnino
Honoring this year’s Filmmaker on the Edge
If you’ve never heard of Italian director Luca Guadagnino — who will receive the Filmmaker on the Edge award this Sunday at the Provincetown International Film Festival — you are […]
MOVIES
Get Seated: Provincetown’s Film Festival Returns
Film Society chief Anne Hubbell welcomes locals and visitors back to the cinema
“It’s sort of a re-launch,” says Anne Hubbell, the Provincetown Film Society’s new executive director, of the upcoming 24th annual Provincetown International Film Festival. The event was shut down and […]
THEATER REVIEW
Straight White Men: A Spectacle of Privilege Deconstructed
WHAT opens its season with a play by Young Jean Lee
The current culture wars — in which straight white men are born privileged and BIPOC and queer minorities and women demand rights and representation — are all about power. The […]
BOOK REVIEW
Refusing to Go Gentle Into The Kingdom of Sand
Andrew Holleran’s new novel is a latter-day queer classic
In his new novel, Andrew Holleran writes, in a scene set at a North Florida Thanksgiving dinner attended by older gay men, “There is a delicate undercurrent beneath get-togethers among […]
THEATER REVIEW
Doing the Time Warp in Mae West’s ‘The Drag’
In the 1920s, having a gay old time was kind of complicated
“This side’s Friday,” vamp extraordinaire Mae West once quipped, pointing to her upper right thigh, then, pointing to her left thigh, “This side’s Sunday. Why don’t you come see me […]
FICTION
Twists of Fate That Aren’t Simple
Randi Triant’s new novel, What We Give, What We Take, traces the lives of a mother and son
“I’ve known women and men — it’s kind of genderless — who think they’re making the right decision, then realize it was one of the worst,” says Provincetown author Randi […]
MUSICIANS
Jon Richardson Composes an Ode to Gay Old Provincetown
Songs from his musical-in-progress, Jack of Hearts, will get a public hearing
“My first love is theater,” says Jon Richardson, a Provincetown musician known for his piano bar gigs at Tin Pan Alley and the Crown & Anchor. Or, perhaps, you may […]
INDIE SCREEN
A Mixed Bag of Oscar Hopefuls
Spanish moms, a pretender to the Scottish throne, and a child of deaf adults
As fans of Spanish writer-director Pedro Almodóvar well know, his films combine personal narrative obsessions and familiar stylized production design with a kind of raw, emotional reality that we all […]
WRITERS
For Shastri Akella, Telling Stories Is a Labor of Love
An Indian-born author finds his queer identity in his prose
Shastri Akella’s first novel, The Sea Elephants, begins with these lines: “My father left the country the year my sisters were born. He returned six months after I watched them […]
WRITERS
In His Poems, Eduardo Martinez-Leyva Discovers Who He Is
A journey from West Texas to Provincetown and back
“I was born and raised in El Paso, Texas,” says Eduardo Martinez-Leyva, a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown who will give an online poetry reading on […]
INDIE SCREEN
Awards Season Movies Look Back in Angst
With nostalgia comes romance and regrets
As a filmmaker, Paul Thomas Anderson has been compared to Orson Welles, and there’s a grain of truth to that hyperbole: both are fiercely creative and indulgent. Anderson, who exploded […]
INDIE SCREEN
The Wild, the Innocent, and the 125th Street Shuffle
Streaming the highlights of an end-of-year season
The title of Jane Campion’s haunting new film, The Power of the Dog (streaming on Netflix), comes from Psalm 22 in the Bible, which reads (in the King James version), […]
INDIE SCREEN
A World on the Eve of Destruction
Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner revive West Side Story
When Jerome Robbins — born Gershon Wilson Rabinowitz on New York’s Lower East Side — first came up with the idea in 1947 for what would become the musical West […]
PURSUITS
During Covid, Michael Hartwig Turns to Writing Gay Romance Novels
It’s just another creative outlet for the Provincetown painter and professor of sexual ethics
Michael Hartwig is not one to let Covid cramp his style. During the pandemic, he and his partner, Steve Ridini, who split their time between Boston and Provincetown, chose to […]
