Hilton Als on the Visionary World of Alva Rogers

I met Alva Rogers years ago, done a communal friend, and her assorted incarnations—actress, singer, creator director, writer, puppeteer—have ever been singular to me. As a young woman, Rogers posed for the creator Lorna Simpson, and is the taxable of Simpson’s photograph-based portion “Waterbearer” (1986), on with different aboriginal works, and, of course, she was the nominal prima of Julie Dash’s movie “Daughters of the Dust” (1991), a fascinating evocation of Gullah civilization successful South Carolina. All of these works—all of these genres—that person been supportive of Rogers being looked astatine person informed her ain work: she knows what the acquisition of being in a communicative feels similar and uses that cognition arsenic a creator of her ain projects.

That’s conscionable 1 of the experiences you’ll instrumentality distant from her caller show, “The Harlem Doll Palace” (at HERE, May 21-June 1), presented arsenic portion of HERE’s Dream Music Puppetry Program, nether the aegis of the creator manager and maestro puppeteer Basil Twist. In the piece, which Rogers, present sixty-five, wrote and stars in, we participate a satellite down a pinkish door, successful a three-story Harlem brownstone, presided implicit by a pistillate whom habitués telephone Aunt Len. She keeps what she refers to arsenic a “dollection”—a postulation of dolls that emotion her and privation to support her from harm, including death. As played by Rogers (and supported by the puppeteers Ash Winkfield, who besides directs, Mecca Akbar, Thalya David, Charlotte Lily Gaspard, and Marcella Murray, with euphony by Bruce Monroe), Len conveys the contented of the creator arsenic visionary—which Rogers, who has ever been a storyteller, projects done the musicality of her dependable and her large, expressive eyes that spot everything, particularly the intimacy of the satellite she creates from the wrong out.—Hilton Als

About Town

Broadway

In the musicalization of “Real Women Have Curves”—a 1990 play that was adapted into a deed 2002 film—the women astatine an East L.A. sewing mill comprise a assortment of assemblage types. One sweltering day, they portion to their skivvies and sing exuberantly astir who they are. But who are they? The show, successful a well-intentioned valorization of Latinidad, flattens respective characters into hardworking brownish heroines oregon callous achromatic villains. The Mexican American protagonist, Ana (Tatianna Córdoba) has conscionable graduated precocious schoolhouse and is helping retired astatine the factory—her sister’s business—while besides interning astatine a section paper and trying not to fto down her self-sacrificing parent (Justina Machado). The performances, songs (by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez), and absorption (Sergio Trujillo) are nary subtler than the story.—Dan Stahl (James Earl Jones; unfastened run.)

Classical

Do you person heavy eyebrows, bewitching eyes, and the magnetism of a tortured prima donna? Or bash you conscionable similar graveyards and bully music? If so, Death of Classical has the lawsuit for you: an evening honoring the precocious soprano Maria Callas. Sip connected cocktails and nibble connected snacks arsenic you perceive to immoderate plaything jazz by a headstone. Then partake in—or, if you’re not feeling peculiarly diva-ish, simply observe—a Callas look-alike contest, hosted by the resistance creator and vocalist Creatine Price (but apt unattended by Angelina Jolie). The extremity of the nighttime volition bring to beingness immoderate of Callas’s arias of choice, sung by members of the Met Opera’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program.—Jane Bua (Green-Wood Cemetery; May 23.)

For more: work Will Crutchfield connected the “stormy, capricious diva.”

Art

Malick Sidibé, the large Malian photographer, who died successful 2016, was fashionable and overmuch successful request successful Bamako, Mali’s capital, wherever his workplace was based. Formal and informal portraits were his stock-in-trade, but helium besides photographed christenings, creation parties, and picnics astatine the beach; a ample radical of images successful this caller show, “Regardez-Moi,” are of joined couples, flanked by friends and family. A celebratory temper is emphasized by accepted decorative frames, reverse-painted connected solid by section artists, that situation the images with loosely drawn flowers and leaves. Made astatine a clip erstwhile Mali was going done a play of post-colonial exuberance and governmental unease, adjacent the astir casual of Sidibé’s images are charged with a consciousness of pridefulness and determination: a imaginativeness of Africa astatine its astir optimistic.—Vince Aletti (Jack Shainman; done May 31.)

For more: work Siobhán Bohnacker connected a sojourn to Sidibé’s house, successful the bosom of Bamako.

Art Rock

The astir caller Squid album, “Cowards,” from February, feels similar much compelling grounds of the band’s relentless guardant motion. Across 3 prowling records, the Brighton post-punks person established themselves arsenic restless voyagers inspired by modal jazz and krautrock, J.G. Ballard and David Lynch. The band’s début, “Bright Green Field” (2021), bent urgent governmental concerns into an imagined dystopian landscape, and the follow-up, “O Monolith” (2023), opted for a distorted, free-roaming art-rock arcana. “Cowards” captures an already unusual set astatine its strangest and astir exhilarating, and astatine its astir fantastical and conceptual, too. The medium is simply a compilation of nightmarish myths reckoning with evil made manifest, from cannibalism to cults. With each song, Squid conceives a caller fable.—Sheldon Pearce (Warsaw; May 23.)

For more: work Pearce connected wherefore Squid’s euphony is truthful weirdly listenable.

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