Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

Tonight at 7 p.m., the insanely popular NPR radio show "This American Life" will be broadcasting live from New York via satellite to select movie theatres nationwide — and Savoy 16 is one of those selected. The broadcast, a two-hour event, will preview the second season of the television show, featuring show outtakes, answers to viewer questions and all-new "extraordinary, funny and true stories from everyday life."

Tickets are very limited, so get to the theater (232 W. Burwash Ave., Savoy) early. Visit This American Life for more information.

The actor, writer, and supervising producer of The Office, B.J. Novak, will be performing stand-up comedy for free on the south side of the Illini Union this Friday night at 7:30 p.m. What better way to celebrate a week of working than with someone who perfectly conveys the pain of doing just that in a cubicle? Sponsored by the Illini Union Board, the show is quite possibly the best reason one could ask for to brave campus town on a Friday night.

The 16th annual Artists Against AIDS exhibition and sale kicks off on Friday evening, April 25, at the Orpheum Children's Science Museum. The museum's theatre is transformed into a gallery space displaying a wide variety of media from paintings to wearable art. As always, the event is fully operated by volunteers, and features submissions from over two hundred and fifty local artists. All the work can be purchased and proceeds go directly to the Great Community AIDS Project (GCAP), a local not-for-profit agency providing support services for those affected by HIV/AIDS and their families. GCAP also provides information and education to the community about HIV/AIDS prevention and awareness.

The events will be held Friday, April 25, 6–10 p.m.; Saturday, April 26, 1–10 p.m.; Sunday, April 27, 1–7 p.m.; and Monday, April 28, 1–7 p.m.

But nothing comes close to the shot in the arm the bard's "Comedy of Errors," a tale of mixed-up identities, received when playwrights Jordan Allen-Dutton, Jason Catalano, GQ, and Erik Weiner flipped the script and birthed "The Bomb-itty of Errors," a hip-hop adaptation.

The Central Illinois Chapter of the National Society of Arts and Letters will re-establish a local public space by hosting a student art show. Decades ago, Robeson's held an annual show at their store in Champaign and this year, the NSAL committee, headed by Dale Steffensen, a self-proclaimed art enthusiast, hopes to pick up where Robeson's fine tradition left off.

"An Artistic Discovery: The 2008 Congressional Art Competition" is currently on display at The High School of Saint Thomas More, 3901 N. Mattis Ave. in Champaign, and it's almost coming to a close. Students from thirteen high schools in Illinois' 15th Congressional District have entered this year's competition which allows students to display their artwork locally, but also gives them an opportunity to be recognized on a national level for their artistry.

Central High School will present Jonathan Larson's Tony and Pulitzer-prize winning Broadway musical, RENT, tonight, April 9, at 7:30 p.m. RENT is a modern day rock opera inspired by Puccini's classic opera "La Bohème." It follows a year in the lives of seven friends barely making ends meet with their Bohemian lifestyles in New York City's East Village.

For one hour, this Saturday, April 5, nine dancers and three musicians will take to the rink at Skateland in Savoy, and embark on a live musical exploration and improvise their physical movement. According to their website, they will "share the impulses and intersections of a journey to free joy of the body, mind, and spirit." Brought to fruition by University of Illinois Dance major and BFA Dance candidate, Kinsey McCartor, "Precision Not Required" is a site specific group thesis performance. Outside of dancing, Cosmology, a new musical trio assembled by local trumpeter, Christopher Moors, will also perform and improvise.

Tonight between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m., Krannert Art Museum will be hosting its bi-annual ARTzilla event to celebrate the opening of its newest exhibition, "Landscapes of Experience and Imagination: Explorations by Midwest Latina/Latino Artists." A wide variety of media will be on display from six artists exploring the theme of landscapes as a metaphor for the human experience. The collective artwork reflects upon the artists' self-identities and their personal insights to the Latin presence in the United States.

The artists will also present a gallery talk to commence the festivities, and performances by the UI Latin Jazz Ensemble and Miami-based artist Kiki Valdes, an on-site live performance painter, are scheduled to perform at 8:30 p.m.

Derek Winstanley’s sculpture entitled, “Prehistoric Dolphin with Modern Technology”, has been chosen as the featured image for the 2008 Boneyard Arts Festival. The panel of local arts professionals, Jenny Southlynn, Joan Stolz, Kim Curtis, and Durango Mendoza, selected Winstanley’s three-dimensional piece after carefully analyzing the qualities of nearly 50 submissions. This is the first time the Boneyard Arts Festival has selected a three-dimensional piece to serve as their unifying visual theme.

Shows at Urbana’s cozy Station Theatre are always a treat. The intimate, theatre-in-the-round setting makes the spectator feel nearly a part of the performance. Certain shows lend themselves better to this atmosphere than others of course — and Deke Weaver’s upcoming play is one such show.

In C-U by way of Minnesota, San Francisco and New York City, Weaver is currently a professor at the University of Illinois’s School of Art + Design. He’s also an award-winning performer, playwright, media-artist and self-proclaimed “emperor/former-goaltender.” Those first and last bits were integral in the writing of his play The Crimes and Confessions of Kip Knutzen: A Hockey Way of Knowledge, starting its run at the Station Theater on Valentine’s Day.

Wind Water and Light, an artisans gallery, opens an exhibit dubbed The Real Politik — just in time for February’s political rumble, Super Tuesday, on Feb. 5. A relatively new kid on the block in downtown Champaign, Wind Water and Light opens the month-long exhibit today featuring two-dimensional and three-dimensional works from local artists reflecting hot button issues in the country and the current political landscape. Displaying artists include Billy Morrow Jackson, Siti Mariah Jackson, Hyon Joo Kim, Brian Sullivan, Rosalind Famian Weinberg and Cindy Westfall. If the tight races and politicos trading barbs isn’t enough to get you into the voting mood — perhaps this exhibit will be the inspiration you need to the primaries. Go democracy!

Wind Water and Light is located at 10 E. Main St. The Real Politik closes on Feb. 29.

Photo by Justine Bursoni

Art museums sometimes get a bad rap. Maybe this is caused by flashbacks to unpleasant school excursions from our youth, when we were shepherded through boring exhibits while pretentious docents blathered on about Etruscan art. Maybe it’s the fear that we won’t know the artists or their work, and will be forced to face our own cultural inadequacies. Or maybe we just want some action, and feel that museums won’t deliver the goods.

But there are those other times when a museum steers clear of this bad rap by filling its space with compelling art and getting on with the business of making you wish its exhibits would never end.

This is exactly what you’ll find at the Krannert Art Museum, which is host to a new, multimedia exhibit titled Blown Away. The opening reception for the exhibit was held last night at 8 p.m.

Chicago-based graphic designer Jay Ryan got into the poster-making business when Highdive talent buyer, Ward Gollings approached the graphic design company Ryan worked for to craft a poster for an upcoming show at Champaign's Blind Pig in the mid-90s. Ryan’s boss enlisted him to illustrate the Supersuckers and Rocket from the Crypt poster design.

Now, the popular graphic designer can’t keep his sought after posters on the walls of record stores and rock clubs for long before fans pull them off for the their own Jay Ryan collections.

Something odd happens every year around this time. Longtime runners and newbies alike, all of them fully aware of the unfriendly temperatures lurking right beyond their doors, fish their sneakers out of the closet, tighten their laces and set out into the chilly air to cover miles of terrain by swift foot.

For many, this is more than the result of a valiant New Year’s resolution that — let’s be honest — is likely to wither away in a few weeks’ time; instead, this is the beginning of months of training for the 5k, the 10k, the half marathon or, the biggest of them all, the 26.2-mile haul known as the marathon.

The race of all races is the subject of Spirit of the Marathon, a documentary film by Mark Jonathan Harris, Jon Dunham and Gwendolen Twist that’s playing tonight only at the Savoy 16 movie theatre on Route 45.

Not this month.