A tale of two cities – Kent and Akron. On Friday, Mer and I headed over to Kent, where the Kent “Around Town Folk Festival” was happening. The Around Town Folk Festival is the new name for what was the Kent State Folk Festival, now that the festival is held all over Kent rather than just over at the university. We went there to see our friends’ band, Bethesda. Bethesda has an alternative-folk sound that varies from very folk to alternative rock. They are quite good, and the lead singer, Shanna, has one of most remarkable voices I have ever heard.
Before we headed over to the music, we did swing by Insomnia Cookies, to pick up warm peanut butter cup cookies, which we ate at the concert. Those are remarkable cookies.
On the way to the venue, which was in Acorn Alley in the spiffy new part of Kent, we ran into a couple that used to go to our church. We had met them years ago at the Kent Folk Festival, so it was fitting to run into them again. They were planning on checking out Bethesda, and so they went with us to see the concert, and they stayed for about half of it. Mer and I stayed for the whole two-hour concert, which included three songs by Alan Brooks, another colleague at CVCA. The concert was great – Bethesda had a ton of energy and sounded really good, considering they were more or less playing in a brick cave. My only complaint was that the “cave” was stuffy and humid, so it was hot for us and must have been almost oppressive for the band.
Saturday was Mer’s day, and she took us to Akron, to see the Akron Art Prize. One of Mer’s former students had a piece on display in the festival, so we wanted to go see it and vote for it. Mer thought it would be in one gallery and we would be done pretty quickly. It turns out that the festival takes place in four galleries and had over a hundred artists involved. We did see them all, and since we walked from gallery to gallery, we discovered a new area of Akron on the far side of the Martin Luther King highway – a small block of a couple of restaurants and two galleries which worked in metals and glass – very cool.
We got to vote for ten artists,which was harder to do than I thought it would be – there were some pretty cool works. The Akron Art Prize was a great surprise, and I hope to do it again next year.
After Akron, we went home and ate before heading down to North Canton to the North Canton Playhouse to see their production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Mer and I had seen Desire in Florida many years ago, and I had forgotten much of the play. It was well acted, especially by the man playing Stanley, but what a depressing play – there is no one that I feel completely behind. This led to an interesting discussion with Mer on the way home – we talked about why a morally void play like Desire is art. We came to the conclusion that it is masterfully written, and that makes it worth doing even if you can’t pull for any of the characters in the play. It was thought-provoking.
A concert, four galleries, and a play in three cities. Who says we are not cosmopolitan?