Director Lee Breuer and actress Maude
Mitchell will attend the U.S. premiere of Mabou Mines
DollHouse, the film adaptation of their adventurous staging
of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, at 1:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5,
at the Cleveland Museum of Art (11150 East Blvd., 216.421.7340). They
will answer questions after the screening. Breuer shot the film,
financed by a French company, with Mabou Mines, an avant-garde theater
collective he co-founded in 1970. For Mitchell, a 1981 Oberlin grad
who’ll spend the rest of the year globetrotting with Breuer from Moscow
to Mongolia and Shanghai, this hometown stop is an opportunity to
discuss her role as Nora in Breuer’s re-invention of the classic 1879
play. “What we’ve done is really embraced Ibsen,” she says. “The trend
is to try to escape him, and I do think he’s misunderstood. It’s not a
goof on him. The piece does really explore theatricality, gender and
power.” Tickets: $10.
Now in its sixth year, the Akron Film Festival, running April
2-5, has a new home at the Akron Art Museum’s Charles and Jane Lehner
Auditorium (1 S. High St., 330.376.9185). “This year, we’re doubling
the size of the theater,” says director of operations Rob Lucas.
“Last year, we had to turn a lot of people away. Now we’re going to be
more accommodating to the size of the crowds.” In addition to featuring
several new workshops, the festival will include four features and 24
shorts. “We’re already talking about 2010 and 2011,” says Lucas. “We
want to work a little bit more on building a community and bringing
people together to network and do a little bit more than just sit in a
dark theater.” An animated interpretation of the Indian epic
Ramayana, Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues opens
the festival at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2; it concludes with an awards
ceremony at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, April 5. Tickets for each film are $6.
Find more information at akronfilmfestival.com.
The Cleveland Cinemas’ Cult Film Series continues this
weekend with a screening of John Carpenter’s monster movie The
Thing at 9:30 p.m. and at midnight on Saturday, April 4, at
the Cedar Lee Theatre (2163 Lee Rd., 440.321.5411). One (not-so) lucky
person at each showing will win a block of ice in honor of the film’s
arctic setting. Tickets: $5.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2009.
