This week, GBH Executive Arts Editor Jared Bowen recommends some art just in time for Halloween: an exhibit that looks at the history of America through quilting, a stage play that follows a woman accused of witchcraft, and an immersive opera experience.
“Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories” on view at the Museum of Fine Arts through January 17th
Boston’s MFA traces American quilting going back centuries in an exhibit that Bowen calls “a truly gorgeous show that tells the story of America.” Quilting is on display as a powerful method of storytelling, with quilts from suffragists that advocate for voting rights, promote abolition and show the horrors of the civil rights era all the way to the present with quilts that convey stories of the post-George Floyd era.
A temple-like gallery is devoted to two works by Harriet Powers, considered the mother of African American quilting. Curator Jennifer Swope calls the experience of viewing “a degree of spirituality and storytelling that is, I just think, unsurpassed.” One featured artist is Michael C. Thorpe, an Emerson College graduate and former basketball star, who grew up around quilting in his family.
“So much of it is distilled down into shapes and colors — and that’s how I learned the visual vernacular, and I can make basically anything I want to make,” Thorpe told Bowen. “Which is crazy because — when growing up, it was definitely patterned quilting; you get a package, you get the fabric, you put it together. And then once I really started playing around, I was like, I can create any world I want, and that's what I do.”
“Witch” presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Calderwood Pavilion through November 14th
Just in time for Halloween, Jen Silverman’s new play takes place in the 17th century but feels as contemporary as ever, reckoning with themes of gender and bias in society. Silverman has loosely adapted the Jacobean play “The Witch of Edmonton” from 1621 to tell the story of Elizabeth Sawyer, an outcast who is accused of being a witch as an intriguing devil named Scratch comes to town and shakes things up.
“Wickedly funny, ‘Witch’ is also importantly an unabashed roadmap for a troubled moment in which so many wonder how we all arrived here,” Bowen says. “Playwright Jen Silverman cleverly reminds us that the past is a bubbling cauldron of prologue.”
“La Traviata” presented by MassOpera at the Eustis Estate (in partnership with Historic New England) through October 24th
MassOpera is reinventing the art of opera performance with this staging of "La Traviata" at Eustis Estate in Milton. For every performance, just 30 people will be allowed to attend the immersive production, and throughout the opera, audience members will move from room to room along with the performers as they tell the romantic story of Violetta.
“What could be more gorgeous than being thrust into one of the great operas, in a grand home at sunset?” asks Bowen. “Hardly anything, as MassOpera demonstrates in a production so novel and beautifully done that it should be a standard contribution to the form.”
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