>> We decided that it needed to be an institution that could provide that bridge between your aspiration as a young person thinking about a career in art and actually creating a path for them.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen.

Coming up on Open Studio-- the historic Brandywine Workshop and Archives is putting a finger on the pulse of prints.

♪ ♪ Then, Melissa Etheridge and the songs she's only now ready to record.

♪ ♪ >> It's funny, looking at me now, you'd think, you know, that I was always like "I'm going to be an activist," but that was not it at all.

I just wanted to play my music.

I didn't want to rock any boats.

>> BOWEN: Plus, Shakespeare gets re-mixed in The Bomb-itty of Errors.

♪ ♪ >> It's funny, it's wacky, and it's I think unlike anything anyone has probably seen in Boston.

>> (singing operatically) >> BOWEN: And the wizarding world of Handel.

>> Handel wrote amazing music for his sorceresses.

>> (vocalizing) >> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: First up, the Brandywine Workshop and Archives in Philadelphia.

Their mission is to draw in artists of all walks to push boundaries by producing limited edition prints.

It's also an opportunity to get their work into major museum collections like the Harvard Art Museums.

And that's where we recently found a half-century of Brandywine prints on view.

Each of these prints have been a tool for engagement-- to interrogate history; to reach for the future; and, sometimes, just to dazzle.

The need for them came in the 1970s, when art world eyes were elsewhere.

>> And there was not a lot of institutional support for people of color back in 1971.

>> BOWEN: So in 1972, Allan Edmunds founded the Brandywine Workshop and Archives, an art collective originally based in a Philadelphia garage.

What was the intention there?

>> We decided that it needed to be an institution that could provide that bridge between your aspiration as a young person, thinking about a career in art, and it actually creating a path for them.

So it was about providing role models.

>> BOWEN: And a place where artists could come, as they do today, for a two-week workshop to try their hand at print-making.

50 years and some 500 prints later, Brandywine artworks are ensconced in an ever-expanding number of major museum collections, including here at the Harvard Art Museums.

What does that do, what does that represent?

>> To be honest with you, we never envisioned that we would be at Harvard Art Museum with an exhibition.

We never envisioned that.

But what we did envision, that if we kept to inclusion as a part of the issue of quality, that at some point, it would manifest itself into wider recognition outside of Philadelphia.

>> BOWEN: Harvard acquired this collection in 2018.

It's a mix of famous names like Faith Ringgold and Sam Gilliam, but also of artists dressing down history, or conversing with cosmology.

They are sculptors or painters or weavers, challenged to stretch their skills by making prints.

Elizabeth Rudy is the show's co-curator.

>> You see artists doing totally new things, in their careers, or... and in their approach to art, which is exciting.

>> BOWEN: Conceptual artist Hank Willis Thomas made this print, titled "To be sold," juxtaposing high-earning Black athletes and performers with a recreation of an advertisement for the sale of enslaved people.

Thomas appears a second time in the show-- in the belly of his mother, photographer and scholar Deborah Willis.

>> She wanted to use some old film of herself pregnant when she was at Yale, and she was discriminated against and she was told by a professor when she entered a classroom as a pregnant woman, she was told "You're taking up space for a good man."

And she separated those words out over her image of herself pregnant with her son, who turned out to be another really famous artist, Hank Willis Thomas.

>> BOWEN: Artist Sedrick Huckaby made more than a hundred prints at Brandywine after watching the Occupy Wall Street movement sweep through the country and newfound attention paid to the 99%.

>> But I felt like the 99% in my community really wasn't getting heard.

>> BOWEN: So in Fort Worth, Texas, Huckaby's hometown, he began creating portraits-- random people he encountered on any given day.

And as he captured them, he rendered bits of their conversation into the portrait.

>> Some people are more talkative, some people less.

And my eye is always just open to trying to get a sense of the person.

>> BOWEN: You said at the outset you wanted to explore who the 99% were, and maybe it was a rhetorical question, but did you come away with a more fundamental understanding and answer to that question?

>> I don't know if it was a question as much as it was a, an attempt to hear people better.

And a lot of times when you're painting from life, you're sort of metaphorically listening to the person.

But in this case, not only was I looking and responding, but I also literally was listening to them, and I think it ultimately made me more sensitive to, to the role of listening, as a part of my art form.

>> BOWEN: Especially knowing the prints would be distributed widely.

One of the central tenets of Brandywine is that it's a place of ongoing communication with arts audiences.

Of charting a course through history-- sometimes literally, as we find in a print by Allan Edmunds himself.

It's called "200 Years," and features President Barack Obama atop a heap of history.

>> And everything else is at the bottom.

The slave ship, the arrival, the manifest change.

And then throughout, there's names of people who I felt Obama embodied: the writers, the orators, the lawyers, the educators, the community workers.

All the names that came before Obama, for which if they didn't, they wouldn't have been an Obama.

He's the summation of all those 200 years of making progress.

>> BOWEN: And for one full quarter of it, Brandywine has been there to reflect it.

♪ ♪ Next, Melissa Etheridge.

She's a singer defined by boldness, strength, and conviction-- especially as one of the first celebrities to come out as a lesbian.

But there was a time when there were songs so personal and raw even she was uncomfortable performing them.

Now she's resurfaced those songs from the late 1980s and early '90s on her recent album One Way Out.

>> ♪ You can scream and you can shout ♪ ♪ But there's only one way out ♪ ♪ There's only one way out... ♪ >> BOWEN: Melissa Etheridge, thank you so much for being with us.

>> It's my pleasure, thank you.

>> BOWEN: Just to start this, your latest album, where you go back into this music from the '80s and '90s, music that you wrote, I wonder if it was music that you rediscovered, or if it had been sitting there with you this entire time.

>> Some of it I rediscovered, some of it I remembered so well because I had loved the songs very much.

These are from the late '80s, early '90s, and, um...

I, I loved them so much.

But there was, like... there were some songs that I felt were a little too revealing about me and my sexuality at the time, which I hadn't come out.

Some were very feminist-based, and it looks all innocent now.

But at the time, you know, late '80s, was not a time to really be standing up and doing all that stuff.

(chuckles) And so I look back at them, and they were like little treasures that I put aside because of fear, actually, because I... of, you know, many, many thoughts I had.

But now, you know, I'm much wiser and older, and I can, I can take these songs and go, "Wow, these are great songs.

"They're really fun.

They're hard hitting, they're rocking."

They, they come from a time when I had a different kind of fire and different kind of energy.

So, it was fun to bring them back to life and share them with the audience.

♪ I tied angels to my feet ♪ ♪ I'm flying down the street with the devil in sight... ♪ >> BOWEN: Well, what you just said kind of belies the fear that you just described.

Fear is not a word I think most people would use with you.

(both chuckle) So what was the fear at that time?

>> Well, I was brand new.

I just had a couple albums out.

I didn't know what a world would... how a world would respond to an, an out performer.

It's funny looking at me now, you'd think, you know, that I was always like, "I'm going to be an activist."

But that was not it at all.

I just wanted to play my music.

I didn't want to rock any boats.

And, of course, you know, life leads you down these roads.

And I eventually had to make those choices for my own personal health and well-being, and so glad that I did.

But it was very interesting to go back and find the songs that maybe at the time-- yes, it was a little bit of fear that was holding me back.

Now, forget it.

(chuckles) ♪ ♪ ♪ My heaven ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Heaven... ♪ >> BOWEN: When you say, your health or well-being, I was going to ask, where did the conviction come when you, when you finally decided to move forward and let the world know who you were?

>> So many places.

From not only being misquoted-- I remember doing a whole long interview, and I was on the cover of this music magazine, and they changed every nonspecific gender that I used to "my boyfriend."

And that was like, "Oh my God," you know, "people are going to think that I'm, you know, telling stories out here."

And you... and you just... when you try to hide things, they're always going to, it's always going to come to the surface, it just is.

So I found myself surrounded by really strong people.

It was the middle of the AIDS crisis.

And I said, you know, "I really need to stand up and be part of this."

And it was just, you know, that the times and so glad I did.

I mean, again, my health and wellness has, has been much better because of it.

>> BOWEN: Your reluctance to, to release the songs aside, when you go back and you look at who was writing those songs, do you... can you still identify with that person?

>> Yeah.

You know, it's still me.

And, you know, I laugh at a lot of the things that I was worried about, or... you know, trying to accomplish, and my thoughts about, you know, relationships and, and love and those crazy things that, you know, are just so impossible to figure out.

And, you know, but I was doing my best and I appreciate the intensity in which I did them.

I love-- I still love doing, you know, my songs.

>> BOWEN: What is the place of songwriting in your life, especially as you just talked about, relationships and how we all try to navigate our way, does songwriting help you do that?

>> Oh, yeah.

Oh, I started writing songs when I was about 11 years old.

You know, it's just been something that I do.

It's, it's my sort of journaling.

I have just drawers and drawers of notebooks filled with writing, and it's a place where not only I could put that emotion down, but I could also sharpen my, my craft.

And it's just been years of, of learning how to do that.

>> BOWEN: What about the place of performance in your life?

I was struck to see during the pandemic in five, five days a week you were performing from your garage because you clearly missed it.

>> (laughing): Yeah.

We're going overtime tonight.

(chuckling): Call your friends.

Tell them you won't be there yet.

So many of us, the whole industry was just, just decimated, just really, really hit hard by this.

It was very hard on us.

So I put together this streaming subscription, that you could go to Etheridge TV, and five nights a week... ♪ Like the way I do, whooo!

♪ (voiceover): I set up my whole looping thing where I did it all by myself.

I had to be my own roadie again.

And it's just been a great way to not only to perform, and I still get to do what I love to do, but to stay connected.

There's a real community on, on, on there.

>> BOWEN: You talk about this with such joy.

And I was reading about how you deliberately found that and made sure it was part of your life after having cancer.

You know, and I was thinking about the last time I saw you live was with the Boston Pops at the Hatch Shell.

>> ♪ I wanna come over ♪ >> BOWEN: And it now occurs to me all these years later, that it's your optimism that also came through in that performance.

>> Optimism.

Thank you.

I... yeah, went through cancer 18 years ago.

18 years cancer-free.

Thank you.

It, it really... it really got me excited about life.

I realized that that joy is medicine.

Joy is a state that your body does its best in.

And I wasn't going to let the small stuff twist me up.

And it has served me well.

I've been very, very, very healthy-- still am.

And it's, it's... optimism is, is just waking up every day going, "This is great.

"This is a whole new day.

"I'm creating this.

"I understand that life is unfolding in front of me "and I'm going to follow it.

And I'm so grateful for every breath I take."

>> BOWEN: Bearing that in mind, and bearing in mind the paths that you blazed to making this country be accepting of gay people, how do you look at this moment where some of those rights are being dialed back?

We see the "Don't Say Gay" bill in Florida.

I'm talking to you on a day where Disney just got its hand slapped for, for standing up for LGBTQ people.

>> Yeah, it's, it's an old...

It's an old fear again.

Let's, let's take... let's get our power-- I'm speaking of those in power-- bringing up the deepest, darkest, horrible fears of people.

It's just sad when people do that.

I think you're always going to see this, especially when we make advances.

Especially when, you know, we've had years now-- almost a decade-- of gay marriage, of, you know, hey, we're having families.

We are in your schools.

We are all around.

And, and it's different, yes.

It's different than what you... some people thought it was.

But you know what?

Different doesn't mean it's bad.

And as time rolls on, these fears... you know, they subside and they will.

>> BOWEN: Well, you had a major part in that in my growing up, that's for sure.

And so it's so great to be with you.

And thanks for destroying that notion-- don't meet your heroes.

(Jared laughs) That's how I felt today.

>> Aw, thank you so much, you're so very kind.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Dormant for a year, New Repertory Theatre retakes the stage with a theater festival.

It's time now for Arts This week.

Monday, it's the 39th Annual Elliot Norton Awards celebrating local theater.

Stream the ceremony live to see which of your favorite Boston-area shows take home the top prizes.

Tuesday, it's a watch-along event as the Massachusetts Historical Society presents film critic Ty Burr leading a discussion of the Boston-set The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

Thursday, Boston Ballet's production of Swan Lake soars into opening night at the Citizens Bank Opera House.

The Umbrella Arts Center in Concord satirizes society with its latest provocative play about culture and community.

See The Colored Museum Friday.

Saturday, New Repertory Theatre is back up and running.

Its New Voices Theatre Festival features three 20-minute productions at the Mosesian Center for the Arts' Black Box Theatre.

After an unfortunate pandemic-related postponement, Actors' Shakespeare Project is about to open a rollicking remix of Shakespeare.

The Bomb-itty of Errors features just four actors, a DJ, and a healthy helping of hip-hop.

The company's artistic director and director of this show, Christopher V. Edwards, has the rap.

Chris Edwards, I promised we would have you back (laughing): when The Bomb-itty of Errors opened.

I'm fulfilling that promise.

Here you are.

>> Thank you.

>> BOWEN: Before we dive into the show, tell me a little bit about it.

>> So The Bomb-itty of Errors is a rap hip-hop opera adaptation of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors with four actors and a DJ.

Those four actors play probably 20 to 30 characters.

The entire show is rapped.

The DJ plays live music... (rapping) >> He never had enough.

>> It's funny, it's wacky.

And it's, I think, unlike anything anyone has probably seen in Boston.

And I liken it to Saturday Night Live meets a hip-hop rap concert.

>> BOWEN: How can that happen with Shakespeare?

>> Oh, it's easy.

It's all, it's all, you know, it's all heightened language.

You look at Shakespeare written in a particular rhythm.

There's no difference from what Drake, or Tupac, or Eminem do with their rhythm.

And some rap is actually written in pentameter.

So you can take a Shakespearean sonnet and put a beat to it, and rap the sonnet.

>> BOWEN: You just made me think, what occurred to me today is that I think as a society, we like things to be just so and you can't change anything.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: But Shakespeare, that doesn't seem to be true.

Why is it... why do we give ourselves... why do audiences give theater artistic directors so much permission to adapt Shakespeare?

>> Well, that said, there are quite a few people that don't want you to do it, right?

There's always going to be those folks.

But I think the thing about Shakespeare itself is infinitely interpretable.

I think that's what's great about it.

And it is also I don't think Shakespeare necessarily has anything to say about who we are.

I actually think we use Shakespeare to say who we are.

>> BOWEN: That is so interesting because everybody relies on that trope that Shakespeare understands us better than we understand ourselves and always has.

>> Yeah, I don't, I don't agree with that.

I think we look at a play, you can look at a play... Well, we just did the Merchant of Venice last year, right?

And it has a history of issues, right?

Anti-Semitism, and, you know, a lot of people have done the play and set it in a fascist regime.

But you can look at these plays, and you can look at them from the left, you can look at them from the middle, or you can look at them from the right.

A play like Henry V has been used to say "War is terrible."

And it's also been used to say "Patriotism, and save your country," you know what I mean?

So, I think the plays are there and we interpret them, and we say what we want to say about them dependent upon where we are in our culture at the time.

>> BOWEN: Speaking of where we are, I was struck by reading about this because this is the first time it's been presented in Boston, so I have not had the chance to see it.

Almost everybody who writes about it talks about the heart in Bomb-itty of Errors.

>> Oh, it's because, you know, I think the play was written in the late '90s.

And it came out of a... NYU's Experimental Theatre Wing.

And it came out of a student project.

And I know the guys that wrote it, they're all friendly guys, and I've known them for a while.

And you can just see this sort of youthful exuberance around, one, their excitement for language; two, their excitement of performing; and three, it's a love letter to hip-hop, but it is also a love letter to Shakespeare.

And so I would say that probably has to do with where the heart comes from.

>> BOWEN: You've directed this before.

I think last time was about 12 years ago, so it made me wonder why this time for bringing it back?

>> Well, you know, when we looked at the... we planned this season during COVID.

And so, you know, everyone is leading this life of constant anxiety, constant stress.

There was so much heavy, that I said, "Let's lighten up something so that we can just come into "a theater and hopefully breathe the same air, and laugh together."

No matter how we're feeling today or, you know, particularly around loss because there was a lot of loss at the time.

And, and I think comedy is, is a great healer of groups together.

So that was pretty much why we tried to put it into this season because we knew we were coming out of the pandemic, we wanted to, you know, celebrate a little bit.

(laughing): And here we are.

>> BOWEN: Well, it's also nice to laugh, right?

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: You think, "Oh, I'm still capable of doing.

>> That's right.

>> BOWEN: Shocking.

>> Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> BOWEN: Well, Chris Edwards, thank you for your persistence in keeping with this show and finally getting it on the stage.

Thank you for being here.

>> Thank you.

Always a pleasure.

It's a joy.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Evil has descended onto GBH-- just one studio over, actually.

That's where Grammy-nominated period music group Boston Baroque recently staged the Handel opera Amadigi di Gaula, which streams through the weekend.

Arun Rath, host of GBH radio's All Things Considered, wandered into the path of the opera's wicked sorceress and has our story.

♪ ♪ >> (singing in Italian): >> Handel's Amadigi di Gaula features some of his most reliable operatic themes: star-crossed lovers, and Disney-esque magic.

(singing in Italian) Renown countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo plays Amadigi, who is in love with Oriana, who is also loved by another man, Dardano.

And Amadigi is loved by Melissa, who happens to be a sorceress with a hell of a temper.

(singing continues) Soprano Amanda Forsythe says getting to know the character has been a blast.

(singing continues) >> It is fun, and it actually... Handel wrote amazing music for his sorceresses.

>> Melissa's magic is generated with the help of modern theatrical projection technology.

The projectors and screens were being set up in the Calderwood auditorium as we spoke.

>> I said, "I think I need lasers on my fingers.

Can we do lasers?"

(Arun laughs) But I think that's been nixed.

(chuckles) >> Even though it has all these sort of magic and fireworks in it, it's, at its heart, just really this story about emotions and about how we experience them.

>> Louisa Muller is the stage director of the Boston Baroque performance of Amadigi di Gaula.

>> It's really all reflective of sort of her emotional state or her, her wishing to control the environment.

So all of it is tied to story.

And none of it is just for its own sake.

I have demons at my disposal!

(laughs) >> I had been hoping to find a director like Louisa Muller, who is helping me explore this character, which can be portrayed as a very stock, one-sided character.

"I am evil and I'm going to do all these bad things to you."

But she, like I do, believes in finding the, the universal emotions in all of these characters.

And so we're working to find a really three-dimensional portrayal of Melissa that is a woman who has been abandoned (chuckling): and rightly is angry about it.

(singing in Italian) >> I want people to be walking away talking about how do we support the storytelling?

How do we really support the narrative?

How do we create an immersive world?

>> And this kind of immersive word feels more special as we emerge from the pandemic.

(dramatic music playing) >> The lights go down and you're sitting surrounded by strangers, and you're all having this ephemeral experience that no one else is ever going to have in exactly that same way.

It's profound.

It's profound, yeah.

>> If you missed the show, you can still experience some of that excitement.

Boston Baroque is streaming a performance of Amadigi di Gaula until May 22.

For Open Studio, I'm Arun Rath.

(singing in Italian) ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week, art that puts the tech in technique.

How the Museum of Fine Arts is using the latest technology to examine sculpture of the ancient world.

>> We need to show how the ancients encountered those works.

>> BOWEN: Plus, photographer Tabitha Soren with portraits of our digital selves.

>> I'm not saying that technology is bad, but this work does definitely question how much you let it into your life.

>> BOWEN: Until then, I'm Jared Bowen.

Thanks for joining us.

And as always, you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

♪ ♪