>> For him, architecture in a building like this was a work of art, a complete work of art.

>> BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio-- in Manchester, New Hampshire, the houses that Frank Lloyd Wright built.

>> (vocalizing) >> BOWEN: Then Whitney White shakes up Shakespeare, using dance and music to reimagine Lady Macbeth.

>> This is the perfect woman to play-- she's contemporary, she's smart, she has desires, she has will, but she kills herself, you know, at the end.

>> BOWEN: Plus, she's got the look.

Academy award-winning costume designer Ruth Carter on her most memorable designs.

How overtly political was your work in Do The Right Thing?

>> We all knew that we were doing a protest film.

>> BOWEN: And an artist's wild ride celebrating Reno Rodeo.

>> I'm hoping to achieve this narrative that can tell the story of so many separate pathways of people and locals and national figures that came to Reno and made Reno really, really interesting.

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

♪ ♪ First up, we begin the show here on this tree-lined street in Manchester, New Hampshire.

It's also one of the few places in America where you'll find two houses designed by the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

And now, thanks to the Currier Museum of Art, they're both open to the public.

On a New Hampshire street dotted with traditional New England homes, there are two very different one.

Built more than 60 years ago, when the neighbors cried "There goes the neighborhood," at least it was going to architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

>> There was quite a stir at the beginning.

They referred to it pejoratively as the chicken coop, but today they've embraced it.

>> BOWEN: It is the Zimmerman House, built for a married couple in 1950 and echoed just a few houses down, in a home built for the Zimmermans' friends, the Kalils, five years later.

Both mark a moment when the aging Frank Lloyd Wright, one of America's most celebrated architects, believed he still had much to say.

>> He was influenced by prairie architecture, but also by Japanese architecture.

>> BOWEN: Alan Chong is the director of the Currier Museum of Art, which inherited the Zimmerman home, fully intact, in 1988.

It purchased the Kalil house in 2019, the first time it had ever come up for sale.

>> We regard these two houses as works of art, so they're technically part of the collection.

We maintain them for the public, for the future.

>> BOWEN: Both couples, busy, childless professionals working in the medical field, wanted homes that would be modern, but also feel warm.

So they reached out to Wright.

Then in his 80s, he was re-engaging in residential design.

Kurt Sundstrom is the Currier Museum's senior curator.

>> He saw this opportunity after World War II with people buying homes, the getting out of the Depression, that there was an opportunity to create beautifully designed homes for the middle class.

>> BOWEN: Even if from the front and to the neighbors' chagrin, it didn't look that way.

>> If we look at the street view, the facade of this building, it's like a militaristic building.

It very keeps much the privacy of the individual.

But then when you look outside, you have this magnificent open glass wall that leads on to these beautifully designed gardens.

And those colors integrate beautifully with this building.

So what is actually a small home feels expansive in this environment, but also very protected from the outside world.

>> BOWEN: In all elements of the home, Wright and his design team were all in.

Surviving letters reveal the couple gave the architect free reign, right down to their stationery and a music stand for the music lovers.

>> He designed everything.

For him, it was the whole, rather than "I'll just build the house and then you guys can furnish it whatever way you want."

Architecture, in a building like this, was a complete work of art.

You can see, even in the woodwork, the level of detail is extraordinary.

This is Georgia cypress.

He takes planks, and the planks are married when they turn a corner, so they're the same piece of wood.

>> BOWEN: Wright designed both the Zimmerman and Kalil homes while also working on the Guggenheim museum in New York City.

All three projects are similar in that they adhere to his philosophy of "organic" architecture.

>> These houses are of the earth.

The house almost seems to rise out of the landscape, and you'll see in both houses, certain areas of the house go below grade.

So that integration right into the landscape is essential for these homes.

>> BOWEN: The houses were also studies in simplicity.

Or at least they were supposed to be.

As the Currier's Andrew Spahr explains, they were designed under a system Wright called Usonian Automatic.

>> Well, Usonian was sort of his play on the United States of America, and Usonia was his philosophy for building these houses and villages, cities.

And Automatic was intended to imply that the owner could construct the house.

>> BOWEN: By way of a builder's roadmap not unlike LEGOs.

>> There are approximately 12 or 13 different, distinct blocks that were designed to construct this house.

There were only seven of these houses built, ultimately, and the owner or the contractor would construct molds, and would then cast these concrete molds to make the blocks.

And you would do a tally as to how many of which kind of blocks you needed to construct the house.

>> BOWEN: To be clear, both the Zimmermans and Kalils hired builders.

And for the subsequent decades they lived in their homes, the couples kept them just as both they and the architect wished, so that two of Frank Lloyd Wright's final projects could also be lasting ones.

>> Their home, they recognized they were only temporary owners, and that it needed to be passed on, and it's the way you buy a work of art, you know?

Someone, a private person buying a Rembrandt, you're just a temporary custodian.

And that's why The Currier is so fortunate to have two homes showing two different aspects of a similar type of home that he was designing.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Next, something this way combusts.

With rock, pop, and gospel, artist Whitney White gives Lady Macbeth a modern makeover, using one of Shakespeare's most famous characters to explore female ambition, power, and the price of wanting it all in the new A.R.T.

production Macbeth in Stride, as you see here.

Whitney White, thank you so much for joining us.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> BOWEN: I am so eager to talk to you about this blend that you have of your love of music and your fascination, your lifelong fascination, as I understand it, with Shakespeare, in particular his lead female characters.

So what is this show?

>> Macbeth in Stride is a musical look at the story of Lady Macbeth.

It uses contemporary circumstances and understandings such as who I am as a woman living in the now, and how my story, and the stories of so many women, intersect with that of Lady Macbeth.

>> ♪ Lil' sister, don't go too far!

♪ ♪ The man is watching, don't be no star!

♪ ♪ Do the best with what you have ♪ ♪ Work twice as hard, might still get had!

♪ >> And that's how Shakespeare wrote it.

>> BOWEN: For people who don't necessarily remember, what's the quick encapsulation of Lady Macbeth's story?

>> At the top of the play, Macbeth is out making war, because that's what one does back then.

And he's very successful at that.

But you come to learn that Macbeth has been given a prophecy by three witches or weird sisters, and he's told that he will be king.

He sends his wife this letter and she goes, "Okay, well, we're going to have to kill the king," like that!

And that's how their story starts.

Lady Macbeth is kind of one of those roles.

She's an archetype, that is a feminine archetype that you see over and over again on television and movies.

And it's lasted for hundreds and hundreds of years.

And so my question is, if this narrative surrounding this woman is so prominent in our society, what is it doing to us?

You know, and that's the kickoff for the show.

>> BOWEN: But how, fundamentally, do you see yourself in Lady Macbeth?

>> Lady Macbeth essentially is a woman who wants more in her life.

If you look at it like that, then I think that encapsulates a lot of people, not just women.

An opportunity comes her way, and she says, "I want that, and I'll do anything to get it."

And when I start at that base level, it connects a lot to my own story.

I think, if I'm honest, it's not, you know, I work in the arts.

Many artists out there, I'm sure, will understand me when I say it's not always easy.

And you have to do a lot of things to get your stories out there, and to get on a stage, to find a stage, to find anyone who's willing to do anything with you.

And she goes to very bad lengths to get what she wants.

(laughter) I don't think that we should be, you know, we shouldn't take to violence, which is ultimately why she unravels.

>> Hie thee hither.

>> Hie thee hither.

That I might pour my spirits in thine ear.

And chastise thee with the valor of my tongue.

All that impedes thee from the golden round.

Which fate, and metaphysical aid, doth seem to have thee crowned withall.

>> BOWEN: It's interesting, your description at the outset doesn't give any of the shades, the negative shades.

I mean, she does not go down well in literature over the last 400 years.

But I understand that this is part of your exploration, too.

And a lot of Shakespeare's female characters especially don't really survive well.

>> So there's two narratives that are present, I think, that permeate our society in so many ways.

It's like, if you're a woman, and you're ambitious for love or for power, it's very rare that you'll survive to act four in a Shakespeare play.

Juliet, Cleopatra, Ophelia, Amelia, Desdemona.

These are, like, the idea of, like, feminine sacrifice as being something essential to a story.

I try and start in a more base character place with her, before we get to all the killing, to look at that in a different way.

But I think there's two parts, you know?

What does it mean to be ambitious and female and in my case, ambitious, Black, and female?

And then what does it mean if a lot of our stories tell us that you can't be?

>> BOWEN: Yeah, start to answer that for me.

What has it meant to you to have to, to love Shakespeare, but to go through play after play after play to see the women end the same way?

- I don't know, I always think about Cleopatra, who's actually one of the women we're going to look at in this series, because Macbeth in Stride is a part of a larger series that we're trying to work on.

But it is funny you psych yourself up for this role and you're kind of told your whole life that this is the perfect woman to play, she's contemporary, she's smart, she has desires, she has will, but she kills herself, you know, at the end.

And then I just started asking why?

Why are the roles I want to play?

Why do they end in violent suicide?

I mean, Juliette is the archetype.

But for me, I always find it's such an unactable thing, that this woman who wants so much out of her life just kills herself.

>> BOWEN: Well, Shakespeare is so foundational for our lives.

I mean, this is why we still present Shakespeare.

We watch it, we read it, because as everybody, as all the critics and the historians tell us, Shakespeare shows us ourselves, even all of these centuries later.

So how much is Shakespeare's depiction of women responsible for what we see of modern, ambitious women?

>> No, I mean, you are crushing it.

That is my play.

>> BOWEN: (laughs) I kind of wish you'd come here and help us talk to everybody.

That is the whole question in the play.

And, you know, women, we are not fragile.

Women are not just jumping off of buildings every time they can't get what they want.

What is that mythology?

We are not answering why it is.

We're trying to look at the effects of that narrative.

One, two, three, four!

(music playing) And what about the stories that are told to us?

Prince Charming?

>> Well... >> Speak softly?

>> Okay!

All right!

>> Stay home?

(voiceover): I think a lot of people are having this conversation, too.

So I'm definitely not the only one having it.

But I am, I'm quite obsessed with Shakespeare, so I'm trying to pull that in, into it.

>> BOWEN: This is what I think is interesting, too.

How have you not been turned off by Shakespeare, given how he ends his women?

>> (laughs) I mean, that's, I need to go to Shakespeare therapy.

(laughter) That's a really great question.

I see my ability to insert myself in Shakespeare as a way of talking back to history, and hopefully talking to the future-- and also the poetry of it.

Let's be real, I mean, some of that poetry, it stands the test of time for a reason.

And I think seeing lots of different people inhabit that is special.

It's like magic.

When you do the Shakespeare, it is like music coming over you.

And I'm a musician, so I'm going to be into that, you know?

>> BOWEN: I was just going to ask you about that and how you talk back to that history.

It's through music that I think people don't necessarily equate with Shakespeare.

That's rock and roll.

Tell me about... about what music you bring to this show.

>> I love vintage rock and vintage soul.

And when you're really in a Shakespeare full on, it feels the same as singing at times because of the verse and the rhyme and the rhythm you have to get on.

And so this couple who's going to go against the world by any means necessary, when I read it, I heard Tina Turner, I heard Nine Inch Nails, I heard The Doors.

>> ♪ When foul is fair and fair means foul ♪ And so the music in the show just helps you expand an emotional moment and understand more.

There are these moments where Shakespeare takes these incredible leaps and we're like, "Hey, let's just get in there and explore that."

And I think I can just bring it back down to earth, and be like, "You know what?

"This is just about a married couple that's not getting along.

Let's sing about it."

>> BOWEN: Wendy White, thank you so much.

What a pleasure to speak with you.

I'm grateful to have you here.

>> Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: It's roommates with a view when it comes to Arts This Week.

♪ ♪ Visit the Fitchburg Art Museum Sunday to see the exhibition Uncovering the Human Condition featuring artists using the human physique as a way to explore the metaphysical.

>> I'll get you, my pretty.

And your little dog, too!

>> BOWEN: Wednesday marks 65 years since the debut of The Wizard of Oz on television.

The film was introduced on CBS by actor Bert Lahr, who played the cowardly lion, and Judy Garland's ten-year-old daughter Liza Minnelli.

Thursday is opening night for Gone Nowhere at Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

It's a drama about a young man who takes to the wilderness after the death of his father.

Visit Handel + Haydn Society at Symphony Hall Friday for a performance of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony.

Nicknamed "Pastoral," the piece highlights the composer's love of nature.

Saturday SpeakEasy Stage Company presents BLKS, an award-winning comedy about three 20-something Black roommates on a raucous late-night adventure.

If clothes make the man, costumes define the character.

That's been the mantra of Ruth E. Carter, the Academy Award-winning costume designer whose work can be traced from Spike Lee's earliest films to the wonderland of Wakanda in Black Panther.

This is one of the last weeks to see a retrospective of her work at the New Bedford Art Museum.

So here, again, a piece we first brought you this spring.

This is one of Oprah Winfrey's ensembles from the film Selma by director Ava Duvernay, one of countless costumes Ruth Carter has designed over her 30-plus-year career.

>> We had Oprah's character, who was Annie Lee Cooper, who had a scene where she was going to attempt to register to vote.

>> You work for Mr. Dunn down at the rest home, ain't that right?

>> Annie Lee Cooper was a domestic.

So I at first gave Oprah kind of her uniform.

And then Ava said, you know, "No, I feel like "this is a special occasion for her.

Let's have her dress up in her Sunday best for this."

>> BOWEN: And why would she have had a brooch?

>> Well, you know, I remember brooches and earrings when I was a little girl in church.

So that's a little bit of, you know, my heart on-- in the costume design.

>> BOWEN: At the New Bedford Art Museum, this is a collection of costumes Carter has personally kept over the years, from her work on the Roots reboot, to a polyester panoply from the comedy Dolemite Is My Name, to Spike Lee's groundbreaking Do the Right Thing.

>> Always do the right thing.

>> BOWEN: How overtly political was your work in Do The Right Thing?

>> We all knew that we were doing a protest film-- this was about one hot day in New York City.

The colors and Do The Right Thing are very saturated, almost in a surrealistic form, that at night you could see these colors almost ignite.

>> BOWEN: Carter's career began in Springfield, Massachusetts, where she interned in a college costume shop after a brief spell as an actress.

I actually could feel how important my wardrobe was to my, my performance.

>> BOWEN: Her job, she says, is literally in the details-- the little things she does in color, fabric, and accessories to manifest a mood.

>> The aging of the jacket, the billowing of the pockets, shoes that are run over.

All silently tell the story.

>> She's like unmatched in the field, and just a really, really special, thoughtful person.

>> BOWEN: Jamie Uretsky is the museum's curator, who spent two years sifting through Carter's costumes, sketches, and mood boards.

But her chief inspiration was the designer's Oscar acceptance speech in 2019 for her work on Black Panther, making her the first Black person to win an Academy Award for costume design.

>> Black Panther, Ruth Carter!

(cheers and applause) >> Thank you for honoring African royalty, and the empowered way woman can look and lead on-screen.

I think that her as, like, a powerful Black woman, who has just, like, had her hand in, you know, like over 40 films that are imperative to understanding American history and the Black experience.

She makes the experiences of these people feel real.

>> BOWEN: When she first started out in Hollywood, Carter says there was a limit to how Black people were portrayed on camera.

>> Every time a Black person was cast, they were a gang banger, or they had their hat turned backwards, or they had big gold chain.

And there were so many more stories in the community that weren't being seen.

>> BOWEN: Carter is now a world away from that time, in the world of Wakanda-- the fictional setting of Black Panther.

Her looks came from deep research into African tribes and influences, and after the film's blockbuster success, Carter's designs on Wakandan culture melded into our own.

>> I hate to tell you, but you can't get to Wakanda.

It's totally made up.

(laughs) But it's kind of an aspirational place.

We want to create that place that you want to go to because it looks like, you know, the perfect place to experience culture that has not been appropriated, or has not been spoiled by, you know, colonization.

>> BOWEN: Spend some time with Carter and you quickly realize she may be most proud of how much research she's done, tracing the path of indigo from Sierra Leone through generations of Africans as she illustrated in Roots.

Noting how tight Martin Luther King, Jr. kept his collar or sitting down at the Massachusetts Department of Correction to read the letters of Malcolm X.

>> Learning was very important to him and growth was very important to him.

When I look at Malcolm X, I can see my intent.

The color palette is very vibrant when he's a young dancer in the dance halls.

It kind of washes itself away the denim, in the prison.

And then when he comes out, it's almost like a black and white film.

>> BOWEN: A fitting if not poetic description from a woman who has always been able to dress the part.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: When it comes to creating murals, it's not Eric Burke's first time at the rodeo, but painting one was.

We head west to see how the artist commemorated Reno's famed rodeo's 100th anniversary.

♪ ♪ >> My name is Erik Burke and I am muralist.

I started getting into graffiti towards the end of high school.

I just loved it and I loved painting at that scale.

But I got into so much trouble from graffiti numerous times.

Spent time in Lassen County Jail for almost a month.

And coming out of that experience is when I really changed and I was like I wanna figure out how to paint still because I'm definitely hooked and there's no way I cannot paint, but I need to figure out a way to do it with permission.

And I slowly weaned my out of graffiti and into muralism.

♪ ♪ I think my technique is kind of different than a lot of other people because I've learned not to get really hung up on details and really try to paint like more or less the feeling and the form and the color.

♪ ♪ I'm always trying to evolve and not get stuck doing the same thing.

So it's always interesting when you have a new project come down the pipeline because you're in a completely new arena of something you haven't really thought about.

Like I have not thought about a rodeo mural ever.

But after this, I can say this is not my first rodeo... mural.

(laughs) ♪ ♪ >> The Reno Rodeo is ten days, is the wildest, richest rodeo in the West held every June of each year.

We started almost two years ago to plan for our hundred-year celebration of Reno Rodeo.

We said, "How about painting a mural on Sutro Street "between 9th and Oddie Boulevard that will depict 100 years of Reno Rodeo?"

And Erik Burke was the perfect fit for that.

>> Once I found out that I got the commission to do the mural, I met with their centennial committee to talk about, like, hey, what was important from the beginning in 1919 to now?

>> We went through looking at all over our photographs that we have.

Guy Clifton wrote a book about the first 80 years of Reno Rodeo.

>> His book informed so much of the mural.

♪ ♪ Just reading through that and figuring out like, okay, so in 1960 this is what happened, here's who the president was, this Brahman bull escaped and all the crazy chaos stories.

And then kind of from that distilling what were the important moments and what would be possible to paint.

>> There's two pictures that really stand out in my memory, and that is the one of Cotton Rosser, our stock contractor.

The other one is Bob Tallman, our announcer.

Erik did an absolutely fantastic job on those two portraits.

>> The rodeo is Reno's longest running special event.

You know, there's nothing else that's 100 years old, no other special event in town.

So to be able to reflect that in public art is something really unique, I think.

>> This mural is roughly about four blocks long.

>> And it's broken down into decades starting in 1919 and coming up to 2019.

♪ ♪ >> We have been talking about this absolutely incredible mural you've been doing, and have been, I'm telling you, we're all blown away.

>> So many people from the neighborhood walk by and say, "I've walked by this wall for 30 years and it's always been a blank wall, and now this is incredible."

Like the whole neighborhood is talking about it.

And I always think about how murals change that environment, but I've never really noticed it to this scale, like this place because it's a neighborhood that has a stigma attached to it.

It's like it's the hood, but really those are the places that absolutely need it the most.

>> Most people probably didn't even know that wall was there.

But they're gonna be able to see it now.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

Next week we go to hell and back by way of my conversation with Anaïïs Mitchell, the creator of the hit Broadway musical Hadestown.

>> ♪ I hear the walls repeating ♪ >> Orpheus is this kind of hero of songwriters and musicians, and he is an artist who believes that if he could just make something beautiful enough that he could change the world.

>> BOWEN: And the pandemic brings out the artist in professionals pivoting away from their longtime careers.

>> This was something I had always had in the back of my mind that something different that I would like to do.

And, you know, maybe in the future I have like my own place, have like a little shop and something to do.

>> BOWEN: Until then, I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for joining us.

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

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

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪