Opening Reception to be held October 18 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Exhibit runs from October 18 through November 13.

www.ringling.com

From the renowned Cossacks' unbelievable equestrian stunts to the Flying Caceres high-altitude feats on an enormous double-decker trapeze, the 138th Edition of Ringling Bros. will take daredevil thrills to new extremes. Circus celebrities will help rev-up the motorcycle madness featuring one cycle on a high wire and action packed Globe of Steel full of cycles too. Audiences will flip their lids as this Ringling Bros. circus really goes Over the Top!

Over The Top is a wacky and whimsical circus spectacular where audiences will experience maniacal mayhem as Ringmaster Chuck Wagner and clown eccentric Tom Dougherty compete for control of a magical top hat that brings to life their fantastical imaginations. From the silliness evoked by the clown to the stupendous spectacle conjured by the Ringmaster, Over the Top provides excitement for the whole family. Dogs fly, Asian elephants skip, hop and groove and one courageous man stands eye to eye with a pack of powerful tigers, all at the 138th Edition of The Greatest Show On Earth^® which plays eight performances at Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport.

Love mysteries? Like free prizes? Play The Maltese Falcon library mystery game. Follow a series of clues throughout the Shelton Libraries. Help solve the mystery of who stole Peaches, the library snake’s cousin Malta. When you think that you have solved the mystery, write down who you think is the culprit on a form found at either the Plumb or Huntington Branch Libraries. Successful sleuths will be entered in a drawing for 2 $50 gift certificates to Staples. The Big Read is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

EVENT DURING LIBRARY HOURS

10:00am – 4:30pm Daily; Sunday, 12:00pm-4:30pm

10:00am – 4:30pm Daily; Sunday, 12:00pm-4:30pm

10:00am – 4:30pm Daily; Sunday, 12:00pm-4:30pm

10:00am – 4:30pm Daily; Sunday, 12:00pm-4:30pm

City Lights Gallery hours

Showtimes are at 8:00pm AND Midnight

It’s Alive! Following last fall’s smash hit production, The Rocky Horror
Show returns to the Playhouse. Experience this new Bridgeport tradition
for the first time, or come “do the Time Warp Again!” Recommended for
Mature Audiences.  Tickets and showtimes at www.playhouseonthegreen.org

10:00am-5:00pm

The Discovery Museum’s Big Read Mystery Lab will bring out your inner
detective, whether you’re a puzzle ponderer by nature or not. Visitors can
gather clues and examine evidence to solve totally fictional, historically
hokey “Crimes of Science”. Included with general admission.

The works in this exhibition reflect the visions of Swedish women who broke from their traditional roles of women, mothers and homemakers to explore their creativity as textile designers, weavers, painters, sculptors and glass artists. Their art resonates with dream-like images of free-flying birds evoking flight and escape from domestic confinement, year-round idyllic visions of midsummer blossoms, and spare Nordic landscapes filled with greenery, water, space, and light.  

Women's Work, Women's Dreams celebrates a remarkable legacy from a country whose art and artists are little known to American viewers.  The Benton Museum is grateful to Samuel and Ann Charters for sharing their extraordinary collection of Swedish Art and Art Glass and for curating this exhibit.

Gallery Hours: 

Thursday & Friday: 10 am - 4:30 pm

Saturday & Sunday: 1 - 4:30 pm

The Benton will be closed:

November 23 - December 2

6:00 pm

This 1943 version of the classic tale is filmed "In Flaming Technicolor"
and stars Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster and Claude Rains as the Phantom.
BYOBeverage & PICNIC!  Not Rated - 92 minutes. 
 

Three decades of wars have deeply marked the entire culture of Afghanistan, yet artistic expression, particularly through carpets, has been maintained in spite of hardships including displacement to refugee camps.  

In traditional Afghan carpet-weaving, patterns tended to be geometric or floral, reflecting the Islamic rejection of anthropomorphic depictions.  However, by the mid-1980s, in response to the 1979 Soviet Invasion, Afghani weavers, principally women, were creating carpets that showed Russian tanks, helicopters and guns.  The subtle geometric borders often contained rows of bullets and grenades.  Most recently, these "war carpets" have included references to the American conflict and even to 9/11.  Although many of the carpets have Arabic or Persian woven into their designs, the Afghani who created them found a market for these rugs in the West.  In part this may be presumed anti-war sentiments but also, while the rugs are generally traditional in design and relatively inexpensive, they are nonetheless a contemporary artistic expression of a century old craft.  

In this exhibition of over fifty contemporary Afghan carpets showing both war and traditional designs, the rugs offer a commentary on modern Afghan history and, in their maintenance of a vibrant tradition, a measure of hope for the future.

Gallery Hours:

Thursday & Friday: 10 am-4:30 pm

Saturday & Sunday: 1-4:30 pm

The Benton will be closed:

November 23-December 2

Solve infectious disease mysteries by examining interactive patients, analyzing lab tests and identifying culprit microbes. Running Monday to Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Sunday noon to 5 p.m. through Jan. 31.

Sea Tea Improv and City Steam Brewery Café Launch Monthly Evening of Beer and Belly Laughs: “Second City Steam”

HARTFORD, CT--  Local improvisational theater troupe Sea Tea Improv has partnered with City Steam Brewery Café to create a monthly evening of off-the-cuff theatrical comedy.  The performance series, named “Second City Steam” after Chicago’s world-famous theater and training center, will launch on October 4^th at 7 PM at City Steam and recur monthly.  Admission is free to the public and City Steam’s full restaurant menu and service will be available. 

The eight members of Sea Tea Improv met through the Hartford Stage Studio training program last summer.  After a year of workshops and performances, Sea Tea Improv began rehearsing and performing independently.  Sea Tea Improv is not formally affiliated with the Hartford Stage but is a product of its rigorous training and esteemed background.   

Sea Tea Improv began its relationship with City Steam almost one year ago, when City Steam Brewery became the informal post-class meeting location.  Students discussed class over a Naughty Nurse, audience members shared a pint with players after a performance, and the formal formation of the company took place at City Steam.  Managers generously allowed Sea Tea Improv to rehearse in the Richardson Room on a regular basis, turning a social spot into a place for artistic discovery and refinement.  On July 19^th, Sea Tea Improv hosted its first City Steam Improv show in the Richardson Room.  On a quiet Sunday evening in downtown Hartford, more than 50 guests cheered on a 90-minute performance.  

"Improv," or improvisational theater, is any type of theater created in the moment and without the benefit of script or set staging.   Over the last thirty years, improv has burst into mainstream popular culture through television’s hit show WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY and institutions like SECOND CITY (which launched the careers of actors John Belushi, Mike Myers, and Bill Murray). 

Following the October 4^th performance, Sea Tea Improv plans to invite other improv troupes and their followers to participate in comedy shows at City Steam.  Since its inception, Sea Tea Improv has been dedicated to fostering improv through performance and building grassroots support and awareness throughout the Connecticut community.  The ensemble has developed friendly relationships with a number other performance groups in the area.  Sea Tea Improv created and manages an online improv community through Facebook called “CT Improv” to encourage communication and growth within the Connecticut theater scene.  Within a few short months, “CT Improv” has become a hub of information and an excellent resource for its almost 300 members.

City Steam Brewery Café is a 15 barrel brew house, located at 942 Main Street in downtown Hartford.  Brewmaster Ron Page hand crafts up to 12 styles of ales and lagers at a time and rotates them seasonally. The casually priced classic brew house menu with new world touches provides a menu for everyone's tastes. The award winning Brew Ha Ha Comedy Club is Thursday and Friday at 8, and Saturday at 7 and 10 p.m. City Steam plays free classic movies on Mondays and hosts a DJ on weekend evenings with no cover.

“Second City Steam” will kick off on Sunday, October 4^th at 7:00 PM.  Future dates have not yet been announced but shows will run approximately once a month.  For more information visit www.seateaimprov.com, www.citysteambrewerycafe.com, or become a fan of Sea Tea, City Steam, or CT Improv on facebook.  If you’d like to hear a human voice please call Julia Pistell at (908) 418-7357.  She can provide information about Sea Tea and City Steam, and promises to laugh at your jokes and remember your name.

Hartford Public Library Exhibit

The American Mural Project (AMP) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation of the largest indoor collaborative artwork in the world – a mural 120 feet long, 5 stories high, and up to 10 feet deep. Over 10,000 people have worked on it since artist Ellen Griesedieck conceived of it ten years ago. This exhibition at Hartford Public Library will feature some of the finished pieces of the mural, as well as a scale model and plans for elements in progress. Visitors will also have the chance to work on an eight-foot paper-pulp sculpture, one of many AMP is now sending across the country to be painted before their eventual installation in the mural. Throughout the month of the exhibit, AMP will also be coordinating projects with kids from local schools, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Hartford Stage, and other arts organizations around the city.

The Artist’s Vision

In the American Mural Project, Ellen Griesedieck celebrates the engineers and ironworkers, heart surgeons and athletes, cattle workers and craftsmen, and many others who have defined our nation through their work. Ellen paints on a large scale but with an intimate relationship to each of her subjects.

To make the mural as large in spirit as it is in size, Ellen asked people in all 50 states to contribute. Thousands of artists, scientists, teachers and children from coast to coast have responded. Children have worked together with remarkable people, including the quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, an inner-city dance troupe, scientists of the 2003 Mars Explorer Rover Mission, survivors of a Japanese-American internment camp, and an intergenerational foster-home community.

About one quarter of the mural is finished. Collaborative projects are in progress around the country, and work on the mural’s new home, in the Whiting Mills complex in Winsted, CT, is about to begin. With soaring ceilings, open floor plans, and long rows of windows, this 19^th century complex of mills and warehouses is an ideal setting for a monumental mural about working Americans. The future includes a visitor’s center with spaces for a theater, studios, and classrooms, as well as a woodland park for outdoor summer concerts and special events.

Hayrides are available every WEEKEND in November as well as SCHOOL holidays. Rides begin at the W.O.L.F. Cabin and are $2.00 each.

At 4:00 pm on Sunday, November 1st, Music @ Trinity will be presenting the musical event Light Divine- Music of the Baroque on All Saints’ Sunday, November 1 at 4:00 p.m., with works by Bach, Handel, Albinoni, and others.

The concert will feature three prominent local musicians, Douglas Myers, trumpet, Michael Doran, countertenor, and Fiona Smith Sutherland, organ.  This unique combination of trumpet and countertenor, a male singing the same range as a mezzo-soprano, gives the opportunity for music both rarely heard and rarely performed. 

The repertoire for the combined trio includes the opening movement of G.F. Handel’s Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, “Eternal Source of Light Divine”, with which we open, and titled, the concert.  The trumpet and organ duo will play a delightful series of short pieces by Telemann and Viviani, along with works by Purcell and Marcello.   Mr. Doran and Mr. Myers will also collaborate on works by additional works by Handel, along with Bach and Pergolesi.

Douglas Myers, trumpet and horn, has been solo trumpet in orchestras in the U.S., Europe and Asia, before turning his attention to a career as soloist and chamber musician. He specializes in the newly invented corno da caccia, or piccolo French horn. The New York Times says "Played with sheer musicianship....beautiful sound."

Michael Doran has studied voice with Chai-Yun Lueh (NY MET), Scott Reeves (CONCORA), and Ian Howell (Chanticleer), and has served as alto section leader in the Choir of Men and Boys, Trinity-on-the-Green, New Haven.  He has sung with Chanticleer, and been a guest musician with the Christ Church Choir, New Haven and the Yale Recital Chorus.  Currently, Mr. Doran is a section leader for the Choir of Men & Women, here at Trinity Newtown.

Trinity Church’s organist and choirmaster, Fiona Smith Sutherland, will be playing both on Trinity’s stunning 49- rank Austin organ, and primarily on a beautiful Bennett/Giuttari portative organ at the front of the remarkable church.  In her second decade as a professional Anglican musician, Ms. Smith Sutherland has served as organist & choirmaster at such historic and affluent churches in the metropolitan New York area as St. James the Less in Scarsdale and Christ Church in Greenwich.

v  The beautiful acoustics of Trinity make it an ideal locale for this concert of vocal and chamber music.   The concert is free, with a suggested donation basket to support the event available.  A reception will follow the concert to congratulate and meet the musicians.

For further details call Fiona Smith Sutherland at Trinity Episcopal Church, (203) 426-9070 x.11 or email to Musicminister@TrinityNewtownCT.org.

The American Mural Project will create the single largest piece of indoor collaborative artwork in the country.  A mixed-media painting and relief sculpture, it will ultimately be housed in the Whiting Mills Complex in Winsted, CT and measure 120 feet long, 5 stories high, and up to 10 feet deep. This exhibition features some of the huge finished pieces of the mural, a scale model, drawings and plans for elements in progress, and an eight-foot sculptural element.

Downtown Library

October 26-November 29, 2009

Artist Reception Friday, November 13, 5:30-7:00 p.m.

Exhibition tour of Mrs. Delany and her Circle at 2pm

November 1 is Founders’ Day at First Presbyterian Church, Hartford. Everyone is invited to join us to celebrate.  Worship is at 10:30 a.m.

Founders’ Day is a tradition at First Presbyterian Church. During the service, fifty-year members will be acknowledged and those members and friends who died during the past year will be remembered.   Following worship, a “Silver Tea” reception will be held when members and friends get together to socialize and reminisce about the rich history of this church.  This year is particularly special with Founders’ Day being celebrated during a period of congregational introspection, assessment and revitalization.

Our members come from various communities in Connecticut, all walks of life, ages, and ethnic backgrounds, with roots all around the world, including Ghana, Scotland, Germany, Jamaica, Guyana and Iran.  We are the second denomination church in Connecticut to recognize the importance of GBLT inclusion in the life of the greater church.  The diversity and inclusiveness of the congregation and its commitment to mission are some of the distinctive characteristics of First Presbyterian Church. 

First Presbyterian Church has stood at the heart of the city and faithfully served Hartford and its people for 158 years and looks forward to serving for another century and more.

Please visit our website: www.firstpreshartford.org to learn more.