'Clyde's' on Broadway, Art and Mass Incarceration, Remembering Petra Mayer, An Hour Celebrating All Things Tacky
Actors Uzo Aduba and Ron Cephas Jones join us to discuss starring in the new play from Lynn Nottage, “Clyde’s,” which tells the story of a sandwich shop run by formerly incarcerated employees. Aduba plays the sadistic owner of the shop, Clyde, while Cephas Jones plays Montrellous, a man chasing after the perfect sandwich. “Clyde’s” runs at the Hayes theater through January 16.
In September 2020, MoMA PS1 featured author and professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU Nicole Fleetwood's exhibit, "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration." Showcasing art made by people in prisons and work by non-incarcerated artists concerned with state repression, erasure, and imprisonment, this major exhibition explored the centrality of incarceration to contemporary art and culture. Fleetwood, who was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Genius Fellowship, spoke with us about the project.
We take a moment to remember NPR Books editor, Petra Mayer.
This hour of the show we discuss all things tacky. Kicking it off, we speak with Rax King, author and host of the podcast, Low Culture Boil, on her new book, Tacky: Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer, a collection of essays that covers topics as wide-ranging as Guy Fieri and “Jersey Shore.” Each essay focuses on a different piece of culture that has been labeled “tacky”… and why King can still find the joy and value in these shows, bands, products, and cultural moments.
To continue our hour celebrating all things “tacky,” we turn to one of the ubiquitous “tacky” brands of the early 2000s… Von Dutch. Worn by celebrities like Paris Hilton and Dennis Rodman, the iconic clothing brand may have a bad reputation, but it also has an epic backstory. Director Andrew Renzi joins us to discuss his Hulu docuseries, “The Curse of Von Dutch,” which explores the behind-the-scenes battle between four people who all claim to be the creators of the Von Dutch brand. All three episodes premiere on Hulu on November 18.
