WYPR

The Signal’s Aaron Henkin recently hosted the first installment in a new, live, vaudeville-style variety-show called Vauxhall at The Creative Alliance’s Patterson Theater.  This debut production featured live music, sketch comedy, and experimental dance, among other things - all of it tied together into one theme:  LIARS.

The Stoop Storytelling Series recently hosted an evening titled, “Believe it or Not:  Stories about Finding and Losin

With his 35 years as an editorial cartoonist, Kevin Kal Kallaugher is a living testament to the resilience of the art form. His dual roles at the Economist magazine and at the Baltimore Sun give him an enormous breadth of material to work with each week, from geopolitical crises all over the globe to the latest shenanigans of local politicians. In short, no one is safe when Kal draws his pen.

It all started with a YouTube video.  One day, an American traveling in Sierra Leone West Africa happened across a blind musician on the street.  The man was playing an instrument called the kondi, and the American was intrigued.

We meet a man who grew up blind in a small village in Sierra Leone.  As a child, he taught himself how to play a rare instrument called the Kondi.  He adopted the name of his instrument, and we hear Sorie Kondi share his music and his story.

A woman tries to deal with a husband who’s somehow been possessed by the soul of Henry David Thoreau.  It’s a special radio adaptation from the short fiction collection, The Wild Flowers of Baltimore, by Rob Roensch.

The Sprout Touring Film Festival showcases inspirational movies by and about people with developmental disabilities, and as the festival heads to town, we explore some of the cinematic highlights with Sprout director Anthony DiSalvo and Kate McGuire of The Arc Baltimore.

Arthur Magida’s book, The Nazi Séance, is set in Berlin during the 1930’s. It was a time when the German economy was still in shambles after the Great War, and the Nazi party was slowly but steadily rising to power.  The people of Germany were looking for something, anything, to believe in – and so they held séances, psychic readings, and communions with the dead.

Ptolemy Slocum wanted to profess his love to his sweetheart, and he thought the most romantic possible place would be at the top of the Empire State Building.  He shares the fantasy – and the reality – in front of a live audience at the Windup Space, as part of the Stoop Storytelling Series.

The Sprout Touring Film Festival will travel to 40 cities nationwide this year, and the Baltimore screening is just a few weeks away.  Never heard of it?  You’re not alone.  Sprout is a showcase of movies by and about a population generally ignored by the media – people with developmental disabilities.