Mark Favermann
Bio:
Architecture, design, film and theatre critic/associate editor Mark Favermann, is an urban designer and public artist who over the past two decades has written extensively on art and design. A former Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT, he was the first leader of the Boston Visual Artists Union (BVAU), the 1970's Boston activist artists organization, served as the former Director of Visual and Environmental Arts for the City of Boston and has been an adjunct professor at several universities. He was a columnist and/or editor for a large number of prominent publications. His own design work has included creating the award-winning marquee for the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, designing the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, creating the look for the 2000 NCAA Final Four in Indianapolis and the 1999 Ryder Cup as well as the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester, England. For the past eight seasons, he has been a design consultant to the Boston Red Sox. His 2005 public art commission, The Birds of Audubon Circle, was nominated by the Boston Art Commission as one of the best pieces of public art in America. In the Fall of 2007, his Recognition Gateway sculpture was installed in South Brookline.
Recent Articles:
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Mothers & Sons Bond at SpeakEasy Theatre
Brilliant Acting Underscores Touching Narrative
By: - May 11th, 2015A touching play exploring our evolving understanding of what it means to be a family. At times funny, provocative, and poignant, this drama follows Dallas matriarch Katharine Gerard on an unexpected visit to New York City to meet with her late son’s former partner, who is now married to another man and raising a young son. Forced to consider the life that her son might have led, Katharine must now come to terms with her own life choices. And certainly, society has changed around her. Wonderful acting underscores this quality production.
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Artist Otto Piene’s Last Environmental Artwork Fine Arts
A Test Run at a Boston Gallery before Exhibition in Germany
By: - Apr 25th, 2015With the passing of pioneering art and technology artist Otto Piene last Summer, his creative legacy has continued to be showcased with shows in Berlin, the Guggenheim in New York and the Cyberarts Gallery in Boston. Recently, the prolific Piene's last art installation was "tested" at the Miller Yezersky Gallery in Boston's SOWA District in preparation for an exhibit at at LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur in Münster, Germany. The master artist's spirit embraced this wonderful environmental art event.
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Come Back, Little Sheba At Huntington's Calderwood Theatre
A Poignant Story of the American Dream Unmet
By: - Apr 16th, 2015A play about dreams and desires unmet, it is the story of Doc and Lola Delaney's rather somber middle class life. To make ends meet, they rent a room in their cluttered Midwestern home to Marie, an unapologetic young college student. Her youthful vitality stirs up forgotten dreams and missed opportunities. Directed by David Cromer, this is an intimate and heartrending portrait of a marriage and painful life partnership fading from youthful exuberance to middle age stasis. The acting is superb and the stagecraft is appealing.
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The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate Architecture
Less May Just Be Less At Senatorial Memorial
By: - Apr 16th, 2015To commemorate the life and service of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a new educational and research institute was recently opened adjacent to the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on Dorchester Bay overlooking Boston Harbor. Though created by a star architect Rafael Viñoly, the structure is spare and initially uninviting. If such a thing can exist, it is minimalism light.
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City of Angels Glowing At Lyric Stage Theatre
A Wonderful Film Noir Spoof Set in 1940s Hollywood
By: - Mar 31st, 2015With clever lines, lyrics as well as songs and set in the seductive Hollywood of the late 1940s, City of Angels chronicles the misadventures of Stine, a disillusioned young novelist attempting to write a screenplay for a tyrannical, egomaniac movie producer. As his marriage falls apart, we follow Stine’s film alter-ego, the dashing detective Stone, who is haunted by the memory of the girl that got away. With a wonderful evocative score, City of Angels simultaneously spoofs the superficially glamorous world of old Hollywood and the edgy film noir world of thugs and femme fatales. This is a funny, witty and very clever theatrical experience.
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Architect Michael Graves Dies At 80 Architecture
Post Modern Master Architect and Consumer Product Designer
By: - Mar 18th, 2015Michael Graves shook up the architectural world by taking the unadorned boxes of modern architecture and often theatrically enhancing them with color, pattern, and ornamentation. His work for Humana, Disney and others was considered kitsch by some but revolutionary by others. Though his building style faded, his often whimsical and sometimes iconic home products for first Alessi and then Target and other retailers may be his greatest continuing legacy.
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Big Fish A Whopper At SpeakEasy Stage Theatre
Wonderful Music and Performances Reflect Father and Son Conflict
By: - Mar 17th, 2015A warm and bountiful Big Fish centers on Edward Bloom, a traveling salesman whose larger-than-life stories of epic adventures delight everyone around him, except his pragmatic son Will. The show is full of terrific talent and melodious music. Just as Edward’s health begins to decline, the questioning Will sets out on a journey of family discovery seeking the truth behind his father’s fanciful tales.
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The Colored Museum At Huntington Theatre Theatre
Black America As Musical Satire And Skewered Stereotypes
By: - Mar 13th, 2015Greatly and rightly honored George C. Wolfe’s one-act play uses satire and wit to describe the pain, joy and thematic contradictions of the African American Experience. He sets forth 11 "exhibits" or sketches to use humor, wit and song to express the human journey of the American Black experience. Shattering many stereotypes, he brilliantly embraces others. With an incredibly talented cast, this Huntington production is all about anger, love and survival with just enough in your face acknowledgement to make you entertained but clearly instructed.
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Intimate Apparel Beautifully Tailored At Lyric Theatre
Early 20th Century Historical Drama Exquisitely Crafted
By: - Feb 21st, 2015From the author of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, Intimate Apparel is a superb evocative portrait of Esther, an independent but lonely African American seamstress in early 20th-century New York. She earns her living sewing exquisite lingerie for wealthy white socialites uptown and whores downtown. After receiving a letter from a stranger who is laboring on the Panama Canal, she begins a long-distance courtship with him. Of course, he is not all that he initially seems. Disillusioned but unbroken, Esther reluctantly returns to her sewing to refashion her dreams. This is a wonderful Lyric Stage Company production.
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The Second Girl At Huntington Theatre Theatre
Moving Irish-American Drama At Calderwood
By: - Jan 30th, 2015Set in August of 1912 with Eugene O'Neill's classic Long Day's Journey into Night as a backdrop, The Second Girl is set in the downstairs world of the Tyrone family kitchen. Two Irish immigrant servant girls and the American-born chauffeur search for identity love and success in their world beset by circumstances and human mistakes. It is the world premiere by Huntington Playwriting Fellow Ronan Noone and directed by actor/director Campbell Scott.
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A Perfect Future At SpeakEasy Stage Theatre
30something Angst in the 21st Century
By: - Jan 13th, 2015A Play of 21st Century manners, A Perfect Future tells the story of Claire and Max finding their values put to the test. When their best friends Alex and Elena announce they are having a baby, things begin to unravel in their perfect world. Claire is climbing the corporate ladder in advertising, while her husband Max is a puppeteer for PBS. With friends entering into parenthood, they begin to ask themselves who they are and where they are going so fast. And what happened to the indie-rock kids that hated everything their parents believed in?
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Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Theatre
A Delightful Chekhovian Spicy Comedy at Huntington Theatre
By: - Jan 08th, 2015A Chekhovian mashup from master of comedy playwright Christopher Durang, Vanya and Sonia's quiet, bucolic and rather boring life is upended when their glamorous movie star sister Masha arrives with her brawny boy toy Spike in tow. This Tony Award-winning Broadway treat is both a rollicking and touching comedy that pays loving homage to Chekhov's classic themes of loss and existential longing.
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Molly Ivins' Wit and Wisdom at Lyric Theatre
Karen MacDonald Triumphant as Red Hot Patriot
By: - Jan 06th, 2015Splendidly portrayed by Karen MacDonald, Molly Ivins was a dyed-in-the-wool liberal from deep in the heart of Texas,. She had a rapier wit that made her one of America’s highest-regarded political satirists and beloved rabble-rousers. Red Hot Patriot weaves personal anecdotes with Molly’s humor and wisdom, celebrating her courage and tenacity. This is especially true even when a complacent America wasn’t listening. She was a personable monument to First Amendment rights and virtues. This is a terrific play about an American original.
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Hope, A Hiaku Word
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Necessary Monsters At SpeakEasy Theatre
Playwright/Actor Kuntz Disrupts Narrative Expectations
By: - Dec 07th, 2014Set in a cage and creatively dramatizing different presentations forms, "Necessary Monsters" by John Kuntz is a play that tells a fragmented story. Its title figuring into at least four story lines. “Necessary Monsters†is the name of a romance novel, a horror film, a bit of film noir, and a children’s television show. This is an unusual production that is part dream sequence, part pill-induced hallucination and serial killer nightmare. It is a provocative thinking person's entertainment.
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The Tale of the Allergist's Wife At Lyric Stage Theatre
Charles Busch's Broad Comedy of Culture
By: - Nov 23rd, 2014A middle-aged Upper-West-Side doctor’s wife spends her mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at MOMA, and evenings at BAM. Plunged into a mid-life crisis of Medea-like proportions, she’s shaken out of her lethargy by the sudden reappearance of a fascinating and somewhat mysterious childhood friend. This is a comedy filled with cultural humor about mid-life malaise.
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Brainy Funny Ruby Wax At Oberon Theatre
Absolutely Fabulous Writer/Actor Speaks Neuroscience
By: - Nov 20th, 2014American comedian/writer/television host Ruby Wax's Out Of Her Mind is a hilarious and a bit dark show. Brash but thoughtful, she touches on the contemporay toxins of envy, fame, television, getting rich, getting the perfect body, marriage, careers, the insatiable drive to win. And above all, staying busy while looking like you’re actually accomplishing something is a special annoyance. Ruby has written for and co-edited every episode of the British TV comedy Absolutely Fabulous, and her best-selling memoir How Do You Want Me? is a classic autobiography. She is a special talent.
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Odets' Stirring Awake and Sing! At Huntington Theatre
Depression Era Drama About Dysfunctional Family
By: - Nov 12th, 2014Set in a cramped Bronx apartment, three generations of a working-class Jewish family are frustrated in their dreams of a brighter future. Matriarch Bessie Berger's fierce determination keeps her family afloat, whatever the cost. Gritty, passionate, funny, and heartbreaking, With outstanding performances, Odets' 1935 drama captures both the hopes, disappointments and struggles of a memorable American family.
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Poetic Whimsy Spoken in Form and Motion Fine Arts
Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde To Iconic
By: - Nov 05th, 2014Alexander Calder's brilliant abstract works revolutionized modern sculpture and made him one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century. This wonderful exhibition brings together 40 of the artist's mobiles (kinetic) and stabiles ( stationary) to explore how Alexander Calder introduced the visual vocabulary into American cultural vernacular. At this once in a generation show, the power of his poetic mastery of elegant form, balance and motion is underscored by his infectious personality of delight and whimsy.
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Hedda Gabler Quirky At Gamm Theatre Theatre
Caricatured Characters With Theatrical Energy
By: - Nov 02nd, 2014The production of Hedda Gabler at Pawtucket's Gamm Theatre is a less than nuanced production of the 1889 Ibsen classic. Set when Gabler has returned from an extended honeymoon with her tediously academic and wimpy husband, carrying heavy personal baggage she is already bored of marriage. Suffocated by bourgeois society and disdainful of intellectual pursuits, she tries to fulfill her aimless often mean-spirited desires by manipulating those around her resulting tragically. A play with offering no easy answers, the focal point is a Hedda Gabler who is a troubled and troubling woman. Slipping into despair as her options narrow, even with directional script flaws, this is a compelling play.
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Bad Jews Provocative at SpeakEasy Stage Theatre
Brilliant Layered Drama About Family, Faith and History
By: - Oct 27th, 2014Don't let the title put you off. This is not a negative play. The narrative concerns the war between two cousins over a coveted family heirloom, It is a biting comedy/drama about religion and culture. At odds are the annoyingly self-righteous Daphna, a young woman who wears her Jewishness like a badge of honor, and her equally self-centered first cousin Liam, an entitled graduate student who enjoys distancing himself from his cultural traditions. Thrown into the mix is Liam's younger brother Jonah and Liam's white bread girlfriend Melody. When the combatants are forced to spend the night in a studio apartment, all hell breaks loose resulting in a viciously funny brawl over family, faith, and legacy.
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Ether Dome: Medical Miracle At Huntington Theatre
Surgical Anesthetic Discovery As Gripping Narrative History
By: - Oct 23rd, 2014This clever production tells the story of the search for a new treatment promising to end pain as it pits a doctor and his student in an epic battle between altruism and ambition, ego and empathy. Based on the true story of the discovery of ether as an anesthetic in 1846, it is set in Boston's Massachusetts General Hospital. This new play explores the horror of pain, the sweetness of relief, and the very modern notion of the hysteria that erupts when healthcare becomes big business.
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Dear Elizabeth Speaks Volumes at Lyric Stage Theatre
A Play in Letters Between Elizabeth Bishop & Robert Lowell
By: - Oct 20th, 2014Told through an extensive and compelling correspondence between two of 20th century’s most important and celebrated American poets, Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, this play on and with words is a different kind of love. It is a story of the spirit and imagination between artists and friends. This thirty-year friendship served to buoy each other up in life and art. Their often messy, addictive and sometimes unhealthy lives were profoundly impacted by the other. This is a lyrical, moving portrait of a friendship that eloquently transcends oceans, continents, and time.
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Assassins Sinister Sondheim At New Rep Theatre
Dark Musical About Murderous Losers
By: - Oct 07th, 2014With a large cast and Stephen Sondheim's music, Assassins is a musical based on the premise of a murderous carnival game to produce a revue-style portrayal of men and women who attempted (successfully or not) to assassinate various Presidents of the United States. Even though the music varies to reflect the popular music of the eras depicted, the time warps of the characters act to confuse the audience. With a fine ensemble, The New Rep tries hard with a very dark Sondheim vehicle.
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Doubt Unquestionable At Stoneham Theatre Theatre
Brilliant Performances About Church and Humanity
By: - Sep 28th, 2014Doubt, The Parable is about the crimes of the priesthood both proven, suggested and covered up by the Catholic Church. It tells the story of a zealous nun school principal who confronts a well-liked charismatic priest about a relationship with a student. The issue is whether she is on a witch-hunt, or is he hiding a dark secret. Wonderfully acted and directed, it is a tour de force by Karen MacDonald.
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