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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Emilie: La Marquise du Châtelet Defends Her Life Tonight Theatre
A Brilliant Woman's Love and Philosophy At The Nora
By: - Sep 19th, 2014Emilie du Châtelet, was a brilliant physicist before physics was a word. She was also a card shark, and all-around bad ass during the Age of Enlightenment. At the Nora Theatre Company, she as a ghost returns searching for answers: Love or Philosophy? Head or Heart? An outspoken eccentric or actual intellectual revolutionary, she was lustful and brilliant. The Marquise introduced Newtonian physics to France and took Voltaire as her lover always correcting errors in his work. This theatrical exploration traverses time and space with a woman ahead of her time, ignoring the rules of polite society, with her greatest limitation being that of her dexterous mind. The central character is wonderfully portrayed by Lee Mikeska Gardner.
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Far From Heaven At SpeakEasy Theatre
1950s Musical Deals With Sexual and Cultural Issues
By: - Sep 17th, 2014Set in the Eisenhower era of complacency and Norman Rockwell family and Main Street values, Far From Heaven is by the creators of the musical Grey Gardens and Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg, It is a a lushly operatic adaptation of Director Todd Haynes' romantic melodrama of private longings and social taboos. A beautiful 1950s Connecticut housewife's perfect life is shattered when she discovers her husband's secret and then seeks comfort in a forbidden relationship. The world is never what it seems..
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Guess Who's Coming To Dinner At Huntington Theatre
The Very Human Pain of Confronting the Us and the They
By: - Sep 11th, 2014Set in the 1960s, this an alternating funny and poignant new stage adaptation that offers a contemporary interpretation of the 1967 Academy Award-winning star-filled film. It features Julia Duffy (“Newhartâ€), Tony Award winner Adriane Lenox (Doubt), and Will Lyman with Malcolm-Jamal Warner (“The Cosby Showâ€) making his Huntington debut. Still relevant nearly 50 years after the movie it was based upon, this is a story about race, prejudice and acceptance.
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Sweeney Todd Thrilling At LyricStage Theatre
Music and Performances Create Haunting Theatre
By: - Sep 07th, 2014Stephen Sondheim's Tony-Award winning Sweeney Todd is a macabre musical thriller that blends wit with a hauntingly beautiful score and grisly humor. Elegantly and wonderfully produced at the LyricStage, the musical follows the homicidal barber Sweeney Todd on his quest for justice and vengeance after years of unjust imprisonment and exile. With the aid of Mrs. Lovett, the twisted proprietor of a failing Fleet Street meat-pie shop, Todd sets out to avenge the terrible wrongs done to him and his family while adding filler to tasty pastry.
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Finding Neverland A Spectacular Journey Theatre
American Rep Wows With Broadway Bound Musical
By: - Aug 15th, 2014Based upon the story of the creation of the 1904 now classic play Peter Pan, Finding Neverland at the American Repertory Theatre is a wonderful theatrical multigenerational event. With spectacular performances, magnificent stagecraft and beautiful music, this is a sight and sound treat. Already set for Broadway in 2015, getting a ticket might be difficult, but well worth the effort. Bravo Diane Paulus and A.R. T.!
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Smart People Funny Treatment of The Serious Theatre
Playwright Lydia Diamond Articulates Race and Sex in America
By: - Jun 05th, 2014Are our biases and prejudices hard-wired? Four Harvard-connected intellectuals: a doctor, an actress, a psychologist, and a neurobiologist studying the human brain’s response to race all search for love, success, and identity. But it is a complex world. Written with insight tempered by barbed wit, Huntington Playwriting Fellow Lydia R. Diamond (Stick Fly) cleverly speaks to the nature of racism, stereotypes, and sexual mores in the 21st Century. It is provocative, funny but often painfully true.
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The Tempest Is Magical At A.R.T. Theatre
A Brilliant Reshaping of Shakespeare's Storm-Swept Saga
By: - May 17th, 2014Prospero is a brilliant sorcerer in this like no other production of The Tempest. Magic and dreams intertwine. The magic was created by Teller (the silent one of illusionists Penn & Teller). When a gaggle of shipwrecked aristocrats wash up on the shores of Prospero’s mysterious island, they find themselves immersed in a world of revenge, trickery and amazement. Accompanied by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan's Dust Bowl balladry, beautifully staged, Teller’s magic, and Pilobolus's movement, this Shakespearean homage wonderfully animates spirits, monsters and myths. This is theatre as spectacle and spectacular theatre.
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Carrie, The Musical Rages At SpeakEasy Theatre
Tormented High School Girl Wins Violent Retribution
By: - May 13th, 2014Kids can be cruel. Hell, people can be cruel. Carrie White has always been an outsider. Constantly bullied and tormented at school and tyrannized by a fanatical religious mother, she begins to have hope that things will change when unexpectedly she is asked to the senior prom. But severe cruelty by her classmates is unleashed, and Carrie's terrifying and horrific power is her revenge.
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Into the Woods A Terrific Trip At Lyric Stage Theatre
Sondheim's Musical Walk On the Fairy Tale Wild Side
By: - May 13th, 2014A Stephen Sondheim sonata to the childhood bedtime stories with adult twists, Into the Woods at the LyricStage Company is a nearly picture perfect illustration of somewhat fractured melodious fairy tales. With an outstanding cast, there is glorious score, sprinkled humor, very human disappointment and scary supernatural presented in wonderful music, movement and words. This may be one of Artistic Director Spiro Veloudos best productions. It is a wonderful last show to celebrate the Lyric's 40th Anniversary year.
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Diane Paulus Named To The TIME 100 Theatre
One of the 100 Most Influential People In the World
By: - Apr 24th, 2014Diane Paulus, the American Repertory Theatre Artistic Director, received another major accolade as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. Since joining the ART, she has added vibrancy and excitement to theatre both in Boston, nationally and worldwide.
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The Shape She Makes Work of Art At Oberon Theatre
A Spectacular Fusion of Movement and Dialogue
By: - Apr 19th, 2014Brilliantly conceived and performed by an ensemble of ten, this production is a fusion of movement and words in the world premiere of this theatrical hybrid. It explores the emotional and continual impact of childhood experiences on our adult lives. Here Quincy, a precocious 11-year old, seeks to understand what she’s inherited from her absent father and neglectful mother. It is a poignant dance of affecting drama. Superbly, it is like nothing else you have seen.
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Becoming Cuba Shines At Huntington's Calderwood Theatre
Love and War Imbedded In Dark Modern History
By: - Apr 11th, 2014Set in 1897 Cuba on the eve of the Spanish-American War, vivacious widow Adela runs a pharmacy, seemingly indifferent to the mounting conflict around her. But when the rebellion literally comes to her home to Havana, she has to choose between her country and her family. With some wonderful performances, this is powerful drama by Playwright-in-Residence Melinda Lopez and directed eloquently by Huntington Associate Producer M. Bevin O’Gara.
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Norman Liebman's Evocative Paintings Fine Arts
At Art Alternative Gallery in Brookline. MA
By: - Apr 08th, 2014Trained as a physician, actually a surgeon, Norman Liebman painted throughout his college education and medical career. Liebman has spent his retirement painting in his studio five or more days a week working in a style related to the COBRA group that worked from 1948-1951 in Europe. He uses bright color and distorted representational form to create semiabstract moody images that have a Modigliani mysteriousness and an expressionist's visual articulateness to them. In his ninth decade of life, he expresses himself in an exuberant, skillful way that underscores a vitality and a youthful experimentation.
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Rich Girl Loaded At Lyric Stage Company Theatre
An Equation of the Heart: Wealth Does Not Equal Happiness
By: - Mar 31st, 2014Add a rich girl, her richer mother, and a starving handsome artist boyfriend together, and what could possibly go wrong? When sheltered Claudine meets actor/director Henry, she falls head over heels for him. But her mother, a tough-talking, cynical celebrity financial guru, tries to crush her daughter's desires and ego. Is Henry everything her daughter deserves or is he only after her money? Rich Girl is a contemporary take on the classic play and film The Heiress. It is a clever comedy about a young woman and her relationships with a man, her mother, money and becoming who she really is.
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Arnold Trachtman Portraits, Galatea Fine Art Fine Arts
Visions Through a Personal Prism
By: - Mar 19th, 2014At 84, Arnold Trachtman is exhibiting a dozen pieces from the last 50 years of his artistic career. Relentlessly he is compelled to express and document history through a vey personal lens. His art never fit the current fad. Arnie never got the memo on the next big wave. Or if he did, he disregarded it. He often combined the past imperfect of the political and social agenda of Europe and the USA in his mostly strident painted images. But the works shown at Galatea Fine Art are more mellow memories yet painted in his most original voice.
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The Seagull Soars at the Huntington Theatre
Chekhov's Classic Brilliantly Presented and Performed
By: - Mar 13th, 2014Celebrated Russian actress Irina Arkadina's visit to her aspiring playwright son with her successful novelist lover in tow kindles unrequited passions and petty jealousies in Anton Chekhov's late 19th Century masterpiece about love, rejection, creative frustration, missed connections, and what it means to be an artist. In this actor's play, a wonderful Kate Burton leads a glittering cast at the Huntington for Chekhov's emotionally rich classic that is directed by the gifted Maria Aitken. Set in brilliant scenery, this amazing theatrical chemistry results in a superb evening of dramatic entertainment.
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The Whale Brilliantly Spouts at SpeakEasy Theatre
Morbid Obesity As Metaphor For Life Choices
By: - Mar 09th, 2014Not an ordinary whale of a tale, The Whale is the story of a rather pathetic Charlie. And he wants to make up for lost time. In the wake of personal tragedy, he has gluttonously eaten to assuage his grief and become a morbidly obese couch-bound, apartment-bound sad recluse. With his health ominously failing, he makes one last desperate attempt to connect with his estranged teenage daughter. Along the way, there are ingredients of Mormonism, costly medical insurance and online higher education as well. This is an exceptionally well-acted humorous, and emotionally wrenching play.
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Death of A Salesman Brilliant At Lyric Stage Theatre
A Stirring Tragic Story of Life Unfulfilled
By: - Feb 20th, 2014Considered one of the greatest American drama's of the 20th Century, since it was first performed in 1949, Death of a Salesman has been recognized as an iconic event of the American theatre. The aging, failing and delusional Willy Loman makes his living riding on a smile and a shoeshine. Playwright Arthur Miller redefined the tragic hero as a man whose dreams are both insupportably grand and pathetically insubstantial. Boston's Lyric Stage Company brilliantly portrays this epic statement of promise and loss and the American Dream unfulfilled.
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FreePort [No. 007]: From Here to Ear Fine Arts
Musical Performance Art By Birds at Peabody Essex Museum
By: - Feb 18th, 2014Most Performance Art is warmed over conceptual art from three or four decades ago. So when something is truly new and exciting, even intellectually and aesthetically provocative, it should be celebrated. Currently at the Peabody Essex Museum is a performance piece by 70 beautiful finches created by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot. It should be seen and heard.
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New York Sojourn II & III Theatre
Two Great Nights at the Theatre and Two Great Museums
By: - Feb 17th, 2014Visiting new York City means seeing great theatre. Mark Favermann and his companion Lisa saw Pinter's No Man's Land with Sirs Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart and the musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder with the versatile Jefferson Mays. These shows are two of the 2013-14 Broadway season highlights in the Big Apple. And NYC also means visiting great museums. Two that were visited were MoMA and the Morgan Library.
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Witness Uganda Compelling Entertainment Theatre
A Musical Journey of Personal Discovery
By: - Feb 13th, 2014When Griffin, a young New York City actor, volunteers for a project in Uganda, he finds himself on a journey that will change his life forever. Inspired by a true story, this rousing new musical is energetically staged by Tony Award-winning director and A.R.T. Artistic Director Diane Paulus. The show exposes the challenges confronted by idealistic American aid workers and the complex realities of trying to change the world while changing themselves more. A great entertainment perhaps destined for a long run on Broadway.
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The Monuments Men Film
WWII Saga That Saved Western Cultural Icons
By: - Feb 07th, 2014The Monuments Men is a American-German war film based on the book The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel. The film follows the story of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program, an Allied group, tasked with saving pieces of art and other culturally important items before their destruction by Hitler during World War II. It focuses on a squad comprised of seven museum directors, curators, and art historians who with limited resources enter Germany with the Allied forces during the closing stages of World War II to rescue artworks plundered by the Nazis. It is a terrific story.
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Sochi 2014 Olympics Look of the Games Design
A Too Busy Patchwork Quilt of Ethnic Imagery
By: - Feb 07th, 2014The venues at Sochi look great, but like a too sweet holiday dessert, the Sochi Winter Olympics "Look" seems to try too hard to please everyone by the way it visually frames the 2014 Winter Games. Similar to Vancouver's 2010 everything including the kitchen sink approach to branding and graphic identity, Sochi's "look" works better. Too visually and perhaps ethnically layered, the " patchwork quilt" looks best on athletes' bibs and venue interiors. Perhaps, it has something to do with the Russian Character?
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New York Sojourn Architecture
Trip to NYC Yields Architecture, Art and Theatrical Joy
By: - Jan 31st, 2014Invited to an architectural tour of Ground Zero, Mark Favermann and his companion Lisa went on a trip that was framed around ML King Birthday weekend to include architecture, art, theatre, good food and football playoff games. This underscores the notion that New York City is so nice it was named twice.
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The Color Purple a Smash at SpeakEasy Theatre
A Riveting Poignant Musical of Hope and Deserved Joy
By: - Jan 12th, 2014Based on the book and movie, The Color Purple is a theatrical treat. The musical is about the trials and tribulations of Celie. Her abuse, hardship and cruelty begin when her abusive stepfather marries her off at the age of 14 to a callous man who separated her from her only true friend in the world, her sister Nettie. But with every reason to despair, she somehow clings to hope and waits for joy. The music and performances are outstanding.
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