e Young Actors Guild pulls natural talent from Memphis’ youth.
to
Flyway
PHOTO: MICHAEL DONAHUE Our Diamond Don’t listen to the critics of AutoZone Park.
PHOTO: WES HALE
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PHOTO: CRAIG THOMPSON
THE fly-by
MEM ernet
Memphis on the internet.
ARDENT
“ e closure is temporary,”
Big Star
drummer Jody Stephens said on Facebook last week. “We were closed for a time for renovations. Betty Fry continued to pay me even though there wasn’t much for me to do. I retired myself from Ardent about two years ago. I was 71 and had had a very rewarding 37 years at the studio.”
{ WEEK THAT WAS By Flyer
staff
Questions, Answers + Attitude
Edited by Toby Sells
Flyway, “Pickleball,” & Memphis
Made
A new vantage point on the river, a clash about AutoZone Park, and Soul & Spirits keeps a beer brand alive.
MEMPHIS FLYWAY
e Memphis Flyway opened at Tom Lee Park last week.
“At some point in the near future I’ll return to Ardent with my drum kit and continue practicing there. All things must pass. I’m feeling pretty good about life.”
DATING
Memphis Redditors talked about best/worst dates here and u/ OutdoorAdequate o ered this: “Met a guy at an AA meeting. He took me out and we fucked at Overton Park at like 1 a.m., and it was an OK time, except that I eventually made a trip to the Health Department for chlamydia (shocker).
“Lmao I met him on like my second day in town and damned if it didn’t make me love this city just a little bit. I have no clue what he’s up to these days but I hope he’s still alive and sober.”
WHO TO FOLLOW
Bogey Studios covers Memphis events (like the Memphis Flyway opening last week), does vintage clothing markets, tries new Memphis restaurants, vlogs walks in Overton Park, and more. Follow along for his positive and peaceful view of our great city.
e $10.4 million Flyway is a 220-footlong, ADA-accessible elevated pathway that winds through tree canopies, over wetlands, and looks out over the Mississippi River. It is named for the Mississippi Flyway, a major North American migratory route for birds.
“I have a feeling we’re going to see thousands of photos taken from this spot in the years ahead: family pictures, proposals, visitors showing o Memphis to their friends, moments people will remember,” Memphis Mayor Paul Young said in a statement. “ at is what great public spaces do. ey create experiences that bring people together and help us see our city in a new way.”
“I have a feeling we’re going to see thousands of photos taken from this spot in the years ahead,” said Memphis Mayor Paul Young.
meeting but did not name Carlisle directly.
e Flyway activates the south end of the park. It is part of the overall $61 million renovation project there.
REDBIRDS AND “PICKLEBALL”
AutoZone Park leaders asked Memphis City Council members for an infusion of $5 million to bring the park up to certain standards. Council member Chase Carlisle argued that a Minor League Baseball team at the park may
“People are playing pickleball,” not going to baseball games.
not be the best use of the property.
He said times were changing. He called baseball stadiums a “dying model.” Instead, he said, “people are playing pickleball.” In a news statement a erward, Carlisle said “the coverage of this discussion didn’t re ect the full conversation, and I think the public deserves the complete picture.”
e Redbirds management said on X later that they were “disappointed by some comments” during the council
e new money, management said, is not for luxury updates but for safety projects and those expected by Major League Baseball to maintain a city-owned facility. Many of these, they said, have already been done simply because they could not wait. Also, further investment is needed, the team said, to modernize the facility.
e Redbirds said AutoZone Park is “one of Downtown’s most signi cant public assets.”
“As Memphis strives to compete with top-tier peer cities, it must be willing to invest in and maintain the institutions, venues, and infrastructure that contribute to a vibrant urban core,” the team said on X.
Carlisle said he hopes the Memphis Redbirds remain Downtown, “alongside other uses that bring people to the park year-round.”
MEMPHIS MADE/SOUL & SPIRITS
Soul & Spirits Brewery acquired the Memphis Made Brewing Co. trademark last week and promised to keep the now-closed brewery’s beers in stores and on tap.
Soul & Spirits bought rights to the Memphis Made brand name “with the intention of continuing the legacy of the Memphis Made brand here in their home city.”
Visit the News Blog at memphis yer.com for fuller versions of these stories and more local news.
POSTED TO INSTAGRAM BY JODY STEPHENS
POSTED TO INSTAGRAM BY BOGEY STUDIOS
PHOTO: MEMPHIS RIVER PARKS PARTNERSHIP
{CITY REPORTER
By Allie Maury and Toby Sells
The Week in xAI
Multibillion-dollar deals, the graywater facility, and a lawsuit over noise.
Google’s $30 billion deal SpaceX will rent compute capacity in Memphis to Google for $920 million per month, according to a document led with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
e deal was announced Friday. In it, Google will rent about 110,000 “NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components,” at SpaceX facilities in Memphis and Southaven. e agreement runs from October 2026 to June 2029. If ful lled fully and no changes are made to prices, the deal is worth $30.3 billion.
Terms allow Google to exit the deal if certain conditions are not met.
rough it all, Google will retain ownership of its products, content, and AI models.
Legal O cer Tannera George Gibson spoke “to the extent that I can” about the project. e land deal was closed in mid-May, she said. e company has one year to begin substantial construction. If they don’t, the city can take the land back, she said.
Will they build it or won’t they?
“ e feelings are pretty positive, pretty strong based on recent conversations,” Gibson said.
Noise lawsuit
Last week, Southaven residents led a complaint for damages and a demand for a jury trial against xAI, SpaceX, and MZX Tech for alleged excessive noise generated by the Southaven power plant, which powers xAI’s Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 data centers.
e data centers are powered by gas- red turbines that, according to the lawsuit, operate continuously despite being designed to operate only during power outages or limited testing.
Google is now the second multibillion-dollar tech rm to house its arti cial intelligence at one of the two SpaceX Colossus data centers in Memphis. Anthropic rented compute power here last month to drive its Claude model. e rm will pay SpaceX about $1.2 billion per month in a three-year deal worth just under $45 billion.
Graywater facility
Despite “pretty positive” signals from SpaceX, city leaders do not know if a promised wastewater treatment facility will be built.
Elon Musk’s company promised to build a facility to take city wastewater to cool its mighty compute power at Colossus in South Memphis. e company later said the facility was no longer a priority.
Late last month, Protect Our Aquifer reported that the company is draining 812,502 gallons a day from the pristine Memphis Sand Aquifer — the source of the Memphis area’s drinking water — to cool its center.
Earlier this month, a SpaceX subsidiary bought 13 acres of land from the city near its facility for $820,000.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young said at the time that the move made him more hopeful about the company’s intent to build a graywater facility for its operations — though notably, the company said nothing publicly.
Asked by Memphis City Council members last week, the city’s Chief
The humming and squealing noises are “pervasive and inescapable.”
e sound is “a combination of high-pitched squealing, continuous engine roaring, low-frequency rumbling, and tonal humming or whining.” is noise is “pervasive and inescapable,” diminishes quality of life and property value, and causes a loss of sleep, headaches, and persistent ringing in the ears. It also violates Southaven’s noise ordinance, the suit says.
In addition to this, the lawsuit says MZX made a $1.4-million donation to the Southaven Police Department, which residents routinely call when making noise complaints.
PHOTO: SPACEX Colossus 1 in Memphis
AT LARGE By Bruce VanWyngarden
The White Trash House
We are amusing ourselves to death.
On February 29, 2016, former CBS CEO Les Moonves was discussing then-candidate Donald Trump’s nascent presidential bid in front of a group of wealthy potential media investors. He admitted openly that Trump’s run for the presidency “may not be good for America, but it’s good for CBS.”
Moonves went on: “Donald Trump is damn good for business; the money’s rolling in. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.”
Needless to say, Donald did keep going. And in the intervening 10 years, Trump has made billions of dollars for the news and entertainment industry (and for himself and his family).
Putting Trump on the air every day has meant “damn good business” for the networks — large and small, network and cable — as well as for podcasts, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, TikTok, and for almost every other iteration of media you can name. Trump-related content is the most pro table reality show in history. It’s on every day, and producing it costs these organizations very little — except their news credibility — but we appear to be way past worrying about that at this point.
Heck, CBS itself is now owned by right-wing billionaires who are laughing all the way to the banks (that they also own) as they destroy 60 Minutes. Not to mention such “competitors” as Fox News, e Washington Post, and soon CNN, to name but a few.
by a new credo: “Who can get the most eyeballs?”
is was all predicted 30 years ago in a book by Neil Postman called Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Postman warned about the trend of TV news being packaged as entertainment, with theme music, ashy graphics, anchors with movie-star looks, and breathless, dramatic reporting designed to draw viewers more interested in drama than truth. Amusement is king. News is secondary. Truth is irrelevant.
In 1961, at the end of his second term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower o ered a warning to the American people: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted in uence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. e potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
Eisenhower’s words were prescient.
e in uence of this country’s unholy alliance between industrial weapons builders and the U.S. military has helped drag the U.S. into numerous armed con icts in the years since his speech. But the new and perhaps even more dangerous force that’s shaping the American “councils of government” is the “entertainment-industrial” complex. It’s wiping out all the oncesacred standards of news and journalism: reporting the facts with impartiality and fairness, digging for the truth no matter where it lies, and fearlessly speaking that truth to power, regardless of who’s in ofce. ose standards have been replaced
Last Sunday night, we may have witnessed the ultimate playing out of Postman’s prediction that we will “amuse ourselves to death,” when Trump, the U.S. military, and the for-pro t Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) partnered to stage cage matches on what was once the White House lawn. e spectators — hand-picked photogenic U.S. service members, administration o cials, and Trump allies — cheered the ghters on as they pummeled and bloodied each other inside an octagon festooned with ads for cryptocurrency. One ghter climbed on the ropes a er winning his match and screamed “Michelle Obama is a man!” to the cheers of the crowd. Good times.
Trump himself had a front-row seat, along with Meta/Facebook mogul Mark Zuckerberg, new CNN owner David Ellison, and other assorted billionaires. In between rounds, the UFC’s “Octagon Girls” strutted around in revealing starspangled bathing suits.
It was crass, tasteless, sexist, racist, and pointless. It was an empty, noisy spectacle with no redeeming human value. It was sound and fury, signifying nothing — an ode to humanity’s lowest aspirations, played out on the grounds of what was once the People’s House but what is now a scraped and degraded piece of real estate that looks like the a ermath of a meth-fueled home explosion. e White House has become the White Trash House. I don’t know about you, but I’m not amused.
PHOTO: HASAN MAJED | UNSPLASH
Money Checkup
It won’t take long to make sure your funds are on track.
We get it. Suggesting you do a midyear money checkup is like reminding you it’s time to visit the dentist. But completing a midyear checkup is less about finding cracks in your financial plan and more about being in control of your money. It’s also the most effective way to ensure your budgeting and savings plans stay on track.
What if we told you that you could perform a midyear financial checkup in about an hour? Let’s get started.
IN 30 MINUTES …
Review your monthly budgets for the past six months.
First, I want to reassure you, it’s never too late to start monthly budgeting if you haven’t been doing one. Try the 50/30/20 rule, or allocating 50 percent of your after-tax income to needs, 30 percent to wants and 20 percent to savings and debts.
If you have been doing a monthly budget, keep up the great work! Review your last six months of spending to ensure you’re staying in line financially within each category of needs/wants/ savings and debts.
At the same time, look for areas that are under budget or over budget. Consider reallocating under-budget monies to areas where you’re overspending. Smarter yet, put that excess money toward an emergency or retirement fund.
However you allocate the overage, make sure every single dollar is accounted for and put to good use. Remember, you control your money. It doesn’t control you.
IN 15 MINUTES …
Check your credit.
You’ve worked hard to build your credit. Keep it from falling by checking your credit score and credit report at least once a year. Your credit score is the three-digit number that represents your overall credit risk. The lowest score you can receive is 300; the highest, 850. Anything under 580 is rated as poor, making it harder to qualify for credit cards and loans. A credit report, on the other hand, lays out your credit history, including the credit accounts you’ve had and your payment history. Checking your credit at least annually ensures you find and correct any issues that may lower your score, hopefully early on before they become a bigger problem.
Tip: Check your credit at least three
to six months before applying for a “bigticket item,” like a mortgage or car loan.
IN 5 MINUTES …
Check your emergency fund.
This is what our grandparents often referred to as a rainy-day fund. Whatever you call it, this savings tool catches you when life throws unexpected financial curveballs your way, like having to replace an old air conditioner or covering expenses during an unplanned job loss. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau offers a helpful guide to build an emergency fund and answers questions like how much you should have in it and when you should use it.
A general guideline: Build three to six months of essential living expenses into your emergency fund. At the end of the day, however, the amount you need depends on your individual financial situation. Think about the unexpected expenses you’ve incurred throughout the past 12 months and use that total to determine how much you should set aside for future expenses.
IN 5 MINUTES …
Organize your tax receipts and documents.
Make sure any receipts for potential deductions are organized in a folder, either in physical or digital form.
Tips: Designate one easy-to-access location for all your tax receipts and documents. Organize receipts into categories like “healthcare expenses” and “office expenses”; use color-coded folders to differentiate categories.
IN 5 MINUTES …
Determine if you need to start saving for the holidays or vacation.
Saving early is the best way to prevent high-interest credit card debt or needing to pull funds from your emergency fund. This dedicated fund for holiday gifts, travel, and other expenses also allows you to shop and plan more intentionally and enjoy it without worrying about overspending.
Tip: Get a head start on holiday spending by opening a high-yield savings account and setting up a monthly automatic contribution from now through December.
If you’d like to begin performing a midyear money checkup but aren’t sure how to get started, a qualified financial advisor can help.
Lindsey D. Rhea, CFP, is owner and wealth strategist at Alia Wealth Partners, connect@aliawealth.com.
Sweet Summer Loan
Home Sweet Home
TTEEN LIVES MATTER
The Young Actors Guild pulls natural talent from Memphis’ youth.
COVER STORY
By Kailynn Johnson
een lives matter. at’s the phrase on the Young Actors Guild (YAG)’s summer academy Tshirts. e electric blue tees with yellow lettering have become a standard part of the uniform for YAG members and supporters. It’s a timely phrase, given the ongoing conversations about Memphis’ youth, in which would-be critics on social media are quick to write young people o as troubled kids who lack ambition — victims of negative headlines and preconceived notions. at’s not how Chrysti Chandler sees them. e Memphis native and YAG founder sees them as the next generation of doctors, lawyers, and manifested dreams. rough her multicultural performing arts organization, she’s intentional about treating them as humans and meeting them where they are, and it’s with that goal in mind that Chandler and her team teach them dance, music, the performing arts, and other skills. Like any great arts educator, she ensures her performers are focused and meticulous when it comes to the foundations of their cra . at said, she’s perfectly ne with her dancers choreographing a majorette-style routine to the latest Megan ee Stallion hit, only minutes a er a ballet class taught by an Alvin Ailey alum. Chandler, a theater arts teacher and professional dancer and choreographer,
founded the nonpro t in 1991 a er noticing how many children weren’t participating in a er-school activities, o en due to the expense. Feeling a responsibility to mentor them, she wanted to build an organization o ering young people a ordable performing arts experiences. And so YAG was born, aiming to “engage and inspire youth ages 3 to 17 in the arts.”
Accessibility is at the heart of YAG’s guiding vision, especially when it comes to location. Since founding the guild, Chandler was determined to procure a site where she could bring arts back into the community, and in 2019 the guild broke ground on the site of Fire Station 22, located at 2788 Lamar Avenue, rechristened as e Harriet Performing Arts Center (HPAC). Chandler and her team were able to purchase the space from the city for only a dollar.
Today, a er its grand re-opening in 2023, HPAC is hosting the guild’s 35th summer academy, which Chandler admits is a bit surreal. e rst iteration of the summer academy took place in her backyard in South Memphis, where she had audiences from Orange Mound and Glenview witness shows orchestrated to tunes by e Jackson 5, Diana Ross, and e Temptations. “We would do dancing and singing in the backyard, and here it is today — we’re doing the same thing,” Chandler says. “ at’s what I love to do.”
A lot has changed since Chandler opened her home to aspiring creatives,
and YAG’s reach has extended far beyond her backyard. At this season’s camp, for example, Chandler smiles at student Jaylen Hunter as he collaborates and dances with his peers, fresh o the success of the Michael Jackson biopic, Michael, where he played young Marlon Jackson. e 16-year-old actor displays a humility and maturity typically exhibited by only the most experienced performers. But he radiates youthfulness as he chats about a Drake song and voting for Love Island contestants. A seemingly ordinary Memphis kid who’s made big moves — it’s mesmerizing.
And it’s illuminating to see YAG’s classes in action. e young performers are fully aware that these early experiences will play a role in bringing their future dreams to life. And such selfawareness also informs their knowledge that, as young people growing up in Memphis, negative portrayals of them in headlines and social media can set invisible boundaries.
It may be easy for those outside the culture to judge Black youth based on generalizations and stereotypes. But a key idea at the center of YAG’s mission is that students with a hunger for success, eager to use their talents, with instructors passionate about training them, can outpace the perceptions.
And so we present to you the stories of four empowered Memphis teens leaving a mark on their hometown and the wider world around them.
BLACK BOY JOY
Dominick Barconia’s “big thing” is that he’s a violinist. e recent White Station High School graduate beams as he modestly lists o the accomplishments he’s garnered: being varsity captain of his baseball team, playing in the Memphis Youth Symphony Program, and interning with the PRIZM Ensemble. He says he grew up immersed in music, thanks to his grandfather, who was always listening to it. But while he knew he wanted music to be woven into his life, he didn’t know it could turn into a career. As he matured as a musician and a young adult, his perspective evolved, and he saw there were ways to incorporate his talent and love into a job. But he credits Chandler’s mentorship and his involvement in YAG with giving him the con dence to get there.
When Barconia rst came to YAG as a 12-year-old, he was the only instrumentalist, but this didn’t present con ict for him, as he says the organization over owed with acceptance.
“I always felt included, no matter what I was doing,” he says. “We really are just a big family. I have a brotherhood of boys here, and a sisterhood of girls here. It’s amazing to be able to call
PHOTO: CRAIG THOMPSON Young Actors Guild performers dance in a studio showcase, from musical theater to ballet and beyond.
these people family.”
YAG has also impacted the way Barconia sees himself outside of music. “I always thought I could just play violin and that’s it,” Barconia explains. “But a er coming to YAG, I started doing public speaking and writing, and that helps a lot. Because when you’re performing, you’re not just playing. A lot of the time you have to interact with your audience.”
As we speak, he sits in front of a black-and-white portrait of himself playing the violin, hanging on the walls of HPAC. e image is part of a project called “Black Boy Joy,” where Barconia and other members of YAG’s rst all-boy senior class were photographed individually. Barconia says it’s an honor to be one of the local, familiar faces of a movement that’s been integral to the way Black men experience happiness and life. “It shows that there are Black boys that are out here doing the right thing — that are getting out the right way,” Barconia says. “We’re doing the things in society that are deemed respectable. It feels good to be able to be a part of that.” is fall, Barconia is headed to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to study violin performance, which he says is key to reaching the next level. Con dent in the foundation that his upbringing and YAG have laid for him, he’s eager to unlock a new world of studying and training.
THE NEXT SKYWALKER
King Henry (that’s his name, not his title — so far) wants to play Spiderman. It’s his instant response when asked about his dream role. But he wouldn’t be upset with being cast in the Star Wars franchise. “I really like Star Wars,” Henry says. “If I could see myself holding a lightsaber, being with Jedi, or shooting the stormtroopers, I might just cry.” Henry knows that to land one of these roles he’ll have to be both disciplined and brave. Luckily, he’s had experience exing these muscles. Now 14, he was only 12 when cast as Sam Bell, Elvis Presley’s childhood best friend, in Elvis Evolution, an
“immersive experience” produced by Layered Reality that opened in London last May, combining multimedia and live performers in a theatrical journey through Presley’s life story. Henry admits he never saw himself performing onstage in London at his age. “I never thought I’d be able to do this until I was way out of college,” Henry says. “I really wanted to be an actor, but I didn’t know I was going to be chosen for [that] part. at’s not something I had in mind.”
Henry joins a long line of YAG students who have showcased their chops worldwide, from YAG itself performing for former President Bill Clinton to YAG alumni appearing at the Apollo eater and on American Idol. e guild’s pedigree helped make Henry’s
dreams more attainable, he says. And being surrounded by other Black artists and entertainers while attending workshops helped him grow.
“Not only do we do performing arts here, we also show the real world who we are as young African Americans,” Henry says. “[Being at YAG] made me understand my history, and it made me proud to be who I am. at’s one of the things YAG does really well, and that’s why I love it.”
Indeed, Black history is an integral part of YAG’s curriculum. While Chandler’s stage has changed since her backyard beginnings, she continues to pay homage to Black artists as a way to put her Black performers in touch with their roots. “ ey paved the way for us,” Chandler says. “ ey paved the
way for the Young Dolphs and GloRillas. e roots never die.”
Henry, for his part, is fully aware of what it means to be a young Black man from Memphis. While the generations of talent from the city can be overshadowed by negative national headlines, he hopes he and his fellow performers can contribute to a shi in this perception. And as he re ects on landing a professional role, he salutes his parents, Chandler, and YAG executive director Sabrina Norwood as key players in pulling out his potential. “[At YAG], they teach everybody how to be respectable young people and to really be ourselves,” Henry says. “We gotta get out of our comfort zone. I didn’t know what I could do when I rst got here.”
He views his growth as an actor holistically. As he has strengthened his dramatic skills, he’s also experienced changes in his attitude and his perspective on being a performer. “When I rst got here, I was arrogant,” he says candidly. “I didn’t like to be told what to do [and] I couldn’t take constructive criticism. Once [I’d been here] for a year or two, I was a way better kid.”
He promises to wield these traits as his career continues to ourish.
AT THE BALLET
Morgan Cunningham’s rst introduction to YAG solidi ed her desire to be a dancer. Its company dancers were the best of the best, she recalls. “I would see them en pointe, doing hip-hop and all the fun dances, and I was like, ‘I want to be a company dancer,’” Cunningham says. And seeing Black dancers lined up with slicked-back and middle-part buns was eye-opening for the now-19-yearold Howard University student. When dancing on her high school’s predominantly white dance team, opportunities to see and train with performers who looked like her were rare. But while the expectations set forth by the majoritywhite culture there were daunting, YAG
continued on page 12
PHOTOS: (ABOVE) WILLIAM JOHNSON; (BELOW) CRAIG THOMPSON
(above) Dominick Barconia; King Henry and Trey Hansbrough; Jaylen Hunter; Morgan Cunningham; (below) Chrysti Chandler at work; (bottom) Performers in YAG’s production of e Wiz
Saturdays became something to look forward to.
Chandler says it’s important that her dancers know they could be ballerinas one day. She has always championed inclusivity, and an evolving idea of what a ballerina looks like — regardless of hair, body shape, size, or skin color. It’s one of the reasons Chandler incorporated ballet into her curriculum. She noticed an inequity when several aspiring dancers were denied enrollment in other ballet companies because they didn’t fit the mold of a “traditional ballerina.”
“Ballet is not just for the Caucasian girl,” Chandler says. “Ballet is an art, so it’s not based on size. We let the girls be who they are, [because] we can’t help the way we’re made up.”
Now, as a returning alum and camp counselor, Cunningham is honored to have the role she has, influencing young girls in the same way she was influenced — by contributing to broader representations of dancers. Meanwhile, as Cunningham recounts these memories, seemingly on cue, a camper yells out to her: “Beyoncé!” Though it could be a reference to her voluminous blonde hair, Cunningham says it’s a call back to when she paid homage to the singer’s iconic Super Bowl halftime performance with a dance of her own.
“They always mention it,” Cunningham says. “It’s really sweet, honestly, to have people look up to you in that way. I always try to perform to the best of my ability, because they’re always watching. I know that’s a goal for them, like it was for me.”
WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
Trey Hansbrough’s favorite band of all time is Queen. His entry point into the band’s discography was hearing “Killer Queen” in a Netflix movie. He was instantly hooked, and shocked to later learn that the same band was behind hits like “Another One Bites the Dust” and “We Are the Champions,” which he’d heard growing up.
The latter song — Freddie Mercury’s ode to overcoming adversity, ending with victorious applause — matches Hansbrough’s retrospective view of his own life. Now an incoming Mississippi State University freshman, Hansbrough’s earliest YAG memories are of playing his Nintendo 3DS backstage, age 10, during his older sister’s dance performances. He was later pulled into the fold when his mother approached Chandler for extra help with an Easter speech, and once he’d joined YAG himself, his mother noticed an immediate change in him. As he readies for college, he attributes his confidence and independence to Chandler and the arts organization.
He’s come a long way from being that shy little boy in his big sister’s footsteps. While he’s learned tangible skills like public speaking, the arts also exposed a vulnerability in him — one that he has been able to express through spoken word performances. “It really has helped me become more open, or else I’d still be attached at my sister’s hip right now,” Hansbrough says. “That’s really what’s made me stay here all these years.”
Hansbrough, like Barconia, was a part of the first all-boy senior class at YAG. That being one of his own contributions to history, Hansbrough hopes it helps inspire future generations of Black boys at the guild. He’s leaving his “Black Boy Joy” portrait hanging in the building as a reminder that it can be done — and that he has done it. Success is within reach.
“At their age I had no idea, but they have all the time in the world to figure it out,” Hansbrough says. “If I can give them the wisdom and the teaching, then that means everything to me — instilling it in the next generation. My time’s still now, but their time is coming, and they need to be well-prepared for that. I’m here to help with that.”
Hansbrough’s current role as a camp counselor is holistic. He knows that he’s there to protect them, but realizes that protection includes both their physical and mental health. For him, “Teen Lives Matter” isn’t just a phrase, it’s a state-
ment meant to be taken literally. “When I’m wearing this shirt, you know this is a safe space,” Hansbrough says. “My job is to interact with the children but also protect them.” And, in his view, the work he’s doing now is pivotal to changing not only how the world sees teens in Memphis, but how those teens see themselves.
Chandler emphasizes that YAG’s mission is collaborative with the students themselves, and even while she encourages her performers to challenge the narratives surrounding their generation, she’s firmly committed to not erasing their unique identities. She isn’t looking to shape her performers into whatever the mainstream deems acceptable; rather she champions each teen’s story through theatricality, performing arts, and celebrations of Black culture.
It’s in that combination of social awareness and individual identity that Chandler places her hopes for the future. While she knows there’s no shortage of talented children and teenagers in the city, she asks the community to be more open to giving them opportunities while also meeting them where they are. “[I hope Memphis] continues to let African American children enter doors and give them a chance, homing in on their natural talents,” Chandler says. “I hope whoever takes my place, whoever walks in my shoes, will allow them to come in and unlock their creativity.”
steppin’ out
We Recommend: Culture, News + Reviews
Surviving the Past
By Kimberly Ham
As America approaches its 250th birthday, the Morton Museum of Collierville History is inviting families to step back in time and discover what daily life was really like for early settlers. During Summer Family Drop-In Day: Survive Early Collierville, children and their families can immerse themselves in local history through interactive activities inspired by life on the Tennessee frontier.
is free event transforms history into a hands-on adventure. Participants will receive game character pro les complete with strengths and weaknesses, then navigate a series of challenges inspired by the realities of early American life.
“We wanted to create something people could experience rather than simply hear about in a talk,” says museum director Neecole Gregory. “People don’t want to be talked at. ey want to do something, engage with it, and make their own connections.”
Inspired in part by the classic Oregon Trail video game, the program allows children to imagine themselves as pioneers, apprentices, medical workers, and other frontier-era gures. Along the way, they’ll visit themed stations, gather supplies, learn about historic occupations, and discover how settlers relied on herbal remedies and ingenuity to navigate everyday challenges.
“We’re presenting history through narrative and story,” says visitor engagement and education coordinator Weslea Turner. “When children can imagine themselves in another person’s shoes, they develop an emotional connection to the past, and that’s where the learning really happens.”
e event is part of the museum’s ongoing Summer Family Drop-In Days series, which emphasizes exible, self-guided experiences. Families can arrive anytime during the two-hour window, participate at their own pace, and leave whenever they’re ready — a format Gregory says has proven especially welcoming for parents and children of all ages.
Beyond the games and costumes, organizers hope participants gain a deeper appreciation for Collierville’s rich history and the role local stories play in shaping community identity.
“Learn about local history and see if you could survive early America,” Gregory says. “Step into someone else’s shoes and experience a di erent time in history.”
Summer Family Drop-In Day: Survive Early Collierville takes place Tuesday, June 23rd, at the Morton Museum of Collierville History. Admission is free and no registration is required.
SURVIVE EARLY COLLIERVILLE, MORTON MUSEUM OF COLLIERVILLE HISTORY, 196 N. MAIN STREET, TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 10:30 A.M.-12:30 P.M.
VARIOUS DAYS & TIMES June 18th - 24th
David Sedaris: e Land and Its People
Novel, Monday, June 22, 6 p.m.
Bestselling humorist and essayist David Sedaris celebrates the release of his newest essay collection. Known for his sharp wit and keen observations of everyday life, Sedaris explores friendship, family, travel, aging, and the absurdities of the human experience in a collection that critics are calling some of his nest work. e event includes a talk and book signing, with line tickets available through the purchase of the book.
Meet the Artist
Dixon Gallery and Gardens, ursday, June 18, 5:30-7 p.m.
Celebrate the vibrant work of Memphis artist Debbie Likley Pacheco and meet the artist behind “Living in Layers,” now on view at the Dix-
on. Pacheco studied design abefore building a career in advertising. She now focuses on painting full time, developing a distinctive mixed-media practice that blends digital and traditional techniques. e resulting works combine rich layers of imagery, balancing naturalistic elements with abstraction to create visually compelling compositions.
From Surviving to riving: A Summer Garden To-Do List Urban Earth Gardens, Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m. Gardeners of all experience levels are invited to this free monthly seminar. Urban Earth owner Brett Norman will o er practical advice on helping Mid-South gardens thrive through the challenges of summer, including drought stress, pests, weeds, humidity, and intense heat. e discussion will cover wa-
tering, pruning, and other essential maintenance tips, with plenty of time for questions.
Summer Solstice Cacao Celebration
e Broom Closet, Monday, June 22, 6:30 p.m.
Celebrate the Summer Solstice with an evening of movement, meditation, and sound. is gathering, for anyone 16 or older, begins with ceremonial serving of cacao to open the heart and energize the body, before owing into Kundaliniinspired practices, ecstatic dance, guided meditation, and a vibrant sound experience featuring yoga house music. e event welcomes participants of all experience levels to honor the longest day of the year through rhythm, breath, and community. Comfortable clothing is encouraged.
PHOTO: NEECOLE GREGORY Summer Drop-In Day
MUSIC By Alex Greene
Nubia Yasin Steps Up to Power
e poet-singer-songwriter’s latest singles hint at her new album with UNAPOLOGETIC.
If one speaks to the typical Memphis music fan, they’ll likely mention hip-hop as the specialty of the music/production/ media/fashion collective known as UNAPOLOGETIC. But while the group founded by IMAKEMADBEATS (aka MAD) over a decade ago has deep roots in hip-hop, there’s a lot more going on there, stylistically speaking. at becomes clearer with every new release by Aaron James, for instance, whose nely wrought acoustic folk-with-beats is practically a modern update of the Laurel Canyon sound of half a century ago. And then there’s the dusky-voiced Nubia Yasin.
“Nina and Amy are very much the roots of the trees that I grow from as a songwriter,” she says, referring to Nina Simone and Amy Winehouse. “Beyond that, when it comes to more contemporary artists, I’m really, really into Mitski, also Bright Eyes, and I love Geese right now.” Such references alone signal just how eclectic the music can be on any given day at UNAPOLOGETIC. Because when Yasin creates songs in uenced by such artists, she doesn’t do it in a vacuum. Her favored in uences and original compositions resonate with many in the collective, and the process of making songs into tracks draws on several of her colleagues’ talents.
“I do not play an instrument yet — that’s still a goal of mine,” says Yasin. “But as of right now, I produce rudimentary versions of the songs, like with GarageBand on my phone and my computer. en I write the lyrics on that base, and record those, and then share them with MAD. Of those, we pick what we want to push forward, and then we get everybody in the studio and replay things, re-imagine parts. So it is very, very collaborative.”
Her collaborators re ect the high level of musicianship associated with Outerspace, the home base and studio for UNAPOLOGETIC. And in creating her tracks, Yasin has bene tted from the input and playing of Adam Billings (electric guitar), Aaron James (acoustic and electric guitar), Eillo (guitar, bass, drums, background vocals), Uni’Q (background vocals, vocal producer), and ADUBB (trumpet), not to mention MAD’s work as co-producer in tandem with Yasin herself. “I’m lucky that I’m surrounded by incredible musicians,” she says.
Yet even with this stellar team bringing her songs to life, it’s not always a sure thing that the tracks will strike
“The album is dissecting the abuse of power, specifically when it comes to gender power dynamics.”
Yasin as appropriate. ough she’s been with the collective since 2019, her debut album, Slightly Sacred, to be released later this year, has really only taken shape since 2024, with the title track dropping as a single last year and another, “He’s Got the Whole Wide World,” appearing just last month. at’s partly because Yasin, who had previously invested her time largely in written and spoken-word poetry, was willing to wait until she found a musical identity that seemed to t.
“We’d cycle through genres,” she says of working with MAD, “because I’m very postmodernist in my approach. Not
that much is sacred beyond the story and the words, so it really could have been anything. It was just about what feels true, and we had to try a bunch of songs and approaches to nd what felt true. And MAD really let me explore. He never steered me in a speci c direction, and never told me, ‘Nah, that don’t work.’”
With that sense of exploration, Yasin was able to cra the perfect melding of music, melody, and lyrics. “I will collect words, like segments of songs or lines, and I’ll put them in my notes app or in my journal, and then when I’m feeling like a song wants to come out, I will
start working on the music. I’ll let the music tell me which song statement it’s feeling compatible with, and then I will start writing.”
Now, a er shaping the material for two years, a strikingly coherent album is poised to emerge. “ e album as a whole has unfurled into this story about power,” she says. “It’s dissecting the abuse of power, speci cally when it comes to gender power dynamics. I love my family, but as a girl child, I grew up in a very misogynistic household. So I’m learning a lot of things as I’m growing up, and from track one to track 10 is literally a full sentence about how I have transitioned in my understanding of power and what it should look like, what it can look like. I have felt restricted by it, but at other times I’ve felt like the wielder of it. And then ultimately it explores where I want to end up, which is kind of in surrender to it, or surrender to a greater power in general.”
As a press release accompanying her latest single states, the album is “her complete thesis on power. If the entire project is a thesis, then ‘He’s Got the Whole Wide World,’ with its deceptively warm instrumentation and sarcastic lyrical commentary on gendered power struggles, serves as a chapter on patriarchy and the institution of marriage. In the song’s opening lines, with a voice that seems to smirk, Yasin croons ‘I’ve been moving too long now, it’s time for a change/And I’ll be his perty birdy if he builds me a cage.’”
What’s harder to convey is the sheer upbeat joy of the music itself, which may well become one of this year’s great summer songs. As Yasin puts it, “It’s a commentary on a transactional relationship and the institution of marriage. Like the idea that women are encouraged, or not just encouraged, but expected to sacri ce certain freedoms in exchange for resources from a man, by way of becoming a wife. It’s just me grappling with that idea, while wrapping it in a really fun-sounding song.”
Expect more such paradoxes from the ever-venturesome Yasin, as the full ambitions of Slightly Sacred are fully revealed later this year. In the meantime, you can hear the artist herself unpack the themes woven therein in real time. “Every Sunday at 9 p.m. Central Time,” she says, “I’m doing the Slightly Sacred stream, where I’m talking through all the concepts of the songs. It’s 10 weeks for all 10 tracks, and I have six more weeks to go.”
Visit nubiayasin.com for details.
PHOTO: G DUFFIE Nubia Yasin
THURSDAY JUNE 18
CROSSTOWN ARTS FILM SERIES A LOVE LETTER TO HANDSOME JOHN directed by OTIS GIBBS | 2026 | N/R | 55 MINUTES
7:00 PM | CROSSTOWN THEATER | $10
THURSDAY JUNE 18
MARISA ANDERSON with CLOUDLAND CANYON
7:30 PM | THE GREEN ROOM | $20 -$25
SATURDAY JUNE 20
MISSISSIPPI BLUES NIGHT with WILLIE FARMER and RYAN LEE CROSBY
7:30 PM | THE GREEN ROOM | $20
SUNDAY JUNE 21
STRICTLY JAZZ presents THE MUSIC OF LOUIS HAYES feat HENRY CONERWAY III
6:00 PM | THE GREEN ROOM | $25
FRIDAY JUNE 26
SUMMER EXHIBITION OPENING RECEPTION
6-8:00 PM | GALLERIES | FREE
CROSSTOWN ARTS
1350 CONCOURSE AVE | CROSSTOWNARTS ORG
AFTER DARK: Live Music Schedule June 18 - 24
Ashton Riker & The Memphis Royals
ursday, June 18, 8 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
Baunie and Soul
Tuesday, June 23, 7 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
The B.B. King’s Blues Club Allstar Band
Friday, June 19, 8 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m. | Monday, June 22, 8 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
Blind Mississippi
Morris
ursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Buddy Albert Nemenz
Monday, June 22, 7 p.m.
SILKY O’SULLIVAN’S
Computermane
ursday, June 18, 9 p.m.
TIN ROOF
David Ingle
Sunday, June 21, 6 p.m.
SILKY O’SULLIVAN’S
Derek Sellers
Saturday, June 20, 3 p.m.
TIN ROOF
DJ Bori
Keepin’ the dance oor movin’.
Friday, June 19, 10:30 p.m.
TIN ROOF
Eric Hughes
ursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
Flic’s Pics Band
Saturday, June 20, 4 p.m.
B.B. KING’S BLUES CLUB
FreeWorld
Friday, June 19, 8 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
FreeWorld
Sunday, June 21, 7 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Keer
Friday, June 19, 7 p.m.
TIN ROOF
Red Thomas
Sunday, June 21, 3 p.m. | Monday, June 22, 7 p.m.
RUM BOOGIE CAFE
Rockin 88’s
Monday, June 22, 7 p.m.
BLUES CITY CAFE
Rodell McCord
Sunday, June 21, 7 p.m.
TIN ROOF
Sydney Reese
Friday, June 19, 10:30 p.m.
TIN ROOF
Avid Violin
Saturday, June 20, 9 a.m.
MEMPHIS FARMERS MARKET
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac Tribute) and DJ A.D.
With DJ A.D. ursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
THE PEABODY ROOFTOP
Off the Clock
Live music and chill vibes.
ursday, June 18, 4 p.m.
RENASANT CONVENTION CENTER
The Quartet Show A celebration of gospel music. ursday, June 18-Saturday, June 20.
CANNON CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
Shannon McNally
One of the most authentic voices in Amercana and outlaw country for three decades.
Saturday, June 20, 7 p.m.
SOUTH MAIN SOUNDS
Sunsets at Beale Street
Landing: Miz Stefani
ursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
BEALE STREET LANDING
Charvey Mac
Wednesday, June 24, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S EAST
The Chaulkies
Sunday, June 21, 3 p.m.
HUEY’S EAST
Debbie Jamison Band
Tuesday, June 23, 6 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Elmo & the Shades
Wednesday, June 24, 7 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
John Williams & the A440 Band
ursday, June 18, 8 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Laser Rock: Led
Zeppelin
Experience music like never before. Friday, June 19, 7 p.m.
PINK PALACE PLANETARIUM
Walrus
Celebrating the band’s 23rd year. Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Wendell Wells Sunday, June 21, 9 p.m.
NEIL’S MUSIC ROOM
Basketcase
Friday, June 19, 6 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Brezay
A Memphis-born recording artist known for her genreblending sound and dynamic stage presence. Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
OVERTON PARK SHELL
The Contradictions
With Steel Waves, Holiday Beach, and Bashford. Saturday, June 20, 6 p.m.
GROWLERS
Deborah Swiney Duo
ursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
THE COVE
Devil Train
ursday, June 18, 9 p.m.
B-SIDE
Holder
With azsham, Slip to Dust. ursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
THE HI-TONE CAFE
G Herbo’s Juneteenth Summer Classic
World-class hip-hop. Friday, June 19, 7 p.m.
MINGLEWOOD HALL
Hypnotic
Stephen Mirdo, Dirty. Saturday, June 20, 10 p.m.
GROWLERS
Ibex Clone
With Data Drums, CS Cleaners. Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m.
LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
Jad Tariq Band
Sunday, June 21, 3 p.m.
HUEY’S MIDTOWN
Jazz Jam with the Cove Quartet
Sunday, June 21, 6 p.m.
THE COVE
Landslide (Fleetwood Mac Tribute)
Sunday, June 21, 5 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
The Lone Bellow
A Brooklyn-based band known for their transcendent harmonies. ursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
OVERTON PARK SHELL
Los Psychosis
With Symptoms, Sweet Cream
Ladies, Subperceptual. Friday, June 19, 8 p.m.
THE HI-TONE CAFE
Magik Hours
With Middle Class Fashion and Eli’s Not Dead. Friday, June 19, 8 p.m.
LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
Marisa Anderson
A guitarist, composer, and improviser. With Cloudland Canyon. ursday, June 18, 7:30 p.m.
THE GREEN ROOM
Mind Mine
With Municipal Bats, Burnt Witch, Steel Waves. Wednesday, June 24, 8 p.m.
GROWLERS
Willie Farmer and Ryan Lee Crosby
One from Mississippi (Farmer), one from Rhode Island (Crosby), both love the blues. Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
Multi Ultra ursday, June 18, 8 p.m.
THE HI-TONE CAFE
Night of the Gemini
With DJ Larry, Dra Hotcoco, Dj Groovy, and Lady Shaun. Friday, June 19, 9 p.m.
BAR DKDC
Orion Financial Free Concert Series: Deanté Hitchcock is artist doesn’t just want to make good and timeless hiphop music. He wants to use it as a vehicle to capture the purest and most honest emotion that most rappers won’t: love. Friday, June 19, 7:30 p.m.
OVERTON PARK SHELL
Pants Tour Finale!
Featuring Agloe TN, e Ellie Badge, and Shamothy + Wicker. Saturday, June 20, 7 p.m.
BAR DKDC
Robert Allen Parker
A guitarist, songwriter, and recording artist from Memphis. ursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
MEMPHIS ZOO
Rock the Boat
Saturday, June 20, 5 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Side Street Steppers
Saturday, June 20, 6 p.m.
CENTRAL BBQ
Solstice Showdown
With Jordan Occasionally, Ozioma, E’Darius DeWayne, Davidd, and more. Sunday, June 21, 7 p.m.
GROWLERS
Strictly Jazz: The Music of Louis Hayes
Curated by Dennis Adams and featuring Henry Conerway III as he pays homage to living legend Louis Hayes. Sunday, June 21, 6 p.m.
THE GREEN ROOM
ers. One killer night. Expect serious energy, bluesy ri s, rock-and-roll attitude, and the kind of show that feels right at home in Hernando’s historic room. ursday, June 18, 8 p.m.
HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY
The Fighting Side is band blends the raw energy of rock-and-roll with the storytelling heart of country music, delivering songs built on friendship, hard miles, and real-life experiences. Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m.
HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY
Gladys Knight is seven-time Grammy winner has enjoyed #1 hits in pop, gospel, R&B, and adult contemporary, and has triumphed in lm, television, and live performance. Friday, June 19, 7:30 p.m. GRACELAND
Superstition: Darkwave
Dance Night
A Gothic dance party with DJ’s taking you on a journey through the realms of goth, darkwave, coldwave, post punk, and more. Saturday, June 20, 10:30 p.m.
THE HI-TONE CAFE
Thumpdaddy
Saturday, June 20, 9 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Tim Cappello
Tim Cappello has been a professional musician, a multi-instrumentalist specializing in saxophone and vocals, for over 50 years. Friday, June 19, 9 p.m.
THE HI-TONE CAFE
Tokyo Takeover: Anime x Rave
Enjoy anime and rave culture together for an experience built around sound with highenergy DJ sets. Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m.
1884 LOUNGE
Twin Soul
Friday, June 19, 9:30 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Vieux Farka Touré e talented son of Malian musician Ali Farka Touré. Tuesday, June 23, 8 p.m.
MINGLEWOOD HALL
Ethan Smith Trio
Wednesday, June 24, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S MILLINGTON
Ken Houston Duo
Sunday, June 21, 6 p.m.
HUEY’S MILLINGTON
Aidan Osias and Lina Beach
Live In Studio A Summer Series is series features talented singers and musicians who graduated from the world-renowned Stax Music Academy and are now attending college, building careers as professional musicians, and performing on stages across the country and around the world. Tuesday, June 23, 2 p.m.
STAX MUSEUM OF AMERICAN SOUL MUSIC
Silverada
A high-energy Texas band blending classic honky-tonk and Americana with modern air. Friday, June 19, 8 p.m.
HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY
Will Sexton and Alex McMurray
Two acclaimed songwriters. Two distinct voices. One unforgettable a ernoon. Saturday, June 20, 3 p.m.
HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY
Yella P
Known for his ery harmonica playing, powerful vocals, and genre-crossing style, Yella P blends hill country blues, southern soul, funk, gospel, rock, hip-hop, and everything in between into a sound that’s uniquely his own. Monday, June 22, 8 p.m.
HERNANDO’S HIDE-A-WAY
Bob Nelson & The Bobcats
Sunday, June 21, 6 p.m.
HUEY’S COLLIERVILLE
The Bugaloos Sunday, June 21, 6 p.m.
HUEY’S GERMANTOWN Concerts in The Grove: The MD’s Local musicians Joe Restivo, Landon Moore, Pat Fusco, and Graham Winchester join forces as e MD’s, the city’s only Booker T. & the MG’s tribute band. ursday, June 18, 6:30 p.m.
THE GROVE AT GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
With Will Azada, Justin Hand,
THE GREEN ROOM
Two incredible guitar play-
Gerry Wednesday, June 24, 5:30 p.m.
HUEY’S GERMANTOWN
PHOTO: COURTESY BAR DKDC Lady Shaun
CALENDAR of EVENTS: June 18 - 24, 2026
ARTS AND SPECIAL EXHIBITS
Artists’ Link Art Show: “Kaleidoscope”
Artists’ Link is pleased to present Kaleidoscope, its annual judges exhibit for 2026 in the Memphis Botanic Garden’s Visitor Center and Grand Hallway galleries. Free. rough June 30.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Bartlett Artists Association Exhibit
A new exhibit featuring work by local Bartlett artists. Free. rough July 29.
ST. GEORGE’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH
“Blues Power!
Celebrating the Legacy of Albert King”
A limited-time photo exhibit honoring one of the most inuential voices in blues history. $16-$20. rough Aug. 6.
STAX MUSEUM OF AMERICAN SOUL
MUSIC
“Café Society: Art and Sociability in Paris, 1855 – 1914” is exhibition examines the development of the French café, a crucial and accessible site for artistic discussion, and, ultimately, how cafés became the subject of works of art themselves. rough Sept. 6.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
David Uzochukwu:
“Bodies of Water”
In this show 22 photographs present hybrid beings, part human and part animal, who inhabit surreal, dreamlike landscapes. Adorned with ns, scales, and other features, these gures are equipped to survive and thrive in challenging waters. rough Sept. 27.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM
“Last Whistle: Steamboat Stories of Memphis” is show features boat models and explores the history of the iconic steamboats that docked at the city. rough June 26.
MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND HISTORY
AT THE PINK PALACE
“LIT”
Artist Catherine Erb’s exhibit of work involving ongoing exploration of light, presence, memory, and the transformative qualities of photography. rough July 18.
DAVID LUSK GALLERY
“Living in Layers”
Enjoy art by Debbie Likely Pacheco, who works in mixed media, combining digital and analog methods to create layered images that straddle a line between naturalism and abstraction. rough Sept. 27.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
“Memphis College of Art, 1936-2020: An Enduring Legacy” rough this exhibition of 90 faculty, administrators, and graduates, this show re ects on the school’s historical impact and celebrates its continued legacy regionally and beyond. rough Sept. 30.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM
“The Mystery of Cave Island”
Los Angeles-based artist
Eileen Havant Townsend presents eight dioramas of rocky landscapes alongside eight graphite drawings. rough June 20.
TOPS GALLERY
“Navigating Knowledge” is exhibition explores vessels and navigation as metaphors for the containment and transmission of knowledge. rough Oct. 7.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM
“Our Wild Kin”
New paintings and monoprints by Angi Cooper exploring ecosystems around us and within. Free. rough Aug. 1.
PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE
Rana Rochat: “New Works”
Showcasing the artist’s signature abstract encaustic paintings — works created through layered wax and pigment that produce a luminous, translu-
PHOTO: COURTESY GERMANTOWN COMMUNITY THEATRE
Falsettos is a musical about a funny, dysfunctional family as they explore the challenges of divorce, parenting, love, and the rise of the AIDS epidemic.
Send the date, time, place, cost, info, phone number, a brief description, and photos — two weeks in advance — to calendar@memphisflyer.com.
DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS, ONGOING WEEKLY EVENTS WILL APPEAR IN THE FLYER’S ONLINE CALENDAR ONLY. FOR COMPREHENSIVE EVENTS LISTING, VISIT EVENTS.MEMPHISFLYER.COM/CAL.
cent surface. rough July 18.
DAVID LUSK GALLERY
“Ratgirl”
Nick Canterucci’s 21st solo exhibit and h show at the Medicine Factory. rough July 19.
MEDICINE FACTORY
“Redemption of a Delta Bluesman”
A 29-painting exhibition by Memphis artist Andre L. Miller that explores the life and legacy of the iconic bluesman. rough June 30.
GALLERY ALBERTINE
Shelby East Garden Club: “Garden Beds & Community Roots” is show highlights the enduring connection between nature and community, showcasing archival photographs and personal stories that reect decades of environmental stewardship and oral artistry. rough July 3.
TOWN OF COLLIERVILLE MORTON MUSEUM
“The Sisters of the Brush and a Brother” e Sisters of the Brush — Phyllis Boger, Barrie Skoda Foster, Jana Jones, and Ann
PHOTO: COURTESY DAVID LUSK GALLERY
Artwork by artist Catherine Erb as a part of her exhibition “LIT.” is show encompasses a series of mixed-media photo encaustic displays.
Lit in the Park Book Club
An adults-only book club, hosted by Play Your Park, talking about the book If Only for the Summer, by Alexandra Warren. 18+. Tuesday, June 23, 6 p.m.
AUDUBAN PARK
Lauren Hough: Monster of a Land Hough leaps at the chance of a roadtrip adventure, and sets o in a refurbished ramshackle 2001 Dodge van, starting from Austin, Texas with her Husky mix Woody by her side. Wednesday, June 24, 6 p.m. NOVEL
Novel Manga Club: Insomniacs After School, Vol. 1-4
Brown omason — and “brother” Patrick McGee bonded over their love of painting and formed a collective that is truly unique. Free. rough June 25.
WKNO DIGITAL MEDIA CENTER
Summer Art Garden: “Wax Print Wonderland”
Samilia Pelshak presents an enchanting installation of her vibrant African wax print designs. rough Sept. 27.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM
“What We Surround Ourselves With” An exhibit serving as a love letter to the evolution of the cra , work, and stories shared through the Museum’s community. rough July 31.
METAL MUSEUM
ART HAPPENINGS
Meet the Artist
Meet the artist Debbie Likely Pacheco. She works in mixed media, combining digital and analog methods to create layered images that straddle a line between naturalism and abstraction. ursday, June 18, 5:30 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
BOOK EVENTS
David Porter: The Soul Man
Spanning more than 60 years and countless songwriting and production credits at Stax Records and elsewhere, e Soul Man: Life of Songwriter David Porter goes beyond the hits to reveal the man behind the music. Saturday, June 20, 2 p.m. NOVEL
David Sedaris: The Land and Its People Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveler, a brother, and a lifelong friend. Monday, June 22, 6 p.m. NOVEL
Two sleepless teenagers nd kinship as they escape to their school’s astronomy observatory. ursday, June 18, 7 p.m. NOVEL
COMMUNITY
Canoes + Cocktails
Enjoy a guided sunset paddle on the lake, followed by specialty cocktails provided by Old Dominick, snacks from Feast & Graze, yard games, and music. Friday, June 19, 6:15 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Rockstar Connect is event is a free, laid-back, no pressure, event that simply introduces business owners to other business owners. ursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
FIREBIRD’S GRILL
Spring Tram Tours
Enjoy a 20-minute tram tour of the 96-acre garden. Free. ursday, June 18, 10 a.m. | Friday, June 19, 10 a.m. | Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 10 a.m.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Summer Solstice Cacao Celebration
Join Taj Chander for a heartopening evening of ceremonial cacao, ecstatic movement, Kundalini meditation, and sound in celebration of the Summer Solstice. Monday, June 22, 6:30 p.m.
THE BROOM CLOSET
CLASS/WORKSHOP
Acrylic Painting with Gay Rhodes
Join this four-session painting series where students will gain new skills from the instructor’s 20-plus years of teaching.
Wednesday, June 24, 9:30 a.m.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Country Swing Dance Lessons
It’s never too late to start and a partner is not required to join the class. Friday, June 19, 7:30 p.m.
WHISKEY JILL’S
Flower Happy Hour
Try your hand at ower arrang-
ing with some of Memphis’ favorite florists. 21+.
$55. Thursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
From Surviving to Thriving: A Summer Garden To-Do List
This month we’re preparing for the summer heat. Gardening in the mid-South means a long growing season but comes with its challenges: drought stress, pests and diseases, weed pressure, high humidity, and harsh sun. Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m.
URBAN EARTH GARDENS
Museum Muses: Personal Tote Bag
Led by artist Sharan Nelson, this hands-on workshop invites participants to transform a blank canvas into a personalized masterpiece. Free. Wednesday, June 24, 12 p.m.
TOWN OF COLLIERVILLE MORTON MUSEUM
Landscape Studies with Shawna
White
Participants will leave this workshop with a partially-completed landscape painting, an understanding of how to start an acrylic piece, and a supply list. Ages 16+. Thursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
Rhythm & Roots
Each week, students explore drumming, dance, teamwork, and creative expression in a safe and inspiring environment led by experienced instructors and mentors. Wednesday, June 24, 6 p.m.
MEMPHIS YOUTH ARTS INITIATIVE CENTER
COMEDY
Ali Siddiq: The Custom Tour
From Houston, TX, Siddiq developed his unmistakable voice in one of the most unlikely places — behind the walls of incarceration, where storytelling was survival, currency, and community. Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m. | Friday, June 19, 7 p.m. | Friday, June 19, 9 p.m.
THE ORPHEUM THEATRE
Friday Night Laughs Hosted by Wild Beale
Come see some of the best national comics in Memphis work their set along side some of the best national traveling comics in the world. Friday, June 19, 8:30 p.m.
SMOOTH LIVING
Open Mic Comedy Night
Come for the laughs, stay for the laughs. Tuesday, June 23, 8 p.m.
THE HI-TONE CAFE
FAMILY
From Page to Stage
Spin into action in this fun-filled theater camp based on the classic tale of Charlotte’s Web Ages 6-12. $200. Monday, June 22, 9 a.m. | Tuesday, June 23, 9 a.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 9 a.m.
GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Kaleidoscope Club
Each week, kids ages 5-9 will enjoy an art or horticulture project that sparks creativity and critical thinking. Wednesday, June 24, 4 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
Mini Masters
Introduce your little ones, ages 2-4, to the arts and nature with crafts, movement, and more. Registration required. Tuesday, June 23, 10:30 a.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
Mudpie Mondays
Come to the Guest House Patio in My Big Backyard for a mud-tastic time this summer. Children can dig in and craft their own mudpie using natural materials. Free. Monday, June 22, 10 a.m.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Novels After Naps
Have your kids, from babies to 5 years old, enjoy a calm and cozy story session that fuels imaginations and encourages active time together. Saturday, June 20, 4 p.m.
GERMANTOWN COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Sew Fun Art: GPAC Summer Arts Camp
Get ready to have sew much fun in this crafty arts camp. Kids ages 9-12 will explore handsewing techniques, create an embroidery stitch sampler, make a cute stuffie, design appliqués, and complete a project on a basic sewing machine. $210. Thursday, June 18, 9 a.m. | Friday, June 19, 9 a.m.
GERMANTOWN PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
Special Story Time
Recommended for children up to 5 years old, Story Time at Novel includes songs and stories, featuring brand-new books in addition to wellloved favorites. Saturday, June 20, 10:30 a.m.
NOVEL
Story Time
At Story Time, kids can enjoy stories, songs, art activities, and creative play that connect with Collierville history. Friday, June 19, 10:30 a.m.
TOWN OF COLLIERVILLE MORTON MUSEUM
Storytime and Sign
For babies through 5 years old, sing a song, learn a sign, dance a little jig, and sit for a story during this interactive, weekly story time for little ones and their caregivers. Tuesday, June 23, 10:30 a.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 10:30 a.m.
GERMANTOWN COMMUNITY LIBRARY
Summer Camps at the Garden These nature camps are dedicated to inspiring a love for the natural world in kids. Ages 6-9.
Thursday, June 18, 9 a.m. | Friday, June 19, 9 a.m. | Monday, June 22, 9 a.m. | Tuesday, June 23, 9 a.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 9 a.m.
MEMPHIS BOTANIC GARDEN
Summer Family Drop-in Day: Survive Early Collierville
Kids will get to know local history firsthand through immersion and imagination as they take their own “profile” and survive a day in early America. (Horses not included.) Free. Tuesday, June 23, 10:30 a.m.
TOWN OF COLLIERVILLE MORTON MUSEUM
Super Saturday - Saltwater Paintings
A hands-on art-making experience inspired by the powerful photography in the exhibition “Bodies of Water” by David Uzochukwu. Ages 5-12. Free. Saturday, June 20, 10 a.m.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM
Toddler Time
Bring your toddlers ages 1-3 to read and do crafts. Thursday, June 18, 1 p.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 10 a.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 11 a.m.
BARTLETT LIBRARY
FESTIVAL
Memphis Brewfest
It’s time to raise a glass and celebrate the return of this beloved event. Whether you’re a beer enthusiast or just looking for a fun day
ACROSS
1 The “one” in “the old onetwo,” maybe 8 Chivalrous offer
15 “You bet!”
16 Eyes, slangily
17 Become independent … as suggested visually by some of this grid’s black squares 19 It’s a wrap 20 Cereal with a Berry Berry variety 21 Being, to Sartre
Taking action
23 Gulf currency
25 Joint 26 Comical Howard
27 Tourist center handout
29 Fun and games, informally
30 Lord of Rivendell in “The Lord of the Rings” 32 Summer cooler 34 Salon offering
Any of 13 popes 37 Suits, briefs, etc. 41 Home of Theseus
Q&A on Reddit
Body parts that become other body parts if you change the second letter to an A
___ Juan
Way off, say
Summer cooler
Wheels of fortune?
Slammin’ Sammy
Series of ages
Like much data
57 Mental eccentricity … as suggested visually by some of this grid’s black squares
60 Briskly, to equestrians
61 Something a short driver might need?
62 Meet at the river, perhaps
63 Unfavorable
1 Like a ballet dancer
2 Language akin to portugués
3 Hide seeker
4 Doctor 5 ___ jacket
6 Opposite of drop
Line setter 8 Things you can get credit for
French article
Wallace who wrote “BenHur”
Relative of Aunt Bee
Started making money as an athlete 13 Suspect in Clue
Soul
Actress Dobrev of “The Vampire Diaries”
out, there’s something for everyone. Saturday, June 20, 5 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
FILM
A Love Letter to Handsome John
An intimate portrait of Todd Snider in the last year of his life. What starts as a film about gratitude, and a way to say thank you to John Prine, becomes a rare glimpse of the artist at home in his quietest moments. Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
CROSSTOWN THEATER
Call of the Dolphins
Narrated by Academy-Award® winner Mary Steenburgen, Call of the Dolphins invites audiences on an unforgettable journey into the fascinating world of wild dolphins, revealing the profound connection we share with these highly intelligent animals. Thursday, June 18, 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. | Friday, June 19, 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. | Tuesday, June 23, 11 a.m., 4 p.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 11 a.m., 2 p.m., 4 p.m. CTI 3D GIANT THEATER
The Mandalorian & Grogu Once a lone bounty hunter, Mandalorian Din
continued on page 20
Chocolaty
continued from page 19
Djarin and his apprentice Grogu embark on an exciting new Star Wars adventure.
Thursday, June 18, 3 p.m. | Friday, June 19, 3 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 3 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 3 p.m. | Tuesday, June 23, 3 p.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 3 p.m.
CTI 3D GIANT THEATER
Mars: The Ultimate Voyage
Ever wondered what it will take for astronauts to travel to the Moon, Mars, and beyond?
On this long journey, what challenges will astronauts face? This show explores just that. Thursday, June 18, 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. | Friday, June 19, 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. | Tuesday, June 23, 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 3 p.m.
PINK PALANCE PLANETARIUM
Jaws
When a young woman is killed by a shark while skinnydipping near the New England town of Amity Island, the police chief wants to close the beaches, but the mayor overrules him, fearing that the loss of tourist revenue will cripple the town. Saturday, June 20, 2 p.m.
THE ORPHEUM THEATRE
Like You Film Club: The Sandlot
During one unforgettable summer in the early 1960s, a shy new kid moves to town and is taken in by a group of neighborhood boys whose lives revolve around baseball, bikes, and an empty sandlot.
Saturday, June 20, 2:30 p.m.
CTI 3D GIANT THEATER
FOOD AND DRINK
Food Truck Friday
Enjoy food trucks at the Dixon on Fridays. Friday, June 19, 11:30 a.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
Legacy at the Table: MCA Dinner Series
A three-part fundraising dinner series celebrating Memphis College of Art’s legacy and artists. $200. Wednesday, June 24, 6 p.m.
MEMPHIS BROOKS MUSEUM
“Papa Bear Trivia” with Shawn
Bring your brainpower and your crew for a night of free trivia. Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m.
DRU’S BAR
Sunday Trivia
Gather your team and put your collective knowledge to the test in Downtown’s most engaging battle of wits.
Sunday, June 21, 5 p.m.
MFS BREWING
HEALTH AND FITNESS
Get Outside Fitness: Yoga Sculpt
A blend of yoga-inspired flows, short cardio bursts, balance sequences, and body-
weight strength training all set to crazy fun music. Free. Thursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Mat Pilates
Experience a low-impact but challenging workout that enhances your mind-body connection. Pilates will lengthen and strengthen your core muscles, build body awareness and balance, and create space for mental clarity. Free. Friday, June 19, 4:30 p.m.
SHELBY FARMS PARK
Taijiquan
Led by Milan Vigil, this Chinese martial art promotes relaxation, improves balance, and provides no-impact aerobic benefits. Saturday, June 20, 10:30 a.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
Yoga
Strengthen your yoga practice and enjoy the health benefits of light exercise with instructor Laura Gray McCann. Thursday, June 18, 6 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
HOLIDAY EVENTS
Boots on the Ground
The second annual Juneteenth networking event by The Davis Legacy Group. Free. Friday, June 19, 11 a.m.
1069 DOCTOR M.L.K. JR. AVE.
Juneteenth Artist Talk Back
Kick off the Juneteenth weekend for an artist talk back with Andre LeMoyne Miller, moderated by his partner and co-founder Sadiyya Miller. Friday, June 19, 6 p.m.
GALLERY ALBERTINE
Juneteenth Community Day
The day will be filled with inspiring programming, live music, cultural performances, family-friendly activities, and community resources honoring this important national holiday. Friday, June 19, 9 a.m.
NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM
Juneteenth in Motion: A Ride Through Black History, Culture & Legacy
A two-hour guided cultural experience through Memphis exploring the stories, music, neighborhoods, and landmarks that shaped Black history. $23-$72. Friday, June 19, 11 a.m.
BEALE STREET LANDING
Juneteenth Shop Black Festival
Featuring local Black-owned vendors, live music, food, and offering a vibrant way to celebrate Black culture, entrepreneurship, and community. Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.
MARTYRS PARK
Juneteenth Tour of Elmwood Cemetery
Prepare to be inspired by the incredible Black history found at the most historic cemetery in Memphis. $20. Saturday, June 20, 9:30 a.m.
ELMWOOD CEMETERY
CALENDAR:
JUNE 18 - 24, 2026
Shell on Wheels: South Memphis Juneteenth Festival
Celebrate power and love as we work as a community to preserve our health, our wellness, and our culture. Friday, June 19, 10 a.m.
THE FOUR WAY RESTAURANT
LECTURE
Exhibition Lecture“Café Society: Art and Sociability in Paris, 1855-1914”
Enjoy this lecture with a native of Memphis, Julie Pierotti, who graduated from the University of Mississippi with a Bachelor’s degree in Art History and went on to receive an MA in the History of Art from Vanderbilt University. Sunday, June 21, 2 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
Munch and Learn: The Arts and Creative Economy in Our Community
Nykesha Cole is a seasoned professional in the non-profit and government sectors recently appointed by Mayor Paul A. Young as Manager of Cultural Investment and Partnerships in the City of Memphis Office of Creative and Cultural Economy. Wednesday, June 24, 12 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
ARTS
The film A Love Letter to Handsome John at Crosstown Theater reveals an intimate portrait of Todd Snider near the last years of his life.
World Cup in history, bringing together 48 national teams from around the globe in a tournament co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Thursday, June 18, 11 a.m. | Friday, June 19, 11 a.m. | Saturday, June 20, 11 a.m. | Sunday, June 21, 11 a.m. | Monday, June 22, 11 a.m. | Tuesday, June 23, 11 a.m. | Wednesday, June 24, 11 a.m. BROOKHAVEN PUB & GRILL
THEATER
Disney’s Tarzan
The king of the apes and his lady love swing to the stage in this adaptation of the Disney film, featuring music by Phil Collins, like the Oscar-winning “You’ll Be in My Heart,” as well as “Son of Man” and “Two Worlds,” making Tarzan an unforgettable theatrical experience. $23. Friday, June 19, 7:30 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 2:30 p.m. HARRELL THEATRE
Falsettos
PERFORMING ARTS
Assassins: DayBreak
A colorful, vibrant drag competition. But it’s not just a competition, it’s a phenomenon of creative pride. Monday, June 22, 9 p.m.
LAMPLIGHTER LOUNGE
Eureka Live!
A take-over drag show brunch. Sunday, June 21, 12 p.m.
LAFAYETTE’S MUSIC ROOM
Memphis Magic Night
Starring Joe M. Turner with Ryan Bush
The Bluff City’s favorite evening of magic, mentalism, and comedy, at a rotating selection of Memphis venues. $20-$25.
Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m.
FLYWAY BREWING COMPANY
Spoken Word Night at Gallery Albertine
Spend Juneteenth with spoken word, jazz, and the vibes of a series of paintings relating the untold story of Robert Johnson. Hosted by Famous Taylor II with headliner El-Hakeem. $25.
Saturday, June 20, 6 p.m.
GALLERY ALBERTINE
SPECIAL EVENTS
Thursday Open Late at the Dixon
Enjoy the Dixon after hours!
Whether it’s a family night out, date night, mom’s night out, or a solo evening. Thursday, June 18, 5-8 p.m.
DIXON GALLERY AND GARDENS
SPORTS
FIFA World Cup Watch Parties
The FIFA World Cup 2026 is the largest and most ambitious
This musical by William Finn chronicles a Jewish family in the late ’70s and early ’80s. A neurotic New Yorker named Marvin leaves his wife Trina and young son Jason to live with his lover, Whizzer. In time, Trina marries his psychiatrist, Whizzer leaves him, and Marvin ends up alone. All learn to face their future with love and dignity in this tale of gender roles, divorce, parenting, gay life, and chosen family. Friday, June 19, 7:30 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 2:30 p.m. GERMANTOWN COMMUNITY THEATRE
Legally Blonde
Elle Woods appears to have it all. Her life is turned upside down when her boyfriend dumps her to attend Harvard Law School. Determined to get him back, Elle ingeniously charms her way into the same prestigious school. There, she struggles with peers, professors and her ex. $62-$84.
Thursday, June 18, 7:30 p.m. | Friday, June 19, 7:30 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 7:30 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 2:00 p.m. THEATRE MEMPHIS
The Loves of Lincoln
A fast-paced, door-slamming farce bursting with camp, chaos, historical facts, and deliciously scandalous twists. As President Lincoln tries to win the Civil War, he’s also juggling a tempestuous wife (Mary Todd), a complicated ex (Joshua Speed), and a dangerously charming new flame (Captain Derickson). $23. Friday, June 19, 8 p.m. | Saturday, June 20, 8 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 2 p.m.
THEATREWORKS @ THE SQUARE
Sweeney Todd
An unjustly exiled barber, who returns to 19th-century London seeking revenge, partnering with a pie-maker, Mrs. Lovett, to dispose of his victims in her pies, leading to a gruesome and darkly comedic tale of obsession, injustice, and revenge. $20$40. Saturday, June 20, 7 p.m. | Sunday, June 21, 2 p.m.
PLAYHOUSE ON THE SQUARE
PHOTO: COURTESY CROSSTOWN
PHOTO: COURTESY NOVEL
Author Lauren Hough celebrates the release of her new book, Monster of a Land, at Novel and will be in conversation with Courtney Miller Santo.
FOOD By Michael Donahue
Flying to Flyway Memphis
Brewery o ers drinks, food, and fun.
f you’ve been wondering what’s going on behind those doors at Flyway Memphis, check out e Flyway Summer Market, to be held Saturday, June 20th from 2-6 p.m., at 598 Monroe Avenue.
“We usually have 20 vendors” selling local arts and cra s, says Scott Tashie, who owns Flyway Memphis along with his wife, Rebekah Tashie, and Schuyler O’Brien. ey also do smaller markets throughout the year.
e Flyway Summer Market will coincide with the Downtown Memphis Brew Hop, which runs from June 15th to the 21st. “ ey visit all the breweries in the Memphis area,” Scott says.
Flyway Memphis is a combination of Flyway and High Cotton beers. e bar and restaurant is also a music, comedy, and special events venue. And it’s in one of the coolest parts of Memphis: e Edge District.
ner, director of sales Ali Stokes, and general manager Brian Bazar. “We’re really good at building teams,” Rebekah says.
Step one was to introduce Bluewing, a light, easy-drinking berry wheat ale, into the market. “We use real blueberries in the batch,” O’Brien says. But the beer is “not super fruit-forward. Even on a hot day, I don’t think there’s many things better.” Using Memphis water makes it “great,” he says. “ is one is perfectly done,” Scott adds.
e next step was to “clean up and ne-tune current High Cotton recipes. Once we got everything really dialed in and we got established as Flyway Memphis, we were able to stabilize the High Cotton brand,” Scott says. “High Cotton is very much around. We continue to ne-tune it as a beer brand. One of the rst things we did was change River King beer, which was kind of in a no man’s land. It didn’t have a full identity.” Now, he says, “It is a beautiful, crisp, juicy, hazy IPA.”
PHOTO: MICHAEL DONAHUE Flyway Memphis team: Scott and Rebekah Tashie, Schuyler O’Brien, Ali Stokes, Kaleb Tanner, Brian Bazar
e Tashies, owners of City Silo restaurants and Juice Bar Memphis, fell in love with Flyway’s Bluewing beer a er they opened a City Silo location in Little Rock, Arkansas. ey also got to know Flyway’s owner, Matt Foster. So, when they saw High Cotton Brewery in Memphis was for sale in 2023, they bought it.
“ at’s when we did not know a ton about brewing beer,” Scott says. “We knew we loved this area. We knew we loved the brand.” And, he adds, “We loved this space. We thought it was really cool.”
ey approached Flyway in Little Rock, suggesting they start brewing Flyway beer in Memphis alongside High Cotton. “We said, ‘Let’s call this whole place Flyway Memphis, and produce two brands of beer: Flyway and High Cotton,’” Scott says. ey then developed a team, which includes head brewer Kaleb Tan-
ey also added new beers, including Mekong Sticky Rice Lager, Lucky 44, their current High Cotton seasonal, and Power Band, a classic West Coast IPA. en there’s a beer they call “Sloosh:” sour beers nished with an ice cream base. “ ey almost taste like a dessert,” O’Brien says. Tangerine Dream is the current Sloosh avor. ey’ve also featured black currant and hazelnut Slooshes.
In transforming the building’s interior, they “opened everything up,” Scott says. ey joined the High Cotton tap room with what used to be Edge Alley restaurant. e tap room now ows into a spacious dining room.
Working closely with Flyway Little Rock, they created a menu that includes original Flyway items as well as items “unique to Memphis,” Scott says.
Among the new items are “buttermilk fried duck tenders served with honey mustard;” the “Memphis Dog,” a “baconwrapped Nathan’s hot dog, crispy cheddar, jalapeño slaw, Bluewing BBQ sauce, and green onion;” and “Smashburger Nachos” featuring a “smashed grass-fed burger patty, tortilla chips, queso, diced house pickles, pico de gallo, fry sauce, and green onions.”
“I can come in here with my kids, get a margarita and a salad,” Rebekah says. “And he can come in here and get a beer, watch football, and get a hot dog with bacon wrapped on it, and everyone’s happy.”
Enroll Your Child in Pre-K
Pre-K will help give your child the basic skills they will need later in school. Plus some programs provide extra support, like devices, for home learning. And, depending on your income, it’s all free.
To enroll your child in Pre-K, visit: PrekMemphis.com
High-quality early childhood programs benefit the whole community. First 8 Memphis coordinates services for kids birth through third grade.
We Saw You.
with MICHAEL DONAHUE
Le Bon Appétit, the Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital fundraiser, was in full swing at e Kent. Local and out-of-town chefs kept guests happy with their cuisine at the event, which was held June 6th.
Kelly English is the founder of the event, which is held every two years. He also hosted the event with Le Bonheur Club.
PHOTOS: MICHAEL DONAHUE above: Mia DeFilippo, Anthony Cestaro, Grace Cestaro below: (le to right) Gil and Kathy Gale Uhlhorn and Monica and Andre Wharton; Crystal Golden, Rajanae Jones; Jonathan and Lauren Magallanes
bottom row: (le to right) Cole Jeans, Harrison Downing, Max Braverman, Schuyler O’Brien; Alessandra Daniele, Justin So er; Neely and Nate Utkov
above: Rob and Jennifer Tuliszewski, Elyse and Kalen Kenney
right row: (top and below) Samantha Dean, Michael and Ashley Robilio; Sarah Cai, Jimmy Nguyen, Arturo Leighton
below: (le to right) Caitlin McMillan and Michael Solomonov; Rob and Emily Mayer; Ursula Woods, Hugh Balthrop; Audrey Sharp, Patrick Nelius bottom row: (le to right) Michael Gulotta, Annabeth and Kelly English; Dorothy and John Collier
ARTS By Allie Maury
Art is Revolting!
A major exhibition and auction of protest art is in the o ng at Brantley Ellzey’s Summer Studio.
Local artist Brantley Ellzey began renting his studio ve years ago on the rst day of summer. “I can always remember my anniversary at my studio, because, oh, Summer Avenue, rst day of summer,” Ellzey says as he walks through his space. “So, typically every year, I have a celebration called Summer on Summer.”
Summer on Summer, Ellzey says, is an annual auction that bene ts charities by selling artwork focused on a speci c cause. is year, Ellzey decided to give artists a chance to advocate for causes they care about by creating protest signs for an exhibit dubbed “Art is Revolting! And So Should You!” Seventy artists have submitted protest signs that will be put up for auction, and Ellzey is preparing his studio to accept up to 100 pieces in total. is year’s charity is Indivisible Memphis, an organization aimed at empowering people through education and collective action.
“We’re all thinking about the world and I thought, well, you know what? Let’s just confront that head on and challenge artists to express their feelings about what’s going on through the making of a protest sign,” Ellzey says.
In a digital age, Ellzey wants to remind people of the merits of physical protest. e act of making a material sign, he says, can be therapeutic. e online aspect of protest and revolt is one thing, but Ellzey believes that going to a protest connects artists with a long tradition. He hopes that the unique perspectives artists bring to a visual piece will motivate people to protest and bring about social change. And for many artists, including Ellzey, the subject matter is personal.
“I’m gay, and so all of the legislation surrounding the trans community and LGBTQ rights is personally a ecting me. But beyond that, I think, as a gay person, I also identify with marginalized groups.”
Ellzey said that he was motivated to stop people from feeling hopeless in the face of attempts to diminish people’s rights. rough this event, Ellzey aims to use fundraising as a way to bring artists together to ght waves of disillusionment in a positive way.
“ at’s what I was thinking about when I started conceiving of this event,” he says. “ at I wanted to do something.”
Other local artists share this sentiment. May Todd, who is participating in the auction, sometimes drives past an intersection with a mural of Tyré Nichols, who was killed by Memphis Police Department o cers in 2023. She says that, even on a mundane day, the mural and
other forms of art prompt re ection.
“It’s a moment,” Todd says, “And yes, it’s a memorial, but it’s also an opportunity to think about something again.”
In a fast-paced world with so many things competing for people’s attention, Todd sees art as something with the power to take up space in people’s minds. She says that it is easy to feel overwhelmed by negative things in life, but that seeing people come together to resist these issues brings her hope. She hopes that the auction will bring this hope to others as well.
“Maybe one voice alone doesn’t do much, but when you’re standing in a group and there are a dozen signs, they start to stand out. at’s really powerful,” Todd says.
Carol DeForest, another artist Ellzey called on to participate in the event, is a sculptor and protester with decades of experience. She said that participating in the 1968 “I Am A Man” demonstrations for fair wages for sanitation workers showed her the value of collective action, but she has long since realized that provoking change requires a lifelong struggle.
“For me to nd out, at this point in my life, that we have so many things to be extremely upset and angry and disheartened by again is pretty daunting,” DeForest says.
When Ellzey called on her to participate, she saw it as a call to get to the studio and take action. DeForest became familiar with the artistic aspect of
Local artist and auction organizer Brantley Ellzey holds up a protest sign.
protest signs through her participation in the No Kings demonstrations and believes that the auction will help artists enact positive change.
“It’s hard to believe that anything we do can really make a di erence,” DeForest says, “but you’ve gotta take a little teeny hammer and chip away at the badness that’s going on.”
e auction’s bene ciary, Indivisible Memphis, aims to organize people who want to chip away at that badness through their mission of “protecting democracy, advancing equity, and holding power accountable in Tennessee and beyond.” Sandra Barrett, a steering committee member for Indivisible Memphis, said that the feeling of helplessness is not uncommon.
“Right now, so many people in this political environment feel alone, and when you feel alone, you feel powerless,” Barrett says.
Indivisible Memphis, Barrett says, is addressing this feeling. In addition to the visibility events, the organization promotes education about issues like pollution caused by data centers, hosts deputy registrar training to promote voter registration, provides mutual aid to Latino communities a ected by ICE, and supports initiatives like busing people to the Tennessee State Capitol during the redistricting process.
“What we’ve discovered with these events is that they help people feel not alone. And, again, that gives them hope,” Barrett says. “ en, that hope builds courage, and courage is contagious.”
Barrett emphasizes the importance of collective action and education, saying that living during the rst Civil Rights Movement when she was younger was formative in shaping her experience. She says it was educational for younger people to be bused to Nashville during the redistricting process and experience what she described as “the largest civil rights movement since 1965,” and that the proceeds from the auction will go toward funding initiatives like these.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” Barrett says. “Supporting the movement locally is a very important thing to do, because that helps.”
e exhibit and auction, “Art is Revolting! And So Should You!” occurs on Sunday, June 21st, from 2-6 p.m. at Brantley Ellzey’s Summer Studio.
PHOTOS: ALLIE MAURY
COMEDY By Gracie Driver
Ali Siddiq Keeps It Real
e celebrated comedian uses humor to tackle serious themes.
Houston comedian Ali Siddiq’s “Custom Fit Tour,” coming to the Orpheum this ursday and Friday, focuses on the ebbs and ows of relationships in our lives. By way of prefacing the show, he notes that not every friend will be with you forever and that’s okay (especially if they have ill intentions). “Sometimes you’ve got to alter your friends and sometimes you have to be altered too, in order to be a blessing to somebody or for somebody to be a blessing to you,” he says. As with clothing, it takes work to create an out t customized to you. Something that ts just right requires tailoring and alterations.
Ali o en works with more meaningful themes than your typical comedian. In April he released From Inside, a non-comedic documentary featuring bare-bones conversations with inmates at a county jail, in which Ali opens up about his own time in prison in the early ’90s. e work aims to break the cycle of incarceration through confrontation, accountability, and education on recidivism in America, Ali says. “I think there are a lot of ill thoughts out there and a lot of people being irresponsible about what they say, and those things can become damaging,” he adds. “I try to have a little more responsibility about the things that I put out there and the product that I produce.”
YouTube has become a successful platform for Ali, who has racked up millions of views alongside his live shows. My Two Sons in particular is an independently produced show that begins with a vivid and energetic story about an argument with
a “29-year-old male.” When it’s revealed that the confrontational male in question is his son, who has refused to take out the trash, the audience quickly warms up to Ali’s humor. Today, the special has reached 15 million views, and in February he was awarded the 2026 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Variety (Series or Special). is was the rst time an independently produced and released YouTube special has been nominated and even won a major award. Ali wants to pave the way for future independent comedians and prove that you can obtain success without the industry backing you.
Only last month, Ali also won three Webby Awards for his standup special Rugged. It begins with a microphone stand, a bar stool, and a chair, as Ali turns the mundane problems of life and even onstage equipment into fodder for hilarious skits. He describes himself as the opposite of a handyman, and the evidence from his stories is pretty compelling. Speaking of a feud with his landscaper, he transforms the chair into a mower and the bar stool into a car’s steering wheel. As the routine unfolds, egos are bruised, contractors are hired, and a concussion may or may not have occurred. roughout, his signature storytelling style will have you hanging on to every word.
Ali performs without a script, and every performance is unique to the town he’s touring in. Ali says, “People ask me a lot of times what I’m going to be talking about.” His inspiration for his work comes from simply living. As he puts it, “It depends on what’s going on that week.”
Re ecting on his 29 years in the business, he talks about how natural performing has become for him, saying that, just as seasoned bakers can bake without recipes, he uses his years of expertise to improvise skits.
Ali will be releasing three new hourlong specials this year, including My Father, premiering on his YouTube channel this Father’s Day, in which he explores his complicated relationship with his dad and the ups and downs that came with it before he died.
A er his U.S. tour takes him to New Jersey, he’ll begin the international leg in Berlin, Norway, Copenhagen, and elsewhere before making his way back to the U.S. for the nal show in Chicago on November 14th. Meanwhile, given his escalating popularity, Ali’s Memphis shows may well sell out.
Ali Siddiq preforms his standup special “Custom Fit” at e Orpheum eatre on ursday, June 18th at 7 p.m. and on Friday, June 19th at 7 and 9 p.m.
PHOTO: DAVID ‘ODI’ WRIGHT
Ali Siddiq
NEWS OF THE WEIRD
By the editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication
The Bear(s)
• Over the last year, 13 people have been killed by bears in Japan, with an additional 50,000 sightings recorded. The bears roamed near schools and broke into homes, supermarkets, and resorts. Now, Japanese company Ohta Seiki has come up with a unique solution to the country’s bear problem: robot wolves. Yahoo! News reported on May 13 that orders for the animatronic “Monster Wolf” are up by so much that the waiting list is a few months long. “We make them by hand,” company president Yuji Ohta said. “We cannot make them fast enough now. We are asking our customers to wait two to three months.” The “wolves” are made of pipe frames attached to speakers and covered with artificial fur. They can make up to 50 different sounds, including recorded human voices and electronic noises, and their eyes and tails flash with red and blue LEDs. Orders have come mainly from people who work in rural areas, such as farmers, construction workers, and golf course operators. The wolf apparatus starts at $4,000. [Yahoo! News, 5/13/26]
• Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Gatlinburg police were called upon to free a black bear that had locked itself in a bathroom at a downtown Quality Inn & Suites, Fox News reported on May 11. In the wee hours of the morning on Friday, May 8, a hotel employee called for help because they “observed a bear enter an exterior bathroom and lock itself inside,” according to the police report. When police arrived on the scene, one officer carefully opened the bathroom door while the other beat sticks together to draw the bear out. In the end, the bear ambled out, seemingly unbothered, leaving behind only minor property damage to the tune of $50. [Fox News, 5/11/26]
Seen This Movie Before
Claassen donned a teenage persona in hopes of qualifying for more social assistance. Her disguise was uncovered when school officials found her social media profiles, which showed her holding a baby that she referred to as her daughter, and listed Claassen’s birth year as 1997. Claassen was arrested and released and is pleading not guilty to all charges. She was expected back in court on June 15. [Oddity Central, 5/8/26]
Americans Abroad
Two grown women are facing federal charges after getting into a slap fight while on a Carnival Cruise in March, Fox 10 reported on May 13. During their return voyage from the Bahamas, Tonya Nelson, 58, and Lisa Horace, 51, were in line to settle their cruise accounts. Nelson told investigators that she was trying to be helpful when she suggested to Horace and Horace’s husband that they were in the wrong line. According to Horace’s statement, she ignored Nelson, but took action after Nelson kept touching Horace’s husband’s shoulder. Horace said that Nelson threatened to slap her, so she slapped Nelson back. The fight escalated from there, with crew members stepping in to separate the two. The women, who did not know each other before the encounter, were issued federal citations for simple assault. The women report that they have both been banned from Carnival cruises and have lost their Diamond member status. “Things happen sometimes on a crowded ship,” Buzz Jordan, Nelson’s attorney, said. [Fox 10, 5/13/26]
I’m Lovin’ It
Minor League baseball team the Charlotte Knights had an unusual celebrity lend their pipes for the national anthem at a recent game, Fox News reported on May 8. A May 1 Instagram post from the team shared a clip of fast-food chain mascot Ronald McDonald singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The beloved clown also threw the ceremonial first pitch before a Philadelphia Phillies home game against the Texas Rangers on March 28. [Fox News, 5/8/26]
Kacy Claassen, 28, was arrested in New York for endangering the welfare of a child, trespassing, and criminal impersonation, Oddity Central reported on May 8. Her crime? Impersonating a 16-year-old and enrolling in Westchester Square Academy in the Bronx. Claassen, who went by the name Shamara Rashad and attended classes for two weeks before she was caught, recently moved to New York from Ohio. Acting on a friend’s suggestion,
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries mathematician Paul Erdős lived without a permanent address, traveling the world to collaborate with other mathematicians. He owned little, claiming “property is a nuisance.” His life was structured around doing mathematics and helping others do mathematics. He published over 1,500 papers, more than any mathematician in history. Was his minimalism a form of deprivation? I prefer to think it was liberation from everything that didn’t serve his purpose. What would your life be like if you eliminated things that don’t serve your deepest purposes, Aries? In the coming weeks, you have permission to be ruthless about your priorities. What are you maintaining out of habit rather than conviction? What burdens masquerade as responsibilities?
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): A friend told me about the creative writing class he took with renowned poet Brenda Hillman. “I recall being in class,” he says, “and having the thought, wow, this teacher works far harder at teaching than I do at learning.” Dear Taurus, please don’t indulge in a similar laziness anytime soon. Your educational opportunities are currently richer than usual. To extract the full benefit, you must match the verve and vigor of your teachers. (PS: The teachers may or may not think of themselves as teachers. They could even be animals, rainstorms, or ancestors.)
CANCER (June 21-July 22): A large earthquake doesn’t relieve stress evenly along a fault. Instead, it creates zones where stress is reduced and others where stress increases, making future ruptures more likely. So the stress is redistributed, but not uniformly. According to my reading of the omens, Cancerian, you recently experienced a metaphorical shake-up. I suggest you identify where stress has grown and where it has dissipated. Your next moves should account for this new distribution of pressure. Some areas of your life are now more vulnerable, while others have become more stable. Read the landscape accurately before proceeding.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Songbirds like zebra finches practice their melodies while asleep. Their vocal muscles move in ways that mirror daytime singing. These replay patterns help young birds learn their songs and adults maintain and refine their tunes over time. I suspect that you are engaged in a similar type of learning, Leo. You are enhancing skills and uncovering insights while asleep and dreaming. Bonus! Even when awake, you’re absorbing clues on a subconscious level. Your deeper intelligence is gathering information you will need for your upcoming breakthroughs. Hooray for mysterious help!
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Architects
By Rob Brezsny
who design concert halls know that perfect sound isn’t achieved through perfect smoothness. The best acoustics come from strategic irregularities, textured walls, and angled surfaces that distribute vibrations in pleasing ways. Too much uniformity creates dead zones and echoes; too much chaos creates muddle. Pleasing resonance arises from organized complexity. In my estimation, Virgo, your life is currently too smooth in some areas and too haphazard in others. You may need more strategic irregularity. Consider introducing productive unpredictability into relationships that have become too routine. Add inventive structure to efforts that have become shapeless. Don’t aim for either total order or complete randomness. What will generate maximum beauty?
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Have you ever been ambushed by unexpected bursts of gratification emerging from subtle miracles? Maybe a loved one finally grasps a truth you’ve been trying to convey for eons. Or you feel balanced in a situation that once made you feel lopsided. Or you grasp, with shivers of awe, that you got uncanny spiritual guidance at a key crossroads. I foresee at least three such blessings for you in the coming weeks. To ensure you recognize them, don’t get distracted in the pursuit of splashy bonanzas and gaudy prizes. Be nimbly alert for subtle breakthroughs.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Poet Emily Dickinson rarely left her family home but bequeathed us a marvelous body of lyrical work as she roamed through vast inner worlds. Sci-fi novelist Octavia Butler rose early to write before long shifts at low-paid jobs, imagining visionary futures during her limited hours to be creative. Lucille Clifton raised six children while shaping poems of distilled, luminous insight, showing us how to summon fierce originality from a life crowded with responsibilities. Moral of the story: Buoyant power can flourish even when circumstances are limited. This lesson may be relevant for you in the coming weeks. If conditions seem imperfect or incomplete, trust that your resilience and adaptability can compensate for external obstacles. I have faith in your ability to generate useful beauty.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Our tongues are primed to heal astonishingly fast thanks to dense blood vessels, saliva’s repair proteins, and a rapid immune response. Wounds that would take more patience elsewhere can heal here in days. I suspect that your psyche now possesses your tongue’s high level of healing power. So I hope you will launch a phase of accelerated repair. Call on every possible form of therapeutic assistance, please!
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Now is an ideal time to clear out old romantic
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Eastern monarch butterflies migrate annually from the American Midwest to central Mexico. The individuals who start the journey from Nebraska or Wisconsin die long before they reach the oyamel fir trees of Mexico. So do their children and their grandchildren. Their great-grandchildren finish the trip, though they have never been to the destination. Somehow they know where to go, navigating thousands of miles to trees they’ve never seen. Let’s apply this as a metaphor for you, Gemini. I suspect you are carrying navigational wisdom you didn’t realize you possessed. Inherited knowledge, encoded deep in your secret places, is ready to guide you. So pay attention to inexplicable certainties. Trust the directions that arrive without logical explanation.
karma from the past. Please consider performing a DIY ritual to release painful memories, leftover grudges, and long-standing hurts that keep tugging at your intimate connections. The coming weeks will also be a favorable phase to discard rigid beliefs about gender and dismantle anything that blocks you from experiencing full-bodied sensual and sexual delight. Expect to be freed from at least some energies that have limited your ability to explore fun and vigorous ways of savoring your desires.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I suggest you adopt a new honorary title like “Charm Weaver” or “Emissary of Radiance” or “Beauty Whisperer.” Why? Because I hope it will help inspire you to stir up delightful play and lyrical mystery wherever you wander. For instance: Infuse your conversations with sparkling harmony and sly, graceful humor. Burst into whimsical songs, fling out extravagant compliments, pose clever questions that spark fresh ideas, and call attention to systems and relationships in your world that are functioning wonderfully well. Many perks will flow your way as you do.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Is there a dream from childhood that you’re ready to revive on a higher octave? Think of something you longed for before the world told you to be boringly realistic: an art you wanted to practice, a way you wanted to live, or the kind of person you hoped to become. The question isn’t “Can I go back and do it exactly the same?” but “What is the mature, wiser, present-day version of that dream?” You might write in your journal: “The childhood dream I’m ready to lift to a higher octave is ______,” and then add, “If I took one concrete step toward it, what would it be?”
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FILM By Chris McCoy
Aliens Among Us
Steven Spielberg looks to the skies for redemption in Disclosure Day
Steven Spielberg is one of those people who has separate Wikipedia pages for his biography, his lmography, and his awards. Since his debut in 1973, the director has averaged two stone cold classics per decade. ere are the perfect summer blockbusters Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark; the greatest one-two punch in cinema history, Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, both released in 1993; Tom Hanks’ nest hour in Saving Private Ryan; the millennial sci- twofer of A.I. Arti cial Intelligence and Minority Report; and Daniel Day Lewis’ stunning turn in Lincoln. His little-seen West Side Story adaptation, released during the pandemic, is a marvel. ere’s a reason he’s the most nancially successful director in cinema history.
governmental program led by Claude Lacombe (François Tru aut) to make rst contact is successful, but a er they take o , the aliens’ existence is presumably kept secret. at’s where Spielberg’s 35th feature lm comes in.
e subject Spielberg keeps coming back to since Firelight, which he directed at age 17, is aliens. at early experiment spawned my favorite Spielberg lm, 1977’s Close Encounters of the ird Kind. Released during the height of the 1970s UFO craze, Close Encounters is the story of an ordinary guy, Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss), whose life is turned upside down by a chance encounter with an alien spaceship. Roy leaves his unhappy marriage with Ronnie (Teri Garr) to chase a er aliens, which, lo and behold, are not only real, but also have a plan which involves him. Close Encounters portrays aliens like the ancients portrayed gods — powerful creatures from the sky whose mysterious actions are in the service of an inscrutable agenda.
As a narrative of rst contact, Close Encounters sells transcendence with a he y assist from a career-best score by John Williams. e lm ends with Roy leaving Earth (and his family) with the aliens, never to be seen again. e secret, quasi-
Disclosure Day starts in medias res with an ass kicking. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is nervously watching a wrestling match when the person beside him sticks a gun in his ribs. When the blackclad operatives lead him out of the arena, we learn that he has betrayed his employer, the Wardex Corporation, led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). Wardex unkies nd the hard drives and memory cards they were looking for in his backpack, but there’s one thing missing: a banana-sized chunk of gray metal with weird symbols carved into it. When Daniel reveals that he has an alien device, Scanlon freaks out — or at least as close as the cold, corporate jargon-spewing leader of a public-private security partnership dedicated to suppressing evidence of alien visitations to earth can come to freaking out.
Daniel escapes his captors, kicking o the same kind of cross-country chase through the American heartland that was so gripping in Close Encounters, with his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) in tow. Meanwhile, TV meteorologist Margaret
Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is lamenting her stalled-out career. She’s stuck in Kansas City with her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), but dreaming of a new job in a bigger media market. When she plays him her news anchor audition video, we learn that the world is on the brink of nuclear war over the collapse of the North Korean government. Just then, a cardinal ies into the couple’s apartment through an open window. e bird makes eye contact with Margaret for a few seconds, then ies away. Jackson is amazed by the bird’s unusual behavior. He’s even more amazed when Margaret starts speaking Russian — and positively shocked when he nds out she doesn’t realize she’s speaking Russian.
A er a brief encounter at her TV station where she translates for the South Korean ambassador (she doesn’t speak Korean, either), Margaret tries to deliver her 90-second weather report, but the words stick in her throat. Instead, she starts speaking in an unknown language. A erwards, her producers and Jackson send her to the hospital for a neurological checkup. She’s seemingly ne, but there are three FBI agents waiting outside to “interview” her. Margaret discovers she can
now read minds when she realizes that they are not, in fact, feds. She escapes the hospital with a very reluctant Jackson in tow, knowing only that she is looking for a guy named Daniel, and that he’s somewhere to the north.
While Daniel and Margaret try to nd each other, they have the help of Hugo Wake eld (Colman Domingo), another Wardex employee who masterminded the breakout. He’s coordinating the operation which he and his secret team hope will spill the beans about aliens to a world on the brink of destruction. Back at the lab, Scanlon is trying desperately to keep his government contacts from nding out that he’s lost control of the alien archive. To aid in his search, he uses another alien device to amplify his psychic powers, leading to a series of tense scenes of possession and betrayal, as he tries to turn Jane against Daniel. e aliens, of course, also have a say in the proceedings.
UFO aps come and go, and we’ve recently been in the middle of another one, inspired by images and videos leaked from the U.S. Navy. Whether those videos show an actual alien spacecra or just the same ambiguous lights in the sky which have fueled the UFO myth since Kenneth Arnold rst saw “ ying saucers” in 1947 remains an open question. But the sense of wonder that question inspires in Spielberg (born 1946) remains potent a er all these years. Both Close Encounters and Disclosure Day have ordinary citizens chased by mysterious forces which converge in a climax that reveals the aliens behind the UFOs. It probably goes without saying that Close Encounters does it better. Spielberg is a horror director at heart, but his natural optimism always shines through. Disclosure Day features the big action set pieces that Spielberg does as
Disclosure Day starring Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor
well as anyone who has ever picked up a camera. He pauses every now and then to debate the wisdom of disclosing the existence of alien life to the masses of humanity. Jane, the former nun, asks her mother superior (Elizabeth Marvel) if the existence of aliens disproves the existence of god. Scanlon believes that the reveal would cause major societal upheaval and collapse, while Hugo says, “Look around you. We’re already collapsing.”
Personally, I loved Disclosure Day. But I realize that the mixture of ’70s paranoia cinema, rollicking chase scenes, and philosophical debates makes for a bumpy ride. Spielberg channels The Day the Earth Stood Still to posit that the aliens want to help us Earthlings work through our troubles, and that once the world realizes that we are not alone, we will do better as
a species. But I have been a journalist long enough to know that just because you tell someone the truth doesn’t mean that they will act on it, or even care. Furthermore, the real disclosure day may have already come and gone. Earlier this year, NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover found compelling evidence that microbial life existed on the Red Planet in the distant past. The astrobiology community is simply waiting to get Curiosity’s samples into an earthly laboratory to make it official. (Naturally, the Trump administration is trying to cut the funding for the sample return mission.)
And yet, we’re still a world of short-sighted apes on the brink of self-destruction. As noted alien believer Carl Sagan said, “In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
LEGAL NOTICE
2012 INFINITI G37 JOURNEY
VIN: JN1CV6AP3CM624212
Any parties holding interest in this vehicle, call 623-826-8753 within 10 business days of the date of publication.
EMPLOYMENT
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Teach courses in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and conduct research.
Employer: The University of Memphis. Location: Memphis, TN. Incidental domestic travel required.
Multiple openings. To apply, e-mail your resume to D. Wibberding at dlwbbrdn@memphis.edu and state the position you are applying for.
THE LAST WORD
By Frank Murtaugh
Our Diamond
Don’t listen to the critics of AutoZone Park.
No place in Memphis has given me more consistent joy over the last 27 years than AutoZone Park. My wife and I raised our two daughters on Redbirds baseball. My rstborn, So a, arrived in 1999, a year before Downtown’s jewel of a diamond opened. Elena arrived in 2002. ey knew what a sacri ce y was before they entered elementary school, and they could de ne RBI and ERA (in baseball terms) by age 10. Together as so ball teammates in 2017, they helped White Station High School to its one and only appearance in the state sectionals. My family’s journey could be measured in metaphorical innings.
So you can imagine my reaction when I read the following thoughts last week (courtesy of the Daily Memphian) from Memphis City Council member Chase Carlisle: “People are playing pickleball. ey are not going to minor-league baseball games. At some point we have to say, 30 years later, ‘Is baseball our best bet? Do we have the best tenant possible in there?’” Carlisle represents Super District 9, Position 1, and he shared these two cents as part of the council’s rejecting $5 million in maintenance funding for AutoZone Park. We’ve not met, but I’m venturing to guess this councilman has never spent a Sunday a ernoon at our ballpark. If he has, he wasn’t paying attention.
is is not a column about economics and budget management. Dean and Kristi Jernigan over-borrowed and over-spent when they brought their dream of a Downtown stadium to life just before the turn of the century. Celebrated as a major-league stadium designed for minor-league baseball, the ballpark was too much of the former with the revenue realities of the latter weighing heavily since Opening Day in 2000. Upon his arrival in 2014, Redbirds president Craig Unger spearheaded a profound reshaping of the stadium and the ballpark experience, the aim being a singular, memorable outing, but one that’s a ordable and, somehow, pro table for the Triple-A franchise’s current ownership (Diamond Baseball Holdings). It’s a challenge, and it was a challenge before a pandemic changed the way human beings “go out” for fun.
If you’ve attended a basketball game at FedExForum recently, you know this is not a baseball problem. Giant tarps are hung to hide the empty upper deck on Tiger game nights. Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium will provide a new, better experience for fans this fall a er reducing its seating capacity. Well over $200 million has been spent, it should be noted, to deliver Mid-South football fans that better experience.
is is a column about joy. And about the value joy brings a city, brings a community. Buses of school kids attend matinee games at AutoZone Park in April, and if you haven’t heard this particular volume of children’s cheers, you’re missing something signi cant. College kids love ursday nights at AutoZone Park, the discounted beer part of the draw, but being outside at a professional sporting event is the memory maker. Elderly couples in baseball jerseys? I see them at virtually every game I attend, “Musial” or “Gibson” on their backs, thoughts of my late father li ing me even as they squeeze my heart.
Maybe $5 million is too much taxpayer money to help Unger keep his stadium up to safety standards. at’s Chase Carlisle’s decision, I suppose. But to suggest people aren’t going to AutoZone Park, and because they’re playing pickleball?!? at’s the view of someone quite out of touch with the corner of Union Avenue and B.B. King Boulevard. A family of four can still attend a Redbirds game for less than $100. Minor-league baseball is, in fact, the last truly a ordable option in pro sports. (Google the cost of World Cup tickets for a laugh.)
Take yourself out to the ballgame, especially if you haven’t been in a while. For joy, however you de ne it. I’ve attended hundreds of games, and by this measure, the Memphis Redbirds are batting a thousand. For the Chase Carlisles of the world, that means they deliver a hit every time up. Frank Murtaugh is the managing editor of Memphis Magazine. He writes the columns “From My Seat” and “Tiger Blue” for the Flyer
This is a column about joy. And about the value joy brings a city, brings a community.
PHOTO: WES HALE Victor Scott II
The Hot Tamale Capital of the World invites you to enjoy an eclectic collection of events and entertaining stops.
» MAY « Mississippi Wildlife Heritage Festival, including Frog Fest and Leland Craw sh Festival LelandChamber.com
Future Tour Golf Championship
» JUNE « Delta Soul & Celebrity Golf Event facebook.com/DeltaSoulGolf
Lake Washington’s “Straight O The Lake” Music Festival
