Letters Read

  • Autor: Vários
  • Narrador: Vários
  • Editor: Podcast
  • Duración: 15:58:04
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Sinopsis

LETTERS READ is the series of live events in which local artists interpret personal letters written by culturally vital individuals from various times and New Orleans communities and is an ongoing series presented by stationer Nancy Sharon Collins and Antenna.

Episodios

  • LETTERS READ: The Only Person Brought to Trial for Conspiracy to Assassinate President John F. Kennedy

    01/04/2022 Duración: 26min

    Wrapping-up the previous programming season, Doing Business in New Orleans, we present the story of Clay Shaw. On March 1, 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested him on conspiracy charges. Shaw was a beloved, successful, local businessman, and closeted queer man. On January 29, 1969, Garrison tried Shaw in Orleans Parish Criminal Court on three conspiracy charges. A little over a month later the jury took less than one hour to acquit Shaw. After, “…jurors expressed their bewilderment as to motive. Respectable socialite Clay Shaw, it strained credulity as to why he would become involved in the murder of the President. Jim Garrison believed that Shaw was acting as Oswald’s shepherd in New Orleans, under instructions from CIA. But he couldn’t prove it, certainly not beyond a reasonable doubt.” —Joan Mellen. Many theories swirl around these, now infamous, Big Easy characters. Both Shaw and Garrison. This reading strives to represent the man who was Clay Shaw and, to a lesser extend, who was Gar

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR VIII: Mid-20th Century Foreign Intrigue & the Almighty American Dollar

    01/01/2022 Duración: 12min

    Wrapping-up the 2021 Doing Business in New Orleans season is a true, rags to riches story. Another incubator-style, informal production, with stuff found along the way. That may or may not fit into full-length Letters Read, Louisiana and New Orleans-centric, programming. This material surfaced while researching the Clay Shaw story. That story is postponed until 2022. Shaw is referred to more than once in this reading because there’s a rhyme in it, a theme that repeats in this story, and in Clay Shaw’s. Throughout, the reader is Letters Read Director, Nancy Sharon Collins. Additionally, a link to the 2008 panel discussion referred to in this broadcast is HERE. And a link to the other referred-to party, a Letters Read Executive Advisor, Michel Varisco, is HERE. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/letters-read/message

  • LETTERS READ: Mad Men New Orleans-style!

    26/11/2021 Duración: 20min

    Premiering Thursday, November 25, letters and ephemera created in 1962 by a local professional association for graphic designers. If you liked the TV show, Mad Men, you’ll love the real thing, New Orleans-style. Art Directors and Designers Association of New Orleans (ADDA) was chartered in 1961. Illustrators, lettering artists, art directors, photographers, commercial artists, and graphic designers banded together and promoted themselves to advertising executives throughout the Gulf South. Central to this was a promotional slideshow presentation. Digitized in 2008. You can view an animation of it HERE. If you are curious about the then new-fangled entertainment gizmo, slideshows, watch the Mad Men scene about their origin, HERE. In this compelling podcast, join reader Colin B. Miller, himself a practicing graphic designer, as he continues the 2021 programming theme, Doing Business in New Orleans. For this production, thanks are given to Steve Chyzyk and Steve Himelfarb, Soni

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR VIII: The Power of a Personal Letter

    07/11/2021 Duración: 05min

    As prelude to the Thanksgiving, 2021 reading, we share advertising executive Ron Thomson's story about the letter he wrote to motion picture actress, Audrey Hepburn, and the friendship that ensued. Thomson is President - Marketing, Beuerman Miller Fitzgerald, Inc. The oldest agency in the southern United States. By the time they met, Hepburn had already starred in Breakfast at Tiffany's, Charade, and My Fair Lady. Winning Academy, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Awards. When Thomson sent the pivotal letter, Hepburn was devoting herself to UNICEF. Her work with UNICEF was the reason Thomson became emboldened enough to write to the famous Hollywood star.  Back in the day (1960s) Thomson worked with Don Smith, art director and fellow adman at Knox Reeves Fitzgerald in New Orleans. It was the largest advertising agency in the South. The Letters Read Thanksgiving podcast tells one story about the old ad-days Don and Ron share. Image: Paramount-photo by Bud Fraker - eBayfrontback, Public Domain.

  • LETTERS READ: Bananas Anyone?

    15/07/2021 Duración: 29min

    Welcome to this reading from a handmade, 1906 photo-album compiled in response to the last documented yellow fever outbreak in New Orleans and the United States.  The podcast is fourteenth in the ongoing, Letters Read project. Readers are William Bowling and Grace Kennedy with audio production by Steve Chyzyk and Sonic Canvas Studio. Antenna is the project’s fiscal partner, and, 2021 is the fifth consecutive season. In photographs and text, “Quarantine Tour of Central America and Panama by Health Authorities as guests of The United Fruit Company” presents the idea that bananas imported by the largest importer of them in the world at that time were safe and did not promote the spread of yellow fever. What was the real purpose for this curious piece of ephemera compiled and produced in New Orleans? Documentation of United Fruit’s best practices in sanitation and mosquito abatement? Merely propaganda? Follow along online in the digitized album at The Historic New Orleans Collection Williams Research Center.

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR VII: Yellow Fever, Mosquitos, and Monkeys

    12/07/2021 Duración: 01min

    As a bit of comic relief to the July 15th, 2021 podcast, "Bananas Anyone", Letters Read project director Nancy Sharon Collins puts forth her science fiction theory to her neighbor, microbiology scholar Claiborne Christian, Ph.D., Tulane University, New Orleans. The following snippet was recorded on her deck, during a typical, New Orleans thunderstorm. You will hear the pouring rain. The distinct sound of the rain is an ironic nod to the subject of tomorrow's Letters Read. Image: Scientific illustration of the “Aedes aegypti” mosquito, the primary carrier of the Zika virus. (Illustration by Vichai Malikul, Entomology Department, National Museum of Natural History).

  • LETTERS READ: The Letters of Edgar Degas

    25/03/2021 Duración: 30min

    This reading is of personal letters from Edgar Degas surrounding his 4-month stay in Reconstruction-era New Orleans. Christopher Kamenstein reads as Degas; audio production is by Steve Chyzyk and Sonic Canvas studio. The event is emceed by stationer and Letters Read director Nancy Sharon Collins. Join us here for an intimate listen to thoughts and emotions experienced by Edgar Degas as he visits his mother’s family in the Crescent City as it strives to heal post-antebellum wounds after the American Civil War. Business, money, family, property ownership, class, race, and privilege, all play important roles in this compelling story. In late 1872, Degas accompanied his brother René to New Orleans where he observed his paternal family’s business managing the post-Civil War cotton trade. The painting used to illustrate this online event is the oft cited depiction of his time while visiting. It captures a moment during the decline of his uncle Michel Musson’s business, the Cotton Office. Which went bankrupt shortly

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR VI: Michel Musson, 1849

    19/03/2021 Duración: 12min

    A prelude to the March 25, 2021 reading, The Letters of Edgar Degas, hosted by Pitot House and co-promoted by Alliance Française de La Nouvelle-Orléans. Michel is Edgar Degas’s maternal uncle. Pitot House was once owned by Degas's maternal grandmother. In this reading, Michel writes of his son, Eugene Henri, 9 years of age, whose illness and death are documented. The letters, September 8th and 9th, are from the Degas and Musson families papers, Manuscripts Collection 226, Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana. Michel’s father, to whom these letters are addressed, was Germain Musson. A native of Saint-Domingue, now Haiti. It had been a French colony until the Haitian Revolution toppled French and white supremacy, freed enslaved peoples, and empowered people of color. Germain, identifying as white, fled. Germain migrated to New Orleans about 1810, married a prominent member of the Creole community here, and made a fortune in Louis

  • LETTERS READ: A Conversation with Two Actors

    01/01/2021 Duración: 32min

    December 31st, 2020: A remote interview with two professional actors, George Saucier and Colin Miller in Lafayette, Louisiana.  With ten questions as a format, this production threads excerpts from a two-hour conversation between George and Colin about being an actor, theatre as an art form, ruminations about Tennessee Williams, the Southern Gothic genre, and the arc of one’s career. In collaboration with Acting Up (In Acadiana) and Amy Waguespack, Artistic Director, and founder of Acting Up. The audio production is by Steve Steve Chyzyk, and Steve Himelfarb, Sonic Canvas Studio in New Orleans. The original conversation took place in George’s Lafayette studio. Nancy Sharon Collins recorded in Sonic Canvas Studio. Sonic Canvas’s sound quality differs from that captured in George’s studio, and, you will hear the difference. While discussing early influences, both actors refer to the Children’s Community School. George later refers to this as “CCS”. "The script" is mentioned several times. This is the 2018

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR V: George & Colin Talk about Southern Stereotypes that some Tennessee Williams Figures have Become

    26/12/2020 Duración: 52s

    This outtake is from the 16th full LETTERS READ production, to be podcast here on New Year’s Eve this year. George Saucier talks about the theatricality of southern archetypes while Collin Miller responds. Intended for a March 2020 reading, from which the full-production and this snippet evolved, this event was to restage the 2018 Letters Read script about the arc of Tennessee Williams's career. Planned with Acting Up (in Acadiana) company members in association with the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana, this was to be a live performance. Then, COVID-19 happened, and the idea of live performances became pretty much impossible. Over several months, with the generous help of Acting Up director, Amy Wagaspac, and these two Acting Up members, Collin and George, Letters Read producer Nancy Sharon Collins created something entirely new for the close of a universally awful year. Captured in one, two-hour recording, the actors responded to ten questions Collins provided. Ten being nickname, or sho

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR IV: Baron Joseph-Xavier Delfau de Pontalba & the Yellow Fever Epidemic in New Orleans

    15/12/2020 Duración: 12min

    Yesterday, the number of people with the coronavirus who died in the United States exceeded 300,000. Today we offer another incubator-style, experimental reading from primary source material: Excerpted letters from Baron Joseph-Xavier Delfau de Pontalba written from New Orleans during the first documented Yellow Fever epidemic there. It was recorded in Sonic Canvas Studio with audio producers Steve Chyzyk and Steve Himmelfarb.  The original music is also by Steve. Our reader is Colin Miller. The material in this reading was graciously translated and provided to us by Pierre Delfau de Pontalba, the Pontalba family historian, son of Charles-Edouard and Isabelle, Baron and Baroness de Pontalba. Further specimens have been excerpted by the Louisiana Museum Foundation. The subject, Xavier as he was known, was born in 1754 in New Orleans and schooled in France. His father died when he was six. He served in the French and Spanish military retiring from the French army as captain. In 1784 he moved back to manage

  • LETTERS READ: The Letters of Robert W. Stuart

    30/11/2020 Duración: 34min

    November 30, 2020, hosted by Bastion | Community of Resilience, Gentilly, New Orleans. Featuring William Bowling, reader, Steve Chyzyk, and Steve Himelfarb, audio producers. Robert, “Bob” Stuart was born in 1923, just three years after women in this country were allowed to vote. Originally from Shreveport, Louisiana. He served in the Navy during WWII, was honorably discharged in May 1946, and lived a long and productive life as a civil servant in New Orleans. This during a time in the middle of the 20th century when identifying, or being identified as gay—or queer—could cause a dishonorable discharge from the military, strip you of civilian jobs, deny you housing, and ruin your reputation forever. This event reflects upon the arc of Stuart’s life, the times through which he lived, and offers a tiny glimpse into correspondence from men who were his close and intimate friends, and one woman. Letters and documents for this recording are from the Robert W. Stuart Papers, The Historic New Orleans Collection. Gift

  • LETTERS READ: The Letters of Skip Ward

    20/08/2020 Duración: 48min

    Thursday, August 20, 2020: Blanchard, “Skip” Ward was a gay activist in rural Louisiana during the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and into the beginning of the 21st century. His home was in Pineville. Skip became increasingly involved in LGBTQIA activism in the early 1980s when he first came out. Or, as he would have phrased it, “came up front” about his sexuality. He co-founded the Unitarian/Universalist Church’s Gay Caucus. He also created Louisiana’s first publication tailored to its gay population, called Le Beau Monde. Ward held some form of membership with nearly every Louisiana LGBTQIA organization from the 1970s onward and was particularly active in the Louisiana Lesbian and Gay Political Action Caucus (LAGPAC), a political activist organization, and the Radical (or Raedical) Faeries, a national organization for rural-based gender and sexual non-conforming spiritualists. The emcee for this event is Shannon Flaherty, co-artistic director of Goat in the Road Productions (GRP). Frank Perez, presiden

  • LETTERS READ: The Letters of Stewart Butler

    26/04/2020 Duración: 31min

    The 14th Letters Read event and first produced entirely as a podcast. The usual, live reading was scheduled for March 26, 2020 at Frenchman Art & Books on Frenchmen Street in New Orleans. It was preempted by the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak. Listen to Dylan Hunter as the voice of our subject. Rebecca Hollingsworth is Anne. Both self-recorded in the safety of their own home. Our emcee is Frank Perez, President of LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana. Frank was recorded through a telephone conversation with Dylan. Dylan is also our audio engineer for this event. Music is written and performed by Rob Hudak. This event provides a rare glimpse into the personal life of an important Louisiana political activist. It begins with the 1967 correspondence from Anne, an intimate friend. The reading weaves in annual Valentine’s letters beginning in 1999 that, as recently as this year, were still mailed to 200 of his dearest friends. Since the 1970s, Butler was a significant force in the Louisiana civil rights mov

  • LETTERS READ INCUBATOR I: A Preliminary Reading of Personal Letters to Stewart Butler

    10/01/2020 Duración: 17min

    As an experiment with potential material for LETTERS READ, this was the first in a series of live recordings for the 2020 programming season. A work in progress, this set of letters developed into the April, 2020 podcast of Stewart Butler letters. The letters in both readings were from a large wooden chest in the home of Butler’s home, the Faerie Playhouse. A Letters Read sponsor, the LGBT+ Archives Project of Louisiana, regularly met there. We listen to a set of letters from 1967. Written to Butler, they were authored by Anne Garza. At the time these letters were accessed, Butler was 89. While his memory was crystal-clear on some points from his past, others eluded him. At the time of this recording, Stewart did not remember Anne yet continued sending $200 monthly to help support the widow of Greg Manella. Greg is also mentioned in this reading along with expectations and misgivings about being in a relationship in the middle of the last century. 

  • LETTERS READ: A narrative of Baroness de Pontalba

    15/10/2019 Duración: 59min

    Wednesday, September 25, 2019 The Cabildo Louisiana State Museum The Louisiana Museum Foundation, Louisiana State Museum, Letters Read, Antenna, and stationer Nancy Sharon Collins bring an intimate, performative evening celebrating our love for history and architecture, and a unique understanding of our relationship with property. A special reading in which professional actors read and interpret contemporary and historic communications surrounding the current exhibit The Baroness de Pontalba & the Rise of Jackson Square at the Louisiana State Museum’s Cabildo. This event weaves the legacy of Don Andrés Almonester (1728–1798), his formidable daughter, Micaela, the Baroness de Pontalba (1795–1874), and specific members of her descendant family into an exploration of our notions of property and property ownership. Special guests include emcee Christopher Kamenstein and Grace Kennedy.

  • LETTERS READ: Codex II

    17/08/2019 Duración: 04min

    Saturday, July 20, 2019 6:00 to 7:30 pm Crescent City Books 124 Baronne Street, New Orleans, across from the Roosevelt Hotel. Thanks to Susan Larson and George Ingmire for this recording and including it on their show, Thinking Outside the Book on New Orleans Public Radio. ABC@PM, Crescent City Books, and LETTERS READ present a second open mic night for book nerds. CODEX is a conversation about the physicality and context of interacting with and using books. Attendees are encouraged to bring any book they’d like sharing! Loads of conversations about the interaction with and what is a book are a goal.  Listen to Jessica Peterson talk about her history and relationship to her favorite book.

  • LETTERS READ: The nature of property ownership, and the origins of Felicity Redevelopment

    05/05/2019 Duración: 39min

    Sunday November 25, 2018
 3:30 to 5:00pm 
St. John the Baptist Catholic Church 
1139 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. 
New Orleans, LA. Twenty years ago, a Northshore, LA developer worked with New Orleans Mayor Morial, two City Council members and two Central City clergymen to demolish a 4-square city block area between St. Mary and Polymnia streets, Baronne and an altered Carondelet Streets. What was planned to replace historic, architecturally important homes was a suburban strip mall-style Albertsons grocery store more than 60,000 square feet large. Two of the four city blocks were planned to become a parking lot.
 Locals and preservationists were in an uproar and a grand fight ensued. This is the story of why and how Felicity Redevelopment began and how two women stopped the Albertsons project from being built. Mack C. Guillory III, emcee.
 Grace Kennedy, reader. Jeremy J. Webber, audio engineer.
 Jeffrey B. Goodman, urban planning consultant.
 Kure Croker, information consultant. T

  • Letters Read: The Desegregation of New Orleans Public Libraries

    19/02/2019 Duración: 36min

    LETTERS READ: The Desegregation of New Orleans Public Libraries Wednesday, February 13, 2019 6:00 to 7:30 pm Nora Navra Library, 1902 St. Bernard Avenue Free and open to the public. Mack Guillory III, Emcee. Julie Dietz, Reader. The historic fight for civil rights in New Orleans is more complicated than most movements in the other 49 United States. Prior to Reconstruction, and the Jim Crow era, free people of color here could legally own property. Free persons of color could even own slaves. Another anomaly, albeit post-Jim Crow, is how and when our libraries changed from a separate but equal policy to total desegregation. Without fanfare, our libraries desegregated almost a decade prior to most of the rest of the deep South. An amazing accomplishment for a small, deeply southern town rooted in antebellum sensibilities and unique, international roots. This event was made possible by Friends of the New Orleans Public Library and this recording was created live during the event. To read more about desegregation

  • LETTERS READ: Janet Mary Riley

    29/06/2018 Duración: 44min

    Though Janet Mary Riley did not define herself as a second wave feminist, by today’s standards, she was a quiet but fierce civil rights advocate and tireless women’s rights activist. Throughout her life, she fought for equal pay in the workplace. This event is dedicated to her successful efforts to revise Louisiana’s community property laws giving women equal management rights of a marriage’s community property. Prior to Riley’s heroic efforts, under Louisiana law, no married woman owned the right to manage her own property. That right was given, by law in marriage, to her husband. The law was changed in 1980. The evening features emcee Chris Kaminstein, Co-Artistic Director of Goat in the Road Productions (GRP), and Leslie Boles Kraus, GRP Ensemble Member/Social Media Coordinator.

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