To understand where a play entitled “The Man From Earth” comes from – aren’t we all men and women, etc. from Earth? – look to the author of the book on which the screenplay and subsequent stage drama was drawn as source material.

The play evolved in stages from the mind of Jerome Bixby who wrote the novel and screenplay for the cult film of the same title on his deathbed in 1998, dictating it to his son. Bixby was a short-story author who gained notoriety as the writer of a 1961 “Twilight Zone” episode, “The Good Life,” later inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He followed that up with four episodes for the “Star Trek” TV series, including one – “Requiem for Methuselah” – which inspired “The Man From Earth” and the subsequent posthumous stage drama adapted by Richard Schenkman.

The premise of the story is simple enough: John Oldman, whose surname serves as a pun for what is about to transpire, is a popular university professor leaving his tenured position behind to “move on.” His colleagues are shocked. They gather at his residence where he’s packing up to leave to who knows where.

Greg Allis as John is at once professorially erudite and personally engaging enough to hold our attention as well as that of his fellow professors. But his reason for moving on becomes preposterously evident near the outset – so much so that it’s quite a stretch that any of these scholars, with one or two exceptions, seem to take him seriously.

John claims that he moves on every 10 years or so in order to avoid questions about why he never appears to age beyond 35. Which is remarkable in that he claims to be roughly 14,000 years old. While he does not say he’s met every famous person in that eons of time – Van Gogh is suggested by a self-portrait he owns – does admit to encountering the first Budda of that religion and, along the way, Moses. Stretching his claim to its very limits, as one of his religiously devout colleagues presses him, he not only says met Jesus but that he was the one on the cross. Never mind how he survived another 2,000 years.

Not all his colleagues are as gullible as Sandy, played devotedly by Cavin Alexandra Moore, whose excuse is that she’s in love with John. Mary Ann Emerson as Edith, an art historian, considers John’s claims of almost-eternal life more a sacrilege than an impossibility, even though he does admit that dinosaurs were way before his time. Art, an archaeologist and John’s most vociferous doubter, is played with the zeal of true-felt outrage by Chris Agharabi.

Others among the “faculty” of players are more malleable. How could they possibly believe this tallest of tall tales? Dan, an anthropologist played boisterously by Zack Schlag, seems to be an unlikely convert, except that he exhibits a genuine affection for John and wants to believe him. Madeline Megahan as Harriet the biologist, straddles the fence with impertinent wisecracks here and there on either side of the question at hand.

Corrie James, as a senior psychologist, shows up late in the farewell “party” – there are drinks involved – ostensibly to evaluate the state of mind, sane or otherwise, of John Oldman, the ageless wonder. Her presence introduces the only physically dramatic sequence in the heretofore verbose exchange of ideas surrounding a fantastical premise.

The in-the-round staging of this play – the first in decades for Tred Avon Players, according to Storm, its director, suited the story impressively. Any of us who have ever moved to another location or station in life can relate to the pile of boxes and bare furnishings at the end, as rendered by set designer Laura Nichols.

While elitism is certainly out of favor in the current political climate, it is refreshing to hear thoughtful exchanges of historical and cultural references to what and where we are today. The implied wisdom of a 14,000-year-old man, however make-believe it may be, should not be dismissed as mere parody.

It’s art. Not politics.

The Baltimore Consort performs a trio of concerts on or near Valentine’s Day – two of them on the Eastern Shore and one in Columbia. The subject is romance,  some of it drawn from the consort’s most recent album, “The Food of Love: Songs, Dances, and Fancies for Shakespeare.” That’s because the consort musicians are all about playing music using period instruments of Will Shakespeare’s time and before.

The musicians, time-traveling virtuosos, are as extraordinary as their instruments, from the treble viol, a forerunner to the violin described as “sultry,” or the “ethereal” flute, a recorder, as well as the “noble” lute, “cheerful” cittern and “stately” bass viol, a forerunner to the cello.

Shakespeare did not write musicals as we know them in the Broadway or West End form, closer now to his English roots. But incidental music, most often played and not sung, was very much a part of Elizabethan theater. Unlike in Shakespeare’s time, women are allowed – no, encouraged, to play in this 21st-century consort format – unlike in the Oscar-winning film “Shakespeare in Love,” starring Gwyneth Paltrow as the forbidden female Juliet.

Before the Baltimore Consort embarks on a California tour in March, it will perform at 8 p.m. Feb. 14 at Howard Community College’s Smith Theater in Columbia, 2 p.m. Feb. 15 at the Avalon Theatre in Easton, and 4 p.m. Feb. 16 at The Mainstay in Rock Hall.

The instruments of the period include some made from maple, boxwood, snakewood, sheep’s gut, horse’s tail, crow’s quill, elephant’s tusk, ram’s horn, and shells of tortoises – as if, according to Baltimore Consort’s website, composed from a sorcerer’s potion. Credentials, however, of these musicians who play such period instruments are exemplary.

Besides the Baltimore Consort, Mary Anne Ballard performs with Galileo’s Daughters, drawing on music from the then-controversial astronomer’s lifetime in Italy, a contemporary of the Bard, and with Mr. Jefferson’s Musicians, creating “Soundscapes of Jefferson’s America” at Monticello in the 18th and early 19th century.

Mark Cudek chairs the Peabody Conservatory’s Historic Performance Department of Johns Hopkins University, and is founder of Peabody’s Renaissance Ensemble. Larry Lipkis is composer-in-residence and director of Early Music at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and music director for the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival.

Ronn McFarlane has recorded 40-plus  CDs, including solo collections, duets, music for flute and lute, Elizabethan music and poetry, lute tunes written by Vivaldi, as well as Baltimore Consort albums. A founding member of the Baltimore Consort, Mindy Rosenfeld plays historic and modern flutes, recorders, whistles, bagpipe and early harp.

In addition, two vocalists sing with the consort. José Lemos is known for his concert and opera performances since receiving first prize in Belgium’s 2003 International Baroque Singing Competition. Danielle Svonavec, a 1999 University of Notre Dame graduate, became a soprano soloist for the Baltimore Consort during its nine-concert Christmas tour that year. Since then, she has also toured with the Smithsonian Chamber Players and now serves as cantor for the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Notre Dame at her Indiana alma mater.
It’s a sure bet that the Baltimore Consort playlist will not be that of your usual classical concert fare.
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The good news here is that if you want to take in both the Baltimore Consort and the latest Chesapeake Music Interlude concert, featuring up-and-coming candidates for classical music super-stardom, you can see them both. But only if you see the consort in Columbia on Valentine’s Day or at the Avalon in Easton the day after. The Chesapeake Music recital overlaps with The Mainstay’s Rock Hall consort performance on Feb. 16, itself a fine venue for this event.Violinist Stella Chen won first prize in the 2019 Queen Elisabeth International Violin Competition – named for the Dutch queen, not the late queen of the United Kingdom. And in 2020 Chen won an Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. Pianist Janice Carissa, who will be accompanying Chen, is a Gilmore Young Artist once-in-four-year award winner and a Salon de Virtuosi prize grantee who debuted with the Philadelphia Orchestra at age 16.

Together they will perform a challenging program starting with Sonata for Solo Violin, Op. 27. No. 5, by Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaye (1858-1931), followed by a modern piece, Adagio for Solo Violin, written by Robert Paterson, born in 1970. Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in G minor, Op. 23, No. 5, Robert Schumann’s Selections From Bunte Blatter, Op. 99 and Bach’s immortal Prelude and Fugue in B-flat minor brings the duo to a well-earned break. After intermission, Cesar Franke’s Sonata in A major for Violin and “Tzigane,” described by its French composer Ravel as a “virtuoso piece in the style of a Hungarian rhapsody,”wraps up the program.

Quite the chamber classical-music duet smorgasbord.|

Baltimore Consort Period-Instrument  Concerts
8 p.m. Feb. 14, Howard Community College’s Smith Theater in Columbia, 2 p.m. Feb. 15, Avalon Theatre in Easton, and 4 p.m. Feb. 16 at The Mainstay in Rock Hall. baltimorecosort.com
Chesapeake Music Interlude Chamber Concert
2 p.m. Feb. 16, Ebenezer Theatre, Easton. chesapeakemusic.org

Steve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

The trio of finalists in the Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra’s annual Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition have been chosen to play in concert with the full orchestra to be judged for first, second and third places. The concert will be held at Chesapeake College’s Todd Hall for the Performing Arts on the Wye Mills campus at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 23.

“I am deeply excited to work with these extraordinary young musicians,” said Michael Repper, music director of the MSO who will be conducting them along with the orchestra for the finalist concert. “The energy and talent they bring to the stage will be a powerful reminder of the next generation of classical musicians.”The finalists competing for top honors are bassoonist Christopher Chung of New York City, who will perform Villa-Lobos’ Ciranda das Sete Notas; pianist Jonah Kwek of Singapore, performing Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23, and Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins, also of New York, playing Concerto for Marimba, her instrument, by Sergei Golovko.

Although there are cash prizes in the competition, the real top prize goes to each of the finalists, no matter their order of finish: Each one gets to play as a soloist accompanied by a full and fully professional symphony orchestra. Many of the applicants, from 27 states and at least nine countries, have never experienced that opportunity before. In most competitions, the finalists compete accompanied only by a pianist. But the cash prizes are worth competing for as well: $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second, $1,000 for third and $500 for audience-choice favorite.

As for the contestants, Christopher Chung is a Juilliard School student who has performed with such distinguished ensembles as the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. As a bassoonist, he is known for his collaboration with Sonarsix, a woodwind quintet, and contributions to the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices, which promotes performances by composers whose careers and lives were cut short by Hitler’s Nazi regime

Jonah Kwek is a graduate of Singapore’s Yong Siew Toh Conservatory now studying for a master of music at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. Already he has become a frequent soloist or contributing pianist on worldwide gigs. He also won the MNTA (Music Teachers National Association) Stecher and Horowitz Award for two-piano competition with a keyboard partner.

Britton-Rene Alyssa Collins, a percussion virtuoso on marimba – similar to a xylophone – earned a prestigious Princeton University Hodder Fellowship and has performed at Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall among other top global venues. She says part of her mission as a musician is to promote percussion as a means of celebrating black culture and identity.

The MSO competition is named for the former Washington Post executive who helped bring the newspaper into the digital age. In retirement, Elizabeth Loker moved to Royal Oak and became a symphony board member and supporter before her death of cancer at 67 in 2015.

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You don’t have to wait until March to hear some of the Mid-Atlantic Sumphony’s finest musicians. As part of its Ensemble Series of chamber concerts, Kimberly McCollum, violinist and concertmaster of the MSO, leads a string quartet that includes first or second-chair musicians  including violinist Celaya Kirchner, violist Yuri Tomenko and cellist Katie McCarthy. Together they will play Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 3 in F major and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 6 in F minor at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8 at Epworth United Methodist Church in Reboboth Beach and at 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9 at the Academy Art Museum in Easton.

Ensemble Series String Quartet, 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 8, Epworth United Methodist Church, Rehoboth Beach; 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, Academy Art Museum, Easton.
Elizabeth Loker International Concerto Competition, 3 p.m. Sunday, March 23, Todd Hall for Performing Arts, Wye Mills. midatlanticsymphony,orgSteve Parks is a retired New York arts critic and editor now living in Easton.

And just when you thought drive-ins were a thing of the past – particularly in the dead of winter –  Easton’s Academy Art Museum launches a monthly Drive-In Film Series in conjunction with its current “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” exhibition running through April 13.

Cars play significant roles in each of the movies in the four-part series starting with the 1924 French silent picture “L’Ihumaine,” directed by Marcel L’Herbier, which predate even a few of the classic Grand Prix race cars and sleek roadsters parked for showroom viewing in the museum’s two main galleries. The 1922 Rolland-Pilain Two-Litre Grand Prix racer acts as a motorized French Formalist prop in the film that kicks off the series on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

French Formalism was the dominant response to Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art until the 1960s. The Formalist movement focused on the structure and visual aspects of a work rather than its content, including in this case, performance, too. The subtitle of the original release of “L’Inhumaine” was histoire feerique, which translates as “story of enchantment.” In its time, the film was a controversial avant-garde collaboration of leading practitioners in experimental decorative arts, architecture, engineering and music. Opening night in Paris reportedly drew an audience of such icons as Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, May Ray, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and the Prince of Monaco. Some adored it. Many more hated it. But the film received better receptions when re-released in 1968 and shown again in 1975 at the 50th anniversary of the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris and in 1987 at the Cannes Film Festival. Finally, a 2015 restoration featured a new musical accompaniment score by Aidje Tafial. The original score by Darius Milhaud was lost over time.

The Roaring ’20s Grand Prix racers on display at the museum during the run of this film series were designed by Italian mechanical artists Ettore Bugatti and his son Jean. Like the French Rolland-Pilain race-car, they are also hand-cranked from the front, dating them as authentic automobile antiques.

The cinematic journey of the series traces the evolution of the automobile from early Grand Prix classic cars to the harrowing high-speed chases of “The French Connection.” Other films in the series include the first film-noir movie directed by a woman, “The Hitch-Hiker,” released in 1953. Ida Lupino, herself a star in several film-noir narratives featuring her either as villain or victim, directed this true-story tale based on a 1950 killing spree by Billy Cook who held two friends hostage during his murderous driving trip to Mexico. Co-starring Edmond O’Brien, William Talman and Frank Lovejoy, it was selected in 1998 for preservation by the U.S. National Film Registry as “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant.”

“The French Connection,” the highest profile feature in the series, won the 1971 Oscar for Best Picture and the Best Actor prize for Gene Hackman, it tells the semi-fictional tale of New York Police Department detectives led by Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Hackman) in hot pursuit of French heroin smuggler Alain Charnier. It conspicuously intensifies high-speed chases framed beneath tight above-ground commuter train tracks. No margin for steering error.

The final film in the series introduces another four-wheel co-star known as the “Bluesmobile,” a battered former police car. Blues singer and petty crook Joliet (John Belushi) is released from prison and picked up by his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) who demonstrates his driving skills by running the light on a raised drawbridge and leaping the gap. Their supposedly altruistic mission is to save a Catholic orphanage from being shut down by paying their $5,000 property tax bill. Aretha Franklin, it should be noted, soars even higher than the airborne Bluesmobile.

Film passes for the “Drive-In and Unraveling Narratives” series are available for $25 for museum members and $35 for non-members. A pass includes access to all four films with free popcorn at beer or non-alcoholic beverages for members and $5 for non-members.

Now and for the next few months, Easton’s Academy Art Museum’s main galleries are transformed into automobile showrooms – except these vehicles are historically artistic expressions of engineering on wheels that you could never afford even if any of the few such cars left in existence were for sale.

But while Concours d’Elegance – vintage auto shows of great prestige – are the highlight of the “Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection” exhibition, curated by Ken Gross and running through April 16, cars are but one medium of fine art produced between the two 20th-century world wars by Italian family patriarch Carlo Bugatti and his sons Rembrandt and Ettore Bugatti and grandson Jean.

Although he never traveled beyond Europe, Carlo drew on Asian, African and Islamic cultural influences in creating fin-de-siecle furniture designs of which two examples – one from the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, the other from Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts – are displayed in the hallway separating the auto “showrooms.” One is an armchair, possibly of Turkish inspiration, that like most of his works – including a hallway bench and an armchair, neither of which you’re allowed to sit on – combine exotic materials: ebonized wood inlaid with copper, brass, ivory and mother of pearl accented with leathery and painted flourishes.

His eldest son, Rembrandt, followed with an explicit art discipline rather than highly refined craftsmanship. In his short life ending in suicide at age 31, he devoted his talents to bronze sculptures of animal figures, none of which, presumably, posed for him. “Three Cow Grazing,” “Asian Elephant Begging” (perhaps for water?) and “Sacred Hamadryas Baboon” on all fours, are arrayed opposite the furniture pieces and a black-and-white photo gallery of the Bugatti family of artists.

Separated from the other sculptures is Rembrandt’s “Leaping Kangaroo,” displayed in the gallery featuring Ettore and Jean Bugatti’s Grand Prix race cars, Roaring ’20s forerunners to what we now call Formula 1 racers. A blue-grey Bugatti Type 45 Grand Prix with exhaust piping running from front to rear reveals its vintage with a front-end crank to start its explosive engine. A silver Bugatti Type 37A Grand Prix antique masterpiece with its red leather two-seat interior and spare tire strapped to the long front end that encompasses a powerful for-its-time engine. You can see a model of that engine outside its handsomely designed housing. It stands right next to the “Leaping Kangaroo.” And for sound effects you can press a couple of buttons to hear the roar of each Bugatti Grand Prix racer.

But for sheer engineering artistry, it’s hard, perhaps impossible, to beat the elegantly sleek designs of the Bugatti roadsters of the 1930s. These cars and the others in this exhibit are from the collection of Judge John C. North of Easton, and have never before been exhibited in a museum setting.  Lee Glazer, AAM’s Senior Curator, curated the exhibition, and Ken Gross is the guest Curator

You can see that the Bugatti Type 57 Atalante coupe on display at Academy Art shows was previously owned in that the driver and passenger seats are a bit cracked, while the classic exterior lines are so captivatingly authentic that they rise above minor seat imperfections. The companion virtuoso vehicle, the Bugatti 57SC Atlantic sports model, gleams in showroom fresh splendor, with its pristine interior and peek-a-boo peek into its awesome engineering artistry. Surely, the Bugattis – Etorre and his son Jean – knew how to make beautiful cars way back then. But imagine trying to insure one. Not to mention mileage. Way better to experience these Bugattis as museum artifacts. Admission is free.

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To accommodate this never-seen-before exhibition at AAM, the annual museum members show has moved to the next-door Waterfowl Building.

The first object you encounter on arrival is Loretta Loman’s “Organic Farm” glazed stoneware ceramic that, to me, deserved an award. But Loman compensated as hers was one of the first  artworks sold. Just to the right of her piece is Anne Sharp’s Best in Show oil portrait “Eunice” of a woman in a red turban. Best painting went to James Plumb for his nearby still-life, “Three Garlics and Water” oil on canvas.

Other winners include Stephen Walker’s Best Eastern Shore Scene primitive-style oil, “Smoke Break”; Best Landscape, actually a seascape by James Sharf, for his “Normandy Coast Gale” oil; Liam Swadler’s Sporting Award for his “Dock Dog” digital photo of a pooch fresh from a Waterfowl Festival water dive; Best in Ceramics for Karen Bailor’s “World View,” an odd-shaped mouth to a vase; Judy Wolgast’s Best Print winner for her “Snowscape” aquatint reflection of trees on an icy surface; Bridget Sullivan’s Best in Mixed Media for her “Ancestral” allegory; the Trippe Gallery Work on Paper Award to Barrie Barnett’s “Sheep in Winter,” in need of a shearing; Excellence in Photography award to George Sass’ soft-focus “Rolling Tide”; Best in Wood to Terance John for his enigmatic “Memories #19”; Best in Fiber to Susan Fay Schauer of Zebra Gallery for her “Ajidamoonh,” squirrel with a paisley tail; and Best Contemporary Art for “Serengeti,” a collage-and-acrylic abstract by Susan Thomas.

All the framed images are within the 12-by-12-inch limits or variable computations therein. Considering the ample space inside the Waterfowl Building, those limits seem, well, limiting as compared to available space in the museum galleries. Better coordination next year, should the members’ show return to the Waterfowl Building, evacuated after the annual mid-November festival, could work better for all concerned.

‘Bugatti: Reaching for Perfection’