Ringling International Arts Festival's Opening Night : A Perfect Beginning

[Amy Warren, LMHC / WQ Mag Columnist]

The stars were aligned for Opening Night of the Ringling International Arts Festival, and event organizers aligned them perfectly. Pre-performance champagne toasts in theater lobbies began the evening with sparkle that carried throughout the evening. As The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art and Baryshnikov Arts Center partnered for the festival, the Night of Premieres included four world premiere performances: solos by Mikhail Baryshnikov and David Neumann, “Opera Baroque” by renowned Forman Brothers Theatre, a Phillip Glass composition performed by violinist Tim Fain, and “Hurricane” by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz.

The premiere “Hurricane” which I attended was a soulful depiction of the traumatic effects of a hurricane on a family formed by circumstances and bound by love. Packed with the emotion provoked by a loved one’s dissociative fugue, Cruz’s script conveys the displacement of the family and the attempt to reconnect. Staging the play in the Historic Asolo Theater served to make the play even more intimate. Well-acted with only three cast members, the play was directed by Michael Donald Edwards, producing artistic director of the Asolo Repertory Theatre. There will be three other opportunities to see “Hurricane” during the festival.

Any event in The John and Mabel Ringling Museum of Art’s courtyard has one thing going for it – the enchanting courtyard. But from a captivating fireworks display in the sky behind the statue of David to a scrumptious feast and dancing to the sounds of a live band whose name I wish I knew, this post-performance gala, which also marked the opening of the cultural season, seemed to have everything going for it. Ringling Museum’s restaurant Treviso did a superb job of catering an event for hundreds of the 1200 people who attended the night's premieres, with one guest remarking that the food alone was worth the ticket price. With table after table of food choices from melt-in-your mouth filet mignon to crab legs, there was something to delight everyone.

Both the energy around the festival and the gala itself were reminiscent of the good old days of the Sarasota Film Festival before the change in leadership. And as any Opening Night should, it left me hungry for the rest for the Ringling International Arts Festival., With 11 shows and 45 stage productions of theatre, music and dance, fortunately, there's still much to devour.