The 60-year-old entertainer was selected for the annual fete in Cambridge because he has made an “indelible mark on the world as an actor, comedian, and filmmaker,” the Hasty Pudding Theatricals organization said in a statement. Odenkirk is also known for his work on “Breaking Bad” and “Mr. Show,” and won an Emmy for his writing on “Saturday Night Live.”
“When choosing our 2023 Man of the Year, I immediately knew we better call Bob Odenkirk,” producer Aidan Golub said. “We’re cooking up a lot of surprises to celebrate Mr. Odenkirk’s contributions to the world of comedy both in front of and behind the camera.”
The Hasty Pudding production put on by the third oldest theater organization in the world will include a celebratory roast in burlesque fashion. It will take place on February 2 at Farkas Hall in Harvard Square.
Previous recipients of the Man of the Year award include Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood, Samuel L. Jackson, Harrison Ford and last year’s honoree Jason Bateman.
The actor, comedian, filmmaker will receive his Pudding Pot at a Feb. 2 celebratory roast
Hasty Pudding Theatricals, the oldest theatrical organization in the U.S., has named actor, comedian, filmmaker, and author Bob Odenkirk its Man of the Year.
Odenkirk has won numerous awards for the character he originated in the television drama “Breaking Bad” and reprised in “Better Call Saul.” Recently he produced and starred in the action thriller “Nobody” and released a memoir that made The New York Times best-seller list.
“When choosing our 2023 Man of the Year, I immediately knew we better call Bob Odenkirk,” said producer Aidan Golub. “We’re cooking up a lot of surprises to celebrate Mr. Odenkirk’s contributions to the world of comedy both in front of and behind the camera.”
The Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ Man and Woman of the Year Awards are presented annually to performers who have made lasting and impressive contributions to the world of entertainment.
This year’s festivities will take place at 6 p.m. on Feb. 2 at Farkas Hall, the Pudding’s historic home in Harvard Square. After a celebratory roast, Odenkirk will receive his Pudding Pot. A press conference will follow the roast, and Odenkirk will attend a preview of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals’ 174th production, “Cosmic Relief.”
The Man of the Year award was established in 1967, with past recipients including Clint Eastwood, Tom Hanks, Robert De Niro, Harrison Ford, Samuel L. Jackson, Ryan Reynolds, and last year’s recipient, Jason Bateman, the 55th Man of the Year.
Odenkirk’s work on “Better Call Saul” (2015-2022) earned him three Critics Choice TV Awards and Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG Award nominations. For his work on “Saturday Night Live,” he garnered an Emmy award for “Outstanding Writing in a Variety or Music Program” in 1989. He co-created and starred in “Mr. Show with Bob and David,” which ran on HBO for four years (1985-1989) and has been called “the American Monty Python.” Next he stars and executive produces the mid-life crisis tale “Lucky Hank,” headed for television in March.
“When I heard that Bob Odenkirk would be Man of the Year, I thought, ‘“Lucky Hank?” More like lucky us!’ It’s funny, get it? Because Bob Odenkirk will be our Man of the Year. Wait, this isn’t actually going in the press release, right?” said Hasty Pudding President Lyndsey Mugford.
The tall front doors of 2 Arrow St. in Cambridge have been shuttered for almost three years. With little fanfare, David Altshuler unlocks the entrance and ushers me inside.
“Well, welcome to our space,” he says.
The foyer has been stripped bare. A ladder leans against one wall, and some of the wiring is showing. Gone is the narrow hallway that once led to the nightclub in the building’s belly. Now light filters through big windows.
In its most recent incarnation, this space was OBERON, the American Repertory Theater’s beloved second stage on the edge of Harvard Square. For more than a decade, it played host to drag queens and burlesque dancers and, most famously, the Shakespeare-meets-Studio-54 extravaganza known as “The Donkey Show.”
The A.R.T. announced in 2021 that it would not renew its lease at 2 Arrow St. as it prepared to move to a new campus in Allston. Many wondered what would happen to the theater. Would Harvard University, which owns the building, sell it off? Redevelop it? Rent it out to another theater company?
Now, Altshuler and his newly-formed nonprofit, Arrow Street Arts, have big plans for the space.
Altshuler leads us through the foyer into the theater itself, which has been gutted: no more catwalk, no more bar. The floor has been ripped up to reveal smooth concrete.
The plan, helmed by Charles Rose Architects, is to transform the warehouse-like room into a black box theater — a simple, flexible space that can be converted into various staging configurations.
Altshuler shows me a set of plans for the seating. The idea is to have seats that can be hidden away or pulled out from the wall, kind of like the bleachers in a high school gym.
“It’ll be a telescopic seating system so you can actually have it be either, you know, 12 rows deep and 240 seats, or it might just be three or six rows deep,” he says, excitedly. “The audience gets sized to what’s appropriate to that show.”
In addition to the black box, Altshuler is converting an empty storefront next door into a studio that will double as a small venue — 1,100 square feet with a capacity of approximately 100. A row of picture windows at the street level will allow passers-by to see inside.
Altshuler expects to invest $2.5 million, much of it his own, into the renovations. He describes it as kind of a “blank canvas” that producers can set up in every configuration imaginable.
“The space, as envisioned, is going to be this flexible multi-art space where, sure, it could be a nightclub one night, it could also be a dance recital, or it could be a straight play, or it could be a set of performing artists,” he says.
Altshuler is an entrepreneur with a background in tech, finance and nonprofit leadership. (Not to be confused with the other Boston-based David Altshuler, a pharmaceutical executive.) But this project is driven in part by his wife, Sharman Altshuler, the founder of Moonbox Productions. The small theater company has an annual operating budget of approximately $600,000 and won numerous awards. But Altshuler says she struggled to find a consistent place to put on shows.
“For years, I’ve sort of fantasized about the idea of, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have, you know, your own space.’ And it was always like, ‘forget it,’” Altshuler says. “Financially, it just doesn’t make sense to have a physical plant as a small theater organization.”
Then she heard that Oberon was closing. She recalls having a conversation about it with her husband.
Arrow Street Arts in Cambridge will include a small performance space at 2 Arrow St. (Robin Lubbock/WBUR)
“And I said, ‘It’s such a great local theater, and wouldn’t it be cool if they actually end up staying a theater, and maybe Moonbox could do something,’” she says.
Her husband took the lead on the competitive process of selling the idea to Harvard. He pitched a plan with Moonbox as a resident theater company, using the space about a third of the time. The Cambridge Community Foundation is also a partner on the project.
Harvard declined a request for an interview, but said in a statement, “Harvard ultimately chose Moonbox because we were confident they could be a long-term partner, because of their team’s track record and financial, operational and creative capacity to succeed in such a project, and because of their goals for activation, community involvement and a diversity of projects.”
The Cambridge Community Foundation is charged with helping Arrow Street Arts find other local presenters to use the space.
“The idea is that we will reach out deeply into the community,” says Cambridge Community Foundation president Geeta Pradhan. “We will bring community groups in, have conversations with them as people, you know, make sure that they know about this opportunity.”
Arrow Street Arts hopes to subsidize an affordable rental model with private events. The Cambridge Community Foundation will also administer a fund, bankrolled by Arrow Street Arts. The fund will offer grants to groups that want to use the space but can’t afford to, “so that smaller groups, particularly BIPOC organizations and theater groups, can actually, we can subsidize the cost of their ability to be able to produce here,” Pradhan says.
Arrow Street Arts will also help raise money for the foundation’s Cultural Capital Fund, which supports creative work throughout the city.
The foundation got involved because it wanted to help address a huge problem for the arts in Cambridge: the loss of space. Pradhan points to studies from the city of Boston and the Mayor’s Arts Task Force in Cambridge that showed a dire need for rehearsal space and mid-size performance venues in the Boston area.
“Improv Boston, they lost their space. Green Street Studios lost their space. EMF building redevelopment resulted in a loss of space for musicians,” Pradhan says.
Arrow Street Arts will fill the void left by another big loss, the closure of Oberon — though Altshuler’s black box is different from its nightclub-like predecessor. It’s hard to predict if Oberon’s burlesque and circus performers will want to use the new space.
But some local producers are excited by the new design.
“The difficulty with Oberon was wing space, dressing room space. It was not an easy facility, production-wise,” says Sehnaz Dirik, the founder of Theater UnCorked, a small community theater. “The updating of the green room, the dressing rooms, all of that stuff for an actor is really important.”
Accommodating performers is a big part of the theater’s design. But Altshuler also wants to make the space super accessible. His plans include wider seats, more legroom and a perfectly smooth floor for wheelchair use. One of the most expensive renovations involves building all-gender restrooms with individual enclosed stalls.
“When an audience member or an artist comes here, do they feel welcome,” Altshuler says of the design philosophy. “Do they feel like they belong in the space?”
There’s a lot of work to do before that question can be answered. Altshuler has to hire a staff and finish the renovations. If all goes as planned, Arrow Street Arts will open fully at the end of the year.
CAMBRIDGE — The building formerly occupied by the American Repertory Theater’s performance space Oberon has a new tenant.
Harvard University, which owns the property at 2 Arrow St., announced it has signed a long-term lease with Arrow Street Arts, Inc., a new nonprofit that plans to open a 300-seat black box theater and a smaller, street-front studio by the end of the year.
The brick building at the edge of Harvard Square will become the new home of Moonbox Productions, a lauded local theater company that has staged productions in nine different venues since its first show — “Godspell” — at the Brattle Theatre in 2011.
In addition, Arrow Street Arts and the Cambridge Community Foundation have devised a grant program to help subsidize use of the new venture by fledgling local producers and artists who, increasingly, are being priced out of smaller practice and performance spaces by the city’s rising rents.
“There’s an acute awareness of the shortage of space,” said Arrow Street Arts founder David Altshuler, a Cambridge resident and arts patron who has been a trustee of the Huntington Theatre and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. “So when Harvard said Oberon was leaving, it became obvious that this was a great chance to be able to do something really wonderful.”
But it won’t happen overnight. Pandemic-related supply-chain problems are slowing renovations, and while Moonbox is expected to account for about a quarter of the venue’s use, the rest of the programming — likely to include local producers, community groups, and corporate events — is TBD.
“We’re going to be heterogeneous,” said Altshuler, whose wife, Sharman Altshuler, is Moonbox’s producing artistic director and founder. “We come to this project with a sense of curiosity, and part of the thrill is we don’t know exactly what it’s going to be like five years from now.
“But we’re excited to figure it out,” he said, adding that the 1,100-square-foot, street-front studio will open first and the 4,500-square-foot black box theater in the fall.
Oberon, which closed in December 2021, operated as ART’s secondary stage for a dozen years, hosting a variety of shows — from fringe theater and drag performances to a memorable reimagining of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and its marquee production, “The Donkey Show.” But with ART’s decision to develop a new state-of-the-art facility in Allston, the building at 2 Arrow St. became available.
In a statement, Sean Caron, Harvard’s vice president for campus services, said the university wanted a tenant who would carry on Oberon’s “legacy of contributing to the local Cambridge arts scene with inclusion and vibrancy.”
Sharman Altshuler said she’s looking forward to finally having a fixed home for her company’s shows, which have garnered some stellar reviews and six Elliot Norton Awards over the past decade. (Its 2019 production of “Parade” won three Norton Awards — outstanding musical production, outstanding musical performance by an actor, and outstanding musical direction.)
Lately, Moonbox has been mounting its shows at the Boston Center for the Arts, but in 2019 and 2021 the company staged “Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the former site of the mom-and-pop candy shop Hidden Sweets in Harvard Square.
“The big difference for us is that by being the resident company here, we’ll have a lot more control over our schedule,” Sharman Altshuler said. “So we can plan not just the season ahead, but a couple of seasons ahead. At the BCA, we’re one of many companies, so we have to work our way around.”
Sharman Altshuler, who worked as a veterinarian for several years before indulging her interest in theater, added that Moonbox’s tradition of partnering with nonprofits will continue at the new place. Since the first performance of “Godspell,” when members of the anti-gang-violence program StreetSafe Boston spoke from the stage before the show, Moonbox has made showcasing the work of nonprofits part of its mission.
Geeta Pradhan, president of the Cambridge Community Foundation, said the closing of Green Street Studios and the EMF building, where dozens of musicians once rehearsed, has hurt the city’s arts scene. But, she said, the investment being made by Arrow Street Arts — about $2.5 million has been raised for renovations — and her foundation’s commitment to help subsidize artists who might not otherwise be able to get their foot in the door, is positive.
“It’s a really exciting start of something,” Pradhan said.
This is the Foos’ first major concert announcement since the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins.
Foo Fighters hinted on New Year’s Eve that they’ll “soon” return to the stage, following the death last year of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins. Now, we have at least one venue. The Dave Grohl-led band are set to headline the opening night of Boston Calling, Live Nation’s three-day festival in Harvard Square, on May 26.
Boston Calling is the Foos’ first major performance to be announced since Hawkins’ death last March in Bogota, Colombia. The Lumineers, the alt-folk hit makers from Denver, will headline Saturday night while alt-rock darlings Paramore, poised to release their sixth studio album, This is Why, will close out the festival with a set on Sunday, May 28.
The weekend also offers festivalgoers the chance to hear new sounds, a Boston Calling hallmark since the festival’s 2013 debut. Look for Chelsea Cutler, LÉON, Fletcher, 070 Shake, Teddy Swims, Joy Oladokun, The Linda Lindas, The Beaches, Brutus, Genesis Owusu and The Aces, to name a few.
New to the fest this year is the GA+ experience. General Admission pass-holders can step up their experience and add the GA+ upgrade to their ticket to gain unlimited access to the event’s Thomas Tew VIP Reserve Lounge, an oasis within the grounds including access to a cash bar featuring craft cocktails, plus an expanded beer & wine menu and complimentary water and soft drinks.
Specially priced presale 3-Day general admission, GA+, VIP, and platinum tickets, as well as single day GA, GA+, VIP and platinum tickets are on sale this Thursday, Jan. 12 at 10:00am ET. More information can be found here.
CAMBRIDGE — Rick Jenkins expected the Comedy Studio to be back in business by now, but the hassles and high cost of reopening the celebrated club have been no joke.
Faced with increased construction costs, COVID-related ventilation requirements, and supply-chain snafus, Jenkins was forced to postpone the Comedy Studio’s return to Harvard Square and to seek donations to bridge a $100,000 shortfall.
“Everything is just more expensive than we anticipated,” said Jenkins.
For two decades starting in 1996, the Comedy Studio occupied an attic space above the Hong Kong Restaurant in Harvard Square, establishing itself as a destination for comics and audiences alike. Eugene Mirman, Gary Gulman, Sam Jay, Jen Kirkman, Mike Birbiglia, Ali Wong, Anthony Jeselnik, and Sarah Silverman are just a few of the funny folks who worked there.
WakuWaku Ramen & Sake celebrated its grand opening yesterday in an event featuring live music from a DJ and futuristic decor.
Located on 33 Brattle St., the Harvard Square location launched in a soft opening last Tuesday and is the second WakuWaku ramen establishment ever built. The first WakuWaku restaurant opened in the spring of 2021 in Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood.
Along with a diverse selection of ramen and sake, the restaurant’s offerings include shaved ice, specialty salads, and chicken karaage.
On opening night, customers entered through the restaurant’s black curtains before being transported to what they called a “unique” and “cyberpunk” space adorned with neon lights. Local resident Efim Karlson wrote in a statement that it “felt like a full-size celebration” and that the food was “phenomenal.”
Classic electronic dance music hits played before DJ Tao, a Boston-based entertainer, took the stage later in the evening.
With a DJ setup on the second floor, Dixon Leung, operating partner in charge of Harvard Square’s Waku Waku, said that the restaurant has plans to host a DJ around two times a week.
This year’s BCMFest Nightcap concert features the “Boston Celtic All-Stars” – Clockwise from top left, Katie McNally, Jenna Moynihan, Shannon Heaton, Natasha Sheehy, Christine Morrison, Rebecca McGowan, Janine Randall, and Bethany Waickman.
For two decades, BCMFest (Boston Celtic Music Fest) has spotlighted some of the Greater Boston area’s best musicians, singers, and dancers in the Irish, Scottish, Cape Breton, and other Celtic and Celtic-related traditions. The all-ages festival will celebrate its 20th year with four days of concerts, sessions, and other special events from Jan. 12 through Jan. 15.
Among BCMFest 2023’s highlights will be a concert featuring the “Boston Celtic All-Stars,” including Katie McNally, Jenna Moynihan, Shannon Heaton, Natasha Sheehy, Bethany Waickman, Janine Randall, Rebecca McGowan, and Christine Morrison – all of whom have performed at the festival over the years.
Other BCMFest favorites coming to the 20th anniversary bash will be Matt & Shannon Heaton; Copley Street; Katie McNally & Friends; Jenna Moynihan; Scottish Fish; Molly Pinto Madigan; the Boston Scottish Fiddle Orchestra; Elizabeth & Ben Anderson; Fódhla; Leland Martin & Friends; Casey Murray & Molly Tucker; the Medford All-Star Ceili Band; Maura Shawn Scanlin & Friends; David Healy, Nathan Gourley and Eamon Sefton; and the Carroll Sisters Trio.
Also confirmed for BCMFest 2023 are: James Kelly & Ryan Douglas; Sarah Collins & Jonathan Vocke; Kate Gregory & Brendan Hearn; Loud Weather; David McKindley-Ward; Adam Hendey with Eamon Sefton and Simon Lace; and the duo Mrs. Wilberforce.
BCMFest will be centered around Club Passim in Harvard Square (47 Palmer Street), with the First Round and Roots & Branches evening concerts on, respectively, Jan. 12 and 13 and a marathon “Dayfest” on Jan. 14, as well as The BCMFest Brunch on Jan. 15. The Sinclair (52 Church Street) will be the venue for the Jan. 14 BCMFest Nightcap with the Boston Celtic All-Stars.
Also on the schedule is BCMFest’s perennially popular Celtic dance party, The Boston Urban Ceilidh, on Jan. 13 at The Crystal Ballroom in Somerville, and participatory sessions at the Cambridge First Parish Church on Jan. 14.
Flute/whistle player and vocalist Shannon Heaton, who co-founded the festival with fiddler Laura Cortese, recently recalled how she and her husband Matt moved to Boston in 2001 and quickly made themselves at home among the various music sessions around town. But while being in an Irish music “bubble” was “glorious,” she said, “I also loved hanging with Laura and other non-Irish players when we’d end up at parties and concerts.”
So when she and Cortese happened to bump into one another in Davis Square one afternoon in 2003, they wound up hatching an idea to bring the area’s various Celtic music and dance communities together.
“We thought about creating a weekend where we’d all deliberately intersect and collaborate. We’d invite all the Irish, Scottish, and Cape Breton musicians. And we’d pull in dancers and singers, too, since back then there wasn’t as much footwork or singing at the sessions,” said Heaton. “Boom: BCMFest.”
In addition to recruiting their musician friends and acquaintances to perform at that first festival, Heaton and Cortese also enlisted the aid of venues like Club Passim, The Burren, and the Canadian American Club to provide performance and participation space. The results were everything that the pair had envisioned, and more.
“I loved seeing and hearing everybody all mixed together, all taking turns to play and listen, all supporting one another,” said Heaton. “And there were some acts that had really taken on our invitation to ‘experiment, to try something new.’ We got people collaborating, just by putting all the different trad communities together in one space. Different styles, different ages. It felt way bigger than just the two of us organizing some weird concert.”
McNally, who has taken the lead in organizing the Boston Celtic All-Stars ensemble, said her vision for the Nightcap concert was inspired by “the BCMFest principles and goals that have been part of the festival from the beginning, especially the idea of uniting the Celtic music communities in the Boston area. So I wanted to be sure that the concert had the Scottish, Irish, and Cape Breton components, and keep everything in balance, including music and dance.”
She also thought about those “who have represented the festival over the years – people from different generations coming together, which is another important value of the festival,” citing Heaton as well as Randall, “who has been part of the Cape Breton vanguard in Boston for years, and has such a strong connection to traditional music.” Moynihan’s inventive Scots-style fiddling represents new directions in Celtic music, McNally added, while Sheehy is a fine exemplar of the traditional Irish accordion sound. McNally said featuring dance traditions in the Nightcap concert also was a must, hence the inclusion of stalwarts McGowan (Irish) and Morrison (Cape Breton/Scottish).
McNally, who was 13 when BCMFest started, has appeared in almost every edition of the festival since then. She’s grateful for the positive impact it had on her as a young musician who had only been playing for a few years when she first performed there.
“I found BCMFest so fun and welcoming, and I just remember learning lots of lessons about traditional music and how it could be played and presented. There were special events like the Boston Urban Ceilidh, which is so fun, energetic, and bright, and then creative, wacky bands like Tradbot. It was also where I learned reverence for older musicians who were rooted in the tradition; BCMFest was unique in that way, because not a lot of festivals made that kind of room for traditional players.”
The blending of generations, as well as “tradition bearers” and more modern-influenced performers, continues to be a hallmark of BCMFest, said Heaton.
“I love the huge age span. I love that there are acts that have come out of local colleges who play really well and maybe are newer to traditional music; and there are also passionate amateurs and community music schools who also bring such beauty to the weekend.”
BCMFest is a program of Passim, a Cambridge-based non-profit that supports a vibrant music community through Club Passim, music school, artist grants and outreach initiatives.
Updates, ticket information, performer bios and other festival details will be available at passim.org/bcmfest.
CAMBRIDGE — Club Passim’s Boston Celtic Music Festival returns for a 20th year Jan. 12-15 after two years of virtual performances.
Fans can enjoy more than 30 Celtic concerts, workshops, songs, and dance sessions during the festival. Events take place at Club Passim, The Sinclair, the First Parish Church in Harvard Square, and the Crystal Ballroom at Somerville Theatre in Davis Square.
Don’t miss the Boston Urban Ceilidh on Jan. 13, featuring instructional and participatory dances for people of all ages — no experience needed — and showcasing Irish, Cape Breton, and Scottish traditions (starts at 7:30 p.m.; $20 per person).
Dayfest on Jan. 14 offers concerts and workshops that focus on the different music styles, instruments, and techniques used in Celtic performances, while Nightcap Finale features a talented all-women, all-star ensemble ($28 per person for Dayfest, $28 for Nightcap Finale).
Wrap up the four-day event with Brunch and Tunes on Jan. 15, from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; no tickets required. Go to www.passim.org/bcmfest for more details.
