This week Dot residents are sharing their talents in music, theater and graphics with the whole city. 

Young String Players
About 60 violin students from the Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy will join the Boston Classical Orchestra for the BCO’s 6th Annual Anne W. Hiatt Memorial Youth & Family Concert tomorrow, May 6 at 9:45 a.m. at the Strand Theatre. The JP2 third –fifth graders will be playing “Amazing Grace” and Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” This will mark the second Youth Concert appearance for the young string-players under the direction of Fine Arts Director Mary Swanton.

The BCO will do familiar selections like a movement from Handel’s “Water Music,” from one of Haydn’s “London Symphonies,” and from Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” as well as livelier pieces like “Hoedown” from Copland’s “Rodeo” and the mambo from Bernstein’s “West Side Story.”

Among the 11 schools in attendance will be six from Dorchester: the four campuses of Pope John Paul II Catholic Academy, Mather School, Lilla G. Frederick Pilot Middle School and Academy 3. The event was coordinated by Sean Roberts, the BCO’s Executive Director, and Andrea Kunst, its Development Director, who live close to the Strand on Jones Hill.

Landry and the Gold Dust Orphans
Definitely not recommended for the kiddies is “Peter Pansy,” an outrageous re-imagining of the J. M. Barrie classic and one of two sassy spectacles opening soon from Ashmont parodist and performer Ryan Landry. Landry (as Captain Hook) and his Gold Dust Orphans will stage their version of this “story of a little boy who refused to butch up” Friday & Saturday nights at 8p.m., Sundays at 5p.m., May 6th - 29th at Machine Nightclub, 1254 Boylston Street.

On  Saturday, May 14 at 1 pm and again at 4, as part of the second annual Emerging America Festival at Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, the Gold Dust Orphans in collaboration with the Huntington Theatre Company will present “Psyched.” It’s Landry’s riff on Hitchcock’s “Psycho” as seen through the eyes of its most famous offstage character—Norman Bates’ mother. Longtime Landry collaboration Larry Coen plays “Norma.”

Landry, who has been a Huntington Playwriting Fellow since the fall of 2009,  has spoofed Hitchcock’s work before with “The Gulls,” his version of “The Birds” set in Provincetown. 

   
                              
Anti-Domestic Violence Paper Bags
Fields Corner artist Richard Inonog is partnering with the non-profit Close to Home in his most recent installation, “Take the Message Home,” at The Boston Common Coffee Co. on Salem Street in the North End. Sale of the artwork will benefit the Dot-based organization’s mission to foster community-wide responsibility to prevent and reduce the impact of domestic violence in Dorchester.

The installation, which is on display through May 20, is a collection of 19 hand-painted paper bags featuring images of wild animals and of the faces of famous women including Angela Davis, Audrey Hepburn, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

“The topic of domestic violence is uncomfortable to some,” said Inonog. “Close to Home helped inspire me to have the courage to openly talk about this issue. With this project, I hope to inspire a person to take the message home; it may help save an entire household.”

Close To Home and Inonog are planning a summer program for local youth. He will teach participants how to screen print their own brown paper bags, which will be donated to local Dot restaurants as a “Take Home” bag, complete with a domestic violence prevention message.