From the Magazine

Fifty years ago, a ragtag group of queer women launched the Atlanta Lesbian Feminist Alliance, upending Georgia’s leftist politics with protest, performance—and plenty of softball.

Joyce Carol Oates brings an unparalleled body of work to discuss as the keynote speaker, but don’t stop with the marquee event.

Today’s third graders may turn up their noses at any toy that doesn’t contain a microchip, but fortunately for Atlanta-based Westminster Inc., their parents have no such scruples. Apparently whoopee cushions and potato guns are timeless.

In 1982 michael horne and Palmer Wells opened Theatre in the Square in the former banquet hall of the old Marietta Depot restaurant. IBM employees by day, they soon realized why the word "depot" was part of the name. The C&S locomotives would rumble down the tracks bordering downtown Marietta so often, they probably could have qualified for membership in the actors’ union. The train noise would sometimes distract from a comedic or tender moment, but I always remember the times when the thundering roars would embellish a scene of high tension, as if the elements were lending a soundtrack.This year Theatre in the Square finally ran out of steam. The 2008 economic slump dramatically reduced contributions to the company, leading to huge debts, unpaid rent, and difficulty even meeting staff payroll. On March 19 its board voted to shut down.Pearl Cleage’s "Flyin’ West" unexpectedly became the final production of the small suburban company that maintained impressive standards for three decades. In my years as a theater critic, I saw more than ninety productions at the Marietta playhouse, from Bill Murphey playing about forty roles in the one-man comedy "Fully Committed" to Jessica Phelps West burning Suzi Bass’s hands with a hot plate in the harrowing "Beauty Queen of Leenane." In fact, it was Theatre in the Square that sparked my interest in the stage.As a film buff in high school in 1983, I noticed that the mystery "Sleuth" was playing in Marietta, and I was curious to see a live version of such a smart, twisty movie. After years of being dragged to theaters, "Sleuth" was the first play I ever saw on my own. It was a revelation to see the action from the front row of an eighty-five-seat playhouse. And while big theaters like the Alliance or the Fox resembled museums or palaces, Theatre in the Square felt more like visiting somebody’s home.At the time, Wells and Horne were learning by doing. “We had no strategic plan,” says Wells. “We scheduled our first season so a show would close on Sunday and the next would open the following Thursday night, so we’d have to build the sets in the space in the meantime. Sometimes we’d work on a set all night, then get up and go to work at IBM in the morning.”In 1985 the pair moved the theater to a larger (but no less train-proof) space on nearby Whitlock Avenue. Theatre in the Square built a loyal audience, programming crowd-pleasers while also showcasing provocative but accessible new work. Unquestionably the company’s signature style belonged to sunny comedies with Southern twangs, and even its tamest and most commercial scripts drew energy from the Atlanta area’s funniest actors.Theatre in the Square’s audience couldn’t get enough of "Smoke on the Mountain," in which the hapless Sanders Family Singers perform an accident-prone show at a depression-era Baptist church. I saw it three times. "Smoke on the Mountain" may be the opposite of edgy, but Theatre in the Square’s renditions were so warm and well-acted, they gave "wholesome" a good name. The playhouse staged hundreds of productions of "Smoke" and its sequels, "Sanders Family Christmas" and "Mount Pleasant Homecoming," using the same actors so often they felt like a real family.Theatre in the Square might still be open if it had produced nothing but Sanders-style shows. But the company was never content to rely on the incessantly staged chestnuts that fill seats at the average community theater. Though never avant-garde by the standards of, say, 7 Stages in Little Five Points, at least once a season Theatre in the Square pushed the limits of what a Cobb County audience could

When we think of sculpture, noisemaking costumes crafted from found objects don’t usually come to mind. But Chicago-based artist Nick Cave has always defied categorization, creating works that straddle performance art, sculpture, and dance. Sponsored by Flux Projects, Cave’s new work, "Up Right Atlanta," is a collaboration with local choreographer T. Lang.

February means Valentine’s Day, which means romance, which now means swiping right. We asked some of the most popular dating apps to share some Atlanta-centric trends.

No one listens to classical gamelan music for the first time and thinks, “I’ve heard something like this before.” There’s nothing like it.

Despite stringent ordinances aimed at protecting those trees, our canopy faces a paradoxical new threat: renewed interest in urban living. Population growth within the city and a surge in denser development may represent eco-friendly shifts from Atlanta’s sprawl, but those trends are paired with infill development that puts trees at risk and reduces space to plant replacements.

If the name Shaky Boots, metro Atlanta’s new country music festival, sounds familiar, it’s because founder Tim Sweetwood also started the now-massive indie rock fest Shaky Knees three years ago. Here’s how Sweetwood’s two events stack up.

Hardy souls who attended early Art on the Atlanta BeltLine events clambered over abandoned rail lines and industrial right-of-ways. Back then, the idea of a twenty-two-mile transit loop through town seemed as fanciful as the kinetic sculptures on display.