{"id":64618,"date":"2015-10-27T21:34:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T21:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=64618"},"modified":"2020-05-20T14:01:55","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T21:01:55","slug":"arts-and-popular-culture-notes","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/?page_id=64618","title":{"rendered":"Arts and popular culture notes (2015)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"weekends<\/a>In addition to the stories by artists, composers and filmmakers in this section of the\u00a0jonestown report<\/em>, we learned of these other developments within the past year:<\/p>\n

Jonestown in Print<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>And Then They Were Gone<\/em>, the story of the teenagers from Peoples Temple who attended Opportunity High School in San Francisco from 1976 until their departure to Jonestown in the summer and fall of 1977, will be published in early 2016, according to the book\u2019s publisher, Sugartown Publishing. The book is written by Judy Bebelaar and Ron Cabral, two teachers at Opportunity High who have written extensively about their work on the manuscript, including in the 2014 edition of the jtr bulletin<\/em><\/a>. According to the publisher, \u201c[And Then They Were Gone<\/em>] provides the social context for understanding Opportunity, Peoples Temple, and Jonestown as part of a complex decade of turbulent cultural change.\u201d
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonestown in Performing Arts<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

<\/a>\u2022 On November 13 at 8:30PM EST, composer Evan Williams<\/a> will present a staged reading of his work Jonestown: A Multimedia Chamber Opera <\/em>at the Cohen Family Studio Theater at the University of Cincinnati\u2019s College-Conservatory of Music. One of the electronic interludes from the piece \u2013 featuring a track from He\u2019s Able<\/em>, and Jim Jones\u2019 voice \u2013 is\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A free reading was mounted with an all-volunteer cast, chorus, and ensemble. Acts I and II appear here<\/a>; Acts 3 and 4 appear here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr. Williams\u2019 reflections upon his work, which includes use of the Jonestown audiotapes collected by the FBI and available<\/a> on this site, are here<\/a>. A more complete discussion may be found on Mr. Williams’ website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 An \u201cimmersive experience\u201d designed by a Las Vegas theater group allowed participants to \u201crecreate Jonestown\u201d during a three-week run in the fall of 2014. For the production of Jonestown<\/em>, ticket buyers would learn the outdoor location of the evening\u2019s performance earlier in the day. When they arrived, they became members of Peoples Temple for the performance.<\/p>\n

The production met with mixed reviews.<\/p>\n

The Las Vegas Weekly<\/em><\/a>, which headlined its story “\u2018Jonestown\u2019 Fails as a Whole, But Has Some Impressively Creepy Moments,” described it as \u201ca skeletal ride, both in its ghoulishness and because it feels a little incomplete.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, the piece isn\u2019t built to support the weight of the final tragedy,\u201d the review concludes. \u201cJonestown<\/em> is a risky experiment, and while parts of it are impressively done, it feels like the show still has some issues to work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Las Vegas Review Journal<\/em><\/a> described the production as \u201cunique\u201d and \u201cintense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]here is uneveness because of an overly didactic first half and a lack of creepiness in the second. But the lovely outdoor setting heightens the reality feeling of the piece\u2026 Jonestown<\/em> gives a fresh new perspective to the theatrical experience.\u201d
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonestown in Film<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\u2022 The San Francisco Film Society recently announced<\/a> its support of Jones<\/em>, a film based on the life of Stephan Jones. The writer\/director for the film is Sally El Hosaini, whose debut feature My Brother the Devil<\/em> picked up major prizes at Berlin, Sundance and London Film Festivals.<\/p>\n

\u2022 An independent film production company announced<\/a> in late September 2015 that it had secured the rights to a screenplay by Jeffrey Goldman entitled Jonestown<\/em>. The movie is described as \u201cthe true story of the Reverend Jim Jones\u201d and is told in part through the eyes of a fictional teenager named Bethany Gibbs who joins Peoples Temple. Additional news about the production appeared<\/a> in mid-November.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonestown in Music<\/span><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

A number of musical artists and groups have incorporated the icons \u2013 and even the very name \u2013 of Jonestown into their own images in recent months. Among recent discoveries:<\/p>\n

\"asianfredlogo\"<\/a>\u2022 A new musical group from Tucson, Arizona called Asian Fred released its first single, The Jonestown Shuffle<\/a> in June 2015. In an interview with The Tucson Weekly<\/em>, bandleader Fred Huang described the song as \u201csort of a silly song about bad decisions and the self-loathing that follows.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 An experimental music group from Calgary, Alberta, once calling itself The Electric Kool-Aid Massacre \u2013 and now known as Jerry Rubin and His Communist Affiliations \u2013 produced at least one song related to its Jonestown reference before renaming itself. Fun In Jonestown<\/a>, a short track from its album of the same name<\/a>, includes snippets and distorted audio from the so-called Death Tape, was released in June 2015.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The band Peoples Temple, which issued its debut album in 2011, released two albums in 2014, including its first live studio album, Weekends Time<\/em>. The album cover may evoke a Beach Boys theme, as one review<\/a> said, but the music by the group from Lansing, Michigan \u201clean[s] closer to Big Star, Rolling Stones and Velvet Underground.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to the stories by artists, composers and filmmakers in this section of the\u00a0jonestown report, we learned of these other developments within the past year: Jonestown in Print And Then They Were Gone, the story of the teenagers from Peoples Temple who attended Opportunity High School in San Francisco from 1976 until their departure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":64612,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-64618","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64618"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98864,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64618\/revisions\/98864"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/64612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}