Hanging against the white walls of the SEABA Gallery on Pine Street in Burlington, Robert Hitzig’s geometric wooden sculptures glow with a subtle sheen. Up close, the layers of tinted shellac magnify the natural grain of the wood. Viewers may have an urge to run a hand across their surfaces, just to see if the pale color hides any imperfections. But, tempting as it may be, don’t ask Hitzig what his floor-laying schedule is. These days, his oeuvre is form, not function.

“I get plenty of requests about doing floors for people when they see my work — and I always have to say no,” Hitzig says with a slight grin. “I like to take wood into the fine-art realm and make it look like art, rather than furniture or something functional.”

That hasn’t always been the case. Working first as an agroforester for the Peace Corps and then for 10 years with the Environmental Protection Agency, Hitzig spent years thinking about forests and timber in a practical way. He indulged in a furniture-making hobby for a while. And then, in 2007, he got tired of function.

Originally appeared in the print version of Seven Days on Jan. 18, 2012.

Theater audiences can’t help but shift to the edge of their seats when they hear these four sounds: Thump … thump … thump … creeeeeeeeeeeeeak. The combination conjures up images of castles, Igor and ominous wooden doors with deadbolts, doesn’t it?

That’s exactly what Foley, or sound-effects, artist Buzz Moran will be counting on in an upcoming performance of The Intergalactic Nemesis at Burlington’s Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. Originally a live radio play in Austin, Tex., and now a touring stage show, Nemesis is billed as a live-action graphic novel. The sci-fi story, set in 1933, features a reporter and her assistant, a mysterious librarian, and sludge monsters from the planet Zygon that are, of course, threatening planet Earth. Hence the “intergalactic nemesis.”

The show is performed with three stationary actors, one keyboard player and one Foley artist. The stage backdrop features more than 1000 hand-drawn comic-book images projected in high def.

Most kids want to run away to join the circus at some stage in their lives. Lorenzo Pisoni ran away from the circus —  in footie pajamas.

The  mental picture of a young Lorenzo shuffling down the highway in PJs is humorous, but the scenario is representative of the serious themes behind the schtick: the father-son relationship on view in Philadelphia Theatre Company's one-man show Humor Abuse. Directed by Pisoni's college friend Erica Schmidt, Humor Abuse is a mostly true account of Pisoni's childhood growing up the son of two circus performers. Throughout the production, Pisoni performs pratfalls and physical gags, falls off of ladders, springs out of trunks, wears flippers, does back flips and employs an entire repertoire of physical humor — all of it handed down from his father, the professional clown Larry Pisoni.

The physical timing is first-rate, and Pisoni's 20 years of circus training and performance serves him well in this production. It's entirely possible to treat Humor Abuse as a behind-the-scenes tour of your very own circus, but the show also places a father-son relationship literally in the spotlight, showing the ragged edges hidden behind even the most sequined performers.

     Although spaced a decade apart and both hopelessly outdated, 1978's movie version of "Grease" and 1987's "Dirty Dancing" still exert an irresistible pull. It's hard to pinpoint the source of the attraction — certainly, Patrick Swayze and John Travolta were cute, but the films really succeeded on the strength of their characters: While behaving badly and acting like punk teenagers, they still exuded a powerful charisma that made thousands of teens want to get up and dance.
   That vital blend of attitude and charm was sadly lacking in last week's performance of Grease at the Academy of Music. The cast may have felt compromised by the substitution of its Danny Zuko for understudy Mark Raumaker, but the entire performance felt both coarsely performed and outdated.
    While the actors onstage played their guts out on the energy level, nailing that hand jive and cheesy dance moves, the main characters felt like carbon-copies of the 1978 film, but with a much less finely tuned realization of what makes Danny and his gang "cool" or Rizzo and her girls strut. As a result, the beloved tunes and familiar choreography felt as out-of-date as Danny's ex-girlfriends.

The real-life character of Edith Bouvier Beale is too often faulted for the disgrace of the Beale family estate, and of her own daughter, Edie. 
    “You have become that most pitiable of creatures: an actress without a stage,” says Major Bouvier to Edith, castigating his daughter for their dysfunctional family dynamics. Yet one can argue that the blatant disregard shown by Edith’s father and by Edith’s absent husband toward her talent and character is the true cause for blame in the musical Grey Gardens, on stage at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre through June 28.
    The infamous story of the Beales, originally immortalized in the 1975 documentary by Albert and David Maysles, is told here with an expanded ticket of songs performed by two of the most tragic divas to have ever graced the high-society circles of New York.  
    The true story of Edith Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edie, aunt and cousin to Jackie Bouvier Kennedy and keepers of the immense mansion Grey Gardens, is recited in whispers: Two formerly wealthy Kennedy relatives end up the sole occupants of a dilapidated, filthy mansion unfit for habitation, carrying on in a manner that suggests mental instability and possible insanity. The newspapers were relentless when the Board of Health discovered them in 1973, house-bound and living amid a sea of feral cats, opossums, raccoons and cans of cat food piled 5 feet high.