CULTURE SHOCK

Queen of the Night (Disambiguation): Queen of the Night may refer to: “Queen of the Night,” Whitney Houston jam with Living Colour’s Vernon Reid on lead guitar; from The Bodyguard (Original Soundtrack Album) Queen of the Night, villain in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. Her aria in the second act has become known as the Queen of the Night aria because, well, what else would you call it? Huh?…

An Exclusive from INSIDE magazine Listening to jazz vocalist Samara Joy sing, it’s a struggle to equate her voice and her age. Samara, who turned 26 in November, sings with the authority of someone twice her age – and with twice her experience. Her voice has a depth and richness of tone that ordinarily comes only with years and years of live performances and studio sessions. And while at least…

The 2026 Grammy Awards served as a significant turning point to how global artists are represented on the biggest stage in music. While the night delivered its usual mix of big performances, polished speeches and celebrity moments what truly stood out was how clearly the spotlight shifted toward artists and communities that have historically been celebrated on the margins rather than at the…

An Exclusive from INSIDE magazine Opera Tampa turns 30 this year and it’s definitely making the most of it. Its expanded season features four works instead of the usual three. Plus, there was a preseason production of Tom Sivak’s very darkly humorous Love v. Death, a two-part chamber opera about, well, love and death. Part One of this piece takes place in Florida and is based on the true story…

Bob Dylan’s 2006 album, Modern Times, kicked off with a track called “Thunder on the Mountain” which contains these lines: I was thinkin’ ‘bout Alicia Keys, couldn’t keep from cryingWhen she was born in Hell’s Kitchen, I was living down the lineI’m wondering where in the world Alicia Keys could beI been looking for her even clear through Tennessee. The verse brings up several questions: Why is…

Were there a Grammy® for least likely musical pairings, an April 2025 performance by Renée Fleming would be a strong contender. Renée Fleming, American soprano and actress Fleming, a soprano who is one of the best-known names in opera, sang with Dead and Company one evening during the band’s residency at Las Vegas’ The Sphere. Dead and Company features Grateful Dead members Bob Weir and Mickey…

In 1967, a 16-year-old from Tulsa, Oklahoma, quietly shifted the landscape of American literature. Susan Eloise Hinton, known more publicly as S.E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders from her bedroom while still in high-school. What began as a response to the fractures she observed among her peers—the invisible line between those with privilege and those without—became a novel that would ripple across…

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, or so the song says, and it’s certainly the busiest. Shopping, cooking, corralling and entertaining your out-of-school children – the festive season takes a lot of work. So we’re adding just one more chore to your to-do list, only because it can be done with a minimum of time and effort and is absolutely essential for us: Make a donation to Straz Center…

The Outsiders isn’t the first (or second or third) title that usually comes to mind when the subject of films directed by Francis Ford Coppola is mentioned. Everything Coppola has made that isn’t “The Godfather,” “The Godfather Part II” or “Apocalypse Now“ will find little space left in a limelight shared with those giants. “The Outsiders,” though, is a worthy entrée in Coppola’s catalog. It…

It would be easy to assume that every dance ensemble in the Western Hemisphere is presenting The Nutcracker this time of year. For quite a while, one of the few that didn’t was St. Louis’ Center of Creative Arts, to the annual dismay of then-head of its dance department, Antonio Douthit-Boyd. Next Generation Ballet’s Nutcracker The reasoning was that since in December you can’t toss a pointe…

Did Ralphie Parker grow up to be Lester the Nightfly? Yes. Sort of. We’ll explain. Ralphie Parker is the 9-year-old protagonist of A Christmas Story, The Musical, coming to Morsani Hall Nov. 28-30. The musical is based on the 1983 holiday movie perennial A Christmas Story, which is based on stories from Jean Shepherd’s In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, published in 1966. Shepherd calls…

In 1968, a heavyset, 6-foot-1-inch-tall gentleman calling himself Tiny Tim had a hit with his rendition of “Tip-Toe Thru’ the Tulips With Me.” He sang the song in a startlingly high falsetto, accompanying himself on a ukulele. A mere 40 years later, Jason Mraz scored a ukulele-centered hit with “I’m Yours,” which spawned a multitude of “How to Play ‘I’m Yours’” videos. The ukulele is not the…

The Turn of the Screw is one of the most enduring ghost stories and one of the least obvious. Its fright quotient comes from a sense of dread that builds to fear. The fear is brought on not by what’s seen but what isn’t. Or might have been. The 1898 novella by Henry James is filled with ambiguity and unanswered questions that leave it open to interpretation. Page one of the twelve-part…

Even after 50 years as an actor, Ann Morrison still gets the jitters. “Every night, I stand behind the curtain before it’s raised and think, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Ann said. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. It’s the audience,” Ann said. “I’m doing it for them, and they’re going to have a good time because I’m having a good time.” Ann Morrison in the national tour of Kimberly Akimbo. Photo by Joan…

An Exclusive from INSIDE Magazine Fences weren’t part of the original design of Straz Center, and they’re certainly not part of the renovation.  Fences don’t play much of a role in our past and future but, boy, are they ever-present in our present.  Straz is undergoing a major multimillion-dollar renovation that includes expanding education spaces for Patel Conservatory, refurbished lobbies…

Gibsonton, a community roughly 11 miles southeast of Tampa, became a winter haven for circus performers in the 1930s. Many of those Gibsonton snowbirds became full-time residents when they retired from the road. In 2021, another group of circus retirees began settling into their own community a couple hundred miles north of “Gibtown.” There they found 2,500 acres of wetlands, grasslands and…

He’s starred on Broadway and graced television and movie screens for decades. But even with a nearly 60-year-old career, bring up Barry Bostwick in polite conversation and the first response will certainly be “Oh, Brad!” Bostwick’s turn as Brad Majors, the uptight fiancé of Susan Sarandon’s Janet Weiss in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, has endeared him to generations of midnight moviegoers eager…