It’s a tricky time for truth.
For starters, traditional media take a constant pummeling — maligned, defunded, gutted globally and suppressed algorithmically.
Charleston’s own Stephen Colbert (and frequent Spoleto Festival USA audience member) was an early prognosticator of this war on truth. In 2005, he launched The Colbert Report by coining the term “truthiness,” which he explained like this: “We’re not talking about truth, we’re talking about something that seems like truth — the truth we want to exist.”
When it comes to artistic expression, a similar rejiggering is now in full tilt. Institutions like the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts are in the political crosshairs, with the powers that be giving the hook to manifold points of view.
There is certainly much to gain from the arts right now. Or as Bruce Springsteen declared recently in a concert in Manchester, England, “The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll in dangerous times.”
Understanding different perspectives
Mena Mark Hanna, general director of Spoleto Festival USA, offers another vantage.
“What the arts are capable of is really coming to conversations that are difficult in our society from different angles, coming at a conversation that we need to have sideways and not have it head-on,” he said in an exclusive interview.
With that in mind, it’s not altogether surprising that many of the works highlighted in the 2025 festival involve the noodling of truth — what defines it, what shapes it, what bends it. Hanna notes many of this year’s productions aim at offering different perspectives: They are stories rooted in counterpoint.
“I do think an emergent theme is trying to understand what truth is,” Hanna said.
Five shows confront truth
Out of the gate there is Thaïs (two performances, May 23 and 25), French composer Jules Massenet’s late 19-century opera that launches the festival at Charleston Gaillard Center. A world premiere production by director Crystal Manich, it is conducted by Timothy Myers, music director of Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra and features Spoleto Festival USA Chorus.
In it, a monk fixated on an Egyptian woman (performed by acclaimed soprano Nicole Heaston), is keen to convert her to Christianity, only to then face down his actual reasons for such an impulse, which has less to do with faith and more with lust.
Verity also haunts the world premiere of The Turn of the Screw (four performances, May 30 to June 6), composer Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera based on Henry James’s story of a governess battling supernatural forces. In a new production directed by Rodula Gaitanou, the work raises questions about how a person understands what is real and what is contrived.
White Box (three performances, May 29 to 31) is an import from Stockholm directed by Belgian set designer and architect Sabine Theunissen. In it, facts are exposed by way of a found camera. Its images chronicle the fate of three scientists who in 1897 aimed to fly over the North Pole in a gas balloon, never to return. Through a truth-distorting mix of dance, music, film and projection, the work shows how photography can lay bare the power, beauty and fragility of the environment.
Then there is the wholly jarring reality of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski (four performances, June 5 to 8). The theatrical work by Clark Young and Derek Goldman stars David Strathairn, the Academy Award nominee who has performed in iterations of it for more than a decade.
Created by The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics and directed by Goldman, the one-man play charts the true story of Jan Karski, who escaped the Gestapo to relay the first eyewitness accounts of war-torn Poland to the West.
Remember This was a latecomer to the festival lineup, subbing in for another that was sidelined by an injury, presenting Hanna with an opportunity to program specifically to our new world order.
“We felt that it was very important that we had a piece that did speak to the moment, and we felt that it was very important that we had a piece that was about one person’s ability to attempt as much as possible to be a witness and speak some truth to power. Karski’s story does that,” Hanna said.
Still, while such disarming divulgences can mightily sting, there is ample visual splendor awaiting. Remember This is realized in a striking cinematic fashion.
Other productions are shaping up to be quite the sight for sore eyes, too.
Hanna namechecks the opera Thaïs.
“There’s a lot of visual candy there for something that I think is very orchestrally lush and deeply beautiful musically,” he offers, describing the sweeping, projection-driven set design and costumes as akin to Dune meets Versace.
The Turn of the Screw, which will run at the Dock Street Theatre, offers an entirely different aesthetic and operatic proposition, with a quotient of seductive creepiness, too.
“That’s a little jewel, and it’s happening in the perfect jewel box theater.” Hanna said.
Other shows to enjoy
Such revelations can take the form of an arresting work of choreography delivering a visceral veracity. In the Bank of America Chamber Music series, Dock Street Theatre patrons embark on an exploration of compositions past and present with musicians mining musical truths with their trademark humility, humor and honesty. In the Cistern Yard, candor often springs organically as musical artists frequently form a safe, strikingly intimate space among thousands, all blanketed by centuries-old oaks.
In all of this, there is one thing that’s certain. Throughout the 17 days of the festival, the ineffable, boundless magic of Spoleto will lead to untold stolen moments, the kind that will ring loud and true.
Ticket prices and times vary. For more on each show, go to the festival’s website: spoletofestival.com.
More Spoleto highlights
Dance
Music from the Sole’s I Didn’t Come to Stay, (four performances, May 23 to 26), gathers eight dancers to mine the magnificent complexity of Black dance and music.
Limon Dance Company (two performances, May 31 and June 1), will mount new works and repertory including Missa Brevis, set to Zoltán Kodály’s choral classic composed during
World War II.
Theater
Manual Cinema’s The 4th Witch (five performances, June 4 to 8) reimagines Shakespeare’s Macbeth and incorporates shadow puppets, live-action silhouettes and music in a world-premiere production.
Music
Fragments (four performances, May 26 to 31) spans six recitals with cellist Alisa Weilerstein performing Bach’s cello suites paired with newly commissioned works by 27 contemporary composers, the first time the project has been presented in its entirety.
Cecile McLorin Salvant (one performance,
May 28) brings her jazz ballads back to the festival as part of the Wells Fargo Jazz lineup, her vocals joined by Spoleto Festival Orchestra and her jazz trio.
Mavis Staples (one performance, May 30), will fill Cistern Yard with her legendary blues and rock-and-roll hits.
Band of Horses (one performance, May 31),
the Grammy Award-nominated, Charleston-based indie band, will play a rare home concert in Cistern Yard.
Patti Smith (one performance, June 3), will fill Cistern Yard with her pioneering fusion of rock and poetry.
Etienne Charles (one performance on
June 4): The Trinidad-born trumpeter joins with Charleston drummer Quentin Baxter to explore the connections between Afro-Caribbean, Gullah and American jazz traditions.
Isaac Mizrahi: I Know Everybody (two performances, June 5 and 7) shines a spotlight on the irreverently clever entertainer and fashion icon in a cabaret-style program with a six-piece band.
Jeff Tweedy (one performance, June 6), the multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter of Wilco fame, is set to share a stirring evening under the stars at Cistern Yard. —Maura Hogan
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