A month of The Catalyst Sessions: Looking back, looking ahead
On March 25 we began livestreaming The Catalyst Sessions – an interview show with people from the St. Petersburg, and greater Tampa Bay, arts scene. The initial idea was to do our part to keep our brilliant, brimming cultural community top-of-mind while concerts, plays, gallery shows and all the other stuff was in quarantine.
So far, we have done 24 half-hour programs, some better than others for various technical reasons (lighting, sound, et cetera); bearing in mind, however, that the whole thing is one hundred percent live, and we’re still trying to master the methodology, The Catalyst Sessions has been a tremendous success. We’ve had a lot of frank and honest talk, some painful truth-telling, plenty of laughs and hopefulness, and even a few songs (reminding us, yet again, that the talent pool in the bay area is entirely of the deep-end variety).
The Catalyst Sessions streams each weeknight at 7 via Facebook Live. (Note: If the livestream doesn’t appear at that time, it’s usually because we can’t edge our virtual car onto the Facebook superhighway – in other words, the line is busy – and we start recording at 7 instead. In those cases, the video will be posted at, or just after, the 7:30 mark).
Tonight (Friday, May 1) we welcome Chris Crawford, freeFall Theatre’s associate artistic director.
The Catalyst Sessions archives are available on YouTube. Here’s the past schedule, with links:
March 25: Musician, singer, author Paul Wilborn and actress/vocalist Eugenie Bondurant
March 26: Actor Matthew McGee
March 27: Author Craig Pittman
March 30: Stageworks Theater artistic director Karla Hartley
March 31: No show
April 1: Musician Kasondra Rose
April 2: Musicians Nate Najar and Daniela Soledade
April 3: No show
April 6: American Stage artistic director Stephanie Gularte
April 7: Musician/composer Jeremy Douglass
April 8: St. Pete Opera artistic director Mark Sforzini
April 9: Creative Pinellas executive director Barbara St. Clair
April 10: Artist Carrie Jadus
April 13: Musician and founder of the Arts Conservatory for Teens Alex Harris
April 14: The Florida Orchestra music director Michael Francis
April 15: Actor Giles Davies
April 16: Keep St. Pete Lit founder Maureen McDole
April 17: Legendary St. Pete musician Pete Merrigan
April 20: Actress/singer Becca McCoy
April 21: Author Jeff Klinkenberg
April 22: Liz Dimmitt, founder and CEO of Fairgrounds
April 23: Musicians Rebekah Pulley and Rob Pastore
April 24: Jobsite Theater artistic director David Jenkins
April 27: Hank Hine (Dali Museum ED) and Laura Hine (James Museum ED)
April 28: Actor, director, writer Bob Devin Jones of thestudio@620
April 29: Opera singers Sarah Nordin and Tyler Putnam
April 30: No show
