Culture watch

All Right Lads, Get Your Kits Off

Two words I never, ever expected to be putting together in a sentence: “Waynesville” and “naked.” And yet, Waynesville’s ever-interesting Haywood Arts Regional Theatre recently announced auditions for that most unencumbered of Broadway comedic musicals, The Full Monty. It may seem like an unlikely turn, given that Waynesville spends about half of the year as a retiree haven — but after sucking up to the blue-haired cash machine with the likes of My Fair Lady during the spring season, HART understandably wants to shake things up again for its more locals-oriented fall lineup. (It worked last year, with HART’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.) And now to the point: Will the male actors really go “full monty?” Sources close to the production claim that they will, though the stage will be lit in such a way that the audience won’t be able to see the … finer details. Auditions take place July 30 and 31. If getting down to your skinny-dipping gear sounds like a kick, check out harttheatre.com to learn more.

An Emmy For His Desperation

You’ve probably never heard of Jason Weil, but the man is local, and he’s up for an Art Direction Emmy, so show some respect. Sure, Weil may be a transplant to these verdant mountain lands, having recently relocated from Los Angeles, but that doesn’t automatically mean he’s some West Coast carpetbagger come to take away all our lucrative Hollywood contracts. Weil, who owns the residential design firm Retro+Fit Design and Drafting, was nominated for his “Outstanding Art Direction for a Miniseries or Movie” work on the ABC horror mini-series Stephen King’s Desperation. He shares the nomination with Production Designer Philip Dagort and Set Decorator Marcia Calosio, and with ABC/Touchstone Television, who paid for the thing. While victory for the Desperation crew is anything but certain — they’re up against two HBO productions, Masterpiece Theatre’s Bleak House and the TNT/Dreamworks production Into the West — Weil and company still have a fighting chance at a trio of statuettes. After all, Weil’s art-direction resume includes notable spins on highbrow think-flicks like You Got Served and The Adventures of Pluto Nash … well, good luck, anyway.

Urbanizing Natural Science in Westville

Call it the unrealized dream of Feynman, Mandelbrot and Basquiat — a panorama that depicts the interconnectedness of life, as shown through urban murals. In a fractal-graffiti nutshell, that’s “Street Science,” the latest effort by Arts2People’s Asheville Mural Project. Four local artists will be spending the last two weeks of July painting their visualizations of scientific concepts on the outside walls of the West Asheville Bank on Haywood Road. To learn more, visit arts2people.org.