Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896
May 5, 2025
May 5, 2025 | Published by the Students of Johns Hopkins since 1896

Arts & Entertainment





SIANKEVINS/CC BY-SA 4.0
Joshua Davis discussed various activist-entrepreneurs at Red Emma’s.

Author Joshua Davis explores ties between activism and business

Red Emma’s Bookstore hosted a talk on the history of social enterprise and fair trade in Baltimore, on Oct. 5. The event was centered around a new book titled From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs written by Joshua Clark Davis, a professor and researcher at the University of Baltimore.



COURTESY OF DAN MANSION
Mansion is a Baltimore native who has been making music for five years.

Dan Mansion: The life of a Baltimore musician

Baltimore’s disparate music scene is one of the most underappreciated great things in both the country and in the City itself. Even in an urban sprawl with eight universities, local talent is so often unexplored in favor of whatever pop sound defines each genre nationally.


COURTESY OF WILL KIRSCH
Florida-based band LANNDS played Baltimore as a part of their east coast tour.

LANNDS puts on an enchanting performance

I’m 21 years old, and I feel old as shit. Somehow, I managed to skip right over the quarter-life crisis and hopped right into the deep pool of existential dread that 40-year-old men live in fear of. That being said, premature adulthood has encouraged me not to spend my weekends in sweaty frat basements anymore.






COURTEST OF WITNESS THEATER
Gemma Simoes Decarvalho and Usman Enam starred in IQ, a featured play.

Witness Showcase highlights talent both onstage and behind the scenes

On Friday, September 29, Witness Theater’s Fall Showcase premiered in the Swirnow Theater. This year’s lineup featured the debut of five original and student-written short plays, including Kiana Beckman’s Please Form a Line Here,Anita Louie’s IQ, Vanessa Quinlivan’s Invisible, Emma Shannon’s Perfect Strangers and Michael Feder’s Neighbor.





GAGE SKIDMORE/CC BY SA 3.0
British actor Colin Firth plaus Harry Hart, a main character in Kingsman.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle lacks charisma

This past Friday, Kingsman: The Golden Circle premiered in theaters. If you’re unfamiliar with the title, then you missed out on one of the best comic book films of the past five years. The Golden Circle is the follow up to the impressive Kingsman: The Secret Service (adapted from the comic book of the same name).


MSCHOCHET/CC0
The City Paper’s yellow news boxes are a Baltimore icon.

Looking back on the City Paper’s past

For the past 40 years, City Paper (CP) has served as a beacon of alternative news and arts in Baltimore, an outlet for creative individuals to write and read stories outside of the constant onslaught of the mainstream media.


AMPLIFIED 2010/CC BY SA 2.0
Kwame Kwei-Armah is the artistic director at Center Stage, which hosted Play Lab between Sept. 22-24.

Play Lab invites audiences to revise original plays

The Fall Play Lab at Center Stage featured the performance of two one-act plays that were edited and revised over the course of the weekend. Audiences were able to engage with and comment upon the two original works: Handle It, by Rachel Knoblauch and To the Flame, by Miranda Rose Hall.



THE COME UP SHOW/CC BY-SA 2.0
Atlanta-based group EARTHGANG released their five song EP Rags at the beginning of September 2017.

Innovative music holds surprises for listeners in our era

The easiest way to present yourself as a boring, uninteresting and lame person is to start a sentence with the words, “Music isn’t the same nowadays...” or “I was born in the wrong era.” That is a mindset that many fall into — feeling that all of the “good stuff” has passed and that new music is garbage.


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