Sweet Corn Festival
Want to get away? There’s no shortage of interesting things to see and do around the state this weekend.
So pack up the car, crank up the tunes and set to exploring these great events around the state.
Coconino County Fair
Enjoy the fair as it was meant to be, with kids showing off their livestock and adults eating as much pie and/or watermelon as they can in a finite time. There’s plenty of fun between 4-H auctions and eating contests, with live music, carnival rides, a demolition derby and a plethora of foods on sticks.
Details: 10 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday-Sunday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 1-4. Fort Tuthill County Park, 2446 Fort Tuthill Loop, Flagstaff. $8, $5 for ages 612 and 65 and older. 928-679-8000, coco
There will be plenty of sweet corn to enjoy in Taylor’s annual salute to the cob-based vegetable, but feasting is merely one of the activities. There also will be rodeos, a parade, a barbecue and dozens of vendors offering arts and crafts. You can learn much more about the Taylor/Snowflake area on a tour of historical homes.
Details: 7 p.m. Friday (rodeo), 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 1-2, and 5:30 p.m. Monday (hay ride), Sept. 4. Taylor (locations vary by event). Free, $2 for rodeos. 928-536-7366, snowflaketaylor chamber.org.
Faire on the Square
Imagine a Christmas shopping sea-
Scottsdale-based actor Michael Washington Brown has lived in Arizona since 1998, but his one-man show “Black!” — Sept 1-2 at the Tempe Center for the Arts — marks his first production here in town.
A London native of Caribbean descent, Brown wrote the play to explore the “global black experience” from four disparate perspectives: African-American, English, Jamaican and African. Some of it is humorous, while other parts are hard-hitting, political and sometimes critical of aspects of black culture.
“In some ways we’ve become very intolerant of hearing what other people’s perspectives are, and sometimes we’re afraid,” Brown says. “We’re not quite sure whether we should be asking these questions. We don’t want to offend anybody. So everybody’s walking this PC line. And I think what these characters show is that it’s OK to ask questions.”
Brown has performed the show at Fringe festivals and other venues around the country, mostly recently in Chicago, where the Sun Times gave it a “highly recommended” review, calling it “both compelling and enlightening.”
Brown came to the U.S. in 1992, as a 19-year-old, and cut his thespian teeth in the Bay area, performing with the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and other companies. But acting took a back seat when he moved to Arizona, until he spent some time in New York a few years ago.
“I got a taste of seeing different stories, particularly productions that are done on a smaller scale,” he says. “Yes, I went to Broadway shows, etcetera, but I also went to off-off-off-Broadway