Robert Gullie: Into the Collage-a-Scope

Robert Gullie’s collages are the kind that you can fully expect to get inside your head. The artist’s photographic work is renowned for skewing rational scenarios into fitful tableaux of oddity. This time Gullie has taken his doctoring techniques one step further to incorporate painting, digital media and collage into images that won’t necessarily give you nightmares, but will have you pinching yourself.

A true surrealist, Gullie uses this method to “express [his] vision of the world, somewhere between reality and dreams.” Piecemeal figures stand, like characters from a Terry Gilliam animation, in vibrant settings, often re-creating traditional scenes like “Madonna and Child” in a, well, slightly untraditional way.

Robert Gullie’s show Into the Collage-a-Scope opens tomorrow (Friday, Nov. 28) at the Clement Art Gallery (201 Broadway, Troy). A reception will be held on opening night at 6 PM. The show runs until Dec. 24. For more information, call 272-6811 or visit clementart.com.

Cobra Starship

DeLoreans, neon visors, zebra-print tanktops, rollerblades, and chicks with keytars: This is the stuff of Cobra Starship. Sure, it’s really nothing more than pop-punk you can spray from a can, cut with the brand of irony they sling at Hot Topic, but, know what? “[They] don’t care if [they’re] a guilty pleasure for you.” And neither do we.

Cobra Starship are the kind of band who still get play on MTV and actually make the channel halfway relevant in the process. More importantly, they throw one bodacious dance party. Rounding out their Sassyback Tour, the band will host kindred dude-rockers Forever the Sickest Kids, Hit the Lights, and Sing It Loud.

Bring your fannypacks to Northern Lights (1208 Route 146, Clifton Park) on Sunday (Nov. 30) at 6 PM. Tickets are $17. Call 371-0012 for more information, or visit northern lightslive.com.

This Wonderful Life

We’ve all seen that indelible, heartwarming holiday tale of an apprentice angel who saves despairing everyman George Bailey, by showing him how different the world would be if he’d never lived. Curling up to take in the laughter and lessons of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life has become an annual tradition for many.

This year, fans of the film can leave the living room and take an adventure over the river and through the woods to Pittsfield, Mass., where Barrington Stage is offering the classic tale with a big twist. This Wonderful Life tells the oh-so-familiar story of It’s a Wonderful Life through the energetic narration and impersonation of a single actor who plays a man who dearly loves the Christmas classic—and all 32 of the characters who inhabit Bedford Falls.

George Bailey, Mr. Potter, Clarence, Mary, Zuzu, and all their eccentric and engaging cohorts will be portrayed in the Barrington Stage production by Tom Beckett, whose recent work on and off-Broadway has earned him an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk Award. Now he singlehandedly tackles an entire town. We confess, it sounds a little crazy, but as Clarence would say, “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.” And that is, we suppose, the moral of the story.

This Wonderful Life opens at Barrington Stage’s intimate Stage II (VFW, 36 Linden St., Pittsfield, Mass.) on Wednesday (Dec. 3) at 7 PM and runs through Dec. 20. Tickets are $15 to $30. For more info, or to purchase tickets, call (413) 236-8888.