After typing more than 2,500 postcards to the President from dozens of campuses and other locations around the country, Sheryl Oring’s Activating Democracy: The I Wish to Say Project is due out in Fall 2016 from Intellect Books/University of Chicago Press.
Shakespeare’s great comedy, Much Ado About Nothing, highlights Aquila Theatre’s 25th anniversary season. Spying, subterfuge, deception, false identities, slander, manipulation and love all take part in this wonderfully entertaining battle of the sexes. Much Ado About Nothing, thought to have been written in 1598, belongs to a group of Shakespeare’s more mature romantic comedies. It is an exuberant, philosophical, and festive play excelling in combative wit, melodrama, and potential tragedy. There will be a preshow talk at 6:00 PM with the cast the day of show.
Tickets on sale July 1. Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school…again. And that’s the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. Adapted from the book The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. Recommended for grades 2-6.
Tickets on sale July 20. The season begins with a new production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle in his first Live in HD performance.
Jerry Zolten, educator, author, musician, roots music historian and producer, also counts among his credits a stint as a stand-up comic. He will give a presentation on the history of stand up comedy that is richly illustrated with rare video performance clips. The talk will explore comedy as it relates to issues including ethnic stereotyping, freedom of speech, social injustice, and race and gender disparity.
Lucy Kalian, artist of “Swells and Soundings,” will be having a talk at the Pollak Gallery at 4:00 PM.
Tickets on sale 4/29 for Center for the Arts donors; 5/4 for general public. The Prince of Spanish Guitar, BENISE is ‘Bennissimo!’ in this special 10 year anniversary production called “Strings of Passion”. Armed with his fiery Spanish Guitar, a stage full of musicians, and an international dance troupe, BENISE takes us on a musical journey through Salsa, Flamenco, Samba, Waltz and Tango, fused with classic rock anthems by Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Santana and The Eagles…to name a few. Go center stage with BENISE in this amazing production that takes your audiences to Spain, China, Paris, Egypt, India, Cuba, Italy, Dubai, the Heartland of America…and more: the Theatrical World Music and Dance Spectacle that has been called “The Latin Riverdance”.
On August 3, 1952, Ruby McCollum, an African-American woman, shot and killed the prominent white doctor and State Senator-elect C. L. Adams in Live Oak, Florida. Exploring a case that has haunted jurors and prosecutors for decades, YOU BELONG TO ME, Sex, Race and Murder in the South unveils hidden practices, exposing the truth of what it meant to be an African-American in the Jim Crow South, and examining the long road to healing. There will be a post screening Q&A with the producer Jude Hagin.
Singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash’s exciting show celebrates her highly-acclaimed and three time Grammy winning album, The River & the Thread. The River & the Thread (2014, Blue Note Records) is a collection of original songs that connect and re-connect Rosanne to the American South, the place of her birth and the home of her ancestors. Rosanne follows her acclaimed Grammy nominated and award winning album The List (2009) with her own poetic survey of places and people of The South on these beautiful and varied songs written with her collaborator, musical director, guitarist and husband, John Leventhal.
