Category: performance

A rare musical performance on Saturday, March 30 at 8 p.m. in Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall, connecting the cultures of Java, Indonesia and Athens, Georgia.

The pieces performed will be reimaginings, remixes, and intermixes of the traditional music of Java, Indonesia, recorded by ICE graduate research assistant Kai Riedl and engineer Suny Lyons of the band Electrophoria. In addition to Electrophoria performing a handful of songs from their upcoming release this spring, Saturday's performance will feature a variety of local musicians including powerkompany, Revien, and Killick. Additional performers include UGA faculty and students in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, and the entire show will be recorded for a later broadcast on Javanese radio.

The Our New Silence Project includes a diverse group of collaborating musicians in Athens, Georgia who began remixing and reimagining the songs from Javasounds within the context of original pop, ambient, electronic, and experimental music. The project includes the work of artists such as Peter Buck (REM) and Kate Pierson (The B52s), Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink (Azure Ray), Bill Doss and John Fernandez (The Olivia Tremor Control), Graham Ulicny (Reptar), and many more.

The object of the blog isn't to be a calendar of events, but sometimes the broader message of our news is simply the volume (and tone!) of activity that wends its way through the Franklin College and UGA. It's that time of year again - which, really could be almost any week in the academic year. But Spring semester seems to bring out our best. This is just one day - today:

The department of English hosts a lecture, "'Let Us Have Faith That Right Makes Might': Proverbial Rhetoric in Decisive Moments of American Politics," Wolfgang Mieder, University of Vermont. 4 p.m., 265 Park Hall

The Willson Center presents a lecture by assistant professor of history Jennifer L. Palmer, "An Ocean Between Them: Race, Gender, and the Family in France and its Colonies,"  at 4 p.m. at the Jackson Street Building (the former Visual Arts Building, nee LDSOA).

The Willson Center and the Lamar Dodd School of Art presents "Printedness," a lecture by visiting artist Karen Kunc, at 5:30 p.m. in room S150 of the school of art.

University Theatre presents a new work by faculty member John Kundert-Gibbs, 'Must Go On', at 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Building Cellar Theatre.

The Hugh Hodgson School of Music music therapy program present the Music Therapy Musicale at 8 p.m. in Edge Hall

And that doesn't count the film Man on Wire at Tate, women's basketball (the men play at Arkansas on ESPN), The Tokyo String Quartet at the PAC, or the Third Thursday evening of art at the GMOA. It's like you live in a major city, brimming with cultural offerings of every kind. So get out there.

CORE Concert Dance Company Contemporary and Aerial Dance will present TAKING FLIGHT! Wed.- Sat. Feb. 27 to March 2 at 8 p.m, held at the UGA Department of Dance New Dance Theatre, Athens, GA. Contemporary and a range of aerial dance - including bungee-assistance, triple trapeze, lyra, silks and cyr – blends with digitally rendered film projection and explores an aeronautical and emotional journey.

Purchase tickets at: tate@uga.edu/tickets, phone: 706-542-8579; or Performing Arts Center (PAC) pac.uga.edu.

$10 Students/Sr. Citz. & $15 General Admission. 

For more information, visit coreconcertdance.com

Image: courtesy CORE Dance Company

In its 80th season, University Theatre presents a production of the light-hearted musical, The Fantasticks:

A lighthearted, modern twist on Romeo and Juliet featuring well-known musical numbers such as “Try to Remember” and “Soon It’s Gonna Rain,” The Fantasticks features neighboring fathers in a feud over a shared wall, their lovestruck offspring, and a hired villain with his troupe of traveling actors. The young lovers face the conflict between moonlight fantasy and the reality of harsh sunlight as the question of “who gets the girl” is not quickly answered.

With music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, The Fantasticks opened Off-Broadway in 1960 and went on to become the longest-running musical in history, playing continuously for over four decades. Directed by professor Farley Richmond, this University Theatre production features musical direction by Rachel Townes.

“Much of The Fantasticks' distinctive charm derives from its minimalistic style, which stands in contrast to the theatrical extravagance of most musical blockbusters,” Richmond said. “The stage is virtually bare, with audience's imagination filling in most of the details.”

The primary scenic element is a wall created by a character, performed by undergraduate theatre major Connor Brockmeier, called simply the “Mute." "The musical's stripped-down style makes it ideal for the University Theatre’s Studio Series, which is dedicated to highlighting the actors' skill, humanity, and intimate connection with the audience," said David Saltz, head of the department of theatre and film studies.

The performances begin February 5 and run through Sunday the tenth with two performances at 2:30 and 8 p.m. that day. Come and enjoy the hardwork of our theatre students and faculty in the wonderful venue of the Seney-Stovall Chapel.

With so many arts events on campus this week, we might take the highly-charged collaborative atmosphere for granted. It's more difficult to do this, however, when you see an event so out-of-the-ordinary that it stops you and demands your attention.

"The Little Clay Cart," a classical Sanskrit play performed in English, will be presented Nov. 10 at 2:30 p.m. and Nov. 11 at 11 a.m. in the Cellar Theatre. The play will be performed by the Epic Actors' Workshop, a not-for-profit theatre organization in New Jersey, and directed by Farley Richmond, a professor in the department of theatre and film studies. Both performances are free and open to the public.

Owing to certain features of structure and language, scholars believe that "The Little Clay Cart" was composed no earlier than the first century B.C. and no later than the fourth century A.D. In the prologue of the piece, accolades are showered on its author, King Sudraka, by the stage manager.

Sudraka composed the play in the form of a prakarana, one of the 10 major forms of dramatic composition in ancient India. According to the Natyasastra, the oldest surviving source of dramatic composition, a prakarana may have a hero who is a Brahmin, or aristocracy, a maximum of 10 acts and a story that is invented. "The Little Clay Cart" possesses all of these requirements. It often has been compared with Greek new comedy because of its host of city characters and fast-moving and complicated plot.

"Our production makes use of a wide variety of theatrical conventions found in ancient and modern India as well as those on the tiny island of Bali, an outpost of Hinduism," said Richmond, who regularly travels to the Indian subcontinent and Asia. "Given the number of characters that make an appearance in the play, we chose to use Topeng masks from Bali to represent most of the minor and a few of the major characters. This keeps the company smaller and allows individual actors to work with many different characters wearing a variety of character masks."

These will be fantastic performances, not to be missed.

Image: The villain and maid from "The Little Clay Cart", courtesy of the Epic Actors' Workshop.

University Theatre will present Rita Dove's powerful "The Darker Face of the Earth" begining on Nov. 1 at 8 p.m. in the Fine Arts Theatre:

Dove, a former Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner, set "The Darker Face of the Earth" on a pre-Civil War plantation in South Carolina. She loosely based the plot on the Greek myth of King Oedipus, an abandoned son who unwittingly returns to his birthplace, kills his father and marries his mother. The play grapples with the historical reality of American slavery to confront still-urgent questions about freedom, reconciliation and prejudice.

 

In a twist on the traditional crime of white male slave owners' sexual use of female slaves, the play's plantation owner is a married woman, Amalia Jennings, played by senior theatre and Spanish major Sarah Newby Halicks of Peachtree City. Amalia's affair with slave Hector, played by master of fine arts in performance student Moses McGruder of Augusta, produces a beloved child who she reluctantly gives up. Unable to love freely and openly in defiance of strong social norms, over time Amalia grows bitter and becomes a savage "master" who rules her plantation with absolute power. Hector loses his mind and retreats to a solitary life in the woods.

This continues a tremendous run this fall by the students and faculty of University Theatre, which has re-established itself as the home of serious, challenging and entertaining live theatre. Our students are receiving high-level, professional training, and each performance showcases their dedication. Art is very demanding as an occupation, and yet some of these student actors, directors, costume and lighting designers are beginning careers right before our eyes. 

Get your tickets now.

Image: Sarah Newby Halicks, left, as Amalia; Dane Alexander, center as Augustus; and Moses McGruder as Hector take the lead in "The Darker Face of the Earth." Photo by John Gallagher-Gonzales

Russian writer Anton Chekhov was a literary artist of the first stripe, and a master of the modern short story. Perhaps most widely know as a major playwright, many motiffs and ideas about the dynamics within a play bear his name to his day. Next week, University Theatre presents one of the two plays written during his last years living in Yalta, Three Sisters:

Anton Chekhov's classic drama about family, longing and the desire for change, on Oct. 9-14 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 14 at 2:30 p.m. in the Cellar Theatre.

Originally produced in 1901, "Three Sisters" follows the life of the Prozorov family across several years. Sisters Natasha, Olga and Irina live in a dreary Russian town and long to escape to the exciting metropolis of Moscow. Each struggles with dreams inhibited by the harsh pressures of reality and the strong tethers of responsibility. Plans fall by the wayside, and the characters are propelled to forge new paths to their own happiness.

"In ‘Three Sisters,' Chekhov has created some of the most profound, most challenging and most exhilarating roles ever written for actors," said David Saltz, head of the UGA department of theatre and film studies.

This theatre season has already been an unqualified success, with the lineup only set to get better. Get your tickets now.

Image: From left to right are UGA students Kayla Sklar as Irina, Zack Byrd as Andréi, Shelli Delgado as Olga and Stephanie Murphy as Masha in the play "Three Sisters."

Beginning this Thursday, University Theatre presents

"In The Next Room," Sara Ruhl's Tony-nominated comedy about marriage, intimacy and electricity, in the Cellar Theatre of the Fine Arts Building Sept. 20-21 and 23-28 at 8 p.m. with a matinee performance Sept 30 at 2:30 p.m.

"Things that seem impossibly strange in the following play are all true," Ruhl said. "Things that seem commonplace are all my own invention."

Set in the 1880s when electricity was first making its way into the home, "In the Next Room" explores the medical practice of treating hysteria among women (and some men) by inducing "paroxysms," known today as orgasms. The play revolves around Dr. Givings' care of his frustrated patients in his home-based clinic and the impact of that treatment on his own passionless marriage.

Tickets can be purchased here. Get yours today.

Lots of great coverage of the Franklin College in Columns this week, including a nice front page story on new faculty member Lawrence Sweet:

A clinical neuropsychologist whose research explores the relationship between physical changes in the brain and conditions as diverse as dementia, nicotine dependence and obesity has joined UGA as the inaugural Gary R. Sperduto Professor of Psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

Lawrence H. Sweet, who comes to UGA from Brown University, has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed research papers and has received funding from several National Institutes of Health agencies, including the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Cancer Institute. He is the co-editor of the book Brain Imaging in Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Neuroscience and holds a patent for a method for measuring changes in brain activity over time.

Sweet uses a technique known as functional magnetic imaging, or fMRI, to provide objective assessments of brain activity and to predict treatment outcomes. His research has examined the neural weight loss, how cardiovascular disease affects cognitive function and how the brains of smokers respond to various rewards. In 2010, he and a colleague received a patent for a new method that combines brain imaging and a common test of working memory and can be used to determine the effectiveness of drugs for conditions such as dementia or multiple sclerosis, for example.

Also in Columns are stories on NSF career awards to Krashen and Perdisci, the Quantitative Biology Consulting Group and a brief on a recital by clarinet professor D. Ray McClellan. The Franklin College is always at the center of scholarly activity, performance and recognition on campus, as this week's campus newspaper is a good reminder.

Next week, UGA will host the world premiere of a new musical work by professor emeritus Roger Vogel:

"Things Fall Apart," a song cycle by University of Georgia's Roger C. Vogel based on excerpts from Chinua Achebe's novel of the same name, will premiere Sept. 6 at 8 p.m. in the Ramsey Concert Hall of the UGA Performing Arts Center. The concert is free and open to the public.