Author: Liam Otten

The employees are getting restless. Trapped in a nameless, New York company, they are buffeted by Orwellian management-speak, inter-office sabotage and inappropriate contact. And then the Firings begin. Welcome to Personal Days, the acclaimed corporate satire by fiction writer Ed Park, who will read from his work Thursday, Sept. 20, for the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences.

Pianist and conductor William Schatzkamer, professor of music in Arts & Sciences, died Wednesday, Sept. 12, of congestive heart failure at his home in Olivette. He was 96.

No Child Left Behind was the signature education bill of the Bush administration. No Child… is an award-winning one-woman play by Nilaja Sun, who spent eight years teaching in the New York City public schools. From Sept. 21-30, The Black Rep will revive its acclaimed production of this Obie Award-winning play in WUSTL’s Edison Theatre.

F=Gm1m2/d2. Well. Of course it does. Newton’s Universal Law of Gravity is a pillar of physics, a monument of mathematics, a timeless, unchanging tribute to scientific reasoning. Tell it all to Leo, when his world goes suddenly, inexplicably topsy-turvy. On Oct. 5 and 6, Edison will present Leo, the newest creation from Berlin’s Circle of Eleven, as part of its fall Ovations Series.

Tenor Kyle Erdos-Knapp, whose recent performance as Tobias in Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ production of Sweeney Todd “nearly stole the evening” (KMOX), will return to St. Louis to present Franz Schubert’s beloved song cycle Die schöne Müllerin. The performance, which begins at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 16, is the annual Liederabend sponsored by WUSTL’s departments of Music and Germanic Languages and Literatures, both in Arts & Sciences.

Public art is a tricky beast. Sometimes you get the Gateway Arch or Citygarden or Laumeier Sculpture Park. Sometimes you don’t. The key is integration, says Leslie Markle, who recently joined the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum as its inaugural curator for public art.

Guitarist Vincent Varvel and soprano Stella Markou will launch the fall Danforth University Center Chamber Music Series at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 12. The performance will feature songs spanning four centuries, including works by Henry Purcell, George F. Handel, Enrique Granados, Heitor Villa-Lobos and George Gershwin. In addition, the program will highlight My Beloved Is Mine, a 2007 composition by WUSTL’s own Martin Kennedy, assistant professor of music.

Take a deep breath. Smooth your brow. Raise your hands and stomp your feet. It’s time to talk about art. Welcome to Kemper Art Reaches Everyone (KARE), a new arts engagement program designed for people with early-onset to moderate Alzheimer’s.

Painter and poet Edward Boccia, professor emeritus of art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, died Monday, Sept. 3, in his home in Webster Groves, from pneumonia. He was 91.

Gerald Early, director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, and Leslie Berlowitz, president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, will host the third national meeting of the Academy’s blue-ribbon Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. The event, which will take place at the Missouri History Museum Sept. 7, will feature more than a dozen  local arts leaders testifying to the importance of the humanities and social sciences in public life and lifelong learning.