Author: Liam Otten

 Joe Angeles/WUSTL Photo ServicesShaun Hudson as Coalhouse Walker, Jr., and Renae Adams as Mother  Ragtime, Terrence McNally’s acclaimed adaptation of the 1975 novel by E.L. Doctorow, is a sweeping and ambitious tale of race, class and the promise of America at the dawn of the 20th century. It is also a tremendously demanding theatrical production, requiring almost 50 actors and at least a dozen musicians. Indeed, Ragtime is so logistically challenging — more than 150 different costumes must be designed and sewn — that it virtually precludes staging by all but the largest of regional theaters. Yet next month, The Black Rep will join forces with the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences to present this Tony Award-winning musical as the fall Mainstage production.

In 1994, dancer Liz Claire, Ph.D., then a junior in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences, won the Bemis Summer Travel Scholarship. The award allowed her to travel to Paris as an intern with alumnus David Dorfman. Today, both Claire and Dorfman continue to make their mark on Washington University.

Four aspiring playwrights will present staged readings of their works Friday and Saturday, Sept. 25 and 26, as part of the 2009 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival, sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

Michael Adams, M.D., and Gyo Obata explore the impact of Japanese internment camps in World War II on their respective families on Oct. 2.

Author Rikki Ducornet, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in The Writing Program in Arts & Science, will read from her work at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1. In addition, she will lead a talk on the craft of fiction at 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8. Ducornet, the is the author of seven novels, including The Fan Maker’s Inquisition (2004) — a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year—and The Jade Cabinet (1993), a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award.

In the 1930s, the photographer Ansel Adams struck up a friendship with California painter Chiura Obata. Yet the arrival of World War II would set these two celebrated artists on radically divergent paths — paths that would, in very different ways, lead both to the now-infamous “war relocation centers” at which the U.S. government forcibly interred approximately 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Next month their sons, Michael Adams and Gyo Obata, will explore the impact of internment on their respective families in a public dialog at Washington University.

Photo by David KilperRoberto Jaime Deseda (left), a student in the Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, chats with Leslie J. Laskey, professor emeritus of architecture, while two students relax in the “Laskey Landscape,” a large construction made of wood and metal located in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Dula Foundation Central Courtyard.

Provocative questions of activism, justified violence and making a difference lie at the heart of “underground,” an ambitious evening-length multimedia dance piece by acclaimed choreographer David Dorfman Sept. 25 and 26.

Courtesy ImageBeginning Friday, Sept. 18, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present “Metabolic City,” an exhibition surveying work by 1960s avant-garde artists and architects.

Fairytales do come true — sort of. Just ask Sleeping Beauty, whose 900 years of enchanted rest finally come to an end in a modern-day sleep disorder clinic, far from the land of far far away. Welcome to Sleeping Beauty Wakes, an artfully twisted take on the classic children’s story, by theatrical power-pop trio GrooveLily. In October these acclaimed indie troubadours will return to St. Louis for a pair of performances as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series.