Author: Liam Otten

Tracy Davis, the Barber Professor of Performing Arts at Northwestern University and president of the American Society for Theatre Research, will present Washington University’s 2009 Helen Clanton Morrin Lecture at 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 1. Titled “The Witness Protection Program: Making Theatre, Everyday,” the talk is free and open to the public and sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

Stalin’s death in 1953 marked the beginning of a cultural and political thaw that gave way to greater economic, educational and artistic freedoms in Soviet society. In Leningrad, a seminal performance in 1961 by two towering figures of the day—composer Andrey Volkonsky (1933-2008) and pianist Maria Yudina (1899-1970)— and an attendant program of music previously censored by Soviet rule, characterized the resulting new forms of musical expression. That concert will be replicated Monday, March 30, by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra’s Community Partnership Program.

Pianist and harpsichordist Charles Metz, Ph.D., will perform on the virginal, a smaller, rectangular version of the harpsichord at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 22 at the 560 Music Center.

Photo by David Kilper”Candlestick Park,” the Hotchner-winning play by alumna Elizabeth Birkenmeier (LA ’08), opens March 26.

Some of the nation’s most prominent African-American writers and thinkers will meet at WUSTL March 25-28 during the 2009 Callaloo Conference.

Doors that dance, chairs that twirl, a cage that doubles as a gymnast’s apparatus. Welcome to the world of Diavolo, the high-flying Los Angeles company known for examining the funny, frightening and unexpected ways individuals interact with their environments. Next week Diavolo will return to St. Louis and perform two shows for the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series, as well as a special matinee for the ovations for young people series.

Haba na Haba (Swahili for “step by step”) is an internationally renowned Kenyan performance group that first formed in the slums of Nairobi, using acrobatics, music, dance and drama to raise awareness and educate their communities on topics such as HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, reproductive health, women’s issues and violence. They are visiting St. Louis through March 23.

Fourteen students from the Dance Program in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences took part in the Central Region American College Dance Conference, held March 11 to 14 at Hendrix College in Conway, AZ. Adjudicators chose two works — Stuck in the Waiting by junior Eliotte Henderson and Falling Petals by lecturer Ting-Ting Chang, the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance — to be performed as part of the concluding Gala Concert.

Have African-American intellectuals abandoned the Civil Rights Movement? Do black academics need to reengage the larger community, and if so, how? What is the relationship between contemporary politics and popular culture? Some of the nation’s most prominent African-American writers and thinkers will address these questions and more during the 2009 Callaloo Conference, which takes place March 25-28 at Washington University in St. Louis.

Two years ago, Washington University alumna Elizabeth Birkenmeier (LA ’08), then a junior, relished her role as a rash, young Queen Elizabeth in the historical drama “Highness,” winner of WUSTL’s 2006 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition, held annually in the Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences. Now Birkenmeier has returned to campus, but this time as a playwright who will witness the world premiere of her own winning production—”Candlestick Park”—at the end of this month.