Author: Liam Otten

Courtesy photo*Animal Farm: The Puppet Musical*”All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Such is the satiric lesson of Animal Farm, George Orwell’s cautionary parable about the uses and abuses of power. In March, New York’s acclaimed Synapse Productions will treat St. Louis audiences to Animal Farm: The Puppet Musical. This witty and visually stunning production — based on a musical adaptation by famed British director Peter Hall — re-imagines Orwell’s novel with all the wonder and grotesquerie of a childhood fairy tale.

Poet Linda Gregerson, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will present a pair of events Feb. 23 and March 2. Gregerson is the author of three collections of poetry: Fire in the Conservatory (1982), The Woman Who Died in Her Sleep (1996) and Waterborne (2002).

Photo by David Kilper/WUSTL Photo Services*Much Ado About Nothing*Rapier wit and cutting observation; lies, laughter and love, with a stiff dose of betrayal. Such is the emotional arsenal deployed for Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare’s strategic guide to the “merry war” between the sexes. This month, Washington University’s Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences will present Much Ado as its spring Mainstage production.

The Washington University Symphony Orchestra will perform music of Ernest Bloch, Peter I. Tchaikovsky and Gay Holmes Spears at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19, in Graham Chapel. Dan Presgrave, instrumental music coordinator for the Department of Music, conducts the 70-plus-member orchestra.

All meetings are from 7-8:30 p.m. on the last Wednesday of the month at Schlafly Bottleworks; there will be an hour of discussion after a 30-minute presentation.

She’s the first of six speakers appearing this spring as part of The Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellows’ Lecture and Workshop Series.

The talk is part of “Unsettled Ground: Nature, Landscape and Ecology Now!” a series of lectures, panel discussions, artistic interventions and workshops.

Their project investigates the relationship between power and self-presentation by asking women to respond to a seemingly simple question.

Dhomhnaill has been hailed by the Irish Literary Supplement as the “most acclaimed Gaelic poet of the century”; Akins is the author of four novels.

“The Black Artists’ Group was a seedbed for artistic innovation,” says Benjamin Looker, author of a 2004 book on the influential yet little-remembered collective.