Arts & Culture

With its poodle skirts, bouffant hairdos and withering irony, John Waters’ Hairspray (1988) feels almost timeless. It could be set at any point after which the 1950s had ceased to be cool. It is actually set in 1962, the year James Meredith became the first African-American admitted to the University of Mississippi. That historical grounding is at the center of a new staging of Hairspray: The Musical, the 2002 Broadway extravaganza based on Waters’ film, by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has announced the recipients of its 2011 Faculty Creative Activity Research Grants. Four art and architecture faculty members will each receive between $1,000 and $8,000 to support a variety of projects. These range from research about the Elizabethan “Lost Colony” of North Carolina and a monograph on Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck to a mobile art studio traveling the Gulf Coast and new methods of architectural fabrication in Jakarta, Indonesia.

A chance encounter with James McLeod by Jazz at Holmes series organizers beneath the Brookings Hall archway in 1998 would lead to the continuation of the popular series, which has become a local instituion in its 13th season. On Oct. 6, Jazz at Holmes will honor McLeod, who died Sept. 6, with a concert by legendary St. Louis saxophonist Freddie Washington.

Tomás Saraceno creates spectacular, gravity-defying installations and visionary sculptural models inspired by clouds, bubbles, spider webs and other natural structures. On Oct. 5, Saraceno — who was born in Argentina and now lives and works in Germany — will discuss his work as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series. The talk, which begins at 6:30 p.m. in Steinberg Hall, is held in conjunction with the exhibition Tomás Saraceno: Cloud-Specific, on view through Jan. 9 at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.

In this centennial year of Williams’ birth, and the 75th anniversary of his matriculation at WUSTL, Tennessee Williams’ literary legacy will be the subject of an Assembly Series lecture by Henry I. Schvey, PhD, professor of drama and comparative literature in Arts & Sciences. Schvey’s presentation, “Tennessee Williams at 100: From Washington University to the Wider World” will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6 in Steinberg Hall Auditorium.

It is the stuff of campus legend. In 1937, Tennessee Williams took fourth in a playwriting competition at Washington University in St. Louis. So upset was the young writer that he soon left town and later, in The Glass Menagerie, exacted sly artistic revenge upon his alma mater. But on Oct. 7 and 8, Williams will return to Washington University, in the form of two one-man shows by veteran actor and playwright Jeremy Lawrence.

Sidney Outlaw, a rising young American baritone lauded as a “terrific singer” by The New York Times, will join pianist Carol Wong for an intimate Liederabend at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 9, at Washington University in St. Louis. Literally translated as “evening of song,” Liederabend is a German term referring to a recital given by a singer and pianist, particularly of works by 19th-century Austrian or German composers. The performance is presented in conjunction with the American Arts Experience—St. Louis.

Three aspiring playwrights will present staged readings of their works Sept. 30 and Oct. 1 as part of the 2011 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival. Nicknamed “The Hotch,” the festival is sponsored by the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences and is named in honor of celebrated alumnus A.E. Hotchner. It consists of an intensive two-week workshop, led this year by nationally known dramaturg Megan Monaghan Revis, which culminates in the staged readings.

The voice is commonly understood as a vehicle for communicating meaning and, alternatively, as a source of aesthetic pleasure — approaches personified by the military commander and the opera singer. But in A Voice and Nothing More (2006), Slovenian philosopher Mladen Dolar proposes a third paradigm: psychoanalysis. In October, Dolar, the Visiting Fannie Hurst Professor, will lead a three-day series, titled “From Hegel to Freud and Kafka,” exploring the linguistics, metaphysics, ethics and politics of the voice, as well as its use by Sigmund Freud, Georg W.F. Hegel and Franz Kafka.

The Saint Louis Art Museum and the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis have announced the selection of the next two Henry L. and Natalie E. Freund Teaching Fellows. Chelsea Knight, a New York-based artist whose narrative-based videos, photographs and participatory performances explore the nature of social control and the current state of democracy, will serve as the Freund Fellow for the 2011-12 academic year. Stih & Schnock, a Berlin-based collaborative team that focuses on issues relating to collective memory, will be Freund Fellows for 2012-13.