Arts & Culture

The Center for the Humanities and Program in Film & Media Studies, both in Arts & Sciences, will host the Sixth Annual Children’s Film Symposium Saturday, Nov. 21. Titled “An Exploration of Children’s Films and Their Audiences,” the symposium is presented in conjunction with Cinema St. Louis.  

The Trombones of the Saint Louis Symphony are one of the nation’s leading brass chamber ensembles, dedicated to elevating the status of the trombone quartet and to expanding the trombone quartet repertoire. At 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20, the group will present a free concert of music spanning the 18th through 21st centuries in the Tisch Commons of the Danforth University Center.

Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Sharon Lockhart creates films and photographs that are at once rigorously formal and deeply humanistic. Beginning Friday, Feb. 5, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum opens a major exhibit of Lockhart’s called “Lunch Break,” showcasing American workers at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine.

At 8 p.m. Nov. 20 at Edison Theatre, Roger Rees, a 22-year veteran of television, movies and the Royal Shakespeare Company, comes to campus with “What You Will,” a side-splitting one-man-show that combines the Bard’s greatest soliloquies with colorful observations about the acting life and offbeat tales of theatrical disaster.

Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and literary critic Louis Menand will present the keynote address for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” the University’s eighth annual faculty book colloquium, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, in Graham Chapel.

In a career spanning more than 50 years, the great French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) emerged as one of the most celebrated women of her day, known for a signature acting style based on grand, theatrical gestures and a famously melodious voice. On Nov. 22 the Washington University Symphony Orchestra will highlight a series of rarely heard works originally composed for “The Divine Sarah,” who commissioned and revived dozens of musical scores to accompany her plays.

Pulitzer Prize-winning essayist and literary critic Louis Menand will present the keynote address for “Celebrating Our Books, Recognizing Our Authors,” the university’s eighth annual faculty book colloquium, at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17, in Graham Chapel. The event — organized by the Center for the Humanities and University Libraries — also will feature presentations by faculty members William Lowry, Ph.D., professor of political science, and Lori Watt, Ph.D., assistant professor of history and International & Area Studies.

Olivier and Tony Award-winning actor Roger Rees is probably best known to American audiences for his work on the small screen — as the dashing English tycoon Robin Colcord on Cheers, as British Ambassador Lord John Marbury on The West Wing and, most recently, as Dr. Colin Marlow on Grey’s Anatomy. But next month Rees, a 22-year veteran of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC), will return to the stage with What You Will, a side-splitting one-man-show that combines the Bard’s greatest soliloquies with colorful observations about the acting life and offbeat (and occasionally bawdy) tales of theatrical disaster.

Critic and curator Yve-Alain Bois, a widely recognized expert on 20th-century European and American art, will present a lecture titled “Chance Encounters: John Cage, François Morellet, Ellsworth Kelly” at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. The talk — held in conjunction with the exhibition Chance Aesthetics, on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum through Jan. 4 — is cosponsored by the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ fall Public Lecture Series and the Department of Art History & Archaeology in Arts & Sciences.

It’s a timeless tale: two rivalrous brothers vie for the love of a single woman. But Remember Me, the ambitious new collaboration between Parsons Dance Company and the East Village Opera Company (EVOC), is anything but old-fashioned. Combining contemporary dance with live and recorded music as well as video projections, aerial choreography and special effects, Remember Me is at once rock-opera and opera that really rocks. Next month these two internationally renowned companies will return to Edison Theatre to present Remember Me as part of the 2009-10 OVATIONS Series.