Arts & Culture

Courtesy photo*Romanzo criminale*The Film & Media Studies Program in Arts & Sciences will host the Italian Film Festival of St. Louis March 30 to April 14. The festival will feature the St. Louis premiers of six recent Italian feature films, screened on Fridays and Saturdays for three consecutive weeks. All films will be shown in 35mm format in Italian with English subtitles.

Nancy and Kenneth Kranzberg received the eighth annual Jane and Whitney Harris St. Louis Community Service Award at a Feb. 20 ceremony at Harbison House. Their prize, a $50,000 cash gift, will be distributed to six non-profit organizations.

Imrat Khan, a distinguished artist-in-residence in the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, will be joined by virtuoso tabla player Samir Chatterjee for a concert of Indian classical music at 8 p.m. March 25 at Edison Theatre.

Poet David Baker, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will read from his work at 8 p.m. March 22 in Hurst Lounge in Duncker Hall as part of The Writing Program Reading Series.

Uta Grosenick, managing editor for DuMont publishers in Cologne, Germany, will speak on the development of commercial art galleries since 1945 at 6:30 p.m. March 22 in Brown Hall Auditorium.

The Washington University Opera will present Kirke Mechem’s highly acclaimed 1980 adaptation of Molière’s comedy “Tartuffe” at 8 p.m. March 23-24 at Edison Theatre.

Joseph A. RosenBig George BrockLegendary blues vocalist and harmonica player Big George Brock will perform at Washington University March 29. Raised on a plantation outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, Brock has shared the stage with figures such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf and operated a series of popular St. Louis blues clubs, including the 1,000-seat Club Caravan. In recent years he has released three critically acclaimed albums: Front Door Man, Club Caravan and Round Two.

Chris HartmanMaryse PearceIn 2002, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks began writing one play each day for an entire year. The resulting cycle, called “365 Plays/365 Days,” is now receiving its premiere as part of a yearlong grassroots festival that has enlisted more than 600 theater companies, arts organizations and universities from across the nation. In St. Louis, 15 students from Washington University’s Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will present a week’s worth of the cycle April 2 to 8.

Gerald N. Izenberg, Ph.D., professor of history and co-director of the Literature and History program, both in Arts & Sciences, will examine the complex notions of identity in a series of programs beginning with the Assembly Series lecture at 11 a.m. March 21 in Graham Chapel.

Eric Woolsey*Highness* by Carolyn KrasEngland’s Queen Elizabeth I is among the most mythologized figures in history. But who was Elizabeth before she rose to power? What transformed this precocious yet lonely girl into a leader of steel? Find out in Carolyn Kras’ historical drama Highness, winner of the 2006 A.E. Hotchner Playwriting Competition, which receives its world premiere this month.