Arts & Culture

Eric WoolseyInto the WoodsWhat happens after “happily ever after”? Find out when the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences presents the Into The Woods — Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical amalgam of fairy tale favorites — as its spring Mainstage production April 1-3 and 8-10.

Jill KrementzJames LapineVeteran Broadway writer, librettist and director James Lapine will introduce Washington University’s production of Into the Woods, his 1987 collaboration with Stephen Sondheim, with a talk at 7 p.m. Friday, April 1.

Jerry BauerBidartAward-winning poet Frank Bidart, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature in Washington University’s Department of English in Arts & Sciences, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 24. In addition, Bidart will give a talk on the craft of poetry at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 31.

The Washington University Opera will present Lee Hoiby’s A Month in the Country — based on the play by Ivan Turgenev — at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 18 and 19. The piece is something of a lost gem in the world of opera: first adapted in 1964 for the New York City Opera, under the title Natalia Petrovna, it was revised in 1980 but had gone years without a performance until last December, when the Manhattan School of Music launched a well-received production.

HackerAward-winning poet Marilyn Hacker will read from her work at 7 p.m. Friday, March 18, at Washington University’s Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. The author of 11 books of poetry and essays, Hacker is a cancer survivor and prominent lesbian activist as well as an influential literary editor and a gifted translator. Much of her work details her own struggles with breast cancer and the loss of friends to AIDS. The talk sponsored by The Center for the Humanities and The Writing Program, both in Arts & Sciences, in conjunction with the Kemper Art Museum’s Inside Out Loud: Women’s Health in Contemporary Art.

Sherman Alexie, a writer known for his poetry, novels, short fiction and screenplays, will deliver the Buder Center for American Indian Studies Lecture for the Washington University Assembly Series at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 16. His talk, “Without Reservations: An Urban Indian’s Comic, Poetic and Highly Irreverent Look at the World,” will be held in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Student Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the Washington University Hilltop Campus. The talk is free and open to the public.

CarlinWashington University’s Eliot Trio will highlight late piano trios by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, in the auditorium of Uncas A. Whitaker Hall for Biomedical Engineering. The Eliot Trio consists of Seth Carlin, professor of music and director of the piano program in Washington University’s Department of Music in Arts & Sciences; David Halen, concertmaster for the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra; and guest cellist Michael Haber, professor of music at the University of Akron.

File PhotoHundreds of college dancers from across the Midwest will visit Washington University March 3-6 as part of the American College Dance Festival Association’s (ACDFA) 2005 Central Region Festival. One of 10 regional ACDFA events, the Central Region Festival brings together approximately 300 student and 50 faculty dancers representing 20 colleges and universities from nine states, along with nationally renowned choreographers David Dorfman, Donald McKayle and Trinette Singleton, who will serve as adjudicators.

Thirteen junior and senior fashion design students will off show their latest couture creations at the Feb. 24 event.

Photo by Shawn G. HenryPowellPoet D.A. Powell, a finalist for this year’s National Book Critics’ Circle Award in poetry, will read from his work at 8 p.m. Thursday, March 3, as part of Washington University’s Writing Program Spring Reading Series.