Arts & Culture

Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton and his wife, Risa Zwerling Wrighton, will receive the 2019 Rosa L. Parks Award for their service to St. Louis’ young people at Washington University in St. Louis’ Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration at 7 p.m. Monday, Jan. 21, in Graham Chapel.

The Black Rep will present the world premiere of the drama “Canfield Drive” in Edison Theatre Jan. 9. The play, some four years in the making, runs through Jan. 27 and explores how two powerful journalists from very different ideological perspectives grapple with the 2014 death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

The Performing Arts Department will present “Shadows,” a new work by celebrated choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess, as part of “PastForward,” the 2018 Washington University Dance Theatre concert, beginning Nov. 30. In all, the concert will feature more than 20 dancers performing seven works by faculty and visiting choreographers.

Hiro is young and successful in New York, a world away from her old Kentucky home. But when her little sister decides to marry — at age 22, to a born-again Christian she just met — Hiro responds, determined to stop the wedding. Washington University’s Ron Himes will direct “Kentucky” Nov. 15-18 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre.

In the age of reality TV, what does it mean to be “authentic”? So asks senior Grace Haselhorst in “The Realness.” Thyrsus, Washington University’s student-run experimental theater group, will debut the play Nov. 9-11.

Two WashU alumni starred in a new off-Broadway production examining the dynamics of a Muslim immigrant family in contemporary England.

The second annual Shakespeare at Olin event April 15 will bring together jugglers, magicians and musicians evoking the Renaissance era, along with performances of the Bard’s works by community players and a reappearance of The Dean’s Players.

Kristin Bauer Van Straten, BFA ’88, is best known for playing the fashionable, no-nonsense vampire Pam De Beaufort on HBO’s True Blood. But when she was younger, she was interested in another art, painting, which led her to Washington University.

WashU alumni share their magical stories about working on Broadway, becoming part of a larger cultural conversation and, ultimately, making a difference.