Arts & Culture

The Performing Arts Department presents the world premiere of “Florida,” a new play by recent alumnus Lucas Marschke, April 11-14 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. Workshopped last fall as part of the A. E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival, the play recounts a dysfunctional vacation for the ages.

Praised for his “silvery tone” (Washington Post) and “gleeful command” (New York Times), Gil Shaham is among today’s foremost violinists. At 7 p.m. April 7, Shaham will join pianist Akira Eguchi for an evening of classical and contemporary duets as part of Washington University’s Great Artists Series.

Choreographers Harrison Parker and Rachael Servello will present a pair of new works March 23 in Edison Theatre as part of “Reel2Real,” the 2019 MFA Student Dance Concert.

A light flashes. A wing rustles. A feather floats gently to the floor. Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” features some of the most indelible images in American theater. From Feb. 22 to March 3, the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences will stage Kushner’s epic drama for six performances in Edison Theatre.

Senior Hannah Gilberstadt leads the Jazz Band at Washington University through a rendition of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 1962 classic “Só Danço Samba” (“I Only Dance Samba”). The Brazilian composer was among the 20th century’s most influential songwriters, and a pioneer of the bossa nova style.

The Performing Arts Department will debut its production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” Feb. 22 in Edison Theatre. “At the heart of the play is a question about who gets to be a citizen of this country,” said dramaturg Paige McGinley. “Gay people, people with AIDS, the addicted — these are often seen as society’s most disposable. Kushner puts them at the center of the American story.”

Virtuoso pianist Nikolai Lugansky, praised for his “plush sound and plenty impetuosity” by The New York Times, will open Washington University’s third Great Artists Series Feb. 10 with works by Claude Debussy, Alexander Scriabin and Sergei Rachmaninoff.

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.