Arts & Culture

Secret military experiments. A television star turned health-care activist. The yearslong battle to remove a Confederate statue in New Orleans. This month, the Film & Media Studies program in Arts & Sciences will screen more than 20 films as part of the 2021 St. Louis International Film Festival.

The Great Artists Series presents intimate recitals with some of the world’s finest classical musicians. The 2022 series will feature soprano Angel Blue; piano duo Kirill Gerstein and Garrick Ohlsson; the Attacca Quartet; and pianist Seong-Jin Cho.

When teenage Dungeon Master Tilly Evans dies in a car wreck, her sister must commence a mythic quest of her own. So begins “She Kills Monsters,” a bittersweet coming-of-age story filled with demon queens, secret tomes and ragtag adventurers battling for lost souls.

Talent agent Samantha Chalk, AB ’08, can find a star in an instant.

Can you ever escape your past? Tennessee Williams spent a lifetime trying. His years in New York, New Orleans and Key West are the stuff of literary legend. But it was St. Louis where Williams lived longest, and St. Louis that shaped him as an artist and a person. So argues Henry I. Schvey in “Blue Song: St. Louis in the Life and Work of Tennessee Williams.”

In “Kent Styles,” junior Zachary Stern explores questions of family, trust and the ghosts we can’t escape. This weekend, the play will receive its world-premiere staged reading as part of WashU’s annual A.E. Hotchner New Play Festival.

The Black Rep launches its 45th season with a new production of “Sweat,” Lynn Nottage’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, in WashU’s Edison Theatre through Sept. 26.

Renowned composer Robert Wykes, professor emeritus of music in Arts & Sciences, died June 29, 2021, in St. Louis. He was 95.

When COVID-19 upended the season, WashU’s Performing Arts Department turned to alumni playwrights.

Bobby, Jill and Tina gather around the picnic table. Their bickering drifts across Mudd Field. But fear not, this isn’t some end-of-year meltdown — it’s a live, un-miked, guerilla-style performance of George F. Walker’s provocative tragicomedy “Tough!”.