Arts In Action

Summer 2008



Performances and Updates



DRAMA

Theatre at the Center: The big finish!

Hot Dog Theatre! Puss in Boots

One show only - you’ll for sure want to bring the whole family for this great outdoor picnic with hot dogs, chips, fun and a chance to meet the cast. Your ticket gets you into the picnic AND the play. A little history: Puss in Boots was the first play ever done by the Seem-To-Be Players. We’re doing it in April in celebration of the company’s 35 years of entertaining and educating children and families across the country. Many STBs will be in the show, from companies past and present and even long past. A reception and party for past players follows the performance. Tickets: $10 for adults / $8 for students and seniors

First Saturday Players: Theatre for the very young

Fractured Fairy Tales and a Little Green for Spring

Our wonderful company of 6th-8th graders, directed by Jennifer Glenn, puts on “old-style” Seem-To-Be Players-type shows with a few sing-a-longs and great energy. Really fun performances are targeted for the youngest audiences, from ages 2 and up.
Tickets: $4 per person at the door.
Sponsored by Bowersock Mills and Vinland Valley Nursery

Summer Youth Theatre: Now enrolling!

Three things never grow old: chivalry, chocolate and Summer Youth Theatre, the Arts Center’s most popular drama education program.

This season, 8th-12th graders will rehearse and perform Inherit the Wind, the classic of American theatre based on the Scopes “Monkey Trial,” and Camelot (the great King Arthur legend as brought to life by Lerner and Loewe). Ceri Goulter will direct, Mary Baker will direct the music, and Deb Bettinger will serve as choreographer. (Yes, we replaced Cyrano de Bergerac with Inherit the Wind. Slated Cyrano director Doug Weaver got a “can’t pass it up” acting opportunity at the Black Hills Playhouse — more on that in the next Arts in Action.)

4th-7th graders will do Willy Wonka with Oompah Loompahs and everything! Jennifer Glenn will direct the show and Mary Baker the music, and Whitney Boomer will serve as choreographer. Then, Will Averill’s new comedy, The Sword in the Stone, which tells the tale of King Arthur as a young man, will be directed by Ric Averill with some choreography by and assistance from Whitney Boomer.

K-3rd graders can choose from four different two-week (Tuesday-Friday) sessions, each culminating in a Saturday morning performance. Directors/teachers will include Cheryl Weaver, Ceri Gouter and staff.

Auditions (for 4th-7th graders and for 8th-12th graders) are Sunday, April 27, from 1 to 6pm. Call the Arts Center at 785-843-2787 for an audition time. Callbacks will take place Monday and Tuesday, April 28-29, from 4 to 9pm. (Those who cannot attend Sunday’s audition can audition Monday, April 28, from 4 to 5pm; please call 843-2787 to sign up.)

All who enroll in Summer Youth Theatre will be cast. Auditions are for role assignments. Students in K-3rd grade do not audition. Please request an enrollment packet at the front desk or by calling 843-2787.

Reel good news: Film and video update

We’re offering a class for potential “documentary” makers — to video the Summer Youth Theatre program — including interviews, rehearsals and performances. We also are offering film and video classes for both beginning and advanced 18+ filmmakers. Check the class listings on page 7 for details.We are constantly buying new equipment and have quite a few teachers working with the program, including Jeff and Christie Dobson, Ric Averill, Jeremy Osbern, Chris Blunk and Steve Deaver.

Late summer camps

Check page 7 for details about our August camps! “From Silliness to Shakespeare” for K-6th graders will be led by veteran actress/director/camp leader Cheryl Weaver. “Moving, Moving, Moving Pictures” is a combination film and dance camp for 3rd-8th graders with some acting that will feature filmmakers Jeff and Christie Dobson, choreographer Whitney Boomer and actor/writer/director Ric Averill as instructors to create an unforgettable movie or two — with dance! A documentary filmmaking opportunity for 4th-12th graders and a video/film class for adults round out the cool stuff.

We say “thank you”! What would we do without you?

Show Sponsors

Alvamar in honor of Bob Billings | Ron & Colette Gaches | Gaches, Braden, Barbee & Associates | Gould Evans | Anne & David Hollond | Thomas & Barbara Hollister | June & Mark Jones | Laidlaw Transit, Inc. | Lawrence Family Vision Clinic | Linwood Road Studios | Local Burger | Rose Marino & Sarah Randolph | Michael & Cindy Maude | McDonald’s of Lawrence | Bill & Marlene Penny | Pet World | Susan, Brad and Sophie Tate

Donors

Elizabeth Averill | Tim & Lauren Averill | Tom Averill & Jeffrey Ann Goudie | Janeine Cardin & David Ritter | Mary Elizabeth Debicki | Hilda Enoch | Oliver & Rebecca Finney | Robert Friauf | Rebecca & Joe Gant | Web & Joan Golden | Don & Carol Hatton | Dr. Jon & Barb Heeb | Charles Higginson & Laurie McLane-Higginson | Suzan Hill | Barbara & Steve Hillmer | Jackie & Russell Hilton | Betty Laird | Burdett & Michel Loomis | John & Linda Lungstrum | Liza MacKinnon | Steve & Kathy McDowell | The Pees Family | Elizabeth Schultz | Jan Sheldon & Jim Sherman | Gary & Connie Sollars | John & Deanell Tacha | Agnes Walsh & Craig West | Pete & Ann Wiklund | Dale & Jan Willey | Judy & Jack Wright

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DANCE

Upcoming dance performances

Kaleidoscope: Advanced Dancers Presents

A special evening of diverse dance is presented by the advanced dancers from the Lawrence Arts Center’s dance program. Highlighting the performance will be the Lawrence Youth Ballet Company advanced dancers directed and choreographed by Deborah Bettinger, and the Pistachio Company directed by Whitney Boomer with original dances choreographed by the company.

Alice in Wonderland

The Peanut, Pretzel, Popcorn and Pistachio Companies present in Alice’s adventures in dance. Follow Alice as she meets the White Rabbit, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat and the not-so-nice Queen of Hearts with whom she plays a game of croquet. The cast includes over 30 dancers ranging in age from 5-17 and is directed by Candi Baker, Whitney Boomer, Mary Devlin and Molly Gordon.

New Works Concert 2008

This concert will be the culmination of a creative, busy season for the new company under the direction of Susan Rieger. “The concert has humor, intelligence and courageous looks at many areas of life and the voices of five experienced choreographers,” Rieger says.

In the evening program will be two new works by Rieger. “Resilience, a new sextet, is performed to traditional Indonesian music. The original inspiration for this dance came from a sculpture of 12 headless figures at the Nelson-Atkins Museum by Maria Abakanowicz. Rieger also has choreographed an untitled duet for dancers Bobbi Foudree and Chris Dunn. It is the final section of “Chair Suite” in which the dancers interact with a chair that represents limiting patterns in a relationship. They each struggle to leave the chair and dance freely with another person.

Three company members have also choreographed works for the concert. Non Edwards has choreographed a piece titled “Lifeboat,” which spans the states of desperation, panic, disassociation and humor in an attempt to cope with the irony of living in the atomic age. Bobbi Foudree has choreographed “Was Bleibt (What Remains),” a quartet to the music of Tabula Rasa, where dancers interact in a removed, distant manner. Marisa MacKay presents, “A Shift,” a trio, which explores shifting spiritual paradigms, performed to a collage of popular music and soundscapes.

In addition to the new pieces, 940 will perform some company favorites, including the athletic, driving piece by guest choreographer Dan Stark titled “Diplomacy,” and the joyful movement piece, “Tomorrow, Greener Grass,” choreographed by Rieger to the music of Tin Hat Trio.

Tickets: $13 for adults / $7.50 for students and seniors

Dance Gala 2008

Four different Showcases will be presented to celebrate the achievements of the students in the Lawrence Arts Center’s dance program. The Showcases will include ballet, tap, jazz, modern dance, Mexican folkloric and more!

Mary Poppins

Presented as part of Performance Dance Camp

Carmine Ballere Dance Scholarship audition: May 19

Designed to recognize excellence and commitment and to encourage the serious study of ballet, this scholarship covers full tuition for four ballet classes per week and for the Lawrence Youth Ballet Company.

Auditions will be held Monday, May 19, 4:30-5:30pm in Studio 206 at the Lawrence Arts Center. Those auditioning should be entering Ballet IV or higher level classes. Additional classes are encouraged. Scholarship is for Fall 2008 through Spring 2009.

The Velveteen Rabbit comes to Lawrence

This fall at the Lied Center, San Francisco’s ODC/Dance Company will present this classic tale about the enduring power of love. Through dance, narration and song, the story is told from the perspective of a stuffed rabbit who, above all else, wants to be real. This magical production will include 10 children from the Lawrence area, under the direction of the Lawrence Arts Center dance program, to perform this classic interpretation of Margery Williams’ 1922 book.

The Velveteen Rabbit

Tickets: $24/$18 for adults, $12/$9 for students and children

Audition opportunity: On Saturday, August 16, we will audition youth ages 7-10 for inclusion in The Velveteen Rabbit. Children must be 5 feet tall or under to be included.Approximately eight hours of rehearsals (mostly on the weekends) will be held during the first two weeks of September, and children will attend rehearsals with the ODC/Dance Company during the week prior to the performance. The audition fee is $10.

940 Dance Company audition opportunity

The 940 Dance Company will audition dancers on Sunday, April 20, 2-4pm, at the Lawrence Arts Center. Bring resume with three references. Bring head shot, if available. Prepared solos are optional. For information, contact Susan Rieger, artistic director, at 940dance@sunflower.com or 785-843-2787, or visit www.940dancecompany.org.

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In the Gallery

April 12, 28th Annual Lawrence Art Auction

Featured artist: Tim Forcade, media artist and photographer

April 14-18, Lawrence Arts Center Preschool Exhibition

Private receptions

April 17-25, “Seeds of Change”

In the Lobby for Earth Day

April 21-May 9, Lawrence Public Schools Art Students Exhibition

May 13, “Her Voice”: Poetry Reading and Reunion

May 14–June 20, “Short Stories”: New Work by Dave Loewenstein

May 14–June 20, “Unsung” Artists Under Thirty
Curated by Molly Murphy

June 25–July 27, Lawrence Arts Center Artists-in-Residence Exhibition

Jennifer Holt, ceramics, and Brian Stuparyk, prints

August 1-30, Metalsmithing in the Sister Cities: Lawrence and Eutin

Curated by Carol Ann Carter (University of Kansas) and Marlies Behm (Germany)

“Her Voice”: Student mentors of poet Elizabeth Schultz reunite for reading

Denise Low, Caryn Mirriam Goldberg, Mary Wharff, Steve Bunch, Jim Bogan and Cyrus Console are former students of Elizabeth Schultz, University of Kansas English professor emerita. They were also poets long before she was. She thus claims all of these well-known, well-published poets and former students as her mentors. To launch her new book of poetry, Her Voice (Woodley Memorial Press), Beth has organized a reunion reading with them in the gallery at the Lawrence Arts Center.

The event on Tuesday, May 13, will be sponsored by the Lawrence Arts Center’s Committee on Imagination & Place, the KU English Department and the Raven Bookstore. It is free and open to the public. Copies of all of the poets’ books will be available for sale at the reading.

Denise Low is Kansas’ second poet laureate and the author of numerous books, including Tulip Elegies, Thailand Journal and Words of a Prairie Alchemist. Caryn Mirriam Goldberg has published two books of poetry — Lot’s Wife and Animals in the House — as well as several highly praised books on writing. Mary Wharff, who won the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for Fiction in 2006, writes both poetry and short fiction and has published in numerous journals. Steve Bunch, who won the Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for Poetry in 2008, was the editor of a long-time Lawrence poetry journal, Tellus. Jim Bogan holds a distinguished teaching chair at the University of Missouri-Rolla, has produced several films on art and culture, and wrote Ozark Meandering and Trees in the Same Forest. Cyrus Console, presently working on a doctorate in KU’s English department, published his first book of poems, Brief Under Water, last year.

Schultz, who retired from teaching in 2001 and who recently retired from writing academic prose, writes poetry and nature essays, having published Shoreline: Seasons at the Lake and Conversations: Art Into Poetry at the Spencer Art Museum.

“Short Stories”: New Work by Dave Loewenstein

“Just about every day for the last 10 years I have walked a path from my apartment in East Lawrence to a coffeeshop downtown and then over to my studio around 9th and Connecticut. It is an unremarkable routine that was for a long time only a way of getting from here to there. Then, after years of being pre-occupied with my destination and overlooking what was right in front of me, I started to see (and imagine) the places, spaces and people along this route as settings and actors engaged in the performance of little one-act plays and flights of fancy. It was a curious new perspective, as if I had discovered something hidden in plain sight. I looked closer, studying puddle reflections, following snow-print paths, glancing through window frames and tree branches, and peering down alleyways. Part cultural anthropologist, part documentarian and part ‘what-if’er, I began watching snippets of these dramas and comedies unfold, never knowing how they began or how they might end. More overseen than overheard, I gleaned what I could from a distance in written and drawn sketches, and then daydreamed up the rest in the studio, the results being these short stories, all of which take place in a 10-block area in and around downtown.”-Dave Loewenstein

“Unsung” Artists Under Thirty

“Unsung, designed to showcase the work of six young artists at the beginning of their visual arts careers, opens in May. The exhibit, the first of its kind at the Arts Center, will attempt to introduce a new generation of ideas and visual inter-pretations being created in Lawrence to a new audience. Featured artists are Betsy Timmer, Glen Mies, Juniper Tangpuz, Jeremy Rockwell, Josh Adams and myself, Molly Murphy, also serving as curator. Each of the exhibiting artists represents the strong arts culture of the city in a different way, and were chosen for their innovation and unapologetic drive to create. The work varies greatly in style, medium and scale — from painting to freestanding sculpture to a paper installation designed specifically for the space — and represents the diversity and strength of work coming from young, generally “unknown” artists. This group of works provides a sense of what’s to come, the active beginnings of future careers and the continued renewal of the Lawrence arts scene. Each of the artists has developed a distinct and individually recognizable style, and a proven ability to critique, examine and investigate through art. I also hope this show gives a face to why many young artists come to Lawrence to study, and why many choose to remain in the area to continue their artistic pursuits.”-Molly Murphy

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Imagination & Place Press

Call for submissions

The Committee on Imagination & Place of the Lawrence Arts Center announces the establishment of the Imagination & Place Press (I&PP), whose mission is “to publish works of literature which are grounded in place and soar with imagination.”

The I&PP has released a call for submissions for its first book, Imagination & Place: An Anthology, which will include works of prose, poetry and images. For this book, writers and artists are encouraged to think, feel, dream and imagine place in complex and innovative ways.

“By publishing writers and artists from around the country in an annual volume, the Imagination & Place Press will create a regional and national context for Kansas writers and artists,” says Elizabeth Schultz, I&P committee member. “We hope that writers and artists will be inspired to create new understanding of environments and of our experience of life.”

Writer Kelly Barth will serve as I&PP editor; Laurie Ward, managing editor; Paul Hotvedt and Blue Heron Typesetting, production designer; Rick Mitchell, Lawrence Arts Center gallery director, publisher's representative; and Denise Low and Schultz, consultants. Visit www.imaginationandplace.org.

Annual Environmental Award Presentation: April 22

The public is invited to attend the annual Imagination & Place Environmental Award presentation ceremony, to be held April 22, Earth Day, 5-6pm at the Lawrence Arts Center. The award presentation will be followed by a reception provided by the Community Mercantile of Lawrence.

The annual award, established in partnership with the City of Lawrence Waste Reduction & Recycling Division, is designed to recognize Douglas County community members who have made a demonstrable and positive impact on the environment. Its inspiration is the idea of giving something beautiful for something beautifully done.

The 2008 award will go to an outstanding volunteer or volunteer group; the award itself is created by Lawrence artist Lisa Grossman.

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What’s going on

Living and making art in Lawrence: The Arts Center’s artist-in-residence program

The artist in residence program at the Lawrence Arts Center brings in a ceramics artist and a printmaking artist each year, giving each an opportunity to create work, gain valuable teaching experience and live as a Lawrencian for a year. The 2007-08 residents were chosen from a competitive pool of candidates from around the country.

Jen Holt, this year’s ceramics resident, received her MFA in ceramics from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and completed a residency at the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, Mont. The enthusiasm Jen’s mold making and slip casting class has stirred up in the ceramics studio is palpable. She also has been very busy making work and exhibiting. In March alone her work was seen in Kansas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and California.

Brian came to the JTPS printmaking studio from Michigan where he received his MFA in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Within days of his arrival he was creating work in the studio. Brian’s prints showcase mementos of the individual pursuit of elusive personal happiness, “tokens of life’s little defeats.” He currently has a solo show at Southern Oregon University.

Jen and Brian will exhibit their work in the Lawrence Arts Center Gallery, June 27-July 25. An opening reception will take place June 27 at 7pm. This is free and open to the public. For information, please visit www.lawrenceartscenter.org.

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20th Annual Honor Society Winners

Thirty-one students auditioned for the Honor Recital on March 1, and 12 were selected to play at the performance for the public held March 9 at the Lawrence Arts Center. The outstanding performance, hosted by Rachel Hunter, included a celebration honoring all of the talented young musicians who have performed throughout the competition’s history.

Congratulations to this year’s winners: Xander Casad, alto sax; Rachael Mulford, marimba; Adrienne Willems, voice; Masa Ohtake, trombone; Ji-Yeon Lee, violin; Danni Wang, piano; Luke Rhodes, piano; Dravid Joseph, piano; Raquel Gonzalez, flute; Alexandra Guinzbourg, violin; Eun Ji Lee, violin; and Paul Eltschinger, piano. Judges this year were Susan Ralston, John McIntyre and Peter Chun.

Thank you to the following for their long-term commitment and support of this event: The Stephen Paul Wunsch Foundation for Young Musicians, the Community Mercantile, Hume Music, Kansas Public Radio, Lawrence Community Theatre, the Lied Center of Kansas, and the University of Kansas Department of Music and Dance.

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