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Lawrence University Presents Benjamin Britten’s Comic Opera “Albert Herring”
No full textIn commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten, Lawrence University brings the great British composer’s hilarious coming-of-age comic opera “Albert Herring” to the stage Feb. 14-17.
Performances in Stansbury Theatre of the Music-Drama Center are scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Feb. 14-16 with a 3 p.m. matinee performance Sunday, Feb. 17. Tickets, at 5 for seniors and students, are available through the Lawrence University Box Office, 920-832-6749.
Originally set in 1900, guest director/choreographer Nicola Bowie transports the production to 1947, the year Britten wrote the opera.
“It is a period that resonated with me, and I believe further serves to accentuate the characters, making them more relevant to an audience in 2013,” said Bowie, an accomplished director who has staged operas with the New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Washington Opera, among others. “It proved to be a perfect fit, emphasizing that life in many rural areas of Britain and probably elsewhere has changed very little over the last few hundred years.”
Intricate and Witty
Pairing an intricate but “listenable” score with a witty libretto, “Albert Herring” parodies life in a rural British village, poking fun at puffed-up politicians, flighty school teachers, vapid vicars, bumbling police officers and an assortment of other eccentrics. But his treatment of shy young Albert’s coming of age has an underpinning of sensitivity and genuine emotion.
When the village committee fails to find a local girl virtuous enough to be crowned queen of its May Day festival, Albert, a virginal “mama’s boy,” is crowned May King instead. Unhappy with his prudish reputation and with the help of with the help of a little spiked lemonade, Albert breaks away from his mother’s domination and the suppressive morals of his elders for a night of debauchery and adventure.
While comic in tone, the opera is as musically complex as any the more serious works penned by Britten, named the most frequently performed opera composer born in the 20th century by Opera America.
“’Albert Herring’ is a wonderful learning experience for our students because it features a large cast of characters, each of whom has significant musical, dramatic and vocal challenges,” said Bonnie Koestner, associate professor of music at Lawrence and vocal coach for the production. “With its theme of a young man’s awkward journey to manhood and independence, it is an ideal dramatic subject for college students. This opera is a major undertaking for undergraduates, but our students have risen to the challenge admirably and are prepared to give our audience a very entertaining evening of musical theatre.”
The double-cast production features junior Ian Koziara and senior Issa Ransom as the titular character. Junior Zoie Reams and sophomore Elizabeth Vaughan play Albert’s overbearing mother. Senior Cayla Rosche and junior Gabriella Guilfoil play Lady Billows, an elderly autocrat, while senior Susan Borkowski and junior Graycie Gardner play Florence, Lady Billows’ companion.
Octavio Mas-Arocas conducts a 13-piece orchestra. Karin Kopischke served as the production’s costume designer and Steve Barnes designed the set. Dave Owens served as technical director while 2004 Lawrence graduate and New York City-based consultant Aaron Sherkow served as the production’s guest lighting designer
Author SARK Shares Her Passion for the Positive in Lawrence University Convocation
No full textAuthor, artist and inspirational tour de force Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy — professionally known as SARK — shares her infectious perspective on living life to its fullest Thursday, March 4 in a Lawrence University convocation.
SARK presents “Make Your Creative Dreams Real” at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. She also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2 p.m. in Riverview Lounge of the Lawrence Memorial Union.
With more than two million books in print, SARK is the author and illustrator of a dozen personal growth, inspiration and creativity books, including the bestsellers “Succulent Wild Woman” and 2002′s “Prosperity Pie: How to Relax About Money and Everything Else.” She’s also embraced the importance of creativity in her books “Inspiration Sandwich,” The Bodacious Book of Succulence,” “Change Your Life Without Getting Out of Bed” and “Eat Mangoes Naked.”
She has been profiled in the PBS series “Women of Wisdom and Power,” shared her passion for life in the documentary film “The World According to SARK” and is a periodic guest on National Public Radio. For more than 10 years, she has provided positive motivation via her own “Inspiration Line.”
A self-proclaimed recovering procrastinator/perfectionist, SARK grew up in Minneapolis. She studied at the Minneapolis Art Institute, the University of Tampa and the University of Minnesota, where she earned a degree in radio and television production. She makes her home today in San Francisco, where she oversees Camp SARK, a company that produces inspirational cards, posters and calendars
Two Lawrence Students Awarded Gilman Scholarships for Off-Campus Study
No full textTwo Lawrence University students have been awarded the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Senior Tammy Tran and junior Zechariah Meunier are among more than 850 American undergraduate students from 324 colleges and universities across the United States selected for the scholarship
Lawrence University Convocation Features Cartoonist, Author Alison Bechdel
No full textAward-winning cartoonist and author Alison Bechdel discusses her life and career in the Lawrence University convocation “Drawing Lessons: The Comics of Everyday Life” Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel. She also will conduct a question-and-answer session at 2:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. Both events are free and open to the public.
Bechdel’s work includes the groundbreaking comic “Dykes to Watch Out For” and the graphic novel memoirs “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic“(2006) and “Are You My Mother: A Comic Drama” (2012).
Featuring a cast of quirky fictional characters navigating life’s daily struggles, “Dykes to Watch Out For,” is drawn from Bechdel’s own experiences as a politically active lesbian. It has enjoyed nearly three decades of syndication in more than 50 alternative newspapers and magazines. Ms. Magazine deemed it “one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comics genre, period.”
Bechdel’s national profile rose with the release of “Fun Home,” a book-length autobiographical work in which she explores her relationship with her closeted, bisexual father and his apparent suicide. It became the first graphic novel named Time magazine’s Best Book of the Year. It also was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, won the 2007 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work and has been a required text for students in Lawrence’s Freshman Studies course since 2011.
Her most recent work, “Are You My Mother,” complements “Fun Home,” with reflections on her fraught, complex relationship with her mother.
Beyond her self-syndicated comics and memoirs, Bechdel has drawn for Slate, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Book Review and U.K. literary magazine Granta. She was awarded a 2012-13 Guggenheim Fellowship for Creative Arts and edited “Best American Comics 2011.” Other honors include a seat on the Usage Panel of the American Heritage Dictionary in 2006, a fellowship at the University of Chicago and the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, which honors LGBT writers
Lawrence University Hosts Town Hall Forum with Four Black Authors
No full textFour distinguished writers will participate in a town hall style forum at Lawrence University Monday, Feb. 21 as part of the 2005 Black Author’s College Tour. The forum, focusing on issues that shape and impact the African-American community, will be held at 7 p.m. in Science Hall, Room 102 on the Lawrence campus.
Participating in the forum will be authors Brandon Massey, Jamise Dames, Lois Benjamin and Yasmin Shiraz. Each will give a brief talk addressing a specific issue related to the African-American community and then take part in an open discussion with audience members.
A resident of Atlanta, Ga., Massey will address issues of the black man’s challenge in America. He self-published his first novel, “Thunderland,” in 1999 and a revised edition was republished in 2002 by Kensington Publishing. His second book, “Dark Corner,” a vampire novel set in rural Mississippi, was released in January, 2004, while “Dark Dreams: A Collection of Horror and Suspense by Black Writers,” was published last August. His latest work, the supernatural thriller “Within the Shadows,” is scheduled for release in June.
Dames, a published songwriter and former recording artist, will share her insights on the importance of sustaining self esteem in the black community. She is the author of the national best seller “Momma’s Baby Daddy’s Maybe” (2003) and “Pushing Up Daisies” (2004). A graduate of the University of Connecticut with a degree in English and an emphasis in creative writing, Dames is currently pursuing graduate studies.
Benjamin, a professor of sociology at Virginia’s Hampton University, will speak on the secrets of the black elite. She is the author of “The Black Elite: Facing the Color Line in the Twilight of the Twentieth Century,” for which she interviewed 100 prominent African-Americans. She also served as editor of the 1997 book “Black Women in the Academy,” a collection of essays written by 33 black female academics and administrators from around the country who discuss their experiences of working in higher education in America. Benjamin earned a Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley.
Shiraz, a journalist and empowerment speaker, will examine the impact of hip-hop culture on the African-American community. She is the author of the 2004 book “The Blueprint for My Girls” and is working on a sequel, “The Blueprint For My Girls In Love.”
As an entertainment reporter, Shiraz has written for a variety of publications, including Black Enterprise, Upscale, Impact and the Electronic Urban Report and has interviewed numerous celebrities, including Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, singers Jay-Z, Queen Latifah and Brandy, actors Jada Pinkett-Smith and Martin Lawrence and attorney Johnnie Cochran, among others.
The Black Authors Tour program is sponsored by Lawrence’s Office of Multicultural Affairs and is part of the college’s celebration of Black History Month
Conservative Author Dinesh D’Souza Celebrates America’s Greatness in Lawrence University Appearance
No full textNoted conservative author Dinesh D’Souza takes on the critics and defends America’s unique standing as the “freest and most decent society in existence” in an address Thursday, May 20 at Lawrence University.
Based on his 2002 book of the same name, D’Souza presents “What’s So Great About America” at 7:30 p.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel.
Written in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, “What’s So Great About America” celebrates the United States, in D’Souza’s view as, “the best life our world has to offer” while taking on those who hate America, including radical Muslims.
Born and raised in India, D’Souza, 43, immigrated to the United States in 1978. After earning a degree from Dartmouth University, he served as the editor of Prospect magazine and spent a year as managing editor of the conservative magazine Policy Review. In 1987, D’Souza joined the Reagan administration as a senior domestic policy analyst.
In addition to “What’s So Great About America,” D’Souza is the author of six other books, including 1991′s bestseller “Illiberal Education,” in which he casts a critical eye on the state of contemporary American higher education. He has also written a biography of Jerry Falwell, “Falwell: Before the Millennium,” provided a controversial view of the role of race in American society in “The End of Racism” and argues the case why Ronald Reagan should be considered among the nation’s greatest presidents in his 1997 book “Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader.”
Hailed by Investor’s Business Daily as one of the “top young public-policy makers in the country,” D’Souza’s writing also has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Forbes, Harper’s and the Atlantic Monthly.
He currently serves as the Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, specializing in issues of social and individual responsibility, civil rights and affirmative action, economics and society and higher education.
D’Souza is speaking at the invitation of the Lawrence College Republicans, and his appearance is sponsored by the Class of ’65 Student Activity Fund, the Young America’s Foundation, and the Outagamie County Republican Party
Author Lynda Barry Brings Gospel of Creativity to Lawrence University Convocation
No full textAward-winning cartoonist and author Lynda Barry brings her message of tapping into your innate creativity to Lawrence University in the convocation “Crossing the Fox River: From Thought to Action.”
The third presentation in the college’s 2012-13 convocation series, Barry’s address on Thursday, Jan. 24 at 11:10 a.m. in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, is free and open to the public.
Barry has enjoyed a 35-year career as a cartoonist that began as an undergraduate at Washington State’s Evergreen State College, where she shared her comic strips with Evergreen classmate Matt Groening, the future creator of the TV hit show “The Simpsons,” who secretly slipped them into the school newspaper.
Along the way, she forged a unique path in the art world. Her weekly comic strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” which ran in alternative newspapers from 1979-2008, is widely credited with expanding the literary, thematic and emotional range of American comics.
A truly multidisciplinary artist, Barry is the author of 18 books, has worked as a commentator for NPR and written monthly features for a numerous magazines, among them Esquire, Mother Jones, Mademoiselle and Salon. She recorded a spoken word album called “The Lynda Barry Experience,” adapted her first novel, “The Good Times are Killing Me,” into an off-Broadway play and has been a guest of David Letterman on his television show numerous times.
A Wisconsin native who makes her home today in rural Rock County, Barry conducts more than a dozen writing workshops a year, including some specifically for non-writers in which she coaxes her students to find that part of the brain where the story-telling talent resides.
Barry has been honored with numerous awards for her work, including two Eisner Awards, which honor creative achievement in American comic books. Her illustrated novel “Cruddy” has been translated into French, Italian, German, Catalan and Hebrew and her book “One! Hundred! Demons!” was required reading in 2008 for all incoming Stanford University freshmen
Lawrence Student Organist Wins Regional Competition
No full textLawrence University senior Alexis VanZalen earned first-place honors at the recent Young Artists Organ regional competition conducted at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minn.
The biennial regional competition is co-sponsored by the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and the Schubert Club of St. Paul.
This was the second straight time a Lawrence student has won the organ competition. Daniel O’Connor earned first-place honors when it was last held in 2010.
VanZalen, a double degree candidate majoring in organ performance and history from Holland, Mich., received $2,000 for her winning performance. Her 25-minute audition included J.S. Bach’s “Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541,” French composer Jehan Alain’s ” Variations sur un thème Theme de Clément Jannequin,” Basil Harwood’s “Allegro appassionato, from Organ Sonata No. 1 in C# minor, Op. 5″ and Benjamin Britten’s “Hymn of St. Columba.”
In 2011, VanZalen earned second-place honors in the Wisconsin National Federation of Music Clubs’ Biennial Student/Collegiate Competition. She is a student of university organist Kathrine Handford.
The Young Artists Organ competition was open to organists under the age of 24 who reside in or attend school in the 10-state region that includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, eastern Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
Founded in 1896, the American Guild of Organists is an educational and service organization that strives to advance organ and choral music, elevate the status of church musicians and maintain standards of artistic excellence among organists and choral conductors
Lawrence University Awarding Honorary Degree to Renowned Scholar, Author Martha Nussbaum
No full textLawrence University will recognize Martha Nussbaum, one of the world’s pre-eminent scholars, public intellectuals and an award-winning author, with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree Sunday, June 9 at the college’s 164th commencement.
Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, also will serve as the principal commencement speaker. This will be Nussbaum’s second speaking engagement at Lawrence. She delivered the university convocation “Global Duties: Cicero’s Problematic Legacy” in May, 2001.
Before joining the University of Chicago in 1995, Nussbaum taught at Harvard and Brown universities. At the same time, she served seven years as a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki, which is part of the United Nations University. .
As the holder of the Freund chair at Chicago, Nussbaum has full appointments in the philosophy department and the law school, as well as associate appointments in the political science and classics departments and the divinity school. She is also a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies and a board member of the Human Rights Program.
“Martha Nussbaum is a great defender of the liberal arts and exemplary role model for our students,” said Lawrence President Jill Beck. “She demonstrates how to bridge effectively scholarly interests with issues of the day and with the need for taking informed positions in our lives and societies. In Dr. Nussbaum’s case, she uses her knowledge of classics to generate contemporary political critique. I’m sure the graduating students will enjoy meeting her and hearing her perspectives.”
Among the country’s most celebrated philosophers and celebrated thinkers, Nussbaum believes philosophers should act as “lawyers for humanity” to address questions of justice, basing her work on a political philosophy of human capability and functioning that has both Aristotelian and Kantian roots. Her scholarship also has focused on the transformative aspects of the connections between literature and philosophy.
“As we tell stories about the lives of others,” Nussbaum has said, “we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves.”
Award-winning scholar, author
A prolific writer with more than 350 published scholarly articles, Nussbaum is the author of nearly three dozen books, including 2010’s “Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities,” in which she argues that the humanities are an essential element for the quality of democracy. Her book “Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education,” was recognized with the Ness Book Award of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and the Grawemeyer Award in Education.
She has been recognized nationally and internationally with numerous awards, including 50 honorary degrees. She was the recipient of the 2012 Phi Beta Kappa’s Sidney Hook Memorial Award, which honors national distinction by a scholar in the areas of scholarship, undergraduate teaching and leadership in the cause of liberal arts education. Last year she became just the second woman to receive Spain’s Prince of Asturias Award for Social Science. The award recognizes a person whose work “constitutes a significant contribution to the benefit of mankind.”
A native of New York City, Nussbaum earned a bachelor’s degree in 1969 from New York University, where she studied theatre and classics. She went on to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in classical philology from Harvard University
Lawrence Welcomes Author and Cultural Critic William Deresiewicz for University Convocation
No full textProvocative essayist, cultural critic and author William Deresiewicz presents “Through the Vale of Soul-Making: The Journey of the Liberal Arts” Thursday, April 19 at 11:10 a.m. in a Lawrence University convocation. The presentation, in the Lawrence Memorial Chapel, will be followed by a question-and-answer session at 2:30 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center cinema. Both events are free and open to the public.
Focusing on higher education, social media and other culture issues, Deresiewicz is a contributing writer for The Nation and a contributing editor for The New Republic. His weekly “All Points” blog on culture and society appears in The American Scholar.
A three-time National Magazine Award nominee (2008, ’09, ’11), his essays include “Generation Sell” (the business plan as art form of our age), “The Disadvantages of an Elite Education” (what the Ivy League won’t teach you) and “Faux Friendship” (about Facebook).
“Solitude and Leadership,” an essay that encourages the practice of introspection, concentration and nonconformity he delivered as an address to the plebe class at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2009, has been used as a teaching tool across the U.S. military, the corporate world, schools of business and at the Aspen Institute.
Deresiewicz spent 10 years (1998-2008) as an English professor at Yale University before embarking on a full-time writing career. He chronicled the transformative effect literature has had on his life in the 2011 novel “A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter.
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