“Revolt of the Beavers,” the season opener for University Theatre, turns the phrase “busy as a beaver” into a singing, dancing socialist parable for kids.
“The Revolt of the Beavers” succeeds in being educational, fun and high-energy, woven around lessons about conservation, teamwork and social responsibility. With 8 and 9-year-old protagonists, itâ??s aimed at elementary through middle school students, but the “Beavers” serve food for thought for grown-ups, too.
After having appeared on both the second and fifth seasons of HBOâ??s Def Poetry Jam, McConnell will showcase her talents as one of the major attractions at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Office of Multicultural Arts Initiatives (OMAI)â??s 5th annual Passing the Mic Series, which will be held Oct. 8-10 at the Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium.
The combination of Jamaica, the U.S., Cuba, Suriname and Guyana undoubtedly makes for an interesting global mix. The UW-Madison Dance Program will give students and patrons a taste of this unique blend with â??Causeway,â? a culturally rich, multimedia dance performance. Chris Walker and Kate Corby â?? newly appointed assistant professors â?? will make their UW performance debut in the show, which runs Oct. 1 through Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. in the Hâ??Doubler Theater in Lathrop Hall.
Everybody has to have a hungry heart this week in Madison, with plenty of events leading up to the big Food for Thought Festival this weekend. In conjunction with the UW-Madison’s Go Big Read initiative, the good folks over at the Ebling Library in the UW Health Sciences Learning Center have put together It’s Good For You! 100 Years of the Art & Science of Eating, an exhibit that draws from the collections of libraries across campus.
At first glance, Laura Olear’s painting look simply like colorful abstract art. This one looks vaguely like raspberries, rendered larger-than-life in dark red and bluish-green. That one could be the inside of a walnut. Another looks like a beehive.
But a closer look at a description hanging next to a ghoulish mask reveals it to be a massively inflated rendering of Mononucleosis. Those raspberries are actually Herpes. The walnuts are HIV. The beehive is a virus related to E. Coli.
Olear’s “Pathological Processes” is a series of digital prints, watercolors and large-scale oil paintings hanging in the Ebling Library. The art lines the hallways around the second floor of the Health Sciences Learning Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“So you’re an actor?” goes an old joke in both Manhattan and Hollywood. “Which restaurant?”
The image of the starving artist may be romantic, but that’s about it. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is combating uncertainty for people contemplating arts careers with a groundbreaking program called Arts Enterprise. It includes a public lecture series.
“Eat food.” It doesnâ??t sound like very profound advice, especially coming from a James Beard award-winning food writer. Author Michael Pollan will be explaining his theory when he visits to Madison next week.
Michael Pollan, the acclaimed author of five books, including The Omnivoreâ??s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, will be in Madison next week for a series of events as part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Go Big Read common-reading program and this yearâ??s Food for Thought Festival.
Four puppets used by the UW-Madison Javanese musical ensemble disappeared at the end of July and haven’t been seen since.
They may not have been worth much money, but are of great sentimental value to the owners, Sakti and Steve Laronga.
Hereâ??s a campus mystery: Four puppets used by the UW-Madison Javanese musical ensemble disappeared at the end of July and havenâ??t been seen since.
They may not have been worth much money, but are of great sentimental value to the owners, Sakti and Steve Laronga.
“For us, those are one of the very valuable things we have,” said Sakti Laronga, who is affiliated with the universityâ??s Javanese ensemble.
As rapper Rick Ross has continuously stated, it is deeper than rap, and Hip-Hop is far more than just a genre of music. The University of Wisconsin-Madison is in the process of integrating the art form into its school as it will be devoting its fall semester to the scholarship and art of Hip-Hop.
Chancellor Biddy Martin proclaimed the 2009-10 academic year the â??Year of the Humanities,â? bringing with it a series of lectures, performances and other events that will educate students, as well as the general public, on the impact of the humanities.
The University of Wisconsin kicked off its fall lecture series â??Getting Real: The Future of Hip-Hop Studies Scholarshipâ? Monday with a seminar discussing the relevance of hip-hop in academia.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s fall lecture series will focus on the art of hip-hop with lectures by a variety of prominent speakers.
Topics during the nine-week lecture series will cover subjects such as sociology, history, women’s studies, and communication arts.
Lorrie Moore had just begun working on what would become her new novel, â??A Gate at the Stairs,â? when she told one interviewer that she was writing a book â??about hate.â?
Later she recalled telling someone else that it was a novel about chores.
Since 1984 Ms. Moore has taught creative writing at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Lorrie Moore is that rare bird of America, a fiction writer who has found success writing short stories as opposed to novels: Her acclaimed 1998 “Birds of America” became a bestseller, one of just a few short-story collections in the past dozen years or so to resonate with consumers as well as with book critics.
Iâ??m aware of one â?? one â?? reader who doesnâ??t care for Lorrie Moore, and even that one seems a little apologetic about it. â??Too . . . punny,â? my friend explains, resorting to a pun as though hypnotized by the very tendency that sets off his resistance.
The University of Wisconsin – Madison will host author Michael Pollan, whose book “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” is the focus of the Go Big Read common-reading project.
Pollan will give a free public talk on Thursday, September 24, at the Kohl Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Quoted: Andrew Taylor, director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Bolz Center for Arts Administration.
Want to ride out the recession? Think long-term.
That was Michael Kaiserâ??s advice to Wisconsin arts companies big and small Monday in the Capitol Theater in the Overture Center. Kaiser, head of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., is 21 cities into his cross-country “Arts in Crisis” tour. Heâ??ll eventually visit at least 65 cities.
(Also participating in the conversation: Andrew Taylor, head of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at UW-Madison)
As the chairman and CEO of independent film distributor Regent Releasing, Stephen Jarchow watches a lot of movies, trying to decide which ones his company should pick up and release in theaters.
He sees so many that he has a ritual â?? every morning, he gets on the treadmill for an hour and watches a movie while he exercises. His company specializes in foreign films, which is ideal; he can read the subtitles and not have to worry about the sound of the treadmill drowning anything out.
The popular Abraham Lincoln statue at the top of Bascom Hill on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus is getting its first cleaning in more than a decade.
Milwaukee art conservator Cricket Harbeck will start cleaning the statue this week. The cleaning coincides with the bicentennial of Lincoln’s birth and the centennial of the statue’s placement on the hill.
Q. Can you share with us the designer/artist of the glass art along the walkways in the Kohl Center? Do you have any other details about it?
A. The stunning, nearly 50-yard-long glass structure is called â??The Mendota Wall.â? It was installed, about 18 feet above the floor, just before the Kohl Center opened on Jan. 17, 1998.
The recording industry has settled a lawsuit against a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student accused of illegally downloading songs from the Internet.
The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s University released its schedule for the 2009-2010 season, and it includes an eclectic range of production from around the world.
Audiences will see plays that bring cultural experiences and enduring questions to the stage from generations of playwrights from France, Spain and Norway. There is also a trip planned to Beaverland, Japan, and an enchanted forest.
“Being Bucky” is a tough ticket no more.
The documentary, which was named the Audience Winner last spring at the Wisconsin Film Festival, just came to DVD. It chronicles a year in the life of the seven students who put on the Bucky Badger suit and represent the University of Wisconsin-Madison at functions throughout the state.
The Office of Multicultural Initiatives (OMAI) at UW-Madison capped off its fourth annual Spoken Word & Hip-Hop Educator’s Institute with what could only be described as an interdisciplinary arts loverâ??s dream at the Wisconsin Historical Society on Friday night.
Atop a broad auditorium stage, the next generationâ??s spoken word gurus belted their beats to an appreciative and hyped up crowd of at least 100 aficionados. Featured performers were New York poets Marne Bruckner and Jasmine Mans, both incoming freshman to the UWâ??s First Wave artists program.
Recent UW-Madison chool of Music graduate Ben Luedcke was figuring out how to balance his summer lawn-mowing business in Milwaukee with his directorship of a Madison church choir when he heard the news: The universityâ??s longtime summer vocal ensemble had been nixed.
Long for the melancholy tune of the lute or the majestic sound of the sackbut?
A weeklong festival featuring early music will be held on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus starting Saturday.
Care to learn the lute? Always dreamt of playing the krumhorn? Hoping to polish up your recorder skills or master a few madrigals?
Aspiring musicians and Renaissance enthusiasts can enjoy and practice the music of the 15th through 17th centuries for a full week at the upcoming Madison Early Music Festival (MEMF), which celebrates its 10th anniversary this month and begins Saturday, July 11.
“It’s really nice,” says Verona (Maya Rudolph) in the movie “Away We Go,” as she and her partner Burt (John Krasinski) tour what’s supposed to be the UW-Madison campus. (It’s actually some college in Connecticut standing in for the UW).
Patrick Goldstein
Los Angeles Times
HOLLYWOOD — Hollywood is full of filmmakers who are uncompromising perfectionists, but only Michael Mann could boast that he not only has a favorite room to screen his films — the Zanuck theater on the Fox lot — but also a favorite row in the theater where he thinks you should park your fanny for the optimal viewing experience.
“Public Enemies” director Michael Mann was born and raised in Chicago. But he came of age while attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1961 to 1965.
“I wanted to attend a great liberal arts school, but I wasn’t uninfluenced by the physical beauty of the place,” said Mann in a recent interview.
From beavers to bad parents, thunder gods to Cinderella, the new University Theatre season is populated with unusual characters from all over the world.
UW-Madison’s producing theater, housed in two stages in Vilas Hall, hopes to educate as well as please audiences, and the upcoming 2009-10 season contains ample opportunities for both.
“We’re really going all over the place for this season,” said new University Theatre director David Furumoto. Furumoto replaces Tony Simotes, who left to head Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts.
If the UW-Cinematheque’s free film series during the school year seems kind of eclectic, mixing together, say, the work of a world auteur like Jean-Luc Godard with a series of ’50s melodramas about social issues, the summer series is even more offbeat. It’s only four weeks long, and feels like kind of a vacation from a programming perspective, mixing the traditional African film series the C’tek plays every summer with some other lighter, weirder stuff.
The musical rings of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s 56-bell Memorial Carillon will resonate throughout the campus more often this summer with two recital series and a Fourth of July program performed by Lyle Anderson.
Anderson succeeded John Wright Harvey as University Carillonneur in 1986, and has performed orchestral tunes ever since. The hourlong performances are scheduled for 3 p.m. on Sundays from June 21-Aug. 2, and at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays from July 9-30. In addition, Anderson plays on Saturday, July 4, at 1 p.m., concurring with “Let Freedom Ring,” a nationwide project that began in 1963.
Ascend the neo-gothic tower, situated on Observatory Drive between Ingraham Hall and the Social Science Building, and watch Anderson in action on the baton-shaped keyboard and pedal board that keeps the bells operating. For more information about the upcoming programs, contact Anderson at 219-5291.
“Adam’s off ox” is one of the phrases included in the Dictionary of American Regional English, Volume I: Introduction and A-C , part one of a multivolume effort to capture regional expressions.
The DARE project, as it is known, was initiated in the 1950s by Frederic Cassidy, a well-known linguist who sent field workers out across the country in “word wagons” to interview people. Cassidy’s catalogers talked to nearly 3,000 people over six years, making recordings along the way in order to capture pronunciations.
The artist known as R. Crumb likes New Orleans food more than he likes museums or galleries. He got a lot of the former and a little of the latter on a recent visit to Madison.
In an article in the London Guardian a few years ago, the longtime Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes called Crumb “the one and only genius the 1960s underground produced in visual art, either in America or Europe.”
As a jazz archivist, collector, talent agent and longtime disc jockey, Gary Alderman has rightly earned his chops as Madison’s jazz renaissance man. So when he raves about the Isthmus Jazz Festival’s two-day lineup, fans can trust the solid endorsement.
Granted, Alderman is on the committee that helps select the acts performing at the Memorial Union Terrace for the 21st annual fest.
The best and brightest of the art world can often be found visiting UW-Madison’s Tandem Press.
They come for a special opportunity they can’t find anywhere else.
Those who work there know that operating a printing press can be a challenge both physically and mentally.
The inspiration for writer Kurt McGinnis Brown’s play, “Broken and Entered,” came from an image. What if, after the house lights go down in the theater, all the audience can see are two flashlights?
It’s a compelling start, one that caught the eyes of the judges for Wisconsin Wrights, the annual new play development project at the UW-Madison. Wisconsin Wrights focuses on writers creating plays in Wisconsin, though not necessarily about the state.
Brown’s play is one of three that will receive a staged reading in the Hemsley Theatre this week.
“Broken and Entered” tells the story of two brothers, Vern and Wally, who inherit their mother’s house. Vern decides to wipe the slate clean by removing all of their family possessions and replacing them with other items stolen from neighborhood homes.
It is, he says, “unprecedented for Madison.” Jin-Wen Yu is talking about “What Moves Us,” and the UW-Madison dance professor is not exaggerating. Indeed, he may be flirting with understatement.
Dancers from across town and across the world kicked off Thursday what UW Dance Program Chair Jin-Wen Yu coined “the most exciting dance event in Madison history.”
Erupting from the turbulent social waters of the 1960â??s counter-culture movement, the genre known as underground comics kicked down the doors of the staid funny book status quo with frank depictions of in-your-face drug use, the sweaty excesses of every imaginable sexual orientation and radical political statements unimaginable in the pages of the conventional Comics Code Authority-sanctioned fare found at the corner malt shop newstand. This revolutionary era in American comics is preserved and celebrated with great aplomb in Underground Classics: The Transformation of Comics into Comix by co-authors James Danky and Denis Kitchen, published this month by Abrams ComicsArts. A companion volume to a fascinating gallery show at the University of Wisconsin-Madisonâ??s Chazen Museum of Art, the book documents the first time in American comics when the uncensored ideas of anti-establishment thinkersâ??from women, blacks and homosexuals to other disenfranchised members of American societyâ??were given full and unfettered voice.
Their primary purpose is to serve the scholarly mission of the archive. But Michele Hilmes, director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, allows that three new online exhibits may appeal to an audience far broader than academics and researchers â?? including star-struck movie fans.
The center, a partnership of the Wisconsin Historical Society and the UW-Madison’s Department of Communication Arts, collects materials related to Hollywood and the entertainment industry. Three of the center’s collections are featured in the new online exhibits “The Papers of Costume Designer Edith Head,” “Radio Pioneers in Madison” and “Photos and Flat Graphics.” The latter is a collection of nine slide shows focusing on Citizen Kane, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, The Ed Sullivan Show, Rita Hayworth, Gary Cooper and other files.
The newest “Star Trek” movie deals with a subject close to my heart: interracial children.
As the mother of interracial children myself, I wondered how this fascination with dual parentage would play out. In the movie, it emerges not in the epic scope of interplanetary warfare, but in the figure of Spock, here situated as a biracial child coping with identity confusion.
Author: Leslie Bow is associate professor of English and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine
Quoted: “This book would be useful for art lovers and future historians to un-derstand the rich heritage of the ancient Anga (modern Bhagalpur). It will help them in understanding the importance of the idea of `history at your doorsteps,” said emeritus professor of history, languages and culture of Asia, University of Wisconsin (US), A K Narain. “We have managed to preserve some of these paintings and folklores associated with it at Bhagalpur Museum. Due to the lack of any institu-tional support, several artists associated with the art switched over to other professions,” Sinha said.
When a committee at Washington State University picked The Omnivore’s Dilemma as this year’s “common reading” selection for all incoming freshmen, faculty members effusively praised the award-winning book and hoped that people at the land-grant university were ready to have a serious debate about the practice of agriculture in America.
“Because this book deals with the food we eat today, it is likely to engender lively discussion and even disagreement,” wrote one professor who had recommended it to the committee. “But discussion and disagreement are the bread and butter of academic discourse.”
By Mike Householder, Associated Press
….House, the lead character on the Fox medical drama of the same name, is a Michigan medical school graduate, and the DeGroots are Michigan doctoral candidates who founded the mysterious Dharma Initiative at the center of the ABC serial Lost.
Such tie-ins allow TV and film productions to be more authentic while at the same time providing universities with free advertising and the chance to up their coolness quotient.
“It’s fun for everyone â?? alumni and students â?? to see their university pop up in film,” said Lee Doyle, who heads up the University of Michigan’s film office.
And while that may be, it sometimes can be serious business for Doyle and others who hold the equivalent job at major universities.
They have their school’s reputation to consider in weighing whether to allow it to be associated with a TV show or movie
President Barack Obama has nominated a UW-Madison alumnus to be the next chair of the National Endowment of the Arts, the largest arts organization in the country.
Rocco Landesman, 61, produces Broadway shows like â??Big Riverâ? and â??The Producers.â? His nomination needs to be confirmed by Congress.
A student-produced documentary film, “Like Touching A Hot Stove,” which provides a window into student life for African Americans at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is set to premiere on Tuesday, May 12.
The University of Wisconsin Art Department and School of Educationâ??s Art Lofts facility will celebrate its grand opening beginning today with a series of events to highlight the buildingâ??s purpose and presence on campus.
For painter Matt Martin, the contrast couldn’t be more stark: a dark, tiny basement in Sterling Hall, destined to be demolished, versus his studio now, a bright, airy space, full of ambient light and white walls.
Martin doesn’t work differently in the new Art Lofts building on Frances Street, which has its grand opening this week. He just doesn’t mind the work as much.
“This is brand new, so there’s a little of that brand-newness fear, you know, like – don’t mess it up!” Martin said with a laugh.
The Chazen Museum of Art celebrated its groundbreaking ceremony Friday with Madison community members.
Over 100 students, faculty, and community members gathered at 750 University Avenue to witness the ceremony. When completed, the museum will offer twice the gallery space than that of the current museum, an outdoor plaza, study rooms and a glass-walled lobby that students will be able to peer into when passing by.
Ground was broken Friday afternoon for a $43 million expansion of the Chazen Museum of Art on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
The project is happening due to a $25 million donation from UW-Madison alumni Jerome and Simona Chazen.
The Chazen’s are art collectors who live in New York, but they have deep roots in Madison. Three generations of the Chazen family have graduated from UW-Madison.
Madison is certainly no stranger to extraordinarily generous gifts benefiting the arts in our community. We’ve been very lucky. And that good fortune continues Friday as the Chazen Museum of Art on the UW- Madison campus celebrates the beginning of construction on its expansion. The $43 Million expansion is made possible by many generous gifts from private donors, but none more significant than the $25 million from Simona and Jerry Chazen.
The mascot of the University of Wisconsin’s Big Ten football team is (like the state of Wisconsin’s) the badger. There’s a costumed Bucky Badger on the sideline, and thousands of screaming fans identifying themselves as badgers.
But Professor Harold Burroughs of that university takes this badger thing even further. As portrayed by David Ferney in this solo show currently at the Arcata Playhouse, the fictional professor is obsessed by this “noble but misunderstood” animal, and begins to identify with it.
Like two lighter-weight bookends, the UW-Madison Dance Programs began and ended with levity Thursday night, encasing an otherwise serious program.
Not that “Spring Flight,” which showcased the choreography of guest and resident instructors and was mostly danced by students, was a bad experience.
With a 35-lb. head, itâ??s no wonder our dear Bucky Badger acts a little cocky from time to time. The independent film â??Being Buckyâ? gives an in-depth look into the lives of those underneath the sweat-laden Bucky costume.
The last (and first) time “American Idol” finalist Michael Johns was in Wisconsin, he and David Cook sang a show in Green Bay wearing cheesehead hats.
He’ll be back on Tuesday evening — minus Cook — at the Overture Center downtown to judge All-Campus Idol, one of the headlining events this week at UW-Madison’s All-Campus Party. It’s co-sponsored by the Wisconsin Alumni Association and the Blair Beinhaker Friendship Foundation.
