Southeastern NEWS
Southeastern Louisiana University
Public Information Office
publicinfo@selu.edu
SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
Date: 10/15/98
Contact: Christina Chapple 52L
Editors: Photos accompany release
FANFARE'S FINAL WEEK SPOTLIGHTS DANCEWORKS, POPS, VAN GOGH
HAMMOND Fanfare, Southeastern Louisiana University's October festival of the arts,
humanities and sciences wraps with a final week that includes dancing swans, a popular pops
"picnic," angelic young singers, a humanitarian and dissident from China, a musical retelling of
the life of Vincent Van Gogh and a gala finale from the Southeastern music department.
Here is the lineup for Fanfare s final week.
Picnic-n-Pops, sponsored by the Hammond Rotary Club and Fanfare, will offer the
"Best of Broadway" to tables of picnickers seated on the floor of the Southeastern University
Center arena and to the audience in the arena's seats. The popular evening of food, socializing
and music, scheduled for Oct. 25, will feature the Baton Rouge Symphony and husband and wife
soloists Karen Longwell, soprano, and Richard Smith, baritone.
The symphony and soloists Broadway melodies will include Irving Berlin's "Anything
You Can Do I Can Do Better," Lerner and Lowe's "I Could Have Danced All Night," Rogers and
Hammerstein's "My Favorite Things" and Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Music of the Night."
Doors will open for picnickers who have obtained table seating from Hammond Rotary
Club members at 5 p.m. General admission tickets in the arena are $5, $3 for students age 13 and
older. Children under 13 will be admitted free, if accompanied by an adult.
"Vincent," a one-man show about artist Vincent Van Gogh, written by Leonard Nimoy
of "Star Trek" fame and starring Jim Jarrett, will be presented at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 26, in Vonnie
Borden Theatre. After spending years researching the show, Nimoy performed the role on
Broadway, where it was a smash hit in the early 1980s and was aired on PBS in 1983. Jarrett
secured the rights to produce "Vincent" in 1994 and considers the show the role of a lifetime.
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FANFARE WEEK FIVE Add one
"Vincent," which has been called "a stunning evening of theater," is a view of the
complex artist, whose work was dismissed as that of a madman in his lifetime, through the eyes
of his brother, Theo. Nimoy sets his play a week after Vincent's death, when his brother has
rented a hall in Paris and invited friends, enemies -- anyone who will listen -- to hear him defend
his beloved brother s honor and reputation.
Critics have called Jarrett's performance, which effortlessly glides between playing both
brothers as well as other key people in Vincent's life, "brilliant" and "a remarkable acting
experience."
Reserved seat tickets for 'Vincent" are $6, $5 for senior citizens, Southeastern faculty
and staff and non-SLU students. Southeastern students are admitted free with their university I.D.
"Wo die Grunen Ameisen Traumen," the final offering of Fanfare's foreign film
festival, is scheduled for 3:30 p.m., Oct. 27, in the Music Recital Hall. The German film tells of a
geologist whose mapping of a desert area threatens to destroy "the place where the green ants
dream." The foreign film series is free.
Choreographed by Southeastern students Lillian Gray of Slidell and Heather Brown
and Jennifer Molero of Chalmette, "Swan" explores in modern dance movement the mystery of
and legends about the graceful swan. The original Southeastern Danceworks modern work will
be presented at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 27 and 29 at Pottle Music Building Auditorium. Reserved seat
tickets are $5, $3 for Southeastern faculty and staff, senior citizens and non-SLU students.
Southeastern students are admitted free with their university I.D.
The American Boychoir, scheduled for 7:30 p.m., Oct. 28, in Pottle Music Building
Auditorium, is America s most widely touring and frequently performing choral group, making
more than 200 appearances annually. Millions of Americans have seen the choir on PBS
television specials or have heard the choristers on movie soundtracks, television commercials or
their many recordings. The young singers' repertoire ranges from simple folk and popular songs
and hymns to the complex music of contemporary composers and classic choral works.
Reserved seat tickets are $10, $8 senior citizens, Southeastern faculty and staff and all
students.
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FANFARE WEEK FIVE Add Two
Fanfare s special films continues at 7 p.m., Oct. 29, with "Shall We Dance?," a
comedy and love story about a group of ordinary Japanese people and the ballroom dance lessons
that bring them to life. Special films, which are free, are shown at University Cinema, 1006 N.
Oak in Hammond.
Harry Wu, founder and executive director of Laogai Research Foundation and a well-
known and respected human rights campaigner, spent 19 years as a political prisoner in China s
"Bamboo Gulag." However, he repeated risked his life returning to his country to document
slavery and human rights atrocities. In 1995, he was arrested, found guilty of "stealing state
secrets," sentenced to 15 years in prison, then expelled. He vows to continue to expose China's
forced labor camps to focus the world s attention on human rights violations.
Wu's books, "Bitter Winds," an international best-seller, and "Troublemaker: One Man's
Crusade Against China's Cruelty," chronicle his victorious journey of suffering and survival. He
will lecture to his Fanfare audience on "China: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" at 7:30 p.m.,
Oct. 29, in the Student Union Theatre. Audience members are asked to bring a non-perishable
food item for the Tangi Food Pantry.
Earlier that day, Bayou Booksellers will host a booksigning for Harry Wu at 4 p.m. at the
204 E. Thomas in downtown Hammond.
Southeastern music department faculty will close out Fanfare 1998 with a gala concert
showcasing their talents at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 30, in Pottle Music Building Auditorium.
Also at the concert, Fanfare will draw the winner of a pair of airline tickets, sponsored by
Rownd Travel. Members of Fanfare audiences who have filled out and turned in the marketing
survey inserted into performance programs are eligible to win.
For more information about Fanfare, call the Southeastern Public Information Office for a
free brochure and ticket order form or visit the Fanfare web site at www.selu.edu/fanfare. Fanfare
tickets are available at the Fanfare Box Office, located at Gate 1 of the Southeastern University
Center on University Ave., 504-549-2323. Hours are 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., weekdays.
- SLU -
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