FANFARE’S WEEK TWO FEATURES AUTHORS, CELTIC DANCE, MISSOULA
      HAMMOND – Two authors who have penned stories of riveting historic events -- one fresh from the headlines, the other still spawning controversy after 40 years – will be featured as guest speakers in the second week of Fanfare, Southeastern Louisiana University’s annual arts festival. 
      Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Rick Bragg, whose was chosen to write the authorized biography of Jessica Lynch, the American soldier captured and rescued from an Iraqi hospital, and Southeastern history professor and dean Michael Kurtz, who has written and taught about the Kennedy assassination for three decades, will be Fanfare’s guests on Oct. 8.
      Bragg will speak at the Columbia Theatre for the Performing Arts at 7:30 p.m., while Kurtz will present a 40-year perspective on the Kennedy assassination at 1 p.m. in Pottle Music Building Auditorium.
      Fanfare’s Week Two will also feature the high-stepping Celtic dance company Common Ground; a musical review of Rogers and Hammerstein classics by Southeastern’s Opera/Music Theatre Workshop, a one-man show about Wild West legend Wyatt Earp, Missoula Children’s Theatre’s “The Frog Prince,” an acclaimed French film, and a dazzling pianist.
      Bragg is the author of two highly-acclaimed memoirs, “All Over But the Shoutin’” and 
“Ava’s Man,” as well as “Somebody Told Me,” a collection of his newspaper stories. The Knopf Publishing Group announced in early September that he had been chosen to write the coveted story of Lynch, with a mid-November publishing date scheduled for “I Am a Soldier, Too – the Jessica Lynch Story.” 
      “Like a majority of Americans, I have been captivated by Jessica’s story,” Bragg said. “I feel a kinship with Jessica and her family and am thrilled at the prospect of bringing this story to the wider world. Readers will learn about the place Jessica is from and the people she is closest to, and they will discover what she saw, what she felt and what she experienced, and understand what she survived.”
      An Alabama native, Bragg worked at several newspapers, including the New York Times. He has covered murder and unrest in Haiti, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Jonesboro killings, the Susan Smith trial, and the international battle for young Elian Gonzalez. In his 20-year career, he has twice won the prestigious American Society of Newspaper Editors Distinguished Writing Award, as well as more than 50 other writing awards. He received the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 1996. In 1992, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, and has taught writing in colleges and in news rooms. 
      Tickets for “An Evening with Rick Bragg” are $10 general admission. The event is free for Southeastern students with their university I.D.
      Kurtz’s lecture, “Who Killed JFK? -- A 40-Year Perspective,” is the first of eight “Then and Now” Fanfare lectures and performances sponsored by Southeastern’s Department of History and Political Science. The free lecture is scheduled for 1 p.m., in Pottle Music Building Auditorium.
      Kurtz, who is dean of the Graduate School and also has written a biography of Louisiana’s colorful Governor Earl K. Long, is one of the few academicians who has researched and written about the Kennedy assassination. His book, "Crime of the Century," published by the University of Tennessee Press, takes scholarly rather than journalistic or sensationalistic view of the cataclysmic event in Dallas on November 22, 1963. For three decades, Kurtz’s unique course on the Kennedy assassination has been one of the university’s most popular electives. 
      Winner of two of Southeastern’s trio of prestigious “President’s Awards” for research and teaching, Kurtz has his own theory as to who killed President Kennedy and believes that the assassination was a conspiracy. He maintains, however, that there is not enough evidence to conclusively pinpoint the culprits.
      Fanfare’s second week begins with “Music for a Sunday Afternoon,” an annual series of free concerts at area churches. On Oct. 5, Hammond’s First United Methodist Church, 2200 Rue
Denise, will host pianist Juré Rozman. The 3 p.m. concert will be followed by a reception.
      Dance takes center stage on October 6 when Common Ground brings its energy, precision and artistry to the Columbia Theatre. This very  “uncommon” troupe combines the thundering rhythms of “Riverdance,” the hard-charging percussive tap of “Tap Dogs” and the energy of “Stomp.” Clicking, tapping and kicking their way through smashing numbers, this ensemble of world champion Irish step-dancers, country cloggers and quick-footed tappers exuberantly celebrates the Irish experience in America.
      Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance are $25, Orchestra 1/Loge; $23, Orchestra 2/Balcony 1; and $20 Balcony 2. Since Common Ground is also part of the Columbia’s 2003 season, seating may be limited.
      Fanfare’s annual Foreign Film Fest gets underway at 3 p.m., Oct. 8 at the Music Recital Hall with a free showing of the highly-acclaimed and award-winning French flick “Amelie,” a whimsical romance about a Parisian waitress with a gift for helping others.
      Southeastern’s popular Opera/Music Theatre Workshop joins the Fanfare schedule on Oct. 8 for a four-night run of “Some Enchanted Evening: The Songs of Rodgers & Hammerstein,” an evening of enchanting Broadway classics. The show features everyone's favorite songs from Rodgers & Hammerstein's hit shows including “The Sound of Music,” “Oklahoma,” “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I” and “Cinderella.”
      Curtain time is 7:30 p.m., through Oct. 11, at Pottle Music Building Auditorium. Tickets, which will be available at the door as well as at Fanfare’s Columbia Theatre box office, are $12, adults; $8, senior citizens, Southeastern faculty, staff and non-SLU students. Southeastern students are admitted free with their university I.D.
      “Wyatt Earp: A Life on the Frontier” will be produced at Vonnie Borden Theatre at 7:30 
p.m. on Oct. 9. It stars Wyatt Earp, who is a descendant of the historic Wyatt. The one-man play was written by the contemporary Wyatt’s wife, Terry Earp, an award-winning Arizona playwright whose works have been produced at universities and festivals throughout the United States.
      The play takes place in the mid-1920s as an elderly Wyatt Earp tells of his adventures and misadventures from Arizona to Alaska during the final days of the American Frontier. “Wyatt Earp” premiered in Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1996. Besides touring throughout the southeast, “Wyatt 
Earp” has also played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland, where “The Scotsman” newspaper called it an “authoritative cultural phenomenon.”
      Tickets are $10, adults; $8, senior citizens, Southeastern faculty, staff and alumni; $5, group rate; and $3, all students.
      A Fanfare tradition, the nation’s largest touring children’s theatre, the Missoula Children’s Theatre, will present “The Frog Prince” at 2 p.m., Oct. 11 at the Columbia Theatre. In Missoula’s take on the classic tale, a selfish Princess makes a promise to befriend a lonely frog after he retrieves her golden ball from a well. However, the princess tries every trick in the book to break her promise.
      Missoula Children’s Theatre has been touring extensively for 30 years, visiting more than 900 communities with 29 teams annually. A tour team arrives with a set, lights, costumes and props – everything it takes to put on a play, except for the cast. The show’s stars are found among the community’s talented youngsters.
      A two-hour audition for “The Frog Prince” is scheduled for 4 p.m., Oct. 6 at the Southeastern Lab School gym on North General Pershing. A total of 50-60 local students will be chosen for the production. Among the roles to be cast are three sisters who also happen to be princesses; two students to play the lonely Frog, bumbling knights, kindly “Swamp Things,” Bert the Alligator, fancy flamingos, helpful ducks and the nasty Venus Fly Traps. 
      The audition is open to all children and no preparation is necessary. Assistant directors will also be cast to help with the technical aspects of the production. 
      Tickets for “The Frog Prince are $7 general admission; $5 for children 12 years of age and under.
       For a Fanfare brochure and ticket order form or for additional information about Fanfare events, contact Fanfare, 985-543-4366 or fanfare_ctpa@selu.edu. Fanfare information is also available online under the “2003 Season” link at www.selu.edu/fanfare. 
      Fanfare tickets are available at the Columbia Theatre for the Performing Arts box office, 220 East Thomas St., Hammond, 985-543-4371. Box office hours are noon to 5 p.m., weekdays. The box office is open until performance time for events at the Columbia Theatre. Tickets can also be purchased online at w ww.ticketweb.com.