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Hammond, LA 70402
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phone: 985-549-2341
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| Editors: Photos to accompany release are available on the Fanfare
CD and will be available online at
www.selu.edu/fanfare/fanfare02/photos02.html.
FANFARE FINALE INCLUDES POPS, CORE ENSEMBLE, SHAKESPEARE HAMMOND -- Fanfare has saved some of its best for last. The final week of Southeastern Louisiana University’s annual festival of the arts, humanities and sciences will feature a popular pops picnic, a unique “chamber music theater” experience with a Latin beat, a timeless Shakespeare’s comedy, and words of wisdom from a “Southern Belle” from Amite. The final week kicks off on Sunday, October 27, with Picnic ‘n Pops, co-sponsored by the Hammond Rotary Club at the Southeastern University Center. Always a Fanfare favorite, the concert will feature Southeastern’s north shore cultural partner, the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, directed by Klauspeter Seibel. Doors will open for picnickers who have obtained table seating from Hammond Rotary Club members at 5 p.m. General admission arena tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance are $5, $3 for students age 12 and older. Children under 13 will be admitted free, if accompanied by an adult. On Monday, Oct. 28, Fanfare’s Jane Austen Film Festival will continue with a 7 p.m. showing of “Mansfield Park” at the East Gate Café and Cinema, located across from campus on North Oak Street. Also that evening, the Core Ensemble will present its chamber music theater piece, “Tres Vidas (Three Lives),” at the Pottle Music Building Auditorium. Curtain is at 7:30 p.m. and tickets are $10 for adults, $8 for senior citizens, Southeastern faculty, staff and alumni and $5 for all students. Since its inception in 1993, Core Ensemble has won international recognition for its efforts to commission new works for its unique combination of cello (Tahirah Whittington), piano (Hugh Hinton) and percussion (Michael Parola). Broadening the definition of chamber music, the ensemble has been the catalyst in the creation of several chamber music theater works weaving narrative and theater into the chamber music experience. “Tres Vidas” stars Broadway and television actress Georgina Corbo, who portrays three legendary Latin American women, Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Salvadoran peasant-activist Ruffina Amaya, and Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni. Corbo has been featured on television programs such as “Law and Order,” “New York Undercover” and the Movie of the Week “It's Always Something.” Her stage credits include leading roles off Broadway in “Ariano” and “Mrs. Carrar's Riffles”; in “Antigone” at the Kennedy Center, and in “Jack Black” at the International Theatre Festival in Russia. The music of “Tres Vidas” ranges from popular and folk songs from Mexico, El Salvadore and Argentina to new music written especially for the Core Ensemble. Lorraine Despres, an Amite native who has made it big as a writer for the big and small screens, will answer the question “What’s a Girl from Amite Doing in Hollywood” in a 2 p.m. lecture on Tuesday, Oct. 29, at the Columbia Theatre. The lecture is free. Despres wrote for television shows such as “Family,” “The Highlander,” “The Equalizer,” “Crime Story,” “Dynasty,” “The Waltons,” and “Knots Landing,” but she is most famous for writing the infamous “Who Shot JR?” episode of the television series Dallas. She has also written a novel, “The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc, a comic love story set in the South at the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement. “It’s about the choices we make, the moments we regret, the prejudices we cling to and the rules we live by,” said Despres. The book was a Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection and was chosen as a Barnes and Noble “Discover Great New Writers” pick. Despres graduated from Northwestern University in theater, then began to write educational radio, film and advertising in Chicago, Paris and New Orleans, where she was also a founding editor of the city’s first feminist journal. Two of her poems and a short play won the Deep South Writers’ and Artists’ Conference Awards of Honor. Currently, she teaches screenwriting at UCLA and works as an international screenwriting consultant. Despres said “The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc” fulfills her life-long ambition to write a novel imbued with her own cynical humor. Fanfare’s “Then and Now” lecture series sponsored by the History and Political Sciences Department continues on Wednesday, Oct. 30, with a topic suitable for the day before Halloween. Department head Bill Robison, author of numerous articles on early modern England, will reveal the origin of some popular superstitions in “Vampires, Werewolves, Witches and Wizards.” His free lecture is scheduled for 1 p.m. in Pottle Music Building Auditorium. Danceworks, Southeastern’s resident dance company, will contribute an original work, “Sleepwalker Nocturne,” to the Fanfare schedule on Wednesday, Oct. 30. “Sleepwalker Nocturne,” a dance piece based on a story by Southeastern English instructor Alan Marsh, was choreographed by Southeastern students Jessica Lee, Ashley Roberts and Tracy Nobles and directed by dance program Director Martie Fellom. Fellom said it tells the story “of a young woman’s journey through the waking and dreaming realms, through life and death, and her attempts to hold on to love, no matter the obstacles.” The performance is scheduled for 7:30 p.m., at the Columbia Theatre. Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for senior citizens, Southeastern faculty, staff and alumni and non-Southeastern students. Admission is free for Southeastern students, with their university I.D. Flute virtuosos Brooks de Wetter-Smith and Brazilian Antonio Carrasqueira, along with pianist Maria José Carrasqueira, will present “Flautas Fantasticas!,” a concert that captures the brilliance and spirit of music from Brazil, Europe, and the United States, at 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 31, at Pottle Music Building Auditorium. The performance is free and will be followed by a flute and piano master class. De Wetter-Smith has appeared as a soloist and has presented master classes throughout the United States, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Asia. He has been featured at festivals at Tanglewood, Salzburg, Carmel, and St. Malo, as well as numerous contemporary music festivals. He is the James Gordon Hanes Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is past president of the National Flute Association. Fanfare’s finale on Friday, Nov. 1, is the innovative and dynamic Aquila Theatre Company’s performance of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream..” Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. performance at the Columbia Theatre are $25, orchestra 1; $23 orchestra 2 and balcony 1 and $20, balcony 2. Committed to a disciplined ensemble approach to classical texts, Aquila present fresh and inventive productions. Founded in London in 1991 by Peter Meineck, the company has won worldwide critical and academic acclaim for its work through extensive touring throughout Europe, the United States and Canada. Aquila has presented regular runs at The Shaw, Pleasance and Place Theatres in London and multiple performances in major cities across the United States including Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and off-Broadway in New York. In New York, Aquila is the company in residence at the Center for Ancient Studies at New York University. Aquila’s imaginative interpretation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” renews the magic of Shakespeare’s plot. Set against a classical Athenian backdrop, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” deals with the universal theme of love, and its attendant complications: passion, lust, frustration, depression, confusion, and, of course, marriage. Aquila’s web of theatrical magic takes the audience to the heart of an enchanted forest, the injustice of the Athenian court, and the political strife of a fairy kingdom. For a Fanfare brochure and ticket order form or for additional information about Fanfare events, contact the Public Information Office, 985-549-2341, publicinfo@selu.edu, or Fanfare, 985-543-4366, fanfare_ctpa@selu.edu. Fanfare information is also available online 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. Tickets can also be purchased online at www.ticketweb.com. Box office hours are noon to 5 p.m., weekdays. The box office is open until performance time for events at the Columbia Theatre. |