Join us for this multi-media presentation about theater of the absurd including a theatrical performance by the actors performing “The Lesson” at the Yellow Barn. (Tickets for that performance available at the link below.)
Nicola’s Books will have copies of the play and also books about theater of the absurd on hand for purchase.
Theatre of the Absurd
Eugene Ionesco was born in Romania in 1912, but spent much of his life in France. “La Lecon” (“The Lesson”,) his second play, was written in 1950. Other playwrights whose plays are also considered to belong to the Theatre of the Absurd include Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, and Harold Pinter. There have been many different interpretations of “Absurdist” theatre. One thought is that these playwrights wished to rebel against traditional theatre, and to comment on certain aspects of society and the human condition by writing these “anti-plays.” “The Lesson” has been interpreted to demonstrate “the impossibility of communication” between the professor and his pupil, and the use of language as an instrument of power. Other explanations are that the professor represents dominance and even political dictatorship, and the maid represents a mother figure, or perhaps the professor’s subconscious mind.
The Play is the longest continuously running performance in the world. It has been performed seven days a week at Paris’s’Theatre de la Huchette’ for sixty years, always to a full house of theatre goers.
Tickets for the Yellow Barn performance available at https://www.artful.ly/store/events/12966
Culinary historian Adrian Miller, a former special assistant to President Clinton, discusses his new book about White House kitchen staff who served first families from the Washingtons to the Obamas. Followed by a book sale, signing, and reception.
7 p.m., Ford Library, 1000 Beal. Free. 205-0555
Open mike storytelling competition sponsored by The Moth, the NYC-based nonprofit storytelling organization that also produces a weekly public radio show. Each night 10 storytellers are selected at random from among those who sign up to tell a 3-5 minute story on the monthly theme. The 3 judges are recruited from the audience. Monthly winners compete in a semiannual Grand Slam. Space limited, so it’s smart to arrive early.
7:30-9 p.m. (doors open and sign-up begins at 6:30 p.m.), Greyline (except as noted), 100 N. Ashley. $10. 764-5118.
Sweetwaters and Toastmaster community members are creating a new Toastmasters Club at Sweetwaters! We will have 1 or 2 prepared speeches, showcase some of our (kind, encouraging and gentle) evaluations of the speeches, and some opportunities for people to have impromptu speaking fun. There will also be a chance for Q & A during the meeting too.
Come a little early and pick-up a beverage or snack from the cafe and have fun making new friendships with encouraging and supportive people!
Sweetwaters Washington St., 123 W. Washington St. Ann Arbor, MI 48104. Free.joshs@sweetwaterscafe.com https://www.facebook.com/events/1053675414768433/
Readings by these 2 poets, both U-M creative writing grads. Dartmouth English professor Francis reads from Forest Primeval, her 2016 collection that won the prestigious Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Eschewing a romantic view of nature, the poems are sensitive to darkness and describe “a landscape formed by the legacy of slavery, oppression, and violence against Black people and, especially, Black women,” says a Connotation Press review. Matthews is a North Carolina poet who also writes memoirs and essays and has been published in several prominent literary magazines.
Barbara has a new Amanda Doucette novel, The Trickster’s Lullaby, and Vicki has the second in her Sherlock Holmes series, Body on Baker Street.
Literati is thrilled to welcome Sam Walker who will be sharing his new book The Captain Class: The Hidden Force that Creates the World’s Greatest Teams
About The Captain Class
Walker starts with one of the most hotly debated questions in sports: What are the greatest teams ever—particularly those that sustained success over a long period of time. He devised a formula to compare the achievements of teams from leagues all over the world, and after painstakingly profiling thousands of them, produced a comprehensive, unbiased list of the 16 best. Period. At that point, Walker became obsessed with another, more complicated question: What did these teams have in common? A genius coach? A transcendent superstar? A groundbreaking system? Or was it all a matter of chemistry? A surprising pattern emerged: There was a very specific kind of leader at the center of these teams, a force that drove them to greatness, and they all shared eight specific characteristics. Who they are, who they are not, and the traits they shared will fascinate anyone who follows sports or is interested in building a team—and winning. Told through riveting stories of some of the most compelling and pressure-soaked moments in sports history, Walker not only brings these uncommon leaders to life, he presents a counterintuitive view of leadership—one that can apply to a wide spectrum of competitive disciplines, particularly business.
“Sam Walker has unlocked one of sports’ greatest mysteries: the secret to the success of 16 team dynasties. On nearly every page, you’ll be shaking your head at another revelation about how a team’s dominance is hard-wired to the team captain’s leadership. The Captain Class is one of the most surprising, best-written—and fun—sports books published in recent years.”—Don Van Natta Jr., Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times bestselling author of First Off the Tee
“Well-researched, wildly entertaining, and thought-provoking. In The Captain Class, Sam Walker presents compelling narratives about the secret ingredient to the greatest teams of all time—and quickly makes you reexamine long-held beliefs about leadership and the glue that binds winning teams together.”—Theo Epstein, President of Baseball Operations for the Chicago Cubs
Sam Walker is The Wall Street Journal’s page one editor overseeing its sports coverage across all print editions and digital platforms. A former reporter and columnist, Walker founded the Journal’s prizewinning daily sports pages in 2009. He is the author of Fantasyland, a bestselling account of his attempt to win Tout Wars, America’s top fantasy-baseball expert competition (of which he is a two-time champion). He lives in New York with his wife, Christy Fletcher, and their two children.
Literati is pleased to welcome Celeste Ng in support of her new novel, Little Fires Everywhere.
Celeste will be in conversation with Douglas Trevor, Director of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan
About Little Fires Everywhere:
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren- an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When the Richardsons’ friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family—and Mia’s.
Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.
“Spectacular sophomore work…a magnificent, multilayered epic that’s perfect for eager readers and destined for major award lists.”— Library Journal (starred review)
“Little Fires Everywhere is a dazzlingly protean work – a comedy of manners that doubles as a social novel and reads like a thriller. By turns wry, heart-rending and gimlet-eyed, it confirms Celeste Ng’s genius for gripping literary fiction.”—Peter Ho Davies, author of The Fortunes
Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio, in a family of scientists. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan (now the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan), where she won the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Bellevue Literary Review, the Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she is the recipient of the Pushcart Prize. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.
Jill Darling is a writer and teacher and has published poetry, fiction, and creative and critical essays. Her books include a geography of syntax, Solve For, and begin with may: a series of moments as well as two collaborative chapbooks with Laura Wetherington and Hannah Ensor: at the intersection of 3, and The First Steps are the Deepest. Other work can be found online at sites such as Something on Paper, The Quint, Ethos Review, Hybrid Pedagogy, How2, Aufgabe, Horse Less Review, Two Serious Ladies, and Unlikely Stories. Darling has won awards from The Academy of American Poets, and the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts in Indiana. She lives in Ypsilanti with her partner and dog.
Stephanie Heit is a poet, dancer, and teacher of somatic writing, Contemplative Dance Practice, and Kundalini Yoga. She lives with bipolar disorder and is a member of the Olimpias, an international disability performance collective. The Color She Gave Gravity (The Operating System 2017) is her debut poetry collection, and her work most recently appeared in Midwestern Gothic, Lime Hawk, About Place, Dunes Review, Typo, Disability Studies Quarterly, Streetnotes, Nerve Lantern, Queer Disability Anthology, Theatre Topics, and Research in Drama Education. She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan where she co-creates Turtle Disco, a community arts space, with her partner and collaborator, Petra Kuppers. www.stephanieheitpoetry.wordpress.com
Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community performance artist and a professor at the University of Michigan. Her most recent poetry collection is PearlStitch (Spuyten Duyvil: 2016). Poems and stories have appeared in PANK, The Sycamore Review, Adrienne, Visionary Tongue, Future Fire, Wordgathering, Beauty is a Verb: New Poetics of Disability, textsound, Streetnotes, Festival Writer, Accessing the Future: A Disability-Themed Anthology of Speculative Fiction, QDA: Queer Disability Anthology, and elsewhere. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias, an international disability culture collective, and lives with her partner Stephanie Heit in Ypsilanti where they co-create Turtle Disco, a community arts space.
Books:
Through reflective meditation and energetic word-play, a geography of syntax takes readers on a journey through landscape, contemporary culture, and language. The tour wanders among topographies of current events, memory, art, and loss among others, and points to ways meaning and understanding of phenomena in the world are constructed through, and altered by, language. The vivid description, color, and imagistic detail combine to create imaginative worlds, spaces within yet on the edge of the everyday, while showing the difficulty of articulating aspects of life that we struggle to even comprehend.
The Color She Gave Gravity traces longing for connection between women. An ecopoetics of the bodymind, these poems take us inside a dance inside an imaginary city inside sculpted spaces inside the insomniac body inside sister grief inside she. The work emerges from a landscape of somatic engagement and from experiences of psychiatric systems and multiple hospitalizations.
PearlStitch is about disability culture activism; feminist poetics history; collaborative practices of mourning, celebration and engagement; about love and transformation.
Literati is thrilled to welcome David Lagercrantz to Ann Arbor and Zingerman’s Greyline in support of The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, a Lisbeth Salander novel, continuing Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series. Tickets are general admission, each ticket type includes a hardcover copy of the novel. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and snacks are available for purchase, courtesy of Zingerman’s Greyline.
From the author of the #1 international best seller The Girl in the Spiders Web: the new book in the Millennium series, which began with Stieg Larssons The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, the brilliant hacker, the obstinate outsider, the volatile seeker of justice for herself and otherseven she has never been able to uncover the most telling facts of her traumatic childhood, the secrets that might finally, fully explain her to herself. Now, when she sees a chance to uncover them once and for all, she enlists the help of Mikael Blomkvist, the editor of the muckraking, investigative journal Millennium. And she will let nothing stop hernot the Islamists she enrages by rescuing a young woman from their brutality; not the prison gang leader who passes a death sentence on her; not the deadly reach of her long-lost twin sister, Camilla; and not the people who will do anything to keep buried knowledge of a sinister pseudoscientific experiment known only as The Registry. Once again, Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist, together, are the fierce heart of a thrilling full-tilt novel that takes on some of the most insidious problems facing the world at this very moment.
David Lagercrantz was born in 1962 and is an acclaimed author and journalist. He has written numerous biographies (including the internationally best-selling I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovi, for which he was the ghostwriter) and four novels, including Fall of Man in Wilmslow, and the #1 best-selling The Girl in the Spiders Web.
Zingerman’s Greyline is Ann Arbor’s unique downtown venue for private events.
