Crazy Wisdom Poetry Series hosted by Joe Kelty, Ed Morin, and David Jibson • Second and Fourth Wednesdays, 7-9 p.m. in the Crazy Wisdom Tea Room • Second Wednesdays are poetry workshop nights. All writers welcome to share and discuss their own poetry and short fiction. Sign up for new participants begins at 6:45 p.m.
Fourth Wednesdays have a featured reader for 50 minutes and then open mic for an hour. All writers welcome to share. Sign up begins at 6:45 p.m. Free. Contact Ed at 668-7523; eacmorso@sbcglobal.net or cwpoetrycircle.tumblr.com.
July 24 • Ian Haight is an author, translator, and editor who graduated from U-M’s Residential College, worked with the UN, was a tenured professor at a Korean university, and now resides in Germany. His book, Celadon, won the First Book Prize in Poetry from Unicorn Press. He communicates an international, spiritually-minded aesthetic. Visit ianhaight.com.
A special performance for students of Shakespeare in the Arb on Labor Day weekend. Play is Twelfth Night, directed by Graham Atkin and Carol Gray, with Kate Mendeloff of the Residential College. Takes place in Nichols Arboretum, 1610 Washington Hts., Ann Arbor. Free but student ID required.
Now in its 19th year, Shakespeare in the Arb is directed by Kate Mendeloff of the U-M Residential College, Carol Gray, and Graham Atkin, and performed by U-M students and community players.
For member and non-member questions and information, visit mbgna.umich.edu
Shakespeare in the Arb came into existence in the summer of 2001, when Residential College Drama faculty member Kate Mendeloff was asked to direct an outdoor production as part of a three year Ford Motor Company grant for Arts in the Nichols Arboretum. She chose Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream for its structure — the characters were transformed by the power of the natural world. The production was such a popular success that Mendeloff remounted it the following summer, and “Shakespeare in the Arb” became an Ann Arbor tradition!
The unique experience of Shakespeare in the Arb comes from the environmental staging of the plays. There is no fixed stage; instead, the audience follows the action through different locations in the Arboretum. The staging takes advantage of the vistas and valleys, the special arrangements of the natural settings.
The wide open space of the Arb becomes a panoramic stage, creating a more realistic setting than if every scene was played out directly in front of you. As one critic commented, “The actors used the vastness of its Arb stage to full advantage, making entrances from behind trees, appearing over rises and vanishing into the woods.”
Every year, many UM students, alumni, and faculty members gather to act in Shakespeare in the Arb. The RC offers Spring term class credit to students who participate. The experience blends community, student, and professional-style participation in a theatrical production with the delicate ecology and beautiful environment of the Arb, providing dynamic educational value for participating students.
Auditions occur every April, with rehearsals starting in the Spring term. Performances occur over 3 weekends in June. For information about participation, please contact founder Kate Mendeloff.
To find information about this year’s production of Shakespeare in the Arb, go to Matthei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum (MBGNA) , or like Shakespeare in the Arb on Facebook for updates on the production!
Daughters of Memory: Paintings and Poems on the Nine Muses is an interdisciplinary show of works by Cindy Sowers exploring the elusive sources for the ancient figures of the Muses, as well as the appropriation of these figures by different artists through the ages.
Reception for the Artist: September 6, approximately 4:30pm. Refreshments will be served.
Cindy Sowers received her B.A. from Oakland University, her M.A. from University of Michigan in Comparative Literature, and her Ph.D. also from the University of Michigan in Comparative Literature. During her Masters program in 1973, she started teaching at the Residential College in the First Year Seminar and French programs. Her dissertation, The Shared Structure of Craft and Song: A Study of Homer’s Narrative Art, revealed passions for narrative and visual analysis comparatively understood that would characterize her teaching thereafter. She participated in an interdisciplinary group composed of Residential College humanities and fine arts faculty who together constructed the Arts and Ideas in the Humanities concentration. Cindy’s recent course offerings have included critical approaches to the literature and visual arts of classic modernism, postmodernism, Shakespeare and Rome, the heritage of Greece, the psychoanalytic interpretation of the arts, and many others. She combines analyses of literary texts, visual arts, and philosophy to hone in on the animating spirit of a cultural moment and space. She has presented at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2006 U-M residency, as part of the RC Faculty Colloquium, for the LSA Comparative Literature and the Colloquium on Critical Theory sponsored by the LSA Department of English Language and Literature, and at the Residential College’s 50th Anniversary celebration. She has received the Ford Foundation Fellowship, the Rackham Prize twice, the U-M Excellence in Teaching Award, the Matthews Underclass Teaching Award, and is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. Cindy retires from her position as a Senior Lecturer and Lecturer IV, having served in the Residential College for 46 years. She has an active art practice, and her work will be displayed in the RC Art Gallery in a fall 2019 exhibition. She also maintains a personal website, cynthiasowers.rc.lsa.umich.edu, where she publishes essays, poetry, and visual artwork.
Missed “Millennials Are Killing” earlier this summer? Fabulous news! These murderous buds are bringing you two extra performances – same cast, same place, at Riverside Arts Center’s “Off Center” studio! Please note that we will be starting one half hour earlier than our previous performances, at 7:30 PM!
Five directionless twenty-somethings – high-maintenance free spirit Jess, impish heartbreaker Joshua, timid gossip Amanda, softhearted activist Nick, and strange newcomer Michael – are content to pass their evenings together in listless, alcoholic stupors. Surely they can have nothing to do with the series of terrible disappearances and deaths happening around their college town?
“Millennials Are Killing” is the newest play to be workshopped by Ann Arbor playwright and director Skyler Tarnas. Tickets will be $10 at the door, $7 for students. The “Off Center” studio can be accessed directly off of Huron Street in Ypsilanti, and is directly under the marquee! There will be a sign on the door and a chalkboard out front!
Show Dates and Times:
Friday, September 13th – 7:30 PM
Saturday, September 14th – 7:30 PM
CAST:
Jessica: Laurie Perrin
Joshua: Kyle Stefek
Amanda: Allison Burley
Nicholas: Sebastien Butler
Michael: Mitchell Salley
Mom: Grey Hendry
Join us for a 45-minute interdisciplinary musical performance that highlights the turning points in the history of physics.
The show combines fragments (excerpts from writings by some of the most prominent physicists in history) read and interpreted by a narrator (a role played by Lynnae Lehfeldt in the premiere), with original songs, based on each fragment, composed by Alberto Rojo, and performed by Alberto Rojo (guitar and voice), Michael Gould (percussion), and Dave Haughey (cello). The project explores the intersection between the arts and the sciences, and postulates that art and science are not antagonistic alternatives in the search for truth; rather, there is a broad territory of coexistence.
The movements are as follows Galileo (The Book of the Universe); Isaac Newton (From the Principia); Pierre Maupertuis (Least Action); Rudolf Clausius (The Limiting Condition); Ludwig Boltzmann (Atomic movements); James Clerk Maxwell (From letters to Faraday); Marie Curie (Radioactivity); Albert Einstein (From the 1905 paper); Max Planck (The quantum of action); Werner Heisenberg (Analogies); J. S. Bell (Remote Instruments); Richard Feynman (Trees are made of air); Vera Rubin (Dark Matter)
Missed “Millennials Are Killing” earlier this summer? Fabulous news! These murderous buds are bringing you two extra performances – same cast, same place, at Riverside Arts Center’s “Off Center” studio! Please note that we will be starting one half hour earlier than our previous performances, at 7:30 PM!
Five directionless twenty-somethings – high-maintenance free spirit Jess, impish heartbreaker Joshua, timid gossip Amanda, softhearted activist Nick, and strange newcomer Michael – are content to pass their evenings together in listless, alcoholic stupors. Surely they can have nothing to do with the series of terrible disappearances and deaths happening around their college town?
“Millennials Are Killing” is the newest play to be workshopped by Ann Arbor playwright and director Skyler Tarnas. Tickets will be $10 at the door, $7 for students. The “Off Center” studio can be accessed directly off of Huron Street in Ypsilanti, and is directly under the marquee! There will be a sign on the door and a chalkboard out front!
Show Dates and Times:
Friday, September 13th – 7:30 PM
Saturday, September 14th – 7:30 PM
CAST:
Jessica: Laurie Perrin
Joshua: Kyle Stefek
Amanda: Allison Burley
Nicholas: Sebastien Butler
Michael: Mitchell Salley
Mom: Grey Hendry
Join us for a conversation about the current debate over gender-neutral pronouns that plays out on college campuses, on social media, and in offices across the country.
We’ll ask questions like:
- Why are we thinking about pronouns in new ways?
- What are the politics and the history of the pronoun?
- And what do the conversations we are having about them reveal about American culture in this moment?
Come talk to humanities scholars who work on questions like these and others you might have about the power of the pronoun. Featuring:
- Angela Dillard (Residential College, Afroamerican and African studies)
- Scott Larson (American culture)
- Robin Queen (linguistics, English, German)
Drawing on archival research and fieldwork, this talk will explore how B.K.S.Iyengar, (1918-2014) widely acclaimed as a man instrumental in bringing postural yoga to the West, came to understand yoga as an art and see himself as an artist.
The Center for World Performance Studies Faculty Lecture Series features our Faculty Fellows and visiting scholars and practitioners in the fields of ethnography and performance. Designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among students, scholars, and the community, faculty are invited to present their work in an interactive and performative fashion.
Professor Hottman-Wei, Director of the U-M Residential College’s Chinese Music Ensemble, presents a rare opportunity to hear the bowed stringed instrument considered a symbol of the Mongolian nation. She will also discuss the numerous cultural contexts in which the Morin Khurr is played.
The Center for World Performance Studies Faculty Lecture Series features our Faculty Fellows and visiting scholars and practitioners in the fields of ethnography and performance. Designed to create an informal and intimate setting for intellectual exchange among students, scholars, and the community, faculty are invited to present their work in an interactive and performative fashion.
U-M senior Marilyn Schotland directs The Dybbuk on Orchard, with themes of queer Jewish identity, deception, and free will.
