On Triad Arts Weekend (1:00 pm):
Imagine being able to develop a unique performance from the ground up with the mentorship of an internationally acclaimed performance artist. That’s exactly what a group of 17 Wake Forest University students will enjoy over a three-week residency with Tim Miller and their production of VOX. The student ensemble work is based on their own personal stories, experiences, and memories.
VOX, which is Latin for "voice", has been described as "an exploration of big mouths and full-throated tales" with all the humor, passion, and intensity of the human experience. It opens Friday night, February 1, and runs through the 10th with evening performances at 7:30pm and a Sunday matinee at 2:00pm in the Ring Theatre of the Scales Fine Arts Center on the campus of Wake Forest University.
Tim and Wake Forest student body president and performer Tre Easton dropped by to talk about it. Tre began with a short excerpt from his piece in VOX.
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Emmie Wilson Birkas (or “Butter” as she’s best known) loves film, and for the past five years she’s brought her passion for cinema to a fascinating series at Centenary United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem. It’s called Faith in Films with free screenings and discussion every Sunday in February beginning at 2:00pm. This Sunday is Ross McElwee’s Time Indefinite. Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man is the following week, and this season Errol Morris’s Gates of Heaven and French filmmaker Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil round out the series which will explore the relationship of cinema to religion as a co-belief system.
Butter has selected Duke Professor of fiction and nonfiction film making Gary Hawkins to give the pre-screening lectures and to moderate discussions following each film. Gary is the screenwriter on Joe, a motion picture produced in the fall of 2012, directed by David Gordon Green and starring Nicholas Cage. Butter says that with his vast experience in filmmaking, teaching, and writing about film, Gary will provide Centenary movie-goers with the perfect insider’s look at film.
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Theatre is a highly collaborative art form in general, but Festival Stage’s new production of 33 Variations by Moises Kaufman takes it to a whole new level.
The Winston-Salem and High Point based company now in its third year has embarked on an unprecedented collaboration with Wake Forest University that taps the school’s departments of music, history, dance, medicine and theatre to produce Kaufman’s Tony award-winning drama.
Performances lectures and exhibits surrounding 33 Variations will be February 1 through the 24 with opening night in Hanesbrands Theatre on Thursday, February 7. Wake Forest University assistant director and associate professor of theatre Brook Davis and Festival Stage resident director Steve Umberger spent two years in the planning stages for 33 Variations, and they recently joined David Ford to explain.
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“I saw you and dreamed of love.” So confesses the courtesan Magda to the well-to-do Ruggero in Giacomo Puccini’s La Rondine. Things get a little complicated but along the way we hear lots of gorgeous writing from the man who gave us Madame Butterfly and La Boheme. The Fletcher Opera Institute at the UNC School of the Artsbrings this lyric comedy in three acts to the Triad tonight, February 1, at 7:30pm. There’s a Sunday matinee at 2:00pm and one final performance on Tuesday night, February 5 at 7:30pm in the Stevens Center, in downtown Winston-Salem. Fletcher Artistic Director Jamie Allbritten spoke with David Ford about Puccini and his operetta-like opera La Rondine.
