Boston University College of Fine Arts (CFA) is proud to announce its 2013–2014 season, featuring concerts, plays, operas, exhibitions, and lectures from CFA’s Schools of Music, Theatre, and Visual Arts. Every year, faculty and staff from the College identify a selection of events from each discipline to highlight among the hundreds of performances and visual arts events presented through the academic year.
At CFA, faculty and staff are as concerned with the process as they are with the performance or finished piece, and this year’s events celebrate this with initiatives and programming. Commencing CFA’s Keyword Initiative’s third year, much of the College’s programming, discussions, and collaborations will revolve around an annual theme, or keyword, and this year, the keyword is transformation. The Keyword Initiative is a project funded by Nancy Livingston (COM ’69) and her husband, Fred Levin, through the Shenson Foundation, in memory of Ben and A. Jess Shenson.
From September through May, CFA will present a range of works that explore the essence of transformation, focusing on profound shifts or radical changes in individuals and society — including the metamorphosis of a diva’s spirit into a vast, emerald butterfly in Florencia en el Amazonas, the evolution of ten Polish classmates lives as their country is torn apart by war in Our Class, and Leonard Nimoy’s exploration, through portrait photography, of the inner yearnings and fantasies of the residents of Northampton, MA in Secret Selves.
“It is through the process that we think, engage, and find solutions,” said Benjamín Juárez, Dean, College of Fine Arts, Boston University. “And it is through this process that our art takes shape, and we as artists grow. We welcome you to join us in this journey of exploration and evolution to embrace the power of art, to witness the transformation, and to, perhaps, let the art transform you.”
In addition, CFA will tap into diverse perspectives to create dialogue that inspires humanity and breeds the critical thinking that leads to solutions through two fall conferences that encourage creative and critical thinking in exploring the artistic process. It is with great pride that Boston University will host TransCultural Exchange’s 2013 Conference, Engaging Minds: International Opportunities in the Arts. Running October 10–13, 2013, this four-day event, featuring keynote speaker Laurie Anderson, brings together curators, galleries, funders, critics, artist-in-residency directors, and artists from around the world for a unique cross-disciplinary platform to network, showcase, support, and promote artists’ work.
Also, the School of Music at CFA is thrilled to present Are We Listening?, October 25–26, 2013, a two-day symposium on music, change, and challenge. Just announced, the conference invites industry experts, musicians, educators, music scholars, and composers to address key issues for today’s musicians including effective entrepreneurship models, the ethics of music degrees, the future of the orchestra, music for social change, and audience building.
SEASON SCHEDULE
Lazy River: Leidy Churchman (Sep 6 – Oct 20)
Paintings and videos are featured in this Brooklyn-based artist’s first solo show at a university gallery. Churchman references life cycles and swimming pools through abstract and figurative paintings and gestures.
Opening Reception Thursday, September 5, 6–8pm
Amy Sillman in Conversation with Leidy Churchman and Book Release Tuesday, September 24, 6pm
Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery
Free and open to the public. Call 617-353-3329 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
17th Annual Fringe Festival (Oct 4–27)
Featured Productions
Siren Song
|
Oct 4–6
Jonathan Dove, composer
Nick Dear, librettist
William Lumpkin, conductor
Jim Petosa, stage director
Based on the novel by Gordon Honeycombe, Dove tells the story of a love-starved sailor entangled in an affair with a pen pal he believes to be a lonely young woman.
Dark Sisters
Oct 11–13
Nico Muhly, composer
Stephen Karam, libretto
Allison Voth, music director
David Gately, stage director
Dark Sisters follow one woman’s dangerous attempt to escape the FLDS Church (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints), a sect that split from mainstream Mormonism following the renunciation of polygamy.
Back Bog Beast Bait
BU13
Oct 22–27
Sam Shepard, playwright
Michael Hammond, director
In this one-act play, a young mother calls on two cowboys to slay a two-headed “pig beast” terrorizing the Louisiana countryside.
BU Theatre, Lane-Comley Studio 210
$7 general admission; $3.50 CFA Membership; one free ticket with BU ID at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bu.edu/cfa/fringe or 617.933.8600.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oct 25)
BCAP BU13
William Shakespeare, playwright
Clay Hopper, director
New Repertory Theatre and Boston Center for American Performance present Classic Repertory Company’s production of the Bard’s enchanting tale, featuring six BU alumni.
BU Theatre
$20 general admission; $15 BU Community and BU Alumni; $10 CFA Membership and Classic Repertory Company subscribers. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
Boston Printmakers North American Print Biennial (Oct 27 – Dec 13)
BU13
The longest running juried printmaking show in the country, the biennial, juried by Dennis Michael Jon, Associate Curator in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Minneapolis Institute for the Arts, highlights printmakers working in traditional, new, and experimental approaches.
Opening Reception Sunday, October 27, 3–5pm
Free and open to the public. Call 617-358-0922 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
Elements, Rudiments, and Principles (Nov 8 – Dec 13)
This group show brings together photography, painting, sculpture, and new media that address visual expressions of the spiritual. Organized by Assistant Professor of Painting, Dana Frankfort, the works are at times humorous and political, while at other moments reflect a search for purity in shape and material.
Also on View John Guthrie in the BUAG ANNEX
Opening Reception Thursday, November 7, 6–8pm
Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery
Free and open to the public. Call 617-353-3329 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
Metamorphosis (Nov 13–24)
Steven Berkoff, playwright
Based on the novel by Franz Kafka
Elaine Vaan hogue, director
BCAP presents Kafka’s story of a humble man who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect.
BU Theatre, Lane-Comley Studio 210
$20 general admission; $15 seniors, students, and groups (10+); $10 CFA Membership; free with BU ID at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bu.edu/cfa/bcap or 617.933.8600
BU Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Chorus at Symphony Hall (Nov 18)
Ann Howard jones, conductor
Ralph Vaughan Williams: Dona Nobis Pacem
Francis Poulence: Gloria
Charles Ives: Psalm 90
Arrangement by David Hoose
Symphony Hall
Tickets on sale 60 days in advance; $25 general admission; $12.50 CFA Membership; Student rush $10, available at the door, day of performance, 10am–6pm. Box Office: bostonsymphonyhall.org or 617.262.1200.
A Delicate Balance (Dec 11–15)
Edward Albee, playwright
Hondo Weiss-Richmond, director
Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play focuses on a wealthy, middle-aged couple whose complacency is shattered when longtime friends appear unexpectedly on their doorstep.
BU Theatre, Lane-Comley Studio 210
$12 general admission; $6 CFA Membership; free with BU ID, at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
A Doll’s House (Dec 11–15)
Henrik Ibsen, playwright
Lillian King, director
A controlling husband and his young wife suffer from the collapse of their ‘ideal’ marriage and home in this Ibsen classic.
CFA, TheatreLab@855
Free and open to the public. Call 617-353-3390 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
Pacific Overtures (Dec 13–19) *
Stephen Sondheim, music & lyrics
John Weidman, book
Additional material by Hugh Wheeler
Jim Petosa, director
From the author of Assassins, this musical explores the Westernization of Japan through the story of two friends caught in the inevitable winds of change. Pacific Overtures blends elements of Kabuki theatre with the conventions of the Broadway musical.
Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, Wimberly Theatre
$12 general admission; $6 CFA Membership; free with BU ID, at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
Making Connections: The Art and Life of Herbert Gentry (Jan 24 – Mar 3)
Organized by Boston University Adelson Fellow Rachel Tolano. With fifty works of art, this exhibition will provide a critical examination and thoughtful celebration of the art and itinerant life of the 20th and 21st-century abstract painter, Herbert Gentry (1919–2003). Gentry’s career which straddled two continents, is characterized and contextualized by his distinctive colorful, expressive style.
Opening Reception Thursday, January 24, 6–8pm
Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery
Free and open to the public. Call 617-353-3329 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
Our Class (Feb 6–22)
| BCAP
Tadeusz Slobodzianek, playwright
Judy Braha, director
English version by Ryan Craig
BCAP presents this play based on true events. As ten Polish classmates – five Catholic, five Jewish – grow up, their lives take dramatically unexpected turns as their country is torn apart by war.
BU Theatre, Lane-Comley Studio 210
$20 general admission; $15 seniors, students, and groups (10+); $10 CFA Membership; free with BU ID at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bu.edu/cfa/bcap or 617.933.8600
Florencia en el Amazonas (Feb 20–23) *
Daniel Catán, composer
Marcela Fuentes-Berrain, librettist
William Lumpkin, conductor
Nic Muni, stage director
Inspired by Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, the opera follows Florencia Grimaldi, an aging opera singer on a steamboat journey down the Amazon River culminating in the diva’s spirit being transformed into a vast, emerald butterfly. Sung in Spanish with English supertitles.
BU Theatre
$20 general public; $15 BU Alumni, WGBH and WBUR Members, Huntington Theatre subscribers, and senior citizens; $10 CFA Membership; $5 students with ID, two free tickets with BU ID at the door. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
The Traveling Lady (Feb 21 – Mar 1) *
Horton Foote, playwright
Sidney Friedman, director
A woman and her daughter arrive in a small Texas town on the hunt for the daughter’s husband, a supposed recent parolee.
Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA, Wimberly Theatre
$12 general admission; $6 CFA Membership; free with BU ID, at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
Leonard Nimoy: Secret Selves (Mar 18 – May 9)
A photographic series exploring the inner yearnings and fantasies that we all share. Inspired by Aristophanes’ theory that humans were once double-sided creatures with two heads and multiple limbs before Zeus divided humans in two, Nimoy’s project reveals his subjects’ other, or second self. The resulting large-scale portraits offer an intimate, sometimes humorous, and profound new look at the portrait models of Northampton, MA.
Sherman Gallery
Free and open to the public. Call 617-358-0295 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
BU Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Chorus at Symphony Hall (Apr 7)
Ann Howard Jones, conductor
Hector Berloz: Grande Messe des morts, Op. 5 (Requiem)
Symphony Hall
Tickets on sale 60 days in advance; $25 general admission; $12.50 CFA Membership; Student rush $10, available at the door, day of performance, 10am–6pm. Box Office: bostonsymphonyhall.org or 617.262.1200.
MFA Thesis Exhibitions (Apr 11–17)
The BU School of Visual Arts welcomes art experts and novices to experience the work of the next generation of contemporary artists in painting, sculpture, graphic design, and art education.
Opening Reception Friday, April 11, 6–8pm
808 Gallery
Free and open to the public. Call 617-358-0922 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
Don Giovanni (Apr 17–20)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer
Lorenzo Da Ponte, librettist
William Lumpkin, conductor
Daniel Pelzig, stage director
With more than two thousand seductions behind him and no end in sight, Don Giovanni becomes increasingly reckless as he descends into excess and immortality. But when his antics turn fatal and unrepentant, the women he has discarded seek revenge and it is ultimately served up by a hellish supernatural force. Sung in Italian with English supertitles.
BU Theatre
$20 general public; $15 BU Alumni, WGBH and WBUR Members, Huntington Theatre subscribers, and senior citizens; $10 CFA Membership; $5 students with ID, two free tickets with BU ID at the door. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
Passion Play (Apr 30 – May 4)
Sarah Ruhl, playwright
Adrienne Boris, director
Named onw of The New Yorker’s “Ten Best Plays of 2008,” Passion Play looks at three communities presenting the Easter Passion, from Queen Elizabeth’s England to Hitler’s Germany to Reagan’s American.
BU Theatre, Lane-Comley Studio 210
$12 general admission; $6 CFA Membership; free with BU ID, at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
Columbinus (May 2–9)
Stephen Karam, playwright
Clay Hopper, director
Sparked by the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, this meeting of fact and fiction illuminates the realities of adolescent culture by exploring the events surrounding the shootings with text drawn from interviews, public records, and the shooter’s private diaries.
BU Theatre
$12 general admission; $6 CFA Membership; free with BU ID, at the door, subject to availability. Box Office: bostontheatrescene.com or 617.933.8600.
BFA Thesis Exhibitions (May 2–9)
The BU School of Visual Arts welcomes art experts and novices to experience the work of the next generation of contemporary artists in painting, sculpture, graphic design, and art education.
Opening Reception Friday, May 2, 6–8pm
808 Gallery
Free and open to the public. Call 617-358-0922 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
Boston University Theatre Showcase 2014 (May 5)
This annual event showcases the work of the School’s graduating students through a one-hour Performance Showcase and a Design & Production Exhibit of representative works from season’s productions.
CFA, 1st Floor Studios
Free and open to the public. Call 617-353-3390 or visit bu.edu/cfa for more information.
|
BCAP = Boston Center for American Performance
BU13 = Alumni Weekend 2013
All artists and programs are subject to change. Please visit bu.edu/cfa for the most up to date schedules and program information.