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UNL Today Archive

Wed, Nov 17, 2004

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NOVEMBER 17, 2004


International Education Week
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA, NOV 15-19
University to Celebrate International Education Week

International Education Week will be observed with a series of events at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Nov. 15-19. Wednesday's events include an International Food Bazaar at the City Union from 11am to 2pm and the Edythe Wiebers International Studies Scholarship Presentation at 4pm in the Nebraska Union.

International Education Week is a joint initiative of the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education to promote programs that prepare Americans for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn and exchange experiences in the United States.

"It has become very clear that broadening our international understanding is critical," said Rod Paige, Secretary of Education. "This will mean renewed efforts to encourage the study of foreign languages and cultures, and to provide opportunities for all students to broaden their knowledge of the world." Secretary of State Colin Powell added that, "People-to-people diplomacy, created through international education and exchanges, is critical to our national interests. Americans who study abroad expand their global perspective and become more internationally engaged. Foreign students and individuals who participate in citizen exchanges return home with a greater knowledge of our democratic institutions and America's enduring values."

In observance of International Education Week, the UNL Office of International Affairs will promote international education under the theme "Nebraska Innovates Around the World." For more detailed information and a full schedule of events, visit the International Affairs Web site or call (402) 472-5358.


INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
 
KIMBALL RECITAL HALL, 7:30PM
University Singers to Perform Public Show

This evening, the University Singers will be performing an announced repertoire in the Kimball Recital Hall. Representing the finest choral singers in the university, the group performs music from the thirteenth century through the present, including works written especially for them. They have sung repeatedly for state conventions of the Nebraska Choral Directors Association, the Nebraska Music Educators Association, the North Central Division Conventions of the American Choral Directors Association, and most recently, the regional and national Music Educators National Conference conventions in Illinois and Nashville and the regional ACDA convention.

UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MUSIC
 
lecture circuit  
228 ANDREWS HALL, 12:30PM
Philosophy/Classics Lecture - 'Nature and Plotinus: What It Is and How It Works'
Luc Brisson, director of research, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique

116 L.W. CHASE HALL, 3:30PM
School of Natural Resources Seminar - 'Water Use of Trees and Grasses in the Nebraska Sandhills'
Tala Awada, UNL

E103 BEADLE CENTER, 4PM
Biotechnology/Life Sciences Seminar - 'Genomic Responses to a Century of Phenotypic Selection in Maize'
Dr. Steve Moose, University of Illinois

NEBRASKA UNION, 4PM
International Education Week Lecture - 'The Study Abroad Experience'
Edythe Wiebers scholarship students, in honor of International Education Week 2004

 
 


UNIVERSITY THEATER, 7:30PM
UNL's University Theatre Presents Sneak Preview of The House Of Blue Leaves

House Of Blue Leaves  
UNL Theatre's University Theatre completes its fall semester season with John Guare's dark comedy The House Of Blue Leaves.  Guest artist Gil Lazier directs the production, which has a sneak preview this evening at 7:30 PM.  Regular performances are November 18, 19, 20 and December 1, 2, 3, 4 at 7:30 PM.  The split schedule is due to UNL's Thanksgiving break. All performances are in Howell Theatre, first floor Temple Building at 12th and R Streets.  Tickets are available at the Lied Center Ticket Office, 301 N. 12th Street, Monday through Friday 11:00 AM to 5:30 PM and one hour prior to performance in Howell Theatre lobby.  The Ticket Office may be reached at 472-4747 or 800-432-3231.  Tickets for the sneak preview are $5.00 and may only be purchased at the door.  Regular performance tickets are $14.00 regular, $12.00 faculty/staff and senior citizen, $10.00 student.

The House Of Blue Leaves is set on October 4, 1965, the day the Pope first visited New York City.  Zookeeper Artie Shaughnessy (played by undergraduate theatre major Jeff Nathan) is on a quest to revive his stalled show business career.  A darkly comic look at the underside of the American dream, The House Of Blue Leaves is complete with Artie's delusional wife Bananas Shaughnessy (played by undergraduate theatre major Caitlin Brandes) and his mistress Bunny Flingus who talks a mile a minute (played by undergraduate theatre major Brittany Leffler).  A look at how people expect miracles from fame and celebrity, Artie's son Ronnie (played by undergraduate theatre major Brett D. Waldon) can't get famous by being in a movie, so he seeks fame as a mass murderer.

Gil Lazier stated, 'I am happy to be in Lincoln to direct The House Of Blue Leaves. The theatre program at UNL has a great reputation and the show is an award-winning American classic. John Guare's play is a very funny, very dark comedy about American life. We're having a wonderful time working on the production, and are eager to share it with our audiences.'

Lazier describes the play as "*not directly about politics or religion, its themes touch on these dimensions of our lives as Americans.  Guare's America of 1965 was a nation at war, as we are today.  We tend to look to our current religious leaders for solace and inspiration, as do Guare's characters. But The House of Blue Leaves deals with even more basic human issues, our sometimes desperate need to succeed, our assumptions that things are always better somewhere else, our compulsions to validate who we are by what others think of us, our aspirations for our '15 minutes of fame.'"

Dr. Gil Lazier is Dean Emeritus of the Florida State University School of Theatre, where he served as Dean from 1982 to 1999. For the past three years he was Director of the FSU/Asolo MFA Conservatory for Actor Training in Sarasota.  Under his leadership, the FSU School of Theatre achieved international prominence as an academic program of the highest excellence, consistently in top-ten listings by such publications as US News & World Report. 

As a theatre artist, Dr. Lazier has directed many dozens of productions in the U. S. and abroad including musicals, new works and classics by such masters as Albee, Brecht, Chekhov, Coward, Ibsen, O'Neill, Pinter, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Stoppard and Williams.  In Moscow, his production of Neil Simon's "I Ought To Be In Pictures" played for over ten years in Russian. He is a specialist in theories of acting, especially those of Stanislavski. He is a member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers.

Dean Gil Lazier was awarded the two highest honors in his discipline, election for life to the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, comparable in theatre to the National Academy of Science; and the National Theatre Conference, limited to 100 acknowledged leaders in theatre in America.

Other cast members include Cecilia Stinner as Corrinna Stroller, Carrie Brown as the Head Nun, Naomi Mitarai as the Second Nun, Jenny Cary as the Little Nun, Seth Petersen as the M.P. Jeff Tinnean as The White Man and well-known community actor Richard Nielsen as Hollywood director Billy Einhorn.

The tech/design team is made up of graduate students Jeff Weber (scenery) and Mike Legate (sound), undergraduate students Jaime Borchert (costumes), Alicia Bailey (technical director) and Jennifer Dierking (stage manager).  Faculty member Heath Lane designs lights.


UNIVERSITY THEATRE ARTS
 
GREAT PLAINS ART COLLECTION, CHRISTLIEB GALLERY, 3:30PM
Robert Hitchcock to Discuss 'People Of The Plains' in Olson Seminar

As University of Nebraska-Lincoln English professor Paul A. Olson pointed out in his introduction to "The Struggle for the Land" (University of Nebraska Press, 1990), much discussion and debate has focused on the environments, peoples, and economies of the grassland ecosystems of the world, from the Great Plains to the steppes of Russia and from the Kalahari Desert region of southern Africa to the pampas of Argentina.

In this Paul A. Olson Seminar in Great Plains Studies, UNL anthropologist Robert K. Hitchcock will address the ways in which peoples of the plains regions of the world have adapted and changed over time, with particular emphasis on the Great Plains of the United States and the savanna regions of eastern and southern Africa.

The lecture will be from 3:30 to 5pm in UNL's Great Plains Art Collection, 1155 Q St. It is free and open to the public, as is a 3 p.m. reception in the gallery.

Hitchcock will discuss the transformations in the economies and social systems of plains communities that occurred as a result of the dividing of the commons into private property. He will also describe population movements, migrations and resettlement of diverse peoples in the heartlands of North America and Africa. His presentation will conclude with an assessment of the potentials and promise of community-based natural resource management and integrated conservation and development programs as strategies to alleviate poverty, promote community well-being, and avert "the unsettling of the Plains."


 
ROSS MEDIA ARTS CENTER
Playing this week at the Ross: Tying The Knot, A Dirty Shame

UNL's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center presents the John Waters' new film A Dirty Shame and the documentary Tying The Knot, playing this week at the center, 313 N. 13th St.

now showing at the ross  
From the wondrously fertile mind of writer/director John Waters comes A Dirty Shame, America's first carnal concussion comedy. Set in the Harford Road area of Waters' native Baltimore, A Dirty Shame tells what happens when a horny horde of "sex addicts" invade a blue-collar neighborhood, to the shock and dismay of the "neuter" neighbors. Rude, joyous and full of sexual anarchy, A Dirty Shame is a movie with a generous heart and a dirty mind: in other words, a classic John Waters comedy.

When a bank robber's bullet ends the life of police officer Lois Marrero, her wife of thirteen years, Mickie, is honored as her surviving spouse but denied all pension benefits. When Sam, an Oklahoma rancher, loses his beloved husband of 22 years, long-estranged cousins of his late spouse try to lay claim to everything Sam has. As Mickie and Sam's lives are put on trial, they are forced to confront the tragic reality that in the eyes of the law their marriages mean nothing. From an historical trip to the Middle Ages, to gay hippies storming the Manhattan marriage bureau in 1971, Tying The Knot digs deeply into the past and present to uncover the meaning of civil marriage in America today.

More information is available at the Ross website.

MRRMAC | A DIRTY SHAME | TYING THE KNOT