March 7, 1997



Sweet Honey in the Rock includes, from left, Carol Maillard, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Shirley Childress Johnson, Aisha Kahlil, Ysaye Maria Barnwell and Nitanju Bolade Casel.

Sweet Honey Strikes Harmonious Chord at Lied

The sweet and soulful a cappella sound of Sweet Honey in the Rock will flow at 8 p.m. March 15 in the Lied Center for Performing Arts when one of the finest American vocal ensembles takes the stage with voices of spellbinding beauty.

The Grammy Award-winning women's ensemble has brought international acclaim to the group in the 24 years since it began sharing the deep musical roots of the sacred music of the black church with spirituals, hymns, gospel, jazz and blues.

During the performance, only one member of the group knows what they're going to sing. In the tradition of the black Southern Baptist Church where songs are raised in the course of the service, the performers glance at the designated "programmer" for clues about what they'll sing next.

"I grew up in a black church," said founder Bernice Johnson Reagon. "They never passed out a list of hymns and the congregation never knew what they were going to sing. Instead the service came out of the person who led the songs. It came up out of what that person needed to say and it was up to the congregation to help that person say it. So when I was in jail during the Civil Rights Movement, I had a model I could turn to. I knew if I picked the right songs, I could keep our spirits up."

A 15-minute educational talk will be given by Deborah Reinhardt, UNL assistant professor of music education, in the Steinhart Room at the Lied Center at 7:05 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. the evening of the performance.

Tickets for Sweet Honey in the Rock are $24, $20 and $16 and are half price for youth 18 and under and students with valid identification from UNL, Nebraska Wesleyan University and Doane College. The Lied Center box office is open for walk-in business weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and 90 minutes before the performance. Phone orders may be placed by calling 472-4747.

Thibaudet Performance to Benefit Network

Nebraska Public Radio Network and the Nebraska ETV Network will present acclaimed pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in a special benefit solo concert at 7:30 p.m. May 2 in the Lied Center for Performing Arts.

Thibaudet's solo recitals around the world have often expanded to encompass dual recitals with violinist Joshua Bell and cellist Truls Mork. Unlike most concert pianists, Thibaudet is a sought-after collaborator who has performed with singers Brigitte Fassbaender, Cecilia Bartoli, Angelika Kirchschlager, Olga Borodina and Dmitry Hvorostovsky.

Tickets will go on sale March 10. Call the Lied Center Box Office, 472-4747, to order tickets. Major credit cards and mail-in orders are accepted. Members of Public Radio Nebraska Foundation and Nebraskans for Public Television will receive a 15 percent discount on tickets. People living outside of Lincoln may take advantage of motor coach tours to Lincoln for the concert, which will include concert ticket, travel, lodging and the opportunity for shopping, sightseeing or museum tours on May 3.

Theater Troupe Presents Compelling View Of Growing Up In The Age Of AIDS


By Carol Ash
University Health Center

New York's award-winning STAR Theatre of the Mt. Sinai Adolescent AIDS Program will offer free public performances and workshops at UNL March 14-20.

In compelling and realistic musical productions, STAR Theatre portrays the lives of young people as they confront the difficulties of growing up in the age of AIDS. The shows are honest focusing on sex, communication, safety and choices youth make.

"Bringing STAR Theatre to UNL is an effective way for us to present hard and fast issues to students," said Pat Tetreault, sexuality education coordinator of the University Health Center. "Research has shown that peer to peer education is very effective. Using theater performances as an educational tool is an added bonus."

Two separate productions will be presented by the talented cast. Over the Edge, targeted at a college-age or older audience, is a fast-paced musical that blurs the line between reality and stage reality by interrupting scenes, directly addressing the audience and using other theatrical devices.

On The Edge, targeted at high school age youth, focuses on issues of peer pressures, hormones and difficult decisions which sometimes result in risky behaviors.

Everyone is invited to attend the public performances which will be at Westbrook Music Hall, Room 119, on the UNL City Campus. On The Edge will be presented on March 14 at 6 p.m. Over the Edge will be presented on Friday, March 14, at 8 p.m. and Saturday, March 15, at 8:30 p.m.

For those interested in working with or developing their own peer-to-peer group that uses theatre as an educational tool, STAR theatre will conduct How We Do What We Do: A Training the Trainers Workshop, Saturday, March 15, 11 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. in the Georgian Room of the Nebraska Union. There is a $7 fee and preregistration is required. Lunch will be provided.

STAR Theatre's visit is made possible by the University Health Center, Committee on Lesbian and Gay Concerns, University Foundations, University Housing, Nebraska Department of Education, Nebraska Department of Health and the Affirmative Action and Diversity Programs Office.

For more information, call Pat Tetreault, Sexuality Education Coordinator of the University Health Center, 472-7440.

A Different Kind of Love Story at Ross Theater

Portraying the Vietnamese immigrant experience through Kieu, Trinh T. Min-ha's A Tale of Love opens March 13 at the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater. The film follows the quest of a women in love with "Love." A Tale of Love is loosely inspired by "The Tale of Kieu," the Vietnamese national poem of love, which Vietnamese people see as a mythical biography of their country branded by internal turbulence and foreign domination.

"[A Tale of Love is] a frankly erotic film that interrogates its own eroticism, challenging the audiences with its acting styles," said Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader. "Nothing else around is even remotely like it."

T. Minh-ha visited UNL in 1989 to participate in the Ross Theater's Film/Video Showcase program.

A Tale of Love will screen March 13-15. Times are 7 and 9 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 1,3,7 and 9 p.m. Saturday.

Acting Company Offers 'As You Like It'

As You Like It, William Shakespeare's upbeat comedy of love at first sight, will be performed by the Acting Company at 8 p.m. March 12 in Kimball Recital Hall, as part of the Lied Center series.

For more than 25 years, the New York-based Acting Company has been a first home to some of America's well-known actors, including Kevin Kline and Patti LuPone. Honored with the Obie Award and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award, it is the only professional theater company of its kind in America.

Written in 1599, Shakespeare's romantic plot "comments upon gender roles and character type, the nature of just rule, lessons in love and the Seven Ages of Man from infancy to second childhood when we are sans teeth, eyes and everything," said Stephen Buhler, a UNL associate professor of English.

For the Shakespeare theater novice, Buhler said the play would be an excellent introduction to the bard's perennially rewarding works. "It is a ver y, very light and upbeat play. It's lots of fun," he said. "There has never been anyone who has been able to craft language and shape characters through language and provide such an opportunity for actors and readers to use their imaginations."

Tickets for As You Like It are $26 and $22 and are half price for youth 18 and under and students with valid identification from UNL, Nebraska Wesleyan University and Doane College. The Lied Center box office is open for walk-in business weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and tickets may be purchased 60 minutes before the performance at Kimball Recital Hall. Phone orders may be placed by calling 472-4747.

'Twelfth Night' at Ross Theater

"Twelfth Night," an international film from Britain, will be shown at the Mary Riepma Ross Film Theater on March 8 and 9. The March 8 showings are at 1, 3:15, 7 and 9:15 p.m. The March 9 showings are at 2:30, 4:45, 7 and 9:15 p.m.

The cost is $4 for students, $6 for non-students. The film is sponsored by the University Program Council.

Douglas Duer, Untitled, from Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, 1912.

Illustrator-Artists Featured in Great Plains Exhibit

"Illustrator-Artists of the American West" will receive some much needed attention in a new exhibition of paintings and drawings of subjects from literature of the American West at the Great Plains Art Collection, 215 Love Library.

The exhibit, which will run March 17 to May 2, features 40 pieces by seven artists including Thomas Hart Benton, Douglas Duer, Harvey T. Dunn, Paul Goble, Grant T. Reynard, Norman Rockwell and Harold Von Schmidt. The show also will include some of the published texts in which the original illustrations are reproduced. This exhibition has been planned in conjunction with the Center for Great Plains Studies' symposium "Literatures of the Great Plains" April 3-5. The Friends of the Center for Great Plains Studies sponsor the show, organized and produced by the gallery.

It has been argued that artists who work as illustrators, particularly of written texts, have often not received their fair share of attention and recognition by the art establishment and general public. From the early 1900s to the present, many "illustrator-artists" have received excellent educations and artistic training, and produced work of extremely high quality. The artists represented in this exhibit have become known primarily as illustrators, except for Thomas Hart Benton.

The exhibit consists mainly of paintings and drawings created as illustrations for fiction or other writings relating to the American West. These include examples of Thomas Hart Benton's original watercolor illustrations for the 1945 edition of Francis Parkman's western classic The Oregon Trail.

The exhibit is free and open to the public. Although the exhibit opens on March 17, the gallery will not be open weekends in March (due to campus spring break and Easter), and will resume normal hours during the rest of the exhibit's run. Normal hours are Monday-Friday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.to 5 p.m.; Sunday 1:30 to 5 p.m.

Annual Prairie Schooner Writing Prizes Awarded

Thanks to generous donations, Prairie Schooner was able to give 13 writing prizes totaling more than $6,000 for work published in its 1996 volume. Prairie Schooner magazine is published with the support of the UNL English Department and the University of Nebraska Press.

Prairie Schooner has announced a new $1,000 prize, The Larry Levis Prize for Poetry, given by Marcia Southwick and Murray Gell-Mann in memory of the poet Larry Levis. John Engman is the first recipient of the prize for his five poems in the spring issue. Engman's poems have also appeared in Eleventh Muse, Caliban and Indiana Review and the anthology Atomic Ghost: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age. He is on the adjunct faculty of the Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.

The $1,000 Lawrence Foundation Award for the best short story in the 1996 volume goes to Lee Martin for "The End of Sorry" published in the spring issue. Martin teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas. "The End of Sorry" is part of his first collection of stories, The Least You Need to Know, winner of Sarabande Books' Mary McCarthy Prize for Short Fiction. His work has appeared in Georgia Review, Story, New England Review, Glimmer Train, and Indiana Review. The Lawrence Foundation is a charitable trust in New York City.

Reetika Vazirani is the winner of the $1,000 Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing for her seven poems which appeared in the spring issue. Vazirani's first collection of poems was selected by Marilyn Hacker for the 1995 Barnard New Women Poets Series. Former managing editor for Callaloo, Vazirani now teaches at the University of Virginia. The Faulkner Award is supported by charitable contributions to honor Virginia Faulkner, former editor-in-chief at the University of Nebraska Press and fiction editor at Prairie Schooner.

The 1996 Bernice Slote Award, a $500 prize for the best work by a beginning writer, goes to Julia Whitty for her short story "Stealing from the Dead" published in the fall issue. Whitty is a documentary filmmaker from Santa Rosa, Calif. She has worked on more than 50 television documentaries for PBS, A&E and the BBC. Her stories have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review and Calyx. The Slote Award is supported by the estate of Bernice Slote, Prairie Schooner editor from 1963 through 1980.

The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award of $500 goes to Scott Cairns for his group of six poems from the winter issue. Funding for this year's award came from Friends of the Prairie Schooner. Cairns is associate professor and director of creative writing at Old Dominion University. He has had poems in Atlantic Monthly, New Republic, Paris Review, Denver Quarterly, and Kansas Quarterly. His books include Figures for the Ghost, The Translation of Babel , and The Theology of Doubt .

Sandra Berris is winner of the $250 Hugh J. Luke Award for her three poems from the Winter issue. Berris is the founding editor and current co-editor of Whetstone. Her work has appeared in Midwest Quarterly, Arts Alive, and Willow Magazine among others. The Hugh J. Luke Award was established in memory of Prairie Schooner's editor from 1980 through 1987.

The Edward Stanley Award for Poetry, $500, goes to Jean Nordhaus for eight poems from the Spring issue. Nordhaus has poems in American Poetry Review and Poetry. Her collections of poetry are A Bracelet of Lies (Washington Writers Publishing House) and My Life in Hiding (Quarterly Review of Literature, Volume 30). Charitable contributions from the family of Edward Stanley, a member of the committee that founded Prairie Schooner in 1926, make possible this award.

Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Awards of $250 each go to Richard Jackson of Chattanooga, Tenn., for poetry, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer of Brooklyn, N.Y., for fiction, D.W. Wright of Tokyo, for his translations of prose poems by Kasuya Eiichi, Maxine Kumin of Warner, N.H., for poetry, Margaret Mitsutani of Tokyo, for her translation of a story by Kyoko Hayashi, and David Haward Bain of Orwell, Vt., for an essay.

To obtain the 1996 prize-winning material and future issues of the magazine, write to Prairie Schooner, 201 Andrews Hall, UNL, Lincoln NE 68588-0334, or call 472-0911. The magazine also is available at local bookstores. Subscriptions are $22 for one year; single copies are $7.25.

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