ENTERTAINMENT
The University Daily KANSAN November 21, 1983 Page 6
Somber 'Feast' ends in message of peace
By PHIL ENGLISH Staff Reporter
The setting was almost churchlike. At one end of the room was what appeared to be a corpse, covered by worn lace cloths. Candles gave a warm glow. In the hallway, as they surrounded every entrance and window.
People entered through the large doors as if taking part in a mass funeral. It wasn't until the end of the performance that the corpse was revealed, revealing large loaves of fresh bread and fruit.
"The Feast" was the fourth presentation of its kind presented since 1977 by the Creative Association, an organization of Lawrence artists.
In creating this year's event, the performers focused in on the personal, local and worldwide consequences of the message presented in the film "The Day After."
About 100 people showed up to observe and eventually take part in a theatre ritual "Feast 83. The Light at the End of The Day After." The light was held at the Lawrence School of Ballet, 205 F. W. 9th St.
Marsha Paludan, one of the key contributors to the performance, said the film could be a
tribute.
"IF WE CAN PRESENT an image of the world, why can't anyone see a world of complete truth?"
Members of the group are united by their commitment to peace. Using the theater as a common ground for everyone to associate with the group, members of the group found a way to communicate to the world.
After the performance, the actors and young children passed the bread and fruit to the audience, in an effort to symbolize their hope for world peace through sharing.
"There is a big problem with attitude and possessiveness," she said. "There is enough food in the world to stop the pain and suffering of us, but there are too many people with "fear of scarcity."
"WE HAVE A VOICE, we can say what we want and stop problems during our lifetime, and
it is beginning through organizations like the
it Wizard Hunger Project." she said.
The performance, which was a benefit for the World Hunger Project, represented an interesting mixture of black comedy and haunting reality.
Mike Randle, who sang the words, "So long, Mom I'm off to drop the bomb, so don't wait up for me," was very moved by the end of the performance.
"People might have felt a little down after the performance, but it isn't a result. The feeling has always been there and the performance just might have brought it out," he said.
"In most cases, including world peace, we want to reach for something very good, but in order to get there, you have to go through something very bad.
Kevin Barrett portrayed a tightrope walker as he dramatically spoke the words to a poem by HarperCollins.
THE POEM DESCRIBED THE "shadow" of a nuclear war with the words, "for three decades, we have lived with its fingers outstretched. clinging to our future, our children's future."
The lights were dimmed and voices could be heard from behind the back wall.
They were unidentified voices, singing in low choral tones. A group of people, shroved in white, held up a placard.
Several characters broke off to the middle of the room and began to symbolically wash their clothes, chanting, "The light at the end of the day."
then the characters began to paddle a boat down a stream, represented on stage by the white cloths, while singing. "We're all in this boat together."
BUT A FIGHT started, because the characters could not agree on which direction to paddle the boat. The fight was violent, but it stopped suddenly, and the characters began to laugh.
A large white blanket was carried out as the group members continued to laugh.
When the blanket was lifted above their heads, they stopped laughing. The white mushroom cloud over their heads brought a silence to the little children walked among the quiet performers.
Members of KU's University Singers, Chamber Choir, Concert Chorale and Concert Choir sing the "Messiah" in a free performance in Hoch Auditorium. The University Symphony joined the combined choirs in yesterday's concert, which was conducted by James Bolstan, professor of music. Thirteen student soloists were featured in the performance of the anatomy, composed in 1741 by George Fredrick Hands.)
Holiday toys no longer just for children
Bv United Press International
As Thanksgiving approaches, so does another American tradition — the holiday shopping season, which for many begins the next day as they prepare to purchase new consumers to downtowns all over the country.
Nearly all the more than 130 board games and 70 computer and video games produced by the Avalon Hike Game Co. of Baltimore are designed to be played on a computer game G. I. Avent of Victory, a $40 military game.
The shoppers will be looking for toys, but they can't all be for kids. Grown-ups are buying more.
high-tech video games, many of which are accompanied by adult price tags.
Among the new board games is a $150 dollar crossword from Scrabble. Carolina Biological Supply Co.'s Oh My Deer, $17.95, which allows players to try to control the progress of a deer
berd through a six-year life cycle in the wild, and
Selchow & Righter's Trivial Pursuit Genus Edition,
$40, with 6,000 trivia questions
One of the biggest adventure games is Sierra On-Line's Time Zone - at about $100, a micropic of 12 disk sides with 13,000 places to go from the stone age to the space age in nine time periods. The game is so vast that Source Telecomputing Corp., of McLean, Va., has created a national solving club. The Vault of Ages, for subscribers
Jazz, campus find harmony in ensembles This form of music is popular both in classes and bars, director says
By DAN HOWELL Staff Reporter
The mention of jazz to many people evokes images of mellow taverns, late nights and cool cats. Such settings still exist, but jazz is its most powerful form. It is its flavorful status in universities today.
Ronald McCurdy, coordinator of jazz ensembles at the University of Kansas, said this week that academic acceptance of jazz's legitimacy had opened teaching positions such as his. He has found the University fruitful for jazz.
"I think I have the best of both worlds," he said, "teaching and performing. That's how I do."
- McCurdy will get to show his teaching talents in a free concert tonight when he directs his students in Jazz Ensemble I and the Jazz Chor. The next time, p.m. in Swanbuck Rectal Hall in Morrison Hall.
McCurdy came to KU in 1976 to pursue a master's degree and provide instruction in jazz. He said that jazz actually had gained from getting away from its sometimes seedy surroundings and into universities where jazz people wanted to teach could reach many students.
"WHAT WE DONE in jazz education is to provide a short cut from the trial-and-error approach."
Ronald McCurdy, KU instructor of jazz, rehearses jazz ensemble students in Murphy Hall.
McCurdy said that the public's image of jazz musicians had improved. Because of his concern for that image, he insists that his students excel in playing and wear coats and ties or dresses for concerts.
"Jazz has shifted from nightclubs and barrooms to classrooms." he said.
The transition to academic settings has not come without its problems, McCurdy said. Many people he calls jazz impostors were appointed to teaching and directing positions in new jazz programs and failed to produce high-quality music.
McCurdy said that his background had prepared him to produce. Though born in late 1963 in Chicago, he calls Belle Glade, Fla., his hometown. His parents always insisted on solid work in school, and started him in piano by age five. After a period of interest in the harmonica, he took up the trumpet in sixth grade. It is still his primary instrument.
STUDYING AT FLORIDA A&M University was an excellent experience, he said, and helped especially by providing both vocal and instrumental training. He played in a jazz quintet, sang in a choir, and as a senior was president of the school's marching band, which has been featured on "60 Minutes." The excitement of the days in Tallabassee still animates him.
"The message I got there was 'Give everything your best,'" he said.
His pride in excellence shows in rehearsal as his long arms and large, expressive hands snap out a rhythm or paint a crescent line. He then plays a rhythm and reviews a rhythm that must be exactly right. When they
HE SAID THAT he had relied mostly on emotion to teach jazz improvisation when he first came to KU as a graduate assistant in 1976. Now, by studying and listening, he has learned complex jazz theory, and relies more heavily on intellect to teach.
"I’m a real teacher now," McCurdy said. "I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to convey the truth."
take up a brassy beep number, his heels lift off the floor to emphasize the synopses.
Having finished his Ph.D. this year, McCurdy looks forward to advancing the KU jazz program. The school needs more students and at the same time wants to continue the growth of its reputation, he said.
"Improvisation is a thinking man's game," he said. "A jazz musician is a composer of sorts. He says that."
MCCURDY ENJOYS THE times that he performs with the Ron McCurdy Quintet, but he finds his greatest satisfaction in his teaching role. He said that his biggest reward was knowing that students did well after they left KU.
He also hopes to arrange and compose more
"When they write back and say thank you, it feels good," he said. "It provides the incentive to continue in that direction." He added that many of the new schools such as North Texas State University.
often, especially for large jazz bands or jazz choirs.
McCurdy said that he expected to make jazz teaching his career because he liked everything he did. So far he has built KU's program from the ground up while earning two advanced piano lessons and performing harmonica player, such accomplishments make a sense of pleasure and pride quite natural.
Dutch art expert shares information in seminar
By PAMELA THOMPSON
By PAMELA THOMPSON Staff Reporter
Many art historians are inevitably bound to the time and place of the art they research.
But Svetlana Alpers, the 1983 Murphy Lecturer in Art at the University of Kansas, said she was bound only by her method of drawing contemporary analogies to art.
"I see myself with the audience of those who look at art," she said.
Alpers, an internationally known art historian on 17th-century European art and a professor of art history at the University of California at Berkeley, has been a visiting lecturer for a graduate student seminar in art history at KU since Nov. 8.
THE SEMINAR, WHICH coincides with the current exhibition at the Spencer Museum of Art titled "D_prints In Daily Life," is focusing primarily on Alpers' recently published book, "The Art of Describing: Dutch Art of the Seventeenth Century."
The 11 students in the seminar had to prepare extensively for Alper's visit, said Linda Stone, assistant professor of art history and regular lecturer for the class.
the students researched topics raised in Alpern book and also evaluated the strengths of these topics.
They also researched various problems with the period and wrote papers that were discussed by experts.
"Her book is on the cutting edge of scholarship in Dutch art history," Stone said.
Alpers said, "Since the book was published last spring, the timing was perfect. The ground laying and pre-planning paid off. It was a clever device. The seminars were quite intense."
ASIDE FROM TEACHING and traveling, she divides her time as the editor of two scholarly journals published at Berkley called "The Raritan Review" and "Representations."
Alpers said she enjoyed writing for the journals, particularly because she worked with 12 scholars from other academic disciplines on one of the publications.
"We publish empirical research that is conceptually sophisticated but readable by a broad audience."
Because Berkeley is such a large institution, which makes it nearly impossible to touch base with experts in diverse fields. Alpens said, a journal that creates a sort of community for the research field.
Alpers has been teaching at Berkeley since 1982, but said she and her husband, who is a professor of English there, had traveled extensively in the United States and in Europe.
BEFORE COMING TO Lawrence, Alpers was in Venice for six weeks, studying Italian art.
Although her primary interest is the Northern tradition of Dutch and Flemish art, Italian art has interested her ever since she started concentrating on art history.
She enjoys the chance to lecture and research art from around the world, but she said she loved to teach because she learned so much from the class sessions herself.
"I'm happy to have come to KU," she said. "I've had a wonderful time and have been particularly impressed by the world art history inhabs here."
As one of the faculty members who helped to bring her to KU, Stone, who studied under Alpers at Berkeley, said that Alpers 'visit was a great experience for everyone involved.
"IT'S BEEN MARVELOUS having her here," Stone said. "She's enormously perceptive, bright and lively. She has a command of many fields."
Alpers gave a lecture last week at the Spencer Museum of Art, titled "Rubens, Poussin and the Politics of Style" as part of the Murphy Lecture in Art series.
Sally Hoffmann, public service coordinator of the Spencer Museum of Art, said the series was sponsored by the Spencer Museum, KU's Kress Foundation, the department of art history and the Nelson-Akins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Mo.
The endowed lectureship was established in 1979 through the KU Endowment Association to promote research in mathematics.
BLOOM COUNTY
BY BERKE BREATHED