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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, February 9, 1968
The theatre: A debut, and offbeat titles
By Carla Rupp Kansan Staff Reporter
The audiences at the University Theatre production of "Blithe Spirit" would be rather surprised if they knew the kind of books read by the urbane, witty author Charles Condomine, the main character.
Some of the titles in his bookcase on the set read "Why," written by B. Cause, "How to Belch," "Ban," and "Sex and You."
Most of the titles of the books are private theatre jokes," Charles Lown, technical director of the University Theatre, said, chuckling.
an example of a "private theatre joke" is the book title "My Fair Man' by Tom Rea," director of "Blithe Spirit." Rea played the lead in "My Fair Lady" two years ago. Then there's "Friendly Persuasion" by Dr. Brooking, KU theatre professor, and also "Let's Play Goff," referring to the former head of the theatre department.
Another title is "The Many Loves of Clarence Seaveen," published by The Shopgirls. Seaver is the scenery shop foreman. The shop in which he works is commonly called "The Slave Market," because, as one theatre student said, "Students who enroll in what they expect to be a normal three-hour course are always surprised to find that six hours of shop work a week plus crewing a show are additional requirements for the stage course.
Some other titles referring to the scene shop are "Paintin' Place" and "Come to Me" by Dr.
Seaver. Seaver explained, "Students have to 'come to me' at the end of the semester to make up shop hours."
Seaver then chuckled and pointed to some titles which he said he painted on the take book fronts on the set of "Billie Spirit." He cited the example of the book "Absent and Tardy," referring to two girls in one of his stage classes with those two "bad habits."
Scaver added, "Some book titles were so obscene that we had to throw them out." He gave the example of "Who Goosed Shakespeare?"
But perhaps one of the most significant titles in Charles Condomine's library might be "Doctor Yes," by James Hawes, who
portrays the leading actor in "Blithe Spirit."
When Hawes was working on his doctoral degree in theatre between 1960 and 1965, "theatre people" often asked him whether he had gotten his degree yet. Hawes would always answer, "Doctor No." However, now that he has received his Ph.D. from KU, he can answer, "Doctor Yes."
Hawes chuckled and said, "Oh, it's a lot of fun acting on the stage in 'Blithe Spirit' and knowing that the audience can't read the titles of the books in my bookshell!"
The final performances of Noel Coward's English comedy "Blithe Spirit" will be tonight and Saturday at 8:20 p.m. There will also be a Sunday matinee at 2:30.
Noted lens man exhibits work
A collection of award-winning photographs by Harry Callahan, noted contemporary American photographer, is on exhibit in the south lounge of the Kansas Union. Callahan enjoys an international reputation as one of the half-dozen outstanding "pure" photographers of his generation.
The exhibit features 150 photographs personally selected by the artist. The three-week show will be open to the public without charge through Sunday, Feb. 25, it was announced by Miss Molly Glover, Displays Chairman of Student Union Activities.
Callahan has been called "an artist who hunts his own shadow." He is represented in numerous collections in this country and abroad, and his work is frequently published in art books and design periodicals. Many exhibitions of the Museum of Modern Art in New York have included his work, among them
The collection of photographs is on loan from the Hallmark Gallery in New York, where the show premiered in the fall of 1965. David L. Strout, director of the Gallery, considers the Callahan show one of the most significant photographic exhibitions staged in New York in recent years.
Edward Steichen's "Family of Man" show.
An innovator as well as a traditionalist, Callahan deals with subjects ranging from landscapes to near-abstractions achieved by multiple exposure and camera movement. His studies include everything from pedestrians to grasses and weeds.
Callahan is a widely recognized teacher of photography as well as an award-winning photographer himself. He serves as director of photographic studies at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, R.I., and was chairman of the photography department at the Institute of Design in Chicago until 196L. He is a native of Detroit.
Callahan began his photographic studies as a hobby in 1938, after spending two years as an engineering student at Michigan State University. In 1945 he joined the teaching staff at the Institute of Design, and in 1953 was awarded a $10,000 fellowship from the Graham Fondation—the largest ever awarded for "still" photography—to study for a year in Europe.
it," he wrote in the introduction of the first definitive monograph of his work published in Mareh, 1965. "A photo is able to capture a moment that people can't always see. Wanting to see more makes you grow as a person . . ."
"I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way, to intens.fy
Among the 150 photographs in the exhibit here are many that have never been shown, and a number of recent examples of his work.
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The Experimental Theatre will present the American debut of "The Crumbling Citadel" by Rumanian dramatist Horia Lovinscu, beginning next Wednesday.
The play is the story of a bourgeois family in Bucharest during the World War II. Safe and secure during the war they find, with the end of the war and the Russian occupation everything is gone. The story is concerned with the struggle of two brothers to find a place in the new society. One brother, blinded and embittered by the war, is able to make the adjustment. The second, a brilliant philosopher who had been offered the post of lecturer at a university, finds himself unable to adapt. The last half of the play is about his destruction.
First performed in Bucharest in
1956, "The Crumbling Citadel" is a very popular play in Eastern Europe. It does not attack the "regime" (it was produced with official permission), and this is the reason Miles Coiner, teaching assistant of speech and drama and director of the play, chose to do it in the Experimental Theatre.
Coiner said it is experimental because it is not a political work. According to him, most of the Eastern European work shown in the United States is selected on politics.
"It is an honest piece of work. It shows problems as they are, with little comment." The play gives the other side of the story. "We don't really see the human misery in a family when it is split politically," he said.
It is experimental, too, said Coiner, because it is very much an actor's play.
Make tracks for your campus bookstore today!
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THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION. S. Handel. This new book describes for the general reader the scientific basis and the technical achievements of the electronics revolution, as well as its impact on our daily lives. A905. $1.45
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. With an Introduction by A. J. P. Taylor. The complete text of one of the most influential writings of the past century.
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