Jacque Janssen, arts/features editor
Arts/Entertainment
Nelson museum exhibit is a must-see
Nelson Paintings pleasing to the eye
Courtesy of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
"A Bar at the Folies Bergere" by Edouard Manet.
By Regan Brown Kansan staff writer
There are really only two things to know about "Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings: The Courtauld Collection" at Kansas City's Nelson-Akins Museum of Art.
First, getting there and getting in is simple. Don't be intimidated by stories of long lines. Tickets can be bought in advance at CATS outlets or at the museum ticket counter.
Crowds waiting for admission have seldom spent more than ten minutes in line, said Chet Arne, head of security at the museum. In fact, the longest line there on Sunday was the brunch line in the museum's stone courtyard.
Review
Second, go. Simply figure out some way to get there before the exhibit closes April 3. Kansas City is the last stop in a five-museum U.S. tour for these 48 magnificent canvases, and the only reason they left their home at London's Courtauld Institute in the first place was that a new gallery could be readied for their return. This is one exhibit that can't be seen anywhere else, except in London.
Wrong. Take Vincent Van Gogh's 1889 landscape, "Peach Blossoms in the Crau." Pause before this canvas and experience the true meaning of the word texture in all its layers and complexity. Scrutinize the bold strokes that bring the rough hedgerow and the delicate peach blossoms to life and study the way hundreds of rough-looking paint dabs unite to form the sky.
For people who don't make frequent trips to museums, driving to Kansas City to see 48 paintings might seem a trifle extreme. After all, most of us have Monets, Manets and Cezannes on the big screen in Introduction to Art History, right?
Afterward, look at reproductions of this painting in the exhibit catalog or on the screen and notice how the camera flattens texture, color and
atmosphere. The depth and texture of these paintings deserve an upclose look.
Fortunately, the gallery layout is conducive to scrutiny from a variety of angles and distances. The crowds on Sunday between 10 a.m. and noon were light enough to allow everyone to get as close to the canvases as they wanted. And when tempted to linger before a particular painting, no one seemed to feel pushed along by those behind.
Note: Getting up so close to these masterpieces is a rare experience, a privilege. Don't plan on taking notes with pen or pencil, since writing instruments are not permitted in the gallery. Gesticulating wildly with the
exhibit catalog directly in front of a priceless Seurat is probably not advisable either, unless you care to be admonished by a polite but firm museum guard.
Why does nature thought you can stand in front of these canvases and practically feel the heat shimmering in waves over the landscapes of France? One remarkable quality shared by the landscapes of Claude Monet, Vincent Van Gogh, and Camille Pissarro is the way we can sense the presence of air, wind and sunlight.
The first canvas to contort the visitor upon entering the gallery was indeed a shocker in its day. Edouard Manet's "Le DeJeuner sur l'Herbe,"
painted about 1863, is a smaller version of one now in the Louvre.
The Paris Salon rejected the larger work because it depicted two men, clothed in modern dress, dining al fresco with a naked woman who stares serenely out of the canvas at the viewer. The incongruity of the scene might seem tame enough to modern viewers, perhaps, but the nude, contrasted with her somber, clothed companions, is still enough to make us blink.
the reflections of the sailboats to perfection.
In the next alcove, Manet's "Banks of the Seine at Argentul" demonstrates the Impressionist mastery of light, air and water. The atmosphere of this riverbank scene simply shimmers; the ripples of water fracture
The presence of this and many other paintings depicting sunny landscapes and the pleasures of rivers and seaside is doubly welcome to those who spend February yearning for warmer weather. The best of these landscapes exude an almost palpable warmth that glows later in the mind's eve.
Very few visitors found it possible to leave without falling in love with at least one painting. Many dawled before Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "La Loge," a frothy depletion of a bermised and elegant young woman
See NELSON, p. 2B, col. 1
Museum presents services
By a Kansan reporter
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of
Art is located at 4525 Oak St. in
Kansas City, Missouri, about one
half mile northeast of the Country
Club Plaza.
EXHIBIT HOURS: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. tuesday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. all other days except closed, when the museum is closed.
TICKETS: May be purchased in advance at Liberty Hall in Lawrence or other CATS outlets; tickets bought through CATS are $6.00 each and include general museum admission. Exhibition tickets may also be purchased at the museum ticket counter for $3.00. Children 5 years old and under are admitted free.
PARKING: The lot at the museum is quite small. On weekends, free shuttle buses will run between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. from parking lots at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Midwest Research Institute. The lots are located at 50th and Oak streets and 52nd and Cherry streets.
FOOD: The Rozelle Court Restaurant at the Nelson-Atkins is charming, but not particularly cheap. Sandwiches, soups, salads and hot entrees are served cafeteria-style in a courtyard setting with a fountain. Hours are 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday and Friday; 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. every other day except Monday.
EXHIBIT CATALOG: The cost is $14.95 for a 148-page catalog with color photographs of all 48 paintings.
EXHIBIT RESTRICTIONS: No photography, no writing instruments of any kind, no guided tours, no strollers or carriages.
RELATED EVENTS: A free film series at the Nelson-Atkins presents classic French films, as well as documentaries related to Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Films are shown Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. in Atkins Auditorium. Call the museum at (816) 561-4004 for more information.
Cultural rebirth is focus of play
By Dayana Yochim
Kansan staff writer
Paul Lim will give birth to a baby next weekend.
Paul Lim. KU lecturer in English and author of the play "Mother Tongue"
Lim's play, "Mother Tongue," will premiere Feb. 18 in Los Angeles.
"One thinks of a premiere like the birth of a baby," Lim said. "It's a symbiotic relationship. After the premiere, I don't really care what happens because up until that point, I had my hand in it."
"Mother Tongue" tells the story of two generations of Chinese. The first immigrated to the Philippines in the late 1930s, and the second generation moves from the Philippines to the United States.
“This is not normal among overseas Chinese,” said Lim, a KU lecturer in English. “After 1949, the Chinese could not go back because of Mao Tse-tung.”
Lim said that all of his plays had autobiographical elements.
"This play is the one that is most blatantly autobiographical," Lim said. "Sometimes, the facts get in the way of the truth. I have felt quite free to alter the facts for the truth, whatever truth I think I agree."
Lim was born in Manila, the Philippines, in 1944. When he was 24, he came to the United States on a tourist visa.
"I liked what I saw," Lim said. "I came in June of 1968, and the following summer was Wood-stock."
"He went back to his first years in the Philippines, which he had never dealt with before." Hough said. "He went back to the basis of that genius, to the basis of that man."
After his six-month tourist visa expired, Lim applied for a student visa. He got his bachelor's degree in English from the University of Kansas in 1970; in 1974, he got his master's degree.
Paul Hough, director of the play and a close friend of the author, said that "Mother Tongue" was Lim's best work so far.
Yet, Lim maintains that he does not have a favorite play.
"I like all my plays equally," Lim said.
Lim said his plays dealt more with ideas than with characters.
"Very often, my characters are
Hough, who got his bachelor's degree in theater at the University in 1967, said that "Mother Tongue" was Lim's most touching work. Hough has acted in and directed Lim's lavs before.
very cold and despicable people. So long as they illustrate an idea, that is fine," Lim said.
"I have always been accused of writing characters that are cold-hearted and ugly. Knowing that I can write such characters, I have in the past gone out of my way to learn how to write with the heart, just as a challenge."
“He goes for the truth, the pain in this play,” Hough said. “This gives him new inspirations. It helps for him to deal with his later life.”
Hough said he had to stop auditions at one point because the play's ending touched Lim very deeply.
In the last scene of "Mother Tongue," the protagonist is sworn in as a U.S. citizen. Lim said that this scene was not autobiographical because he saw his swearing-in as humorous because the language was so archaic.
"The thing that is most important to me in this play is the idea that language carries the weight of moral values," Lim said. "When the protagonist takes on American citizenship, he has to examine inwardly what he is getting into. Inevitably, your own ethics and moral values are shaped by the language you use."
"It's a rebirth, the cutting of the umbilical cord again, but in a cultural sense," he said. "In a way, you are giving up the old past by way of culture, by way of language. You take on a new culture and a new language, and this will change you as a person because language carries that moral weight."
To Lim, a successful play is one that changes the audience's point of view.
"What gives me the most pleasure is when people come out from one of my plays and are stimulated
by some of my ideas or talk about some of the ideas or are even changed." Lim said.
"Criticism is a very sensitive matter. I know some playwrights who refuse to read reviews or talk to people about their work," he said. "On the other hand, if you listen too much and try to incorporate and satisfy everyone, there's a danger that the original intention of the play may be lost."
Lim said that the last scene of the play was criticized by some of his friends and co-workers but that he took criticism seriously.
Lim's theory of criticism says that if he hears the same thing being said by three or four people, then change may be in order.
Lim said he was criticized often for the characters in his plays. He also said that a preview audience had suggested that he change the ending to "Mother Tongue," but that he did not change it.
"In the L.A. production, it will be interesting to see if my instincts were right." Lim said.
Portraying nun is hard habit to kick
Green is the lead character in "Nunsense," the longest running musical in Kansas City history. The play is about a convent in which 52 nuns die of food poisoning from bad soup.
By Jill Jess
Mary-Pat Green sat in the back room at the Waldo Astoria dinner theater and sipped a Diet Coke. Dressed in slacks and a blouse, she hardly looked like a woman who, an hour later, would be singing and dancing in a nun's habit.
Kansan staff writer
The Mother Superior, Green's role,
has a vision to start a greeting card
company. The nuns do and raise
enough money to bury the dead nuns.
But the Mother Superior misjudge the amount of money that it will cost to bury all the nuns and buys a video cassette recorder for the convent, leaving five nuns unburied.
The sisters have a variety show to raise the money needed. Most of the play is the variety show.
Green grew up in the Kansas City area. She graduated from Shawnee Mission East High School and Kansas University. She spent two years in the theater department.
“In fact, that’s about all I did,” Green said of her theater experience at KU. “I don’t think anyone else in my program would probably remember me.”
But, she said, she hadn't come to KU to get a degree.
"I went with the thought of just taking every theater course I could and then going to New York. I didn't really go to college to get a college degree. I didn't care about a college degree for acting," she said.
"mkn now that was probably a mistake," she said. "There are certainly things that I can't do without one. I don't regret having done it because I literally did take almost every (theater) course there was to take in the two years that I was there."
She performed in several plays at KU, including "Man of La Mancha" and an original script by a playwright she encountered again in New York City. She said that her acquaintance with the playwright at KU got her a part in one of his New York productions.
Green has been performing in "Nunsense" for about a year and a
The Waldo Astoria is the first dinner theater Green has performed in.
half. She performed the Mother Superior role in Boston for nine months and in Chicago for one month before coming to Kansas City for the opening of "Nunsense" on July 7.
"I've always played regular theaters, be they a Broadway house with 1200 seats or a convention center with 5000 seats or a little off Broadway house with 100 seats," she said. "It (dinner theater) is different in the sense that you sometimes are dancing with roast beef."
But Green said that dinner theater was in some ways, more enjoyable than fine art.
'It's a very party atmosphere. Everybody's here to have a good time. They're here because they wear it, and a really good show,' she said.
She said that the show was rewritten slightly to be more conducive to dinner theater.
"When I did it in Boston or when I do it in New York, it's two hours and five minutes with a 10-minute break and it's just lickety split," she said. "This show, the first act is about 45 minutes and it is very energetic and very fast."
"Nunsense" plays in more than 40 cities throughout the world, including Munich, West Germany; Amsterdam; the Netherlands; London; and Sydney, Australia, said Tracy Wasak, public relations coordinator for Tiffany's Attic and Waldo Astoria dinner theaters.
Kansas City is lucky to have one of the best productions of the play, Waszkad said. She said that directors and producers who saw many productions of the show told her that the cast was one of the best.
Green has been involved with the show since its beginning as a cabaret show in a theater in the Village in New York City.
"Then, it was sort of a dirty night club show about nuns and priests," she said. "There were two priests and three nuns. Now, we have three nuns and it's not dirty at all."
She said that among the many companies doing the show, many of the actresses changed companies and roles.
See NUNSENSE, p. 4B, col. 1