6
Monday, April 4, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Only one 'one-act' is impressive
By PAUL STEPHEN LIM
Guest Reviewer
Since I knew that what I would be seeing of "An Evening of One-Acts" by assorted KU playwrights last night at the Inge Theatre was a final dress rehearsal rather than a formal evening tonight, and since I also know that most theatrical productions rarely "pull together" until opening night—I thought, perhaps, that it would be the better part of kindness to confine my comments to the audience rather than to their respective productions.
Would that I had decided otherwise and had taken a different set of notes!
Of the four one-acts on this week, I saw only three: "Sterile Lullaby" by Donna Young, "Fencers" by Stan Haehil, and "Leda and the Swan" by J. L. McClure. A fourth, "Webs Weaved" by Charlotte Dodson, was not yet ready to be seen. It is for which time it replaces "Fencers" for the duration of the run, through Saturday.
WHICH IS A pity, because of the three one-eact I saw, "Fencers" was the only one that managed to hold my interest throughout its entire 30 minutes.
the pay starts out with two medieval fencers in a physical as well as a verbal joust. What they finally decide is that they don't know why they are fighting, and so they part ways. Next, a clever magus tells an irisible princess four versions of a story involving two brothers and how they came to lose their inheritance. Each of these
versions is marvelously enacted by the same group of players, and the last version has the two brothers fencing, as at the beginning.
PLAYWRIGHT Haeli knows exactly what he is doing, but he is also very fortunate in that he has found a kindred spirit in Cathy Rogers to direct his very inventive and highly imaginative script. Spare though the production was (there was no set as such, only hand-held props), the Inge space has never been used better. The ensemble
On Stage
acting, too, was uniformly good, with Doug Weaver and Jim Gilcrest deserving special mention.
Where "Pencers" continues to delight the imagination long after it is over. "Leda and the Swan" merely irritates by its one-dimensional retelling of a myth. In this version, Zeus is perched on top of a ladder, telescope in hand, complaining about how he is not the god once was as he spies on a made Leda reading a book (dressed in a grotesque body
ZEUS FINALLY buys a swan suit from a novelty store, inimates himself into Leda's bathhit and, at the end of the play, Leda lays an egg. The moment is funny, true. But it is also vulgar and cheap. Jim Peterson directed and, of the four players, only Terri Cowick as the proprietor of the novelty store was believable.
Finally, about "Sterile Lullabye," the less said the better. This is the second one of Donna Young's plays to be seen this season. And while she may say that the new work is every bit as ill-conceived in the writing and as poorly directed, acted and designed in the production, as last October's very unfortunate anyone is somebody's Mother (Sometimes).
Whether the play is a cry for or against government control and bureaucracy is anyone's guess, because at least in this one particular case, neither the parents nor the doctors from the Population Center seem to know anything about how to raise children.
SET SOMETIME in the future, the new play characters a low-income couple's fight to keep the government from appropriating their genetically-superior child, a six-month-old baby whose first words are "shit" and "dada."
If playwright Young's only point is that parents, however incompetent, have a right to raise their own children because natural parents have "love" going for them, then to take an entire hour to give us that "message" is an act of extreme cruelty. When a parent receives the message or persevering, she says she is already hard at work completing yet another play, scheduled for a script-in-hand reading on May Day.
Paul Stephen Lim is a Ph.D. candidate in English and an award-winning playwright.
This Week's Highlights
Theater
"STERILE LULLABY," "LLEDA AND
TONIGHT (through Wednesday) in Theatre.
"STERILE LULLABY," "WEBS
WEAVER" and "LEDA THE SWAN"
8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday, Inge Theatre
Concerts
MALCOLM SMITH, obe, with the Fine Art Trio, Chamber Music Series, 8.tonight
CLIFF KEUTER DANCE COMPANY.
C concert, Series 8, p.m. Wednesday, Moch
10:30 a.m.
WEATHER REPORT, with special guest
Al Dimeola, p.m. Tuesday, Uptown
Park
LEON REDBONE and MICHAEL
WILSON on Tuesday, Uplown
Theatre, Kentucky City, Mo.
THE GREEG ALLMAN BAND. B. p.m.
Wednesday, Memorial Hall, Kansas City
Recitals
Oboist to join concert Trio
Roger Rundle, another KU graduate, will accompany Smith. Rundle also gives solo recitals, and his original compositions—both chamber and vocal music—have been performed by the Greenhouse Dance Ensemble and Westchester Chamber Players.
A native of Lawrence and a KU graduate, obol Mokalm Smith will perform with the Fine Arts Trio to 8 tonight in the University Hall Ball and ends this year’s Chamber Music Series.
CONCERT CHORALE, 8 p.m. Tuesday.
Swarthout Recital Hall.
Smith's credentials include studies with Harold Gomberg, three years as principal obist of the Jullait Opera, first obist of the Dauphin Opera since 1973, principal obist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Johns Hopkins University College of Music, Burler University.
Wilfred Biel, violin; George Katz, piano;
and John Ehrlich, cell; form the Fine Arts
Trio, a group known for its contemporary
repertoire as well as its classical and
romantic repertoire. Ehrlich is also a KU
graduate.
Tonight Smith and Rundle will perform *dandel's* 'Sonata in C Minor' and Britten's 'Sonata after Ovid, Op. 49.' The Fine Arts Trile will perform 'Trio in B Major, Op. 8.'
ALBERT GERKEN, carillon, 7 p.m.
Wednesday. Camanoile.
"PAUL HOFHAIMER: A MODEL FOR GERMAN ORGANISTS" Louise Couter, professors of Michigan, assisted by James Moore, organist; J. Bunker Clark, hardscholar and chorale led by Daniel Wischorff, p.m. Thursday. Swanwhort Rehital Hall
Nightclubs
CLYDE McCOY, bandleader and trumpet player, 9 to midnight tonight, Paul Gray's Jazz Place. JAZZ JAM SESION, 9 to midnight Thursday.
KELLEY WADE, toksinger and pianist
noon to 1 p.m. and 10 p.m to 12:30 a.m.
Tuesday through Thursday, the Seventh
Spirit
JAM SESSION, blugrass, folk and
midnight Wednesday. Off the
Wall Hall
LA TRAVIATA-Based on the opera by LA TRAVIATA-set to one of his most moving musicals.
THE CRUCIFIED LOVERS—A touching love story drastically by a class struggle. A Japanese film that was adopted from a Kabuki drama.
PERFORMANCE-Set in contemporary London, covering themes ranging from sanity to reality, love and death. Stars in the famous actor James Fox and Mick Jagger.
Books
THE TIME OF THE DRAGON, by Dorothy Elden (Crest, $1.95)—A new one by probably the best of the Gothic practitioners. This one is set in China during the Boxer Rebellion and into present day China. One of those massive family epics.
THE GOLDEN RENDEZVOUZ, by Alistair MacLean (Creat. 1715)-Ruseis of a thriller about infringe on the sea, in involving a ship on a Caribbean cruise, mysterious coffins, a broken radio (always the book novel), and deaths all over the place.
THE LYNMARA LEAGACY, by Catherine Gaskin (Crest, $1.95)—Romantic stuff about a girl, an old house and a hero. Set, of course, in England.
THE RUNNING OF BEASTS, by Bill Perry. The book's subject is Rape murders, three of them. In a small New York town bring a psychiatrist on the scene, and somehow it reads as though all men are under control.
**MARY WAKEFIELD**, by Mazo de la Roche (Crest, $1.50)—Another in the Whitebooks saga on the people of Jana One. It recounts how one of the earlier in chronological time.
Male Dancers Night Tuesday. April 5 Back by Popular Demand
Featuring—
From Kyle's Bar
in Kansas City.
Jumpin Goey.
The Bartender.
Because You Demanded It!!
The Flamingo
9 till?
Ladies Only
TRIP TO WESTPORT April 7th Thursday
Party Hardy
Departs X-Zone 8:00 p.m.
1.00 class members
2.00 non-members
SIGN UP 1138 UNION BY APRIL 4
Arts & Leisure Sculptor works for public
By LEROY JOHNSTON
face the fact that there are commercial aspects about art," Bott said recently. "But for the public's sake, we've got to get back to objects."
Revlewei
"When I left New York, I was selling $200,000 worth of work a year. I had begun to wonder if my art was just dollars, so in 1988 I moved back to Texas where I was raised." *Sculptor H. J.* Bott speaking. His work is displayed at the 767 gallery, E. Seventh St., New York.
At the Gallery
"I'm not saying that we artists shouldn't
Since 1972, Bott's work has been based on what he calls the 'displacement of volume' concept. He limits himself to a single shape: it looks like half of a square-shaped yin-yang symbol. He has warped it, smashed it, deformed it, coated it, drawn it and built both large and small versions of the same shapes in different pieces by the hundreds. In short, there isn't much one could do to the shape that Bott hasn't done. But why?
"AFTER MANY years as an artist you begin to feel a little too facile. By working with single pattern—a self-imposed constriction that sets a difficult problem for himself," she said.
To Bott, this is all part of his desire to make art comprehensible to the public, a public which he has been intimidated by modern art.
$4.50
"For example, in the art world we have our own jargon—artiste—and we end up intimidating those outside," he said. "We should remember that part of the reason for art is the desire to share our creative impulses and urges."
BOTT SAIH he called himself a post-conceptualist sculptor-assimilate because
4$3.00
A fancy restaurant dinner,
without the fancy price.
920 W. 23rd
Lawrence, Ks.
Open 1 a.m. - 9 p.m. Daily
"It's ironic that the conceptualists (a recent group of artists devoted to pure logic, analysis and organized behavior) started out avoiding the gallery but ended up exhibiting their notebooks and other work.
although his art was rigorously analytical and conceptual. He builds objects that could be appreciated by the public in a museum or outdoor setting.
"But one thing we owe the conceptualists is that they made technology compatible with computers."
He is involved with technology, specifically computers. His form, a non-
repeating tile, has attracted the interest of mathematicians at the University of Houston. Bolt said plans were being made to program a computer to generate 3-D drawings of the form while he described them to the computer programmer.
Bott's commitment to his self-imposed limitations is impressive and adds a great deal of believability to what might otherwise be mere repetition. The smaller pieces suffer a bit from a corporation-ashtray look, but the larger ones are less sloppy, but the obsessive drive that Bott brings to his art gives strength to his work as a whole.
Sherlock Holmes meets Sigmund Freud
THE SEVEN-PER-CENT
SOLUTION
An Epic Fantasy of War & Peace
Every Eve.af 7:30 & 9:30
Sat.Sun.Mat.2:30
"WIZARDS"
Granada
(624) 789-1500 | Highway 3170
10 Academy Award Nominations
"ROCKY"
Stirring
SYLVESTER STALLONE
Eve. 7:30 & 9:40
Sat. Sun.Mat. 1:45
747 crashed at sea.
Passengers aboard are
frapped, underwater.
Eve. 7:30 & 9:15
Sat.-Sun. Mat. 2:30
Hillcrest
AIRPORT
PG 77
Bee 7:30 9:45
Sat. Sun, Mat. 1:15
Hillcrest
End Tuesday
"Mother
Jugs & Speed"
- PLUS -
"Vanishing
Point"
Show starts at 11/30
@ Sunset
Kansas University in cooperation with Lawrence High School Haskell Indian Junior
Musical entertainment for the entire family Tuesday, April 12, 8:00 p.m. HOCH AUDITORIUM Tickets: SUA Office, Lawrence High School, Haskell Indian Jr. College, Rusty's IGA stores $3.50 public/$2.50 students
Five Good Reasons to Vote for
BARKLEY CLARK For City Commissioner on Tuesday, March 8
PROFESSOR OF LAW
THE MOST KNOWLEDGEABLE CANDIDATE
Dedicated teacher and scholar. The only K.U. teaching faculty member or student in the race for City Commission.
THE MOST EXPERIENCED CANDIDATE
Seven years service in local government, including terms as Chairman of the Planning Commission and member of the Council.
Unfor couldn't
AUST knew it pany he of the 7
**KNOWLEDGE OF THE CANDIDATE**
The expert on government and governmental affairs articles on municipal legal problems. Consultant for the Kansas Legislature and the League of Kansas Lawyers.
The 1 with wa shot pu of four!
Comp of the s run with squads they fa
The head of KU en in the
Cliff W
invitation
Rainbow
It w team t thei in the re defend over.
AN OBJECTIVE CANDIDATE
NO conflicts of interest. No axe to grind!
SOLID STANDS ON THE ISSUES
"I s best re all of
SOLID STANDS ON THE ISSUES
Neighborhood preservation. Reserve sharing funds for "People Programs." Provide local employment for K.U. students, Consumer protection advocate.
Better recreational facilities in Lawrence. Good relations between "Town & Gown."
But week, hurt t State, Frazier a Tex KU
A REMINDER: All students locally registered to vote in the November election must register as a candidate for KU, KU. Students Exercise your franchise and VOTE FOR BARKLEY CLARKI
KU
champ
night i
their
they v
AUS
were
Satur
been
away
Mo
Texa-
the
Satur
rear
J T
point
Jor
become
Texa
favor
day-
The class schoo bigge
Paid political adv. by the committee for the election of Barklev Clark