Arkansas New Play Fest
TheaterSquared, Community Media Summit, Scupture & Flame Work
TheatreSquared’s New Play Festival opens Friday night and runs through Saturday at the Walton Art Center’s Baum Studios.
The festival will present staged readings of nine new plays about Arkansas, five by professional playwrights and four by Arkansas high school students, with some of NWA finest actors and directors participating.
Tickets are $5 for each reading or $20 for a weekend pass by calling 445-6333 or www.theatresquared.org.
Here’s the schedule.
Robert Ford
Friday
7 p.m.: “Disfarmer” by Werner Trieschmann. Based on the life of the Depression era portrait photographer, Mike Disfarmer, of Heber Springs, whose work is sought by highbrow collectors.
8:30 p.m.: “Look Away” by Robert Ford. A story about two men who escape from a lynch mob by hiding in the kitchen of eccentric plantation owners,
Kevin Cohea
Saturday
11 a.m. Meet the playwrights at the playwrights panel
Noon: “Vinegar Pie and Chicken Bread” by A.E. Edwards. Adapted from a book by Margaret Bolsterli inspired by the frontier diaries of Nannie Stillwell Jackson.
1:45 p.m.: Young Playwrights Showcase. Short plays by four emerging playwrights from Arkansas high schools. “The Devil’s Oven” by Mary Browning of Augusta, “Mineral Water Cures All!” by Stephen Kennedy of Bentonville, “Anna’s Flood” by Audrey LeBert of Rogers, and “Open House” by Morgan Mansour of Fayetteville.
3:30 p.m.: “Ivanhoe, Ark.” by Sherry Kramer. A Passion Play in rehearsal, a Nascar track under construction and a swarm of white supremacists all in the Ozark Highlands.
8:00 p.m. “Sundown Town” by Kevin Cohea. Healing Springs, Ark., was a good place to live in 1918 until a drifter named Moses arrived. “Sundown Town” explores virtue, sin and the fear of change.
Sculpture and Flame Work
At the University of Arkansas “Physical Reminders,” which examines the physical in relation to the new media world using sculpture as a point of departure, is on exhibit at the Fine Arts Center Gallery through April 15.
The exhibit features the work of seven nationally distinguished artists: Michael Jones McKean, Claire Atkins, Greg Pond, David Gurman, Micki Watanabe Spiller, Mike Wsol and Lian York.
Two lectures are happening today at the UA Fine Arts center. At 10 a.m. there will be a woodturning demonstration by David Morris in room 110 and at 6 p.m. Hank Kaminsky will speak about public art in room 213.
At the new Fayetteville Underground at 1 E. Center St. on the Fayetteville Square, the Contemporary Sculpture Society and the Association of Ceramic Enthusiast are presenting an invitational sculpture exhibit. More than 20 artists from a four-state area are showcasing work in stone, bronze ceramic, fabric and plastic. The exhibit runs through April 4.
At Dark Star Visuals near the Fayetteville Square, three artists will be demonstrating bead-making techniques using flame work. In flamework, glass is melted in the flame of a torch.
Beau Anderson, Vanessa Bunet and Sage Holland will demonstrate their individual techniques beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday. Bunet is visiting from Paris, France, to teach flameworking. Anderson is a soft glass sculptural artist who has been studying and teaching in Europe. Holland, who came to NWA from Seattle, has been exhibiting and teaching around the U.S. and abroad.
Community Media Summit
Those interested in community media, free speech, localism, diversity, creativity, media literacy and independent media can expand their horizons this weekend at the Community Media Summit at the Cosmopolitan hotel in downtown Fayetteville.
The summit opens at noon Friday and concludes at 6 p.m. Saturday with the Fat Cat awards banquet at the Community Access Studio.
There will be webinars, panel discussions and workshops about media issues and technology, a trade show and entertainment. The trade show and Freedom Stage open mic will be going on throughout the event.
At 6 p.m. Friday, there will be video showings of 10-minute productions. At 8 a.m. Saturday, featured guest Charles Benton of the Benton Foundation, will present the opening speech.
Special guests will be Antonia Levy and Sara Strahan from Paper Tiger TV of New York City who will also speak on Saturday. They will discuss ways to create a more equitable and healthy media democracy and show short clips from Paper Tiger’s recent documentary, their public access programs and examples of short media reform videos designed for the Internet. Each clip will be followed by a round-table discussion on strategies for how media artists, scholars and activists can work together.
Fayetteville’s Community Access Television is hosting the summit. For a complete schedule to to http://summit.catfayetteville.org.
