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Music…Dance…Theater… And Books
The BackStage BookClub goes global
Last winter, we launched a Mondavi Center book club to great success. Sign-ups far exceeded demand, and it got us scratching our heads as to how we might best fulfill all the apparent interest in the idea.
What we’ve come up with is to have Mondavi Center be a partner in the book club you put together--with people you know, in a living room near you. For our part, we’ll do what we do best: suggest books built around themes and performances at Mondavi Center, and assemble writers, artists and UC Davis faculty in a series of fascinating discussions about the books you’re reading.
All for free.
Sound interesting? You bet. Sign in here and we’ll have more details for you later this summer.
Can’t wait? Then visit bookclub.mondaviarts.org and get reading.
October:
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 A Thousand Acres
Jane Smiley
Hamlet
Shakespeare & Company
10/18-19, 2008, Jackson Hall
Shakespeare & Company is doing some of the finest theatrical work in the United States today. The Mondavi Center is proud to present the first national tour of this acclaimed company, in-the-round, with the audience seated on the Jackson Hall stage. The Wall Street Journal has praised this production as “incisive and fast-moving, full of fresh line readings and directorial touches.”
Shakespeare: From Page to Stage
October 20, 2008 ▪ 5 pm
Jackson Hall ▪ Free
A conversation between Jane Smiley--who took themes from Shakespeare’s King Lear and won a Pulitzer Prize resetting it in a modern American novel--and Tina Packer, the artistic director of Shakespeare And Company--an ensemble firmly committed to performing Shakespeare’s work in the idiom of his day. |
December:
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 Mountains Beyond Mountains
Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder lecture
December 1, 2008, Jackson Hall
The book chosen for the 2008-2009 Campus Community Book Project is Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. Hailed by The New York Times as “touching, funny, and inspiring,” Kidder’s book tells the story of Dr. Paul Farmer and his dogged, uphill fight to beat AIDS and tuberculosis in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries.
Panel discussion, Tracy Kidder
December 1, 2008 ▪ 4 pm
Jackson Hall ▪ Free
A panel discussion concerning the issues and themes of “Mountains Beyond Mountains.” |
January / February:
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 Transformations
Anne Sexton
Fables, Fairy Tales and the Arts
January 29, 2009 ▪ 5 pm
Studio Theatre▪ Free
What’s unique about the way fairy tales and fables have touched the arts, as compared to other forces (politics, literature, psychology, et al)? UC Davis faculty Della Davidson (who set Transformations, Anne Sexton’s poetic meditation on Grimm’s Fairy Tales to dance), Lucy Corin (whose fiction is touched by fable) and Brenda Schildgen (Co-editor, The World of Fables) discuss how the world of fairy tales and fables has touched the arts and their own work. Jeffrey Callison, of KXJZ’s Insight, will moderate.
Cinderella
State Ballet Theatre of Russia
February 6, 2009, Jackson Hall
Set to music by Sergei Prokofiev, this full-length Cinderella features a company of 56 dancers and a 54-member orchestra that brings this timeless fairy tale live to the Mondavi Center!
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April:
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 Long Way Gone
Ishmael Beah
Ishmael Beah lecture
April 8, 2009, Jackson Hall
A former “child soldier” in Sierra Leone, Ishmael Beah was conscripted, given an automatic weapon and copious amounts of drugs, and turned into a professional killer at age 13. Beah not only survived his ordeal but regained his humanity to write A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier, a compelling story Time called “breathtaking” and “truly riveting.” Beah’s message is one of redemption.
Just the Facts, Ma’am?
April 6, 2009 ▪ 4 pm
Studio Theatre ▪ Free
As memoir and historical fiction fall under increasing scrutiny, The Forum@MC holds a panel discussion with UC Davis faculty David Simpson, Sacramento Bee reporter Stephen Magagnini and others on the future of non-fiction in a new century. |
To contact the Mondavi Center, please e-mail mcbookclub@ucdavis.edu. Staff at Mondavi Center will check this e-mail intermittently between now and September 1.
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