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  • Jerry Zolten: We Were What We Laughed At! An American Cultural History through the Art of Stand-Up Comedy

    Jerry Zolten, educator, author, musician, roots music historian and producer, also counts among his credits a stint as a stand-up comic. He will give a presentation on the history of stand up comedy that is richly illustrated with rare video performance clips. The talk will explore comedy as it relates to issues including ethnic stereotyping, freedom of speech, social injustice, and race and gender disparity.

    Motivated by his love of comedy and the power of the best comedians to shake up thinking on a range of significant social issues, Zolten dug into the history of American stand-up and over the years interviewed and published profiles of luminaries including Carl Reiner, Steve Allen, Dick Gregory, George Carlin, and Woody Allen, to name a few.

    His collaborations on roots music projects with noted satirists Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar have led to guest appearances on public radio’s American Routes and as a featured speaker at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame.

    He is the author of Great God A’Mighty! The Dixie Hummingbirds: Celebrating the Rise of Soul Gospel Music (Oxford University Press), co-editor of Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream (Ashgate), and contributor to The Cambridge Companion to the Beatles (Cambridge University Press).

    Zolten contributed to two 2015 Grammy-Winning projects, The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records, Volumes 1 & 2 (Revenant/Third Man) and The Fairfield Four’s Still Rockin’ My Soul!.

    His most recent work includes an article on the centennial of the iconic Martin Dreadnought Guitar for the C.F. Martin Guitar Company’s Martin Journal of the Acoustic Guitar along with a featured on-screen appearance in the documentary film “The Ballad of the Dreadnought” produced by C.F. Martin & Co.

  • Art and Oceans: A Discussion About Coastal Environments

    Join us September 28 at 4 PM in Wilson Auditorium for a panel with artists Lucy Kalian, Mark Ludak, and Ira Wagner. Moderated by Urban Coast Institute Director, Tony MacDonald, the artists will discuss the coastal environments they depict in their artwork and the issues surrounding them.

    FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

  • Hispanic Heritage Month 2016

    CALENDAR OF EVENTS

    Hispanic Heritage Month 2016

    Honoring Our Heritage
    Building Our Future

    September 15 – October 15

    September 15 – October 15
    Library Room 101
    9 a.m. – 5 p.m.    		 Memorias – Geography of a Decade: Chile 1973-1983
    Exhibit
    September 26
    Woods Theatre
    6 p.m.    		 Tres Vidas
    Celebrating the lives of Frida Kahlo, Rufina Amaya, and Alfonsina Storni
    Performance
    October 3
    Library
    3 – 6 p.m.    		 Memorias – Geography of a Decade: Chile 1973-1983
    Presented by Chilean Writer Gustavo Gac-Artigas and Dr. Priscilla Gac-Artigas
    Lecture
    October 3
    Wilson Auditorium
    6 – 8 p.m.    		 Movie: ¡Alambrista!
    Vivid and spare where other films about illegal immigration might sentimentalize, Robert M. Young’s take is equal parts intimate character study and gripping road movie, a political work that never loses sight of the complex man at its center.
    October 12
    Library
    4:30 – 6 p.m.    		 400 Year Celebration of Cervantes’ Death
    Presented by Dr. John O’Neill, Librarian and Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts from The Hispanic Society of America NY
    Book Exhibit, Lecture, Reception
    October 13
    Plangere Room 115
    2 – 3 p.m.    		 Study Abroad Program in Cadiz, Spain
    Presented by Dr. Alison Maginn
    October 15
    Pollak Theater
    8 p.m.    		 BENISE – Strings of Passion
    10 Year Anniversary World Tour
    Performance

  • Resonance Collective Dance Performance

    Erlanger Gardens will come to life with a site-specific performance event invoking the wonder and desire of nature through a visceral landscape of moving bodies and sound. Monmouth University has united visual artist Lucy Kalian, whose work is being shown this semester in the Pollak Gallery and The Resonance Collective; a collaborative interdisciplinary dance and vocal ensemble, bringing our environment to life through stunning imagery and virtuosic physicality. The Erlanger Garden performance will begin at 12:00PM and will feature an original dance and electronic/live vocal piece. This is the beginning of a day-long event culminating in the Pollak Gallery opening of Lucy’s Swells and Soundings exhibit at 6:30PM. Within her exhibit, Lucy explores the tidal forces at work where land and water meet. This exhibit is cosponsored by the Urban Coast Institute. 

    Erlanger Gardens are located
    right outside Wilson Hall. Pollak Theatre will serve as the location for the dance
    performance in the event of rain. 

  • National Theatre of London: Amadeus (Live in HD)

    Please Note the time of this screening has changed to 7:00 PM.

    Music. Power. Jealousy. Lucian Msamati (Luther, Game of
    Thrones    , NT Live: The Comedy of Errors) plays Salieri in Peter
    Shaffer’s iconic play, broadcast live from the National Theatre, and with live orchestral
    accompaniment by Southbank Sinfonia.     Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a rowdy young
    prodigy, arrives in Vienna, the music capital of the world – and he’s
    determined to make a splash. Awestruck by his genius, court composer Antonio
    Salieri has the power to promote his talent or destroy his name. Seized by
    obsessive jealousy he begins a war with Mozart, with music, and ultimately,
    with God.     After winning multiple Olivier and Tony
    Awards when it had its premiere at the National Theatre in 1979, Amadeus
    was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.

  • National Theatre of London: St. Joan (Live in HD)

    Gemma Arterton
    is Joan of Arc, broadcast live from the Donmar Warehouse.     Bernard Shaw’s
    classic play follows the life and trial of a young country girl who declares a
    bloody mission to drive the English from France. As one of the first
    Protestants and nationalists, she threatens the very fabric of the feudal
    society and the Catholic Church across Europe.     Josie Rourke (Coriolanus, Les Liaisons Dangereuses) directs Gemma Arterton (Gemma Bovery,
    Nell Gwynn, Made in Dagenham) as Joan of Arc in this electrifying
    production.

  • National Theatre of London: No Man’s Land (Live in HD)

    Following their hit run on Broadway, Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart return to the West End stage in Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, broadcast live to cinemas from Wyndham’s Theatre, London.

    One summer’s evening, two aging writers, Hirst and Spooner, meet in a Hampstead pub and continue their drinking into the night at Hirst’s stately house nearby. As the pair become increasingly inebriated,
    and their stories increasingly unbelievable, the lively conversation soon turns into a revealing power game, further complicated by the return home of two sinister younger men.

    Also starring Owen Teale and Damien Molony, don’t miss this glorious revival of Pinter’s comic classic. The broadcast will be followed by an exclusive Q&A with the cast and director Sean Mathias.

  • National Theatre Live: Hedda Gabler (Broadcast in HD)

    “I’ve no talent for life.” Just married. Bored already. Hedda longs to be free…Hedda and Tesman have just returned from their honeymoon and the relationship is already in trouble. Trapped but determined, Hedda tries to control those around her, only to see her own world unravel. Tony Award-winning director Ivo van Hove (A View from the Bridge at the Young Vic Theatre) returns to National Theatre Live screens with a modern production of Ibsen’s masterpiece. Ruth Wilson (Luther, The Affair, Jane Eyre) plays the title role in a new version by Patrick Marber (Notes on a Scandal, Closer).

  • The Mitzvah

    The Mitzvah (“The Good Deed”) is a one-person play that dramatically explores one of the most shocking stories of the Second World War. More than a hundred thousand German men — classified as “mischlinge” (the derogatory term the Nazis used to describe those descended from one or two Jewish grandparents) — fought in the German armed forces. After the play there will be a post-performance lecture and audience discussion led by Grunwald.

    The story of one such mischling is at the center of The Mitzvah and actor (and child of survivor) Roger Grunwald seamlessly transforms himself into an array of characters to tell that story. In addition to Christoph (the “mischling”), other characters include Schmuel, a Polish Jew from Bialystok and the play’s Chorus who offers edgy commentary that probes the boundary between the absurd and the horrific. The Mitzvah is a touching and tragic tale told in a powerful one-act solo performance created by Grunwald and Broadway veteran Annie McGreevey.

    The Mitzvah adds to the historical narratives about The Holocaust at a time when few survivors remain to tell their stories to younger generations and was inspired by the lives of Grunwald’s mother and aunt, survivors of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, respectively. It premiered at the Emerging Artists Theatre’s “Illuminating Artists: One Man Talking” festival in New York City and is currently being presented in theaters, universities and Jewish organizations around the country.

    Through one soldier’s story, The Mitzvah reveals the startling history of tens of thousands of “partial Jews” who served in Hitler’s military, most of whom were discharged in 1940. Nearly all were sent to forced labor camps — or worse. However, a few thousand who had an “Aryan appearance” and who were deemed by the Reich to be “valuable to the war effort,” were exempted from the Nazi race laws. A “Declaration of German Blood” (a Deutschblütigkeitserklärung) — signed by Hitler himself — allowed these select few thousand mischlinge to fight for the Nazi cause. Most died in battle.

    “… The Mitzvah is an important piece of cultural discourse as well as a marvelous piece of theater… by a gifted and versatile playwright and performer.”
    – Rabbi Shalom M. Paltiel, Chabad of Port Washington

  • American-Israeli Relations in the Trump Era: A Lecture by Michael Tuchfeld

    The positions that president Trump expressed in his campaign regarding Israel and the Middle East conflict were sometimes inconsistent or contradictory.  Nevertheless, some characteristics show that he will act to roll back most of former president Obama’s ideas and policies of how to promote peace in the area. It is obvious that new terminologies have been formed and reached the gates of the region. What are they and what do they indicate? Many Israelis feel relieved, others – worried. What are P.M. Netanyahu’s expectations in the new era? What are the Israeli cabinet ministers’ expectations and do they expect the same things?  The questions of settlements, annexation of territories conquered in 1967, the two-state solution and the settlement regulation law will be raised as well as the policy towards Iran, Egypt and other players on the political field

    Is the defeat of the American political establishment a positive development for Israel?
    What mistakes should both sides avoid?
     
    These questions and others will be raised in the lecture….

     
    Michael Tuchfeld is a journalist, currently working for Maariv-Makor Rishon and NRG 360 News website as a political analyst and correspondent. He was the parliamentary correspondent of Kol-Israel, IBA, and the host of the daily talk show on The Knesset Channel – Channel 2 News. He also has a weekly talk show on Galey Israel. He has an M.A. degree from Bar Ilan University in Communications and Political Sciences.
    This event sponsored by The Jewish Cultural Studies Program at Monmouth University