On sale May 10
Franco Zeffirelli’s picturesque staging, an audience favorite for more than 30 years, features a winning young cast, including soprano Kristine Opolais and tenor Vittorio Grigolo as the lovers Mimì and Rodolfo. Stefano Ranzani conducts.
From the 2013–14 season
Runtime: 2 hours, 20 minutes
On sale May 10
Rossini’s madcap comedy receives a spirited production by Tony Award–winning director Bartlett Sher and stars mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, tenor Juan Diego Flórez, and baritone Peter Mattei. Maurizio Benini conducts.
From the 2006–07 season
Runtime: 3 hours, 5 minutes
On sale May 10
Soprano Anna Netrebko and mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili offer blazing performances in Verdi’s grand drama of ancient Egypt, seen in a stunning production by Sonja Frisell. Nicola Luisotti conducts.
From the 2018–19 season
Runtime: 3 hours
An exhibition of works exploring the world of colors created by the American artist, humanist, and teacher Jacob Landau. Born in Philadelphia in 1917, Jacob Landau launched his career as an illustrator, winning national prizes at age 16 and a scholarship to the Philadelphia College of Art. He had over sixty one-person shows and was the recipient of many awards, including Guggenheim and National Arts Council grants. Many of his works are featured in permanent collections, such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A master teacher, he retired as professor emeritus at New York’s Pratt Institute. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts by Monmouth University.
For Jacob Landau “art enables us to see the world whole and undivided.” As a humanist his art was devoted to the unity of the imagination. And at its center lies Landau’s desire for justice in the world. In the current exhibit his celebration of our love of color, shared across so many cultures, is inseparable from his humanist conviction. Color and drawing, Landau once declared, are the “twin fundaments of my style.” And he has been praised by fellow artists and critics as a colorist. His dazzling palette and expressive line exhilarate us. We find ourselves transported by their exuberant life, colors that rise up and sing for us in a work titled Flight. And yet his love affair with color does not blind him to the world of injustice.
On the one hand, his red and orange and yellow, and green and blue watercolors of gorgeous promise, so exquisitely handled in a radically imagined portrait of Isaiah dazzle us with life. But by the same token, Landau by these colors insists on the social justice that Isaiah declaimed. Justice, the artist makes clear in his beautiful and unsettling riot of forms, that he expects of us.
Uniquely, his canvass of many colors dazzles and disturbs. His understated colors in Apocalypsis fill us with foreboding, and he asks, “Whose apocalypse is it anyway ours or God’s?” Just like Landau to leave us with an uncomfortable question in the language of subtle colors. At the same time, we see a bold backdrop of brilliant yellow across the way in his Oracle 1, dramatizing the hope that resides in the human heart. A yellow we can’t shake as we walk away.
The exhibition features a selection of some twenty-one works. All are from Monmouth University’s extensive collection of Jacob Landau’s work, comprising over 300 prints, drawings and paintings. The collection was gifted to Monmouth University in 2008 by the Jacob Landau Institute of Roosevelt, NJ. This exhibit is co-sponsored by the Jewish Culture Studies Program and the Honors School of Monmouth University.
Docent tours are available (for times, contact Professor Noel Belinski 732-263-5425; email: nbelinsk@monmouth.edu).
The Black Maria Film Festival was founded in 1981 as a tribute to Thomas Edison’s development of the motion picture at his laboratory, dubbed the “Black Maria” film studio, the first in the world, in West Orange, NJ. Now in its 38th year, the festival attracts and showcases the work of independent filmmakers internationally. The festival is a project of the Thomas A. Edison Media Arts Consortium, an independent non-profit organization in residence at New Jersey City University’s Department of Media Arts. Unlike other major film festivals, the Black Maria Festival is not presented in only one location. Instead, the winning films are presented at universities, museums, libraries and cultural centers across the country all year.
More information on this year’s festival at: www.blackmariafilmfestival.org/
Come and join Blue Hawk in releasing their 14th compilation album! Music and live performances. An event you do not want to miss!
Join us for a fun improv show! A cast of five will use: your suggestions, props, “Cards Against Humanity”, music, something you throw at them and miss, and actually YOU on stage! Their quick-wits and dangerous minds to keep you entertained for AT LEAST AN HOUR!
An absurdist comedy troupe who happen to be the first troupe of people with Asperger’s Syndrome. They were featured in the Duplass Brothers Productions documentary “Asperger’s Are Us” now on Netflix. They have performed over 100 original absurdist sketch shows in nine countries since 2010.
“Audiences don’t usually know what to expect from Asperger’s Are Us, a Boston sketch comedy troupe made up solely of artists on the autism spectrum. Will they use self-deprecating humor about life with Asperger’s syndrome? Are they hoping to shed light on a serious condition? Will they be something like Sheldon, the socially inept character on CBS’s ‘The Big Bang Theory’?
The answer, it turns out, is none of the above.
Instead of focusing on the condition, the four men who make up the troupe perform skits and monologues that reflect their thoughts, perspectives and offbeat sensibilities, often characterized by deadpan and absurd humor… the guys are not looking for sympathy laughs or polite applause. Their show is not an autism awareness campaign, they say. They want people to laugh simply because they’re funny.” – New York Times
There will be a postshow Q&A with the cast.
Free and open to the public, but registration is recommended.
adapted by Helen Edmundson
based on the novel by Andrea Levy
Andrea Levy’s Orange Prize-winning novel Small Island comes to life in an epic new theatre adaptation. Experience the play in cinemas, filmed live on stage as part of National Theatre Live’s 10th birthday.
Small Island embarks on a journey from Jamaica to Britain, through the Second World War to 1948 – the year the HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, England.
The play follows three intricately connected stories. Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica, Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer, and Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots. Hope and humanity meet stubborn reality as the play traces the tangled history of Jamaica and the UK.
A company of 40 actors take to the stage of the National Theatre in London in this timely and moving story.
Ricky Byrd is first and foremost – a man living in long term recovery. He also happens to be part of rock ‘n roll royalty. He is a well-recognized musician who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as the lead guitarist and former original member of Joan Jett and The Blackhearts. Ricky played with Joan from 1981-1992, and has also recorded or toured with Roger Daltrey, Ian Hunter, Southside Johnny and many other talented musicians since that time.
Ricky most recently has been combining his love for music with his passion and mission to help carry the torch of change surrounding the stigma of drug and alcohol use. He hopes to break down the barriers and spread the message of hope, education, awareness and addiction resources to his audiences. Using the healing powers of music as a touchstone, Ricky likes to motivate those early in recovery or still struggling, along with their family members. Whether it’s through his various speaking appearances, concert events, music outreach sessions, small recovery music groups, or prevention programs, Ricky is dedicated to inspiring change.
As a songwriter, who now often focuses on recovery lyrics, Ricky moves people to laugh, cry and think. He’s played his songs in the most intimate of rooms as well as to hundreds of thousands all over the world. He recognizes the power of the word and the music and often combines both into a message of hope and encouragement for sobriety.
Ricky can contribute to an event by sharing famous rock ‘n roll stories in a keynote address or by performing recovery music from his latest CD, Clean Getaway. There is also a special place in his heart for smaller group settings where he can play acoustic guitar and clearly see the faces, tears, smiles and struggles up close. Ricky feels that music therapy and the open discussion that follows can lead broken souls to find that little bit of happiness – and encouragement they need to move forward.
He presents on the benefits of a sober lifestyle and likes talking to youth, who are at that age, where pressures and experimenting can often lead them down a crooked and deadly path. Ricky takes pride in also educating those individuals in our communities that are somehow unaware and uninformed of the deadly drug and alcohol pandemic we are facing in this country.
In 2017, Ricky received the Drug Free Heroes Award, presented by Foundation For a Drug free World. He is proud to help others find a message and purpose to getting clean and sober.
Cosponsored by: Monmouth University’s Office of Substance Awareness, Students in Recovery, Student Activities Board, The Music and Theatre Department
FREE and OPEN to the public, but registration is recommended.
