K. Smith News

In recognition of the SEDONA INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL's 25th Anniversary as unique communal experience for filmmakers and moviegoers. A profile of the event and the man who has steered its course, Patrick Schweiss. Running this year from Saturday, February 23rd, 2019 through Sunday, March 3rd.

Creating music together can be a tremendously joyful act, binding people together in both times of celebration and moments of hardship. When Beethoven incorporated Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy poem into his Ninth Symphony, it was a radical call for equality, freedom, and brotherhood.

This March, the more than 20 organizations in eleven cities nationwide that compose the Poetry Coalition will launch “What Is It, Then, Between Us?: Poetry & Democracy,” the coalition's third annual programming initiative. For this collaborative effort, organizations will offer a range of events and publications that speak to this timely theme. This programming is made possible in part by a grant from the Ford Foundation secured by the Academy of American Poets.

Florida Studio Theatre (FST) and BookStore1Sarasota present PoetryLife for its 8th consecutive year on Monday, February 18, a unique celebration of poetry and the power of the written word.

Among the various programs to celebrate the centenary of Leonard Bernstein's birth, none has been more ambitious in its design and more fulfilling in its execution than ASU School of Music's production of MASS. Showed November 17 and 18.

A weeklong festival exploring big questions about life and death will unfold not just in theaters and concerts halls across New York City's five boroughs, but also in hospitals, libraries, houses of worship, senior centers, and even cemeteries from October 27th through November 3rd as part of the first Reimagine End of Life New York.

San Francisco North Bay theater artists gathered Monday night at the Juncture Taproom and Lounge in Santa Rosa for the Third Annual Marquee Theater Journalists Association Awards. Seventeen awards were given to local theatre artists and productions whose nominations were culled from the sixty-six Sonoma County productions attended by members from September 1, 2017 through August 31, 2018.

A weeklong festival exploring big questions about life and death will unfold not just in theaters and concerts halls across New York City's five boroughs, but also in hospitals, libraries, houses of worship, senior centers, and even cemeteries from October 27th through November 3rd as part of the first Reimagine End of Life New York.

The San Francisco North Bay's Marquee Theater Journalists Association has released the list of nominees for its 3rd Annual MTJA Awards. The Association recognized the exemplary work of Sonoma County theater artists with nominations in seventeen categories that were culled from the sixty-six productions attended by MTJA members. Recipients will be announced at the 2018 MTJA Awards - A Celebration of Sonoma County Theater which will be held October 22nd at the Juncture Taproom and Lounge in Santa Rosa.

Martin Farawell, Director of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival, has announced highlights of the upcoming 17th biennial four-day event, October 18-21, featuring bestselling authors, literary legends, Pulitzer Prize winners, slam champions, and Academy of American Poets Chancellors. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, Pulitzer Prize-winners Sharon Olds and Gregory Pardlo, as well as much-published and award-winning poets Sandra Cisneros, Sapphire, Eileen Myles, Ntozake Shange, Kwame Dawes, Alberto Rios, David St. John, Henri Cole, Gregory Orr, Mary Ruefle and David Young will be giving Featured Readings during the Festival and are among the dozens of acclaimed poets who will participate in the four-day event, which takes place at the

The world's largest free jazz festival kicks off this weekend, and Detroit Public Television for the first time will be broadcasting live from the Detroit Jazz Festival in a 90-minute program hosted by our own Fred Nahhat and Jazz Fest President Chris Collins.

The Academy of American Poets is pleased to announce the winners of the 2018 American Poets Prizes, which are among the most valuable poetry prizes in the United States. This year the organization has awarded over $200,000 to poets at various stages of their careers.

Bill T. Jones, MacArthur Genius Award and National Medal of Arts awardee and Artistic Director of New York Live Arts, and Janet Wong, Associate Artistic Director, announced the New York Live Arts' 2018-2019 season today. "We look to artists to reflect, reframe, reimagine, and represent the world to us. We hope that in turn we respond with empathy and, dare we say, compassion," states Bill T. Jones. "New York Live Arts will premiere eight New York and/or world premieres this season including the much anticipated "Y" by Randjelovi?/Stryker Resident Commissioned Artist RoseAnne Spradlin," says Janet Wong. "We will also bring back Jack Ferver's highly successful 'Everything Is Imaginable,' which premiered at New York Live Arts' this past season. For the 2019 edition of the Live Ideas Festival we will look at artificial intelligence and our role in shaping the future," she adds.

Evans Mirageas, The Harry T. Wilks Artistic Director of Cincinnati Opera, today announced that the company has commissioned a new evening-length opera, Castor and Patience, from composer Gregory Spears and librettist Tracy K. Smith, poet laureate of the United States. Castor and Patience will premiere at the Corbett Theater in the School for Creative and Performing Arts in July 2020, highlighting Cincinnati Opera's centennial season. It will be Spears' second work for the company, following the extraordinary critical and popular success of Fellow Travelers, with librettist Greg Pierce, in 2016. Smith, winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her collection Life on Mars, is one of the most lauded poets of her generation; her original story for Castor and Patience is both timeless and topical, setting a prototypical family conflict against the backdrop of recent events.

As You Like It - wit, wisdom and flaws - done in the squares of London on beautiful summer evenings, What's not to like?

Shakespeare in the Squares' new production of As You Like It, Shakespeare's enchanting comedy of love, desire and mistaken identity, is set on the brink of the Seventies, during the first Glastonbury Festival. As Shakespeare's characters flee from the rigidity of the court to the Forest of Arden, audiences too can exchange the conformity of city life for a pastoral utopia where hippies and freethinkers meet to dance, love and put the world to rights.

Shakespeare in the Squares has released rehearsal images for its 2018 production of As You Like It, touring to London's squares and parks from 20 June to 13 July. Tatty Hennessy directs Jack Brett (Orlando), Comfort Fabian (Celia), Jodie Jacobs (Audrey/Adam), Sian Martin (Jaques), Katharine Moraz (Rosalind), Stanton Plummer Cambridge (Oliver/Corin), Julia Righton (Duchess Senior/ Duchess Frederick), Sydney K. Smith (Touchstone) Emmy Stonelake (Phoebe/Amiens) and Lamin Touray (Charles/Silvius).

In the city that never sleeps the Players Theatre Short Play and Musical Festival has encouraged playwrights to create plays that share a unique aspect of urban life in the annual NYC - themed festival. Celebrating its 8th year, 'Only in New York' opens Thursday, June 7 and runs for three weeks. Each week five original short plays or musicals, by a variety of playwrights (including one high school student) will be presented with a 'Best of the Week' production being selected by audience vote.

Shakespeare in the Squares today announces full casting for its 2018 production of As You Like It, touring to London's squares and parks from 20 June to 13 July. Tatty Hennessy directs Jack Brett (Orlando), Comfort Fabian (Celia), Jodie Jacobs (Audrey/Adam), Sian Martin (Jaques), Katharine Moraz (Rosalind), Stanton Plummer Cambridge (Oliver/Corin), Julia Righton (Duchess Senior/ Duchess Frederick), Sydney K. Smith (Touchstone) Emmy Stonelake (Phoebe/Amiens) and Lamin Touray (Charles/Silvius).

Camerata Pacifica's May program opens with Debussy's "Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune," the composer's lush depiction of French poet Stephane Mallarme's erotic, hedonistic dreamscape in which a mythical young faun is consumed by his vain attempts to seduce two nymphs.