Northwestern University News

Broadway, TV and film actress and Northwestern University alumna Ana Gasteyer, a former cast member of the popular Emmy Award-winning late night television sketch comedy show 'Saturday Night Live' (SNL) will return to campus Friday, Oct. 17, to serve as grand marshal of the University's 2014 Homecoming Parade.

The Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF) announced casting today for A Night at the Tonys, this year's William and Greta Wiley Flory Concert, an annual cabaret performance, taking place on Monday, Nov. 3, 2014 at 7:30 p.m. at Francis W. Parker School (2233 North Clark Street) as part of the 25th Anniversary Fall Festival: Journeys, Oct. 25-Nov. 9.

Provocative and prophetic, a puzzle waiting to be unraveled before the audience's eyes similar to a Gordian knot, the Boulevard Theatre on stage at Walkers Point Center for the Arts presents a limited run of Gideon's Knot, a Wisconsin premiere. Artistic Director Mark Bucher stages the play under the direction of Patricia Durante in this daring and unsettling view on the state of education in one small classroom set in Lake Forest, Illinois. Does a person cut this production's tragedies out of their thoughts or pull the answers to these probing questions in an attempt to understand perhaps this evolving microcosm of American education presented in the production.

Northlight Theatre, under the direction of Artistic Director BJ Jones and Executive Director Timothy J. Evans, presents The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, directed by Jonathan Berry. The production will run at Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd in Skokie, from November 7 - December 14, 2014. The press opening is Friday, November 14, 2014 at 7:30 pm.

CHICAGO, IL (October 7, 2014)—Chicago nonprofit 3Arts has increased the amount of its annual unrestricted awards for women artists, artists of color, and artists with disabilities to$25,000, effective with the 7th annual 3Arts Awards tonight, Oct. 6, 2014. Ten Chicago-area artists working in the performing, teaching, and visual arts will receive a total of $250,000 in a celebratory gathering at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Previously, 3Arts presented annual awards of $15,000.

HISTORY MATTERS/BACK TO THE FUTURE, a coalition of theatre professionals, has announced the application deadline for the new Judith Barlow Prize has been extended to December 30th, 2014 to better align with the academic calendar. The Judith Barlow Prize will award $2,500 annually to a student playwright of a one-act play inspired by the work of an historic woman playwright whom she/he has studied. In addition, a $1000 prize will be awarded to the runner up and a $500 prize will be awarded to the winning student's professor who participated in the One Play at a Time initiative.

A Jewish, Midwestern, Chekhovian comic drama for the 21st century will be the third offering in The Echo Theater Company's 2015 season at Atwater Village Theatre, the company's new permanent home. Jennifer Chambers directs the world premiere of Better, a gentle examination of family and mortality by Jessica Goldberg, opening Oct. 4.

Walloomsac: A Roman Fleuve: ($20, ISBN: 978-1-937536-90-9, LCCN: 2014952145, 176pp, 6X9', October 2014; purchase on: CreateSpace, and Amazon; Kindle Edition: $2.99): If a novel is a work of prose of some length, this is a novel-but different in that it is more like life, which has no plots and does not reward virtue or punish vice, and in which characters appear and then, if the author doesn't kill them off, remain to the end. Life is messier than Tolstoy and Henry James were willing to admit. Here, in David R. Slavitt's farrago, one thing leads to another but without discernible direction until, at the end, there is a kind of resolution, a vision, however unreliable and approximate, of what the life of the speaker has been. It is a deeply thoughtful book but also laugh-out-loud funny. Like life, if we're lucky. David R. Slavitt: educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia, is the author of more than 115 books-novels, poetry, reportage, and translations. He was the movie reviewer for Newsweek in the sixties and was co-editor of the "Johns Hopkins Complete Roman Drama" as well as the "Penn Complete Greek Drama." Among his recent publications: "The Sonnets and Short Poems of Francesco Petrarch "(2012, Harvard University Press), Civil Wars (2013, Louisiana State University Press), "The Four Other Plays of Sophocles" (2013 Johns Hopkins University Press), and "The Crooning Wind: Three Greenlandic Poets" (New American Press 2013), and "Shiksa" (C&L Press). His version of "The Mahabharata" will be published in the spring by Northwestern University Press. 'David Slavitt has (herein) written a book about or for which it is impossible simply to write a blurb-a word, it might interest you to know, coined in 1907 by Gelett Burgess. (Did you think of a purple cow, just then?) The text itself is indescribably (deliciously?) itself. Like the Waloomsac River, it just keeps rolling along, taking the reader irresponsibly with it-laughing out loud again and again and again; marveling at its rapid wit (white water?), the wide breadths of its erudition, the dangerous shallows of its overt and covert cheekiness; marking the vertiginous depths of its, yes, wisdom. To make a long blurb short, I haven't had this kind of significant fun since I stayed up 'til dawn one night in 1962 breathlessly reading Pale Fire for the very first time.' ?R. H. W. Dillard on Walloomsac: A Week on the River $20, Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1937536904 $2.99, Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00O4FRIXE The Anaphora Literary Press was started as an academic press with the publication of the Pennsylvania Literary Journal (PLJ) in 2009. In the Winter of 2010, Anaphora began accepting book-length submissions. Anaphora has now published over 90 creative and non-fiction books. John Paul Jaramillo's collection of short stories received an honorable mention for the Latino Literacy Now's Mariposa Award Best First Fiction Book Award. Professors have taught from a few Anaphora books. Many Anaphora writers have scheduled readings at major bookstores. Anaphora books have also had several articles published about them in regional newspapers. PLJ has featured interviews with best-selling writers like Larry Niven, and Cinda Williams Chima, as well as interviews with the winners of the Sundance and Brooklyn Film festivals.

With the mantra 'Retro never sounded so now,' Under the Streetlamp harmoniously blends the diverse talents of Michael Cunio, Michael Ingersoll, Christopher Kale Jones, and Shonn Wiley to perform classic hits of the '50s, '60s and '70s with the perfect balance of tender ballads and uptempo classics, all done with the same signature harmonies and slick dance moves that have made them irresistible.

A Jewish, Midwestern, Chekhovian comic drama for the 21st century will be the third offering in The Echo Theater Company's 2015 seaason at Atwater Village Theatre, the company's new permanent home. Jennifer Chambers directs the world premiere of Better, a gentle examination of family and mortality by Jessica Goldberg, opening tonight, Oct. 4.

Light Opera Works will present COLE PORTER'S GREATEST HITS today, October 3 through 12 at the Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company, the nation's longest-standing, most distinguished ensemble theater, announced today new leadership and unveiled plans for a future campus expansion. Steppenwolf ensemble member and Tony Award-winning director Anna D. Shapiro will succeed Martha Lavey as artistic director at the conclusion of the current season in fall 2015.

Connecticut Repertory Theatre (CRT) will open their 2014-15 season with Olives and Blood at the Nafe Katter Theatre today, October 2nd - 12th. Written by Michael Bradford, this new play stars Martin Sola as Juan Luis Trescante Medina, the aging fascist who claims responsibility for the murder of poet-playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, played by Nicholas Urda.

Zach Braff, who recently made his Broadway debut in 'Bullets Over Broadway' will helm a pilot for a new MTV dark comedy titled SELF PROMOTION.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company Artistic Director Martha Lavey engages in conversation with John Lahr about his latest book, Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh in a special one-night-only event, Monday, October 13 at 7pm in the Downstairs Theatre. Lahr, who served as senior drama critic for The New Yorker for more than two decades, recently released his twentieth book, an authoritative, extraordinary biography on Tennessee Williams that invites intimate access into the mind of a playwright whose work reshaped the American theater. The conversation will include a Q&A, followed by a book signing in the lobby. Tickets are $10 and are available through Audience Services (1650 N Halsted), at 312-335-1650 or at steppenwolf.org.

The University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) opens its 2014-15 Mainstage Series with William Shakespeare's dark and twisted tragedy Macbeth. Under the direction of Brant Russell, Assistant Professor of Drama, Macbeth will make its CCM debut Oct. 2 through 5 in CCM's Patricia Corbett Theater, with a preview performance at 8 p.m. tonight, Oct. 1.

Quintessence Theatre Group launches its fifth season of progressive classic theatre with an all-male Shakespeare repertory: AS YOU LIKE IT presented in rotating repertory with RICHARD II. Bringing together the best professional actors and designers from Philadelphia and across the country, Artistic Director Alexander Burns leads this collective of artists on a mission to ignite the classics through visceral, actor-focused and text-driven productions. AS YOU LIKE IT will begin previews today, October 1 at 7pm and open on Saturday, October 4 at 8pm. RICHARD II will begin previews on Thursday, October 9 at 7pm and open on Saturday, October 18 at 8pm. All performances are at the Sedgwick Theater, 7137 Germantown Ave in Mt Airy, Philadelphia, PA.

'Mad Men' star Vincent Kartheiser and Broadway's Larry Pine (CASA VALENTINA) will play Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler, respectively, in BILLY & RAY, Mike Bencivenga's new play -- directed by the legendary director/writer/producer Garry Marshall -- being given its NY premiere this fall at the Vineyard Theatre (108 E. 15 St.), with previews scheduled to begin tonight, October 1 prior to an official opening on October 20, it has been announced by Vineyard's Artistic Directors Douglas Aibel and Sarah Stern.

Mix a Hitchcock masterpiece with a juicy spy novel and a dash of Monty Python and you have The 39 Steps, the hilarious whodonit opening Bristol Riverside Theatre's season tonight, September 30-October 26. Directed by Gus Kaikkonen, the ensemble cast features Dan Hodge, Matt Leisy, Karen Peakes, and Adam Sowers.