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Join the Arts at Brandeis E-List for the inside scoop on plays, concerts, and fine arts at Brandeis, as well as free and discount tickets to arts events in Greater Boston.
The Brandeis arts magazine, State of the Arts, provides a complete schedule of events. To be added to the magazine’s mailing list, email arts@brandeis.edu.
Arts@Brandeis Calendar
All events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.
April 3 - 5
Closer
Spingold Theater Center, Merrick Theater
7 p.m.
Set in 90's contemporary London, Patrick Marber's play Closer takes a cynical and painfully accurate look at relationships. Both romantic comedy and brutal analysis of modern love, it is a play about the kindness of strangers and the cruelty of desire. Directed by Eric Hill and featuring members of MFA program in acting. (Note: the Merrick Theater is not handicapped accessible.)
Tuesday, April 17
Vocal Poetry: Open Mic Series
Shapiro Campus Center, Multipurpose Room
8:00 p.m.
A workshop, followed by a performance, introduces the Brandeis community to various styles and forms of poetry.
Wednesday, April 18
Close Looking: Richard Prince
Rose Art Museum
3:30 p.m.
Paul Morrison (English) and Jeff Rosenheim (Curator of Photography, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) discuss Richard Prince's "Untitled (Cowboy)" as part of a yearlong series of interdisciplinary conversations about art, rare books and manuscripts. Sponsored by the Rose, the Mandel Center for the Humanitites, and Library and Technology Services.
April 18-April 22
Senior Thesis Performance Festival
Enjoy a week of more than a dozen adventruous works -- plays, musicals and one-person shows -- created by graduating theater arts students who participate in a variety of roles, including actor, director, writer and costume designer. Visit the Senior Thesis Festival webpage for a schedule of performances.
Thursday, April 19
Film Screening: Without Gorky
Wasserman Cinemateque, Sachar International Center
7:00 p.m.
In "Without Gorky," director Cosima Spender takes a personal journey into a family myth as she explores the affect of the suicide of her grandfather (Arshile Gorky, the abstract expressionist painter) on family dynamics. Screening followed by Q&A with the director. RSVP to delorenz@brandeis.edu. Sponsored by the Film, Television, and Interactive Media program.
April 19 - 22
In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play
Shapiro Campus Center Theater
Detailing the early history of the vibrator, this play by Sarah Ruhl touches on love, jealousy and female sexual desire. Presented by undergraduate theater group Brandeis Players. Tickets: $5; $3 with Brandeis ID. Purchase tickets online or call Brandeis Tickets at 781-736-3400.
April 20-April 21
Cymbeline
Ridgewood Commons
Friday, April 20 at 8 p.m.
Saturday, April 21 at 9 p.m.
An evil queen, a banished lover, mistaken identity and false accusations. Shakespeare’s "Cymbeline," at equal moments intense, charismatic and hilarious, explores questions of love and identity. When and how do we accept types of love that do not fit into neatly constructed categories? At the end of each performance, a panel will mediate a dialogue about gender and sexuality in this interpretation of Shakespeare. With support from Hold Thy Peace, Brandeis Pluralism Alliance, Triskelion and the Medieval Society. For more information, contact Jenna Schlags at jschlags@brandeis.edu.
Saturday, April 21
Culture X
Levin Ballroom, Usdan Student Center
Time TBA
A festive assemblage of students performs in celebration of their diverse cultural traditions. For more information, visit the Intercultural Center's website.
Sunday, April 22
Music Fest '12
Slosberg Music Center
1:00-6:00 p.m.
The Brandeis Early Music Ensemble, Jazz Ensemble, Improv Collective, Wind Ensemble, Chamber Choir and University Chorus offer a full afternoon of diverse musical styles. These students bring commitment, energy and passion to all that they take on, from the rigorous accuracy and meaningful interpretation demanded by the classical canon to the flights of skill and imagination of more improvisational styles.
Concert: Enigma Quintet and Leonard Bernstein Fellows
Slosberg Music Center
7:00 p.m.
Two select groups of undergraduate players, coached by members of the Lydian String Quartet, are showcased in a concert of chamber works.
April 26-29
Activate Art!: The 2012 Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts
For four days, a whirlwind of performances, happenings, exhibitions and all-around artistic spontaneity activate the Brandeis campus.
Highlights of the festival include the Brandeis Theater Company's dance/sculpture collaboration "Beyond the Boundaries"; an outdoor folk festival; and Miss Tess and the Bon Ton Parade, a foursome inspired by vintage swing, blues, country, and folk, with a completely modern sensibility and sense of fun.
Visit the Festival of the Arts webpage for more info.
April 27-April 28
Boris Kitchen Presents: Lots of Strings Attached
Shapiro Campus Center Theater
Undergraduate students present all-new, all-original, live sketch comedy and premier new videos. Expect woodland creatures, puppets, flatulence, hijinx and a special appearance by someone who kind of, sort of looks like Barack Obama. Tickets: $5; $3 with Brandeis ID. Purchase tickets online or call Brandeis Tickets at 781-736-3400.
Monday, April 30
Improv Collective
7 p.m.
Slosberg Music Center
Expect the unexpected with the freshest ensemble in the Music Department. Tom Hall, director.
Exhibitions
Celebrate the newly renovated Rose Art Museum and three new exhibitions:
Art at the Origin: The Early 1960s (Gerald S. and Sandra Fineberg Gallery) celebrates the museum's formative period by displaying paintings, sculptures and prints created during the museum's first years, 1961-65. Key works by Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Marisol are displayed in newly renovated spaces.
Collecting Stories (Lois Foster Gallery) documents the collection's growth over five decades, from gifts of modernist paintings that inspired the Rose's formation to contemporary art acquisitions connected to its legacy of bold exhibitions. Left: Marsden Hartley, Musical Theme (Oriental Symphony), 1912-13.
Bruce Conner: EVE-RAY-FOREVER (1965/2006) (Mildred S. Lee Gallery) presents the Rose's newest acquisition, a groundbreaking triptych film installation originally shown at the Rose as part of the late artist Bruce Conner's first major museum exhibition in 1965. In honor of the museum's 50th anniversary, the museum has acquired Conner's 2006 recreation of this groundbreaking film experience.
Through April 29
Prospect II: Post-Baccalaureate Painting and Sculpture
Dreitzer Gallery, Spingold Theater Center
Opening reception Wednesday, March 14, 5-7 p.m.
Through May 18
Sarah Zell Young: Occupy Sanhedrin
Kniznick Gallery, Women's Studies Research Center
Sarah Zell Young, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute artist in residence, examines religious and secular roles for Jewish women from the Second Temple to the present. In addition to photographs, the exhibition features a site-specific installation--a participatory rendition of a Sanhedrin (rabbinic court). Young's work explores jurisprudence in relation to the female body, showing how justice can be encountered between the folds of the flesh.