Poet Reads 'Wartime Address' At Washington College

Chestertown – Poet Maxine Susman will present a reading of her “Wartime Address” at Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House on Tuesday, September 29, at 5 p.m.

 “Wartime Address” is a poem sequence based on the memoir of Jean Wetzel. It tells of her flight from Paris during World War II.

Dr. Susman is Professor of English at Caldwell College where she teaches poetry, literature and writing across the curriculum.

Her poems have appeared in several dozen journals and anthologies, including Paterson Literary Review, Colere, Ekphrasis, Earth’s Daughters, The Dogwood Journal, The Chesapeake Reader, Blueline, and forthcoming in Alehouse and Poet Lore. Her two other books of poetry are Gogama (2006) and Familiar (Fall 2009). She belongs to the performance group Cool Women.

Admission to the “Wartime Address” reading is free and open to the public.

Native American Net-Making Techniques Demonstrated

Chestertown – The Center for Environment & Society (CES) at Washington College will  present “Native American Net-Making and Other Prehistoric Fishing Technologies” by Dr. Bill Schindler as part of the Chestertown Waterfront Festival on Saturday, September 26, from noon to 3 p.m. in Wilmer Park.
Dr. Schindler, assistant professor of anthropology and archaeology at Washington College, says the migratory fish resource was very important to the prehistoric inhabitants of the Chesapeake Estuary. Accordingly, they developed a number of technologies to successfully procure them.
Many of these technologies will be displayed and demonstrated including:  primitive fibers and net-making techniques, bottle gourd floats, stone net sinkers, fish poisons, bone fish hook manufacture, and fishing weir.
The Waterfront Festival & Cardboard Boat Regatta is free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.ces.washcoll.edu or call 410-778-7295.

Waterfront Festival Pays Tribute to the Chester River

CHESTERTOWN – Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society will present the annual Chestertown Waterfront Festival at Wilmer Park on Saturday, September 26, from noon to 5 p.m.
The festival features boating, sailing and kayaking on the Chester River, a cardboard boat race, a Native American fishing and artifacts display, exhibits on watershed ecology, a touch tank, crafts, good food, family activities and music along the scenic Chester River. 
“It combines a mixture of nautical recreation, maritime culture and live entertainment right in the historic district,” said event organizer JoAnn Fairchild.
This year the Chesapeake chapter of the Antique & Classic Boat Society will rendezvous on the river, with several wooden boats on display at the Wilmer Park bulkhead.
There will be fried fish and funnel cake by Rose Green, a guided canoe trip with Sultana Projects, and of course, the ever-popular carboard boat regatta.
With brave mariners climbing aboard and piloting their handmade crafts around a competitive race course, “The colorful cardboard boats are a real crowd-pleaser,” Fairchild said. “It’s always a surprise to see who captures the Cutty Sark prize for best engineering as opposed to the captain and crew that garners the Titanic award for most spectacular sinking.”
Admission to the Waterfront Festival is free and open to the public. Wilmer Park is handicapped-accessible and friendly pets on leashes are welcome. In case of foul weather, water-based activities will be cancelled but Chester River Runoff will perform under Lelia Hynson Pavilion.
The event is organized by the Center for Environment & Society, with sponsorship by Chesapeake Bank & Trust, Sultana Projects, Chestertown Marina, several local restaurants, and the Student Affairs Office at Washington College.
The Center for Environment & Society supports interdisciplinary research and education, exemplary stewardship of natural and cultural resources, and the integration of ecological and social values.
For a complete Waterfront Festival schedule and more information, go to http://ces.washcoll.edu/news/waterfrontfestival/index.php. 

Tennessee Williams' Classic 'Glass Menagerie' Staged At Washington College's New Gibson Center

Chestertown – The Washington College Department of Drama will present Tennessee Williams’ classic drama “The Glass Menagerie” at Tawes Theatre in the newly renovated and expanded Gibson Center for the Arts on Friday and Saturday, September 25 and 26, at 8 p.m.

“The Glass Menagerie” was the first stage success for Williams, who went on to become one of America’s most highly regarded playwrights. The drama premiered in Chicago in 1944, and in 1945 won the prestigious New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

The play is introduced to the audience by Tom Wingfield, who serves as both narrator and point-of-view as events unfold. The story is Tom’s recollection of his mother and his sister. The father abandoned the family years ago, and the mother remains stuck in the past. Tom works in a warehouse, doing his best to support the family. He chafes under the banality and boredom of everyday life and spends much of his spare time watching movies in cheap cinemas at all hours of the night. The mother is obsessed with finding a suitor for Tom’s sister, who spends most of her time obsessed with her glass collection.

Tom eventually plays matchmaker by bringing a co-worker home for dinner. The dinner guest at first seems like the ideal match for the sister, but things don’t always work out as well as hoped…

“The Glass Menagerie” is considered by many to be Williams’ most autobiographical play (before he was “Tennessee,” his real name was Tom), replete with the lonely mother and troubled sister who had been a part of the playwright’s home life.

The Washington College production of “The Glass Menagerie” is directed by senior Allison Valliant and features Katie Muldowney, Bethany Ackerman, Joe Rittenhouse and Brian Haluska. Admission is free, but reservations are required; call 410/778-7835 or e-mail drama_tickets@washcoll.edu.

Author Presents 'Demystifying Book Publishing' At Washington College

Reading, Booksigning Also Slated

Chestertown – Author Irina Reyn knows the book business from both sides – as a writer and as an editor. She will share her insights with aspiring literary artists when she presents “Demystifying Book Publishing: A Publishing talk with Irina Reyn” at Washington College’s Rose O’Neill Literary House on Thursday, September 24, at 4:30 p.m.

Reyn, the 2009 Mary Wood Fellow at Washington College, worked in book publishing for several years. Her presentation will take the audience on a practical journey through the process of getting the written word from laptop or notebook and onto the bookstore shelves.

Initiated in 2007, the Mary Wood Fellowship is extended bi-annually to an emerging female writer. It is made possible by the continued support of author Mary Wood.

In addition to “Demystifying Book Publishing” on September 24, Reyn will give a reading, along with Washington College Students, at the Casey Academic Center Forum on Saturday, September 26, at 1:30 p.m. A booksigning will follow.

Reyn’s first novel, What Happened to Anna K., a bold reimagining of Anna Karenina in modern New York, was named one of the best books of 2008 by The San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and Entertainment Weekly, and is described by Philip Lopate as a “witty, psychologically astute and immensely pleasurable novel.”

Reyn is editor of Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State and has published widely in One Story, Post Road, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Town & Country Travel, The Forward, Nextbook, Ballyhoo Stories, San Francisco Chronicle, The Moscow Times and in several anthologies.

Born in Moscow, Reyn currently divides her time between Brooklyn and Pittsburgh, where she is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.

Admission to both the September 24 talk and the September 26 reading is free and open to the public.

Washington College To Screen Lyme Disease Documentary

Chestertown – Washington College’s Center for Environment & Society will screen an award-winning documentary on Lyme disease, “Under Our Skin,” in Litrenta Lecture Hall on Wednesday, September 30, at 7 p.m.

A dramatic tale of microbes, medicine and money, this eye-opening film, hailed by the New York Times as “heart-rending,” investigates the untold story of Lyme disease, an emerging epidemic larger than AIDS.

As natural habitats and animal populations are impacted by humans, unintended consequences often result. Recent decades, for example, have seen a population explosion of deer and rodents in the forests of the eastern United States. Behind the scenes, they have been accompanied by many more ticks carrying Lyme disease, one of the fastest growing infectious diseases in the country.

For anyone who spends time outdoors, Lyme and other tick-borne infections should be a cause for concern. The symptoms can be severe and debilitating, but diagnosis is not always easy.

Each year thousands of Americans go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed, told that their symptoms are “all in their head.”

Following the stories of patients and physicians as they battle for their lives and livelihoods, the film brings into focus a haunting picture of our health-care system and its ability to cope with a silent terror under our skin.

Litrenta Lecture Hall is located in the  John S. Toll Science Center. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the Center for Environment & Society (CES) at Washington College at 410-810-7161 or visit www.ces.washcoll.edu.

Luminaries From Worlds Of Theater, Art, Music Honored At Washington College's 2009 Convocation

Event Formally Dedicates New Gibson Center for the Arts

Chestertown – Washington College’s annual Fall Convocation, scheduled for Friday, October 2, at 3:30 p.m., will take place in a very special, and very new, venue: the College’s just-completed showcase, the Daniel Z. Gibson Center for the Arts.

The Convocation ceremony and subsequent gala reception will mark the official dedication and public opening of the Gibson Center, a $24 million renovation and expansion of the original structure that was built to house the arts more than 40 years ago.

In its new incarnation, the Gibson Center for the Arts offers several venues in which students can learn, rehearse, practice, perform and exhibit their works, as well as all the latest tools and technology that support professional-caliber theaters and exhibition spaces.

The original 650-seat auditorium, now known as Decker Theatre, has been rescaled and configured to accommodate the addition of the Hotchkiss Recital Hall and the Tawes Theatre.

The renovation also facilitated the addition of the Kohl Art Gallery, an exhibition space fully equipped to mount major works of art, as guests will see during the gala opening-weekend celebration.

In keeping with the threefold functionality of the new facility, notable figures from the worlds of theater, art and music, the three disciplines taught in the new center, will be special guests and receive honorary degrees at Washington College’s Fall Convocation: Broadway director and scriptwriter Mark Bramble, art historian Linda Nochlin and Grammy-winning folksinger Tom Paxton.

Mark Bramble has been involved in the writing, directing and producing of stage musicals all over the world. He attended the McDonogh School, Emerson College and New York University, and began his theatrical career under the tutelage of David Merrick, for whom he worked on 20 Broadway productions.

As author, Bramble’s shows include Barnum, which introduced Glenn Close as a leading actress and garnered and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical in addition to 10 Tony Award nominations (including Best Book and Best Musical); 42^nd Street, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical, the Laurence Olivier Award for Musical of the Year, the Evening Standard Drama Award for Best Musical, and other honors); and The Three Musketeers with the music of Rudolph Friml.

Bramble’s collaborations with Michael Stewart include The Grand Tour with songs by Jerry Herman, Treasure Island with songs by Jule Styne, and the off-Broadway opera Elizabeth & Essex based on Maxwell Anderson’s Elizabeth the Queen.

At the Haymarket Theatre in Leicester, England, Bramble and Henry Krieger (composer of Dreamgirls) created Fat Pig, a rock-and-roll extravaganza about health. In London Bramble adapted and staged Notre Dame at Saddler’s Wells, and created the first radio musical, In With The Old, for BBC radio.

Bramble directed the 2001 Tony Award-winning Best Revival of 42^nd Street on Broadway, as well as productions of the show in London, Sydney, Shanghai, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Vienna.

He is a member of The Dramatist’s Guild, The Society Of Stage Directors and Choreographers and The Association Of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers.

Linda Nochlin is the Lila Acheson Wallace Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts/New York University, where she earned her doctorate in art history in 1963.

She previously served as Professor of Art History and Humanities at Yale University, as Distinguished Professor of Art History at the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York and as the Mary Conover Mellon Professor of Art History at Vassar College, her undergraduate alma mater.

Nochlin is known widely for her work on Gustave Courbet—a painter of interest to her since embarking on her doctoral dissertation, as well as for her seminal publications on Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism and, notably, for her groundbreaking work to advance the cause of women artists, beginning as early as 1971 with her article, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”

Sparking a major development in art history and criticism, that early work led to the 1976 exhibition Women Artists: 1550-1950, which Nochlin co-curated with Anne Sutherland Harris for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the show was accompanied by the catalogue of the same title co-authored by both scholars.

Nochlin has written numerous books and articles focusing on social and political issues revealed in the work of artists from the modernist period to the present day. Her books – Representing Women, The Body in Pieces, Women, Art, and Power and The Politics of Vision – have directed and expanded the dialogue among art historians on the nature of viewing and have broadened the scope of our interpretation of the role of art and artists in society.

Nochlin is a Contributing Editor of Art in America. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and of New York University’s Institute for the Humanities as well as the American Philosophical Society.

Tom Paxton ranks alongside the likes of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs in the pantheon of American folksinger-songwriters. Emerging from the thriving Greenwich Village folk music scene of the early ’60s, the prolific Paxton quickly made a name for himself, both as a performer and as a songsmith whose works proved wildly popular among fellow artists looking for quality material to cover.

The Chicago-born, Oklahoma-raised Paxton joined the Army Reserve in 1960 and ended up stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey. While at college a few years earlier, he had cultivated a passion for folk music; so the Army reservist was soon spending his free time in New York City, performing at amateur-night hootenannies in Greenwich Village clubs and mingling with other rising stars of the folk movement.

The city became his home once his active duty was completed, and Paxton’s productivity flourished. The Chad Mitchell Trio gave him a big boost by recording one of his songs – the first of countless acts in the folk, country, pop and rock spheres to do so over the years.

In 1962 Paxton recorded his debut album, I’m the Man Who Built the Bridges. Forty-seven years and nearly 50 albums later, Paxton has continued to write, sing and record, serving up everything from trenchant commentary on current political topics, to expressions of love, to whimsical, popular children’s fare.

Many of Paxton’s songs have enjoyed enduring appeal, including modern standards such as “The Last Thing on My Mind,” “Bottle of Wine,” “Whose Garden Was This?” and “Ramblin’ Boy.”

Paxton’s compositions have been recorded by Pete Seeger, Judy Collins, Joan Baez, Doc Watson, Harry Belafonte, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston Trio, John Denver, Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner, Willie Nelson, Flatt & Scruggs, and numerous others.

A perennial “global ambassador” of folk music, Paxton has performed thousands of concerts around the world – in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Scandinavia, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Holland, England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and all over the United States. His songs have been translated into various languages, and he enjoys a strong relationship with fans throughout the globe.

In 2009 Paxton received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the capstone to a whole host of accolades that have come his way over the course of a long and remarkable career.

In addition to the Fall Convocation ceremony, the gala opening weekend at the Gibson Center features events that bespeak the versatility of the region’s latest and greatest arts venue:

• The Washington College Department of Drama will present “Tick My Box” in Tawes Theatre on Friday, October 2, at 8 p.m.

• Musician Chad Stokes will headline a “Performers’ Showcase” in Decker Theatre on Saturday, October 3, at 8 p.m. Emceed by Comedy Central’s Kyle Cease (10 Things I Hate About You), the show features illusionist Mike Super, winner of NBC’s hit TV show Phenomenon; and poet Gabriela Garcia Medina, 2009 Spoken Word Performer of the Year. The event is sponsored by the Student Affairs Office.

• The 58^th season of the Washington College Concert Series will commence with a performance by the Brentano String Quartet in Hotchkiss Recital Hall on Sunday, October 4, at 3 p.m.

• The Kohl Gallery’s inaugural exhibition, “Second Nature: Masterpieces of 19^th-Century Landscape Painting,” featuring seldom-displayed masterworks from some of the major artists of the period, will open and be on view through November 15. The exhibition is curated by Kohl Gallery Director and Underwood Chair in Art History Donald McColl.

For more information about the Gibson Center for the Arts and its gala opening weekend, visit http://gibson.washcoll.edu/grandopeningcelebration.php.