November has begun, and we have this weekend’s calendar picks from KC Studio editor Alice Thorson to get the month started right. Tonight, Rockhurst University presents Irish poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnail, and Spinning Tree Theatre‘s production of the musical Nine opens at The Living Room Theatre (show continues through Nov. 20). Tomorrow night is First Fridays in the Crossroads, with opening receptions at Mid-American Arts Alliance, KCAI Crossroads Gallery, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, and Weinberger Fine Art, among others. Stop by the Telephonebooth Gallery south of the Crossroads Friday and Saturday to see work by artist Sean Semones. Saturday night at the Kauffman, Lyric Opera Kansas City presents The Mozart of Figaro. And Sunday night Midwest Center for Holocaust Education showcases music from survivors of the Holocaust at the Folly. For more ideas this weekend, visit Kansas City’s most comprehensive arts calendar at kcstudio.org/events.
Midwest Poets Series: Nuala Ní Dhomhnail
November 3 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm | $3
Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Hall Auditorium at Rockhurst University
Irish poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnail will be read her work, written in the traditional Gaelic language, as the guest of the Midwest Poets Series at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3, in the auditorium of Fr. Pedro Arrupe, S.J., Hall.
Dhomhnaill is one of Ireland’s most talented living poets and one of the most prominent poets writing in Gaelic today, Her poetry has been translated into English in collaboration with Paul Muldon, Seamus Heaney and other Irish literary stars.
Her books are available for purchase at the event. Book signing and a reception follow the reading. Admission for the event is $3, but no one will be denied admission for lack of funds.
For information about this series, call The Center for Arts and Letters 816-501-4607 or 816-501-4828 or visit rockhurst.edu/artsandletters.
Nine
November 3-5 @ 7:30 pm
November 6 @ 2:00 pm
The Living Room Theatre
Based on Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical film “8 ½” and originally directed and choreographed by Tommy Tune, NINE focuses on celebrated filmmaker Guido Contini. Facing a midlife crisis – and without a subject for his newest film – Contini feels heightened pressure from the women in his life. Composer and lyricist Maury Yeston: “The great secret of NINE is that it took 8 ½ and became an essay on the power of women by answering the question, ‘What are women to men?’ And NINE tells you: they are our mothers, our sisters, our teachers, our temptresses, our judges, our nurses, our wives, our mistresses, our muses.” NINE won the 1982 Tony Award for Best Musical and the 2003 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical.
First Fridays in the Crossroads…
Beyond Words: Visual Narratives from the Block Book to the Graphic Novel
November 4 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Mid-America Arts Alliance
M-AAA is pleased to bring an exhibition preview of ExhibitsUSA’s Beyond Words: Visual Narratives from the Block Book to the Graphic Novel to Kansas City for November’s First Friday, November 4 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Beyond Words will be in M-AAA’s Culture Lab, and Kansas City Zine Con will be exhibiting in M-AAA’s Convening Space.
Beyond Words reminds us that the history of sequential narrative begins not with the comic book, but with the history of art itself. In the Middle Ages, early book printers used carved wood blocks as stamps, and advances in printing from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries made books more widely available. Comics then appeared for the first time in newspapers in the late nineteenth century, and comic books did not take off until the introduction of Superman in the late 1930s. Rather than presenting an evolutionary history of visual storytelling, the works selected for this exhibition allow us to situate woodcuts, engravings, comic strips, and graphic novels in a long tradition of word- and image-making, to consider the roles of image and narrative in our cultures, and to examine storytelling techniques in different media.
Kansas City Zine Con, a festival celebrating do‐it‐yourself publishing in all its myriad forms, was held this September at UMKC’s Pierson Auditorium, and at the Uptown Theater in August 2015. For November First Friday, KC Zine Con’s organizers are proud to curate a display of local zines and DIY products, both current and historical, from some of Kansas City’s most talented and eclectic self‐publishing artists. If you missed the event in September, stop by to check them out!
“Replication: Molds and Meaning”
November 4 – December 2
KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice
This collaborative exhibit is an outcome of Casey Whittier’s “Replication: Molds & Meaning” course and features photographs produced by the Archive Collective, drawings by University of Kansas students and objects by KCAI Students Damien Spader (senior, sculpture), Kathryn Cook (sophomore, fiber), Astrid Blurr (junior, illustration), Hannah Kaplan (junior, printmaking), Zoa Smalley (senior, game design and creative writing), Salacia Loe (senior, sculpture), Bailey Glass (senior, painting) and Isabel Vargas (junior, painting).
First Friday, Nov. 4 from 6-8 p.m.
Noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday
6 to 8 p.m. First Fridays and Saturdays by appointment.
Francois Robert: Stop the Violence, Art Miller: Transformed, Ky Anderson: The Cave
November 4 – December 17
Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art
Opening First Friday, November 4th, 2016 | 7-9 p.m.
WINTER COLLECTIVE | WORKS ON PAPER
November 4, 2016 – January 7, 2017
Weinberger Fine Art
Weinberger Fine Art presents the WINTER COLLECTIVE | WORKS ON PAPER on view from November 4 – January 7th. This exhibition highlights work recently curated from eight different artists and includes vibrant drawings, spontaneous mark making, collaged work, and whimsical paintings on paper. The artists featured in THE WINTER COLLECTIVE are Madeline Gallucci, Michael Regnier, Stephen T Johnson, Brenda Zappitell, Hunt Slonem, Larassa Kabel, John Raux, and Salvador Dali.
The exhibition opens Friday, November 4th. The gallery hosts exclusive First Friday hours for its members with an appearance by Pop-up Charlie.
Flower! recent work by Sean Semones
November 5 – November 30
Telephonebooth Gallery
Telephonebooth is proud to bring to Kansas City the 7th appearance of Sean Semones recent endeavors since his first body work shown at the gallery in 2003.
Sean is a 2002 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute Printmaking Dept, currently working on his M.L.S. in St. Louis.
Over the past 15 years Sean has been included in numerous shows around Kansas City including the MOMO gallery, Leedy Voulkos, Urban Culture Project, Paragraph and H.R. Block Artspace.
While Sean went thru a technical program at art school he has always had a painterly process and consistently followed that process as a method of working thru content. While his statements are often poetic and abstract there is a poetics to his work based on color, form, line and the narrative questions of his daily life.
Saturday & Sunday…
The Marriage of Figaro
November 5 @ 7:30 pm
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts
Few operas are as delightful as Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, considered by many to be the most perfect opera ever written. Picking up where The Barber of Seville left off, it’s now several years later and the bloom is off the rose. Count Almaviva has developed a wandering eye and has set his sights on Figaro’s bride-to-be, Susannah, neglecting his own wife. What follows is a rousing and poignant comedy of misplaced identities, misbegotten plans and general misbehaving. All ends well as love is restored, families are reunited and Figaro finally gets his bride.
The Marriage of Figaro is a new co-production with Opera Philadelphia and San Diego Opera and will premier at Lyric Opera of Kansas City.
Sung in Italian with English subtitles. Suitable for children who have had their first crush.
Return to Life: Music of the Ex-Concentration Camp Orchestra
November 6 @ 7:00 pm
Folly Theater
With their arrival in 1946, the first wave of Holocaust survivors to call Kansas City home confronted their return to life. The conclusion of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg that fall also marked a pivotal chapter in the pursuit of postwar justice.
MCHE will commemorate 70 years since these watershed events with a special concert featuring music performed by Jewish musicians once confined in the Kovno ghetto, assembled postwar at St. Ottilien in Bavaria, a monastery used as a Jewish hospital and displaced persons camp. The event will honor Kansas City’s Holocaust survivors.
Originally named the St. Ottilien Orchestra, later the Ex-Concentration Camp Orchestra of the She’arit Hapleta (the Surviving Remnant), the group performed at the Liberation Concert, the first official gathering of Jewish survivors, held on May 27, 1945 at St. Ottilien. From 1945 to 1948, they played triumphantly in striped concentration camp uniforms in front of a banner that read “Am Yisrael Chai.” (“The People of Israel Live.”) On two occasions the musicians were joined by renowned conductor Leonard Bernstein.
After garnering praise for their inspirational performances throughout the American and British zones in Germany, the orchestra was invited to perform for prosecutors and staff of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and for the first Zionist congress in Basel, Switzerland. David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir were among the orchestra’s fans.
MCHE’s Return to Life Concert will showcase pieces from the orchestra’s Nuremberg program, performed by a 40-piece orchestra under the direction of James Murray III, director and conductor of the Northland Symphony, music coordinator and instructor at Metropolitan Community College – Maple Woods.
