Arts News

CTE's Jesus Christ Superstar a Rocking, Rousing Production

Thu, 09 May 2013 14:49:39

Jesus Christ Superstar, the record-setting rock opera written and scored by the legendary Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice, was first staged on Broadway in 1971. Now Central Washington University’s Central Theatre Ensemble resurrects this classic, charismatic tale of the last days of Christ, in a full-scale musical production.

Jesus Christ Superstar will be performed May 10, 11, 16, 17, 18 at 7:30 p.m., and May 12 and 19 at 2:00 p.m. in McConnell Auditorium. There will be reserved seating for all ticket groups. Tickets are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors/students, and $7 for CWU students with ID. Tickets may be purchased online at www.cwu.edu/theatre/tickets, by phone at 509-963-1429, or in person at the Welcome Center on University Way or the Wildcat Shop Customer Service desk in the Student Union Recreation Center.

Based on history and the Gospels, this 2013 telling of the masterpiece depicts the last week in the life of Jesus Christ, including the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the clearing of the Temple, the trial before Pilate, and the crucifixion.

The passionate depiction of characters, crisis, struggle, and tragedy through the medium of rock music has stunned and inspired audiences for decades. Jesus Christ Superstar is directed by Keith Edie, CWU senior lecturer, theatre arts-performance, with David Brown, as musical director, and Terri Brown, professor, musical theatre studies, as vocal coach.

Orchestra students from the CWU Music Department will be joining Central Theatre Ensemble on the production of Jesus Christ Superstar.

The production is recommended for audiences 16 years and older.

Parking at CWU is free after 4:30 p.m., and on weekends, except in specially designated spaces and residence hall lots.

Media Contact: Valerie Chapman-Stockwell, CWU Public Affairs, 509-963-1518, valeriec@cwu.edu

Glenn Greenwald: Political columnist/commentator kicks off First Amendment Festival at CWU

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:39:45

Political columnist and New York Times bestselling author Glenn Greenwald, whose columns for Salon and The Guardian prompted Newsweek to name him one of the nation's top 10 opinion writers, will speak at CWU’s First Amendment Festival on May 6. His talk, titled: “Under Fire: The War on Terror’s War on the First Amendment,” will be at 4 p.m. in the SURC theater, and is free and open to the public.

“Day in and day out, he exposes how the ‘war on terror’ has eroded the bedrock principles our country was founded on – from Obama’s war on whistleblowers to the threat that drones hold for our rights to privacy and to due process,” said Cynthia Mitchell, festival chair and associate professor of journalism.

“As a journalist and First Amendment advocate, I really appreciate how he advocates for the importance of a free and adversarial press, and how he never hesitates to call out the mainstream media when they act more like lapdogs than watchdogs. I really want to expose Central students to his insights. They need to hear what he has to say.”

Greenwald often appears on leading political news shows, including MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the The Colbert Report. He has authored three New York Times bestsellers. His latest, “With Liberty and Justice for Some,” exposes America's burgeoning two-tiered system of justice, which grants immunity to the political and financial elite while imprisoning the economically powerless.

Greenwald is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism and the 2010 Online Journalism Association Award for his investigative work on the arrest and oppressive detention of Bradley Manning.

In 2012, Greenwald co-founded and now serves on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, along with famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, the actor John Cusack, the filmmaker Laura Poitras, and others. The Foundation is devoted to supporting independent journalists such as WikiLeaks that are under attack by the U.S. government and to helping fund transparency projects in general.

For more information contact Cynthia Mitchell, associate professor of journalism, at mitchelc@cwu.edu.

First Amendment Festival : CWU hosts weeklong festival celebrating First Amendment rights

Fri, 03 May 2013 09:35:24

CWU will host a weeklong First Amendment Festival May 6-9 in the Student Union and Recreation Center, featuring a number of activities – from mock trials to a “Marketplace of Ideas” – designed to help students learn about and exercise their First Amendment freedoms.

The festival keynoter is political columnist and New York Times bestselling author Glenn Greenwald, whose columns for Salon and The Guardian prompted Newsweek to name him one of the nation's top 10 opinion writers. His talk, Monday at 4 p.m. in the SURC theater, is free and open to the public.

“Day in and day out, he exposes how the ‘war on terror’ has eroded the bedrock principles our country was founded on,” said Cynthia Mitchell, Festival chair and Central journalism professor. “I really want to expose Central students to his insights. They need to hear what he has to say.”

Along with Greenwald’s presentation, from 11:00 a.m. to noon on Monday and Tuesday, and noon to 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, three famous First Amendment trials will be re-enacted by CWU history students: the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsburg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times; Lenny Bruce's obscenity trial; and the “Chicago Seven” trial of protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

At the end of that trial, scheduled for Monday, Greenwald will close the re-enactment with a short talk about the parallels and differences between that case and the oppressive detention and court martial of Bradley Manning for leaking to Wikileaks. Students can expect a ‘real’ court room experience as the trials will present each side of the case, letting the audience weigh in as the jury.

All week long, students will have the ability to write on a free speech wall or to make their own protest sign. On Thursday from 11-2, they’ll also have the chance to speak out on several hot topics in the SURC pit, from gun rights to reproductive rights.

“It’s important that students make their voices heard,” Mitchell said. “Our partnership with College Civics Week is designed to show them how they can use their First Amendment rights to get involved in issues they care about, starting with the most important way to get involved – voting.”

Monday’s “Showcase of Action” from noon-1 p.m. on the 2nd floor SURC mezzanine will show students the many ways they can get civically involved on campus and in the community. And the “Marketplace of Ideas,” Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m., will feature campus clubs and community advocacy groups, which are encouraged to reserve free tables to advocate for their causes.

“We want students to know their rights,” Aubrey Abbott, president of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA), said. “Students should use the Marketplace of Ideas to educate themselves.”

For more information regarding the festival contact Cynthia Mitchell at mitchelc@cwu.edu.

To reserve a table in the Marketplace of Ideas, contact Gracie Manlow at manlowg@cwu.edu.

CWU’s Big Brass Turns Up the Volume at Regional Conference

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 14:40:05

Central Washington University music students performed well at the International Tuba and Euphonium Association's Northwest Regional Conference at Washington State University in March. The CWU group, led by Curtis Peacock, professor of music-tuba, was the only school to have winners in more than one competition.

Beserat Tafesse, from Redmond, won the Artist Division Euphonium Solo Competition against advanced musicians from the University of Oregon and Vancouver, BC. He was awarded $200 and a $100 gift certificate for music.

CWU's LRAD Brass Tuba-Euphonium Quartet also won the Quartet competition, competing against musicians from University of Puget Sound and University of Oregon. The quartet was awarded $500. The players were Tafesse, Kendra Nye, Monroe; Danny Craig, Roy; and Nick Delmedico, Bothell.

Peacock was featured in the faculty recital. He performed the “Adagio” from his Concerto for Tuba. He also released a new classical recording at the conference, Plog: Three Miniatures - Peacock: Concerto. This recording was made with Larry Gookin, CWU professor of music and director of bands; Dean Snavely, graduate student in band/jazz; and the CWU Wind Ensemble. It can be found online only at iTunes, CDbaby, and Spotify.

NOTE: The euphonium is a tenor-voiced brass instrument that looks similar to a baritone. The name comes from the Greek word, euphonos, meaning “good sound.”

Media Contact: Valerie Chapman-Stockwell, CWU Public Affairs, 509-963-1518, valeriec@cwu.edu

CWU History Professor Wins Prestigious Labriola National Book Prize

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:40:27

Central Washington University History Professor Daniel Herman has received the Labriola National Book Award for Modern American Indian History/Studies for his book, Rim Country Exodus: A Story of Conquest, Renewal, and Race in the Making (University of Arizona Press, 2012). Herman will receive the award at the Labriola Center at Arizona State University on Monday, March 25. He will receive a cash prize of $500 and will speak at the award announcement ceremony.

“I wrote this book,” says Herman, “because of an elderly Yavapai man named John Williams who I interviewed for a school project in 1974. It turned out he’d spent much of his life off the reservation. He had worked all over Arizona and the West as a cowboy, as a miner, and more. I wanted to find out more about the lives of people like him who left the rez [reservation] in the early twentieth century.”

Herman’s book examines not only Indians who left the reservation, but the larger history of Yavapais and Dilzhe’es (“Tonto Apaches”) from the time of the Indian Wars of the 1860s through the 1930s, when reservation Indians adopted tribal constitutions. Their history, says Herman, is “both tragic and hopeful.” The two closely related peoples, notes Herman, experienced what amounts to ethnic cleansing followed in 1875 by a forced march to an alien reservation. Two decades later, thousands abandoned that reservation and made their way back to their homeland, where they sought to live among settlers.

“Herman’s narrative of the tumultuous experiences of the Dilzhe’e and Yavapai bands is exceptionally interesting and extremely important to the growing body of literature on Native peoples in Arizona,” said Jeffery P. Shepherd, author of We are an Indian Nation: A History of the Hualapai People.

An Arizona native, Herman specializes in American cultural history, American Indian history, the American West, Jacksonian America, and the Civil War. He has produced three books, twelve scholarly articles, and some thirty book reviews, and encyclopedia articles. His first book, Hunting and the American Imagination (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), won the 2002 American Historical Society/Pacific Coast Branch book prize and became a History Book Club selection. His second book, Hell on the Range: A Story of Honor, Conscience, and the American West (Yale University Press, 2010) was chosen as a Pima County Library Southwestern Book of the Year.

Dedicated in 1993, the Labriola National American Indian Data Center in the Arizona State University (ASU) Libraries is one of the only repositories within a public university library devoted to American Indian collections.

Media Contact: Valerie Chapman-Stockwell, CWU Public Affairs, 509-963-1518, valeriec@cwu.edu

March 13, 2013

Liberal Arts Essay Contest - $500 Award

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 15:11:58

Dear Arts and Humanities Students:

The WA Consortium for the Liberal Arts (WaCLA) is running a statewide essay contest for students enrolled in institutions of higher education that are dues paying members of WaCLA. CWU is a member and so our students (undergrad and grad) are eligible to participate in the contest, for which cash awards will be given at the campus and state levels. The purpose of the contest is to get students thinking about the value of their liberal arts education, and then to use the winning essays to broadcast students' messages about the liberal arts widely across the state.

Below you will find the required cover sheet and also a flyer that explains all details regarding the contest. The 4 winning essays here on campus will be forwarded to the state level competition. Please consider writing an essay for this important contest. Don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

Dean Marji Morgan: mmorgan@cwu.edu

Essay Cover Sheet

Essay Contest Flyer

PULSE student online Magazine

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:10:25

Check out the latest edition here.

2012 College of Arts and Humanities Award Winners

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:09:43

The following awards were presented at the CAH Annual Awards Banquet on 15 May 2012.

Undergraduate Student Achievement Awards

Betty E. Evans Award for Achievement in Creative Writing: Crystal Sauby
Thomas Gause Award for Achievement in Music Composition: Katie Davi
CAH Award for Achievement in Non-Fiction Writing: Danny Schmidt
George Stillman Award for Achievement in Art: Nathan Thomas
Raymond A. Smith Award for Achievement in Scholarship: Catherine Graham
Raymond A. Smith Award for Achievement in Scholarship: Judy Miller
CAH Outstanding Student Award: Michael (Mac) Brown
CAH Outstanding Student Award: Sheena Wildes

Graduate Student Awards

Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarship Award: Rebecca Hastings
Outstanding Graduate Student Scholarship Award: Cyphar Hopkins
Outstanding Graduate Student Artistic Achievement Award: Naomi Faith Smith

Faculty Awards

Outstanding Non-tenure Track Faculty Teaching Award: Heather Netz
Outstanding Faculty Artistic Achievement Award: Nikolas Caoile
Outstanding Faculty Service Award: Matthew Altman
Outstanding Faculty Teaching Award: Gary Weidenaar
Summer Teaching Grant Award: Joan CawleyCrane
Summer Scholarship/Creativity Grant Awards: Matthew Altman, Liahna Armstrong, and Elise Forier Edie

Alumni Recognition Awards

Art Department: Jay Hilburn
Communication Department: Tim Booth
English Department: Katherine Mason
Foreign Languages Department: Sean Dyers
History Department: Brian Murphy
Music Department: Chris Danielson
Philosophy and Religious Studies Department: Jessica Erickson
Theatre Arts Department: Annie DiMartino

New Ethics Minor

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:08:46

Click here for more information.

Kairos Lyceum Summer Concerts

Fri, 14 Oct 2011 16:07:52