Every year since 1973, Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts (CFA) has drawn students, professors, and residents to its facilities on the east end of campus for a wide range of performances, art exhibitions and film screenings. With a full calendar of events, this year should be no exception.
“We want the CFA to be the cultural center for frosh throughout their four years at Wesleyan,” said CFA Director Pamela Tatge. “We strive to make it a place where students, faculty, national and international artists and members of the regional arts community can exchange ideas and experiences. There are so many student, faculty and visiting artist performances and exhibitions to take advantage of.”
Tatge said that interested freshmen should attend the CFA’s job fair next Thursday, Sept. 8, at 4:15.
Freshmen wishing to become involved in theater should check out Second Stage, Wesleyan’s student-run theater company. Students manage every aspect of production from technician work to budgeting and ushering. Second Stage accepts proposals from students hoping to be directors and chooses which plays to produce by the end of the semester. The group provides performance space, technical help, costumes and props. Second Stage produces several plays each month with free admission to the public. Staff positions are also available. For more information, visit the Second Stage website at www.2ndstage.org.
Other features of the CFA complex include galleries, concert halls, an art library and the year-old Center for Film Studies.
In the next few weeks, artists working in several media will be coming to campus. On Sept. 9, the Zilkha Gallery opens its first exhibition of the semester, “The Disasters of War: From Goya to Golub.” The exhibition will feature work by artists including conceptual artist Hans Haacke and Wesleyan alumna Andrea Wozny ’05.
Next, on Sept. 10, Middletown Dances! will bring together more than forty dance performers and groups from around the city, including the Wesleyan Dance Department. The festival will take place on Main St. from 12 p.m.-4 p.m. and then on Andrus Field from 4:40 p.m.-6:30 p.m. That night, the Crowell Concert Series opens with a visit from klezmer band FleytMuzik. The full festival schedule and a map can be found at www.middletowndances.org.
On Sept. 16 and 17, the Outside the Box Theater Series kicks off with Chicago-based, cult-favorite theater troupe The Neo-Futurists, promising as usual to smash through thirty plays in sixty minutes.
Outside the CFA, Russell House serves an alternative space dedicated primarily to lectures and readings by professors, students, and visiting artists. This semester, Russell House will host poet and art historian David Shapiro, on Sept. 14; novelist and short story writer Lydia Davis, on Sept. 24; and writer Ann Beattie, on Oct. 5. And, like every semester, the winners of the Wesleyan Student Poetry Contest will read in Russell Hall along with student poets from other universities.
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