Events

LEXINGTON, Ky.—In celebration of Women’s History Month, playwright and performance artist Claudia Stevens will present her original monodrama “Blue Lias or the Fish Lizard’s Whore” at Transylvania’s Carrick Theater Tuesday, March 25, at 7:30 p.m. The performance is free and open to the public. Through dramatic performance, music, letters and impressions by contemporaries, Stevens portrays fossil hunter Mary Anning, a unique figure of Victorian England, who discovered the amazing fossils of the Blue Lias near Lyme Regis in England. “Blue Lias” explores the indignity of Anning’s position within the all-male scientific community and the conflict emerging between science and religion. Despite being deeply religious herself, Anning faced years of opposition from people who sought to discredit her on the grounds that her fossil findings were incompatible with their faith or because she was a woman. Stevens also portrays Anning’s nemesis, the eccentric, humorously self-important William Buckland, who often helped himself to her work. A clergyman and Oxford geologist, Buckland struggled to reconcile scientific discoveries with biblical accounts. Stevens’ fascinating play, with original music by noted composer Allen Shearer, had its first reading during Stevens’ artist residency at Cornell University in fall 2005. Its world premiere was on March 25, 2007 at the Zimmerli Museum of Art at Rutgers University, with subsequent productions in Virginia, North Carolina and Texas during spring 2007. This is Stevens’ second visit to Transylvania. She presented her one-person performance piece about the Holocaust, “An Evening with

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), will deliver a lecture titled “Liberal Education and America’s Promise” at Transylvania Tuesday, March 4, at 7:30 p.m. in Carrick Theater. The lecture is free and open to the public. Schneider has been president of the AAC&U since 1998. With 1,100 institutional members, AAC&U is the leading national organization devoted to advancing and strengthening undergraduate liberal education. Under her leadership, AAC&U launched two major initiatives, Liberal Education and America’s Promise, an advocacy and campus action project designed to engage students and the public with what really matters in a college education for the twenty-first century, and Greater Expectations, a multi-faceted program that identified and advanced innovative models to improve campus practices and learning for all undergraduate students. In the 1990s, Schneider headed a major AAC&U initiative on higher education and U.S. pluralism, American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning. She has published extensively on all the major areas of her educational work and has taught at the University of Chicago, DePaul University, Chicago State University and Boston University. Schneider received her undergraduate degree from Mount Holyoke College and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. The lecture is sponsored by the Center for Liberal Education at Transylvania and funded by the Bingham Program for Excellence in Teaching. For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120 or political science professor Jeff Freyman at (859) 233-8273.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—R. T. Smith, award-winning poet and short-story author will speak at Transylvania’s William T. Young Campus Center Thursday, Feb. 28, at 8 p.m. After reading from his work, the well-known writer will sign books during a reception in his honor. The event, which is part of Transylvania’s Delcamp Visiting Writer program, is free and open to the public. It is for his book of short fiction, “Uke Rivers Delivers,” that Smith was invited to speak at Transylvania. “Cold Mountain” author Charles Frazier wrote of “Uke Rivers Delivers,” that “this collection of stories is funny, amazing, daring. Its polyphonic voices of Civil War ghosts, broken innocents, and confused killers lead you down contrarian trails deep into the haunted territory of Southern myth and magic. This is the most enjoyment I’ve gotten from a batch of fiction in a longer span of time than I care to recollect.” Smith was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Georgia and North Carolina. He attended Georgia Tech, the University of North Carolina Charlotte and received his master’s in English from Appalachian State University, where he founded “Cold Mountain Review,” which publishes poems by and interviews with national and international poets. For 19 years, Smith taught at Auburn University, serving as alumni writer-in-residence for 12 years and holding many positions, including the co-editorship at “Southern Humanities Review.” Since 1995, Smith has served as editor of “Shenandoah” for Washington and Lee University, where he also

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LEXINGTON, Ky.—The wildly wacky comedy “Noises Off” opens at Transylvania Thursday, Feb. 21 in the Lucille C. Little Theater. Showtimes for the well-known British farce are Feb. 21-23, 28-29 and March 1 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 24 at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10. “Noises Off” has been called the funniest farce ever written and is about a group of actors putting on a play called “Nothing On.” It’s a typical bedroom farce, but the actors are having all sorts of difficulties memorizing the lines, handling props and dealing with backstage relationships and a dilettante director. What goes on behind the scenes is funnier, sexier and more absurd than the comedy being performed onstage. In theatrical stage directions, the term “noises off” refers to sounds that are meant to be heard from offstage. Drama professor Tim Soulis said that directing this hilarious comedy has been a wonderfully delightful experience. “Our rehearsals at times have mirrored the confusion on stage in the play within the play,” he said. “The experience becomes a hall of mirrors in which we can’t tell where the play ends and rehearsal begins.” If you want an evening or afternoon of non-stop laughter where everything that can go wrong, does, you won’t want to miss “Noises Off.” For more information, contact the public relations office at (859) 233-8120 or Tim Soulis at (859) 233-8163.