serious theater | radical truths | always free
Photo: Allen Warren – Wikimedia Commons Melvin Hinton reads James Baldwin’s essay, Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare Audio from this reading is being reworked … thanks for your patience. Madison’s Melvin Hinton reads this wonderful essay and
Anna Akhmatova and the Engineers of the Human Soul Cast and Crew Anna Akhmatova – Brette Olpin Nadezhda Mandelstam – Mya Kahler Ensemble roles – Ari Pollack Music – Charlie Lynch Script by David Simmons Direction by David Simmons
Photo – Wikimedia Commons An evening of reading, music, dance and conversation about the French writer, philosopher and activist Simone Weil. April 14, 2019, Arts + Lit Lab. Thanks to all in the standing room only crowd. Perhaps we
Eugene V. Debs – A Graphic Biography by Paul Buhle and Steve Max, illustrated by Norm Van Sciver Historian Paul Buhle relates the history of America’s most important and popular socialist and adds some personal thoughts about socialism and
A Gold Slipper – a short story by Willa Sibert Cather – first published in Harper’s Monthly Magazine #134, January 1917. We continue our examination of the life and works of Willa Cather with this wonderful short story. Samra
Richard Meier is the author of four books of poetry, most recently February March April April (Oxeye Press) and In the Pure Block of the Whole Imaginary (Omnidawn). He is writer-in-residence at Carthage College and lives in Madison and
How precocious was Willa Cather? Well, editor of a national magazine at age 22, but her letters tell the story best. Listen as Brette Olpin reads from Cather’s early correspondence and judge for yourself. Editorial work and commentary by Alex
“Years ago when I was studying the ways of the Chicago Wheat Exchange I suddenly grasped how they managed the whole world’s wheat from there and yet I did not grasp it either. I knew at once: you’ve run into
How quickly a year does pass … here for Valentine’s Day 2019 are twenty more of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Readers (in order of appearance) are David Simmons, Nick Barovic Hancock and Alex Hancock.
What are we to make of the life and writings of Simone Weil? Born in Paris in 1909 to an acculturated Jewish family, her older brother a mathematical prodigy and genius, she graduated from the École Normale Supérieure first in