Boston Globe lauds Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac

The Boston Globe showcased Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University on April 7, saying the world’s largest collection of paintings, sculptures and visual arts related to the Famine will help amplify the role that art has played in giving a voice to the victims and healing the still-raw wounds of the Great Hunger.

“The hollow figures, with eyes as vacant as their stomachs, in the latter-day artwork on exhibit continue to evoke the dark side of Ireland’s terrible beauty,” the newspaper reports. “Clothes drip off the barefoot and wasted subjects in John Behan’s bronze sculpture ‘Famine Mother and Children,’ and the slender, life-size figures that Kieran Tuohy carved from primordial Irish bog oak drown in grief. The grotesque subjects that Lilian Davidson has painted in her blue-tinged ‘Burying the Dead’ resemble zombies with their gaunt countenances and sunken eyes.”

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Theater for Community to present ‘Ernest in Love’ April 25-28

Students rehearse for the upcoming production of “Ernest In Love”

Quinnipiac University‘s Theater for Community will present the musical “Ernest In Love,” from April 25-28 in the Clarice L. Buckman Theater on the Mount Carmel Campus.

• Please click here for a sneak peek at rehearsal.

Set in Victorian England, “Ernest In Love” is a musical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” The plot revolves around Jack Worthing, an earnest young man who loves the aristocratic Gwendolen Fairfax. Gwendolen says she loves him, however, she thinks he is someone else. Jack’s problems multiply as he desperately tries to hold onto Gwendolen, win over her formidable mother, Lady Bracknell, and protect his young ward, Cecily Cardew, from the advances of his friend, the pleasure loving Algernon Moncrieff.

The play will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 25, and Friday, April 26; at 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 27; and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, April 28.

Tickets are $12 general admission and $8 for students and senior citizens. There is a special two-for-one discount for Quinnipiac alumni for the Friday and Saturday performances. To reserve tickets, email kevin.daly@quinnipiac.edu or call 203-582-3500.

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Theater for Community to perform ‘Lily Hare’ Feb. 28 through March 3

 

New Haven playwright and Quinnipiac alumnus Kevin Daly

Quinnipiac University‘s Theater for Community will present the world premiere of “Lily Hare,” a dark comedy by New Haven playwright Kevin Daly, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28, in the Clarice L. Buckman Theater on the Mount Carmel Campus.

The play also will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 1; 4 p.m. on Saturday, March 2; and 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 3.

Set in 1849, “Lily Hare” follows the fortunes of an actress who tours the country with her companion and student, Ned Tambourine, presenting a one-person show of badly memorized speeches from Shakespeare. Sadly for Lily, her talent does not match her ambition and her performances invariably end with the audience throwing tomatoes. Under the cover of this chaos, Ned cunningly picks audience members’ pockets to procure enough cash for Lily and him to make a quick getaway. Then, after one typically dreadful performance, Lily meets wealthy young admirer Simon Filbert and hatches a plan to use him and his money to advance her career.

Theater professor Crystal Brian will direct “Lily Hare,” with set design by Tricia Thelen, associate professor of theater, and sound design by Robert Bresnick, adjunct instructor. The cast includes Michelle Ayrapetyan as Lily Hare; Michael Bobenhausen as Ned; Dan Fox as Simon; Sara Detrik as old woman; Ashley DiFranza as stage manager; Mark Regini as Amity; Jen Espisito as Elm; Krystle Bernier as Whitney; Caitlin Riblett as Orange; Sean McLaughlin as Dixwell; Krista Langan as Whalley; Austin Demos as Goffe; Jen Fremd as Edwards; Alan Johnson as Humphrey; and Amir Boone as Edgewood.

Daly, who holds a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Quinnipiac’s College of Arts and Sciences, is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at the University. It was while working toward a bachelor’s degree that Daly first became involved in theater. He began performing in theater department productions and worked closely with Brian on writing the Theater for Community’s productions of “The Antigone Project” and “The Troubles of Romeo and Juliet.”

Working on these projects ultimately moved him toward a life in the theater. Since earning his master of fine arts in playwriting from Indiana University, Daly has developed and produced plays at theaters around the country, most notably at the Manhattan Theatre Club. He has twice been named a semi-finalist for the National Playwriting Conference at the O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn. In 2008, he was awarded the Jason Stradtman Prize for Excellence in Playwriting and in 2011 his play, “In Kings and Fools,” was a finalist for the Woodward/Newman Drama Award.

Tickets are $12 for general admission and $8 for students and senior citizens. There is a special two-for-one discount for Quinnipiac alumni for the Friday and Saturday performances. To reserve tickets, email kevin.daly@quinnipiac.edu or call 203-582-3500.

Founding editor of ‘Storyscape Literary Journal’ to read and discuss her career Feb. 28

Anne Hays, founding editor of “Storyscape Literary Journal,” will read from her fiction and essays and discuss her work when she appears in the Carl Hansen Student Center, Room 119, on the Mount Carmel Campus at Quinnipiac University at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 28.

Hays’ fiction has appeared in “PANK,” a magazine that fosters access to emerging and experimental poetry and prose, publishing the brightest and most promising writers for the most adventurous readers, and “The Brooklyn Rail,” an independent forum for arts, culture and politics throughout New York City and beyond. Her essays have appeared in “Drunken Boat,” “Ms Magazine” blog, and “Lumina” among others. She writes a zine called “Alex,” and is working on a book-length project about portrait photography.  She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. with her wife, dog and cat.

This event, part of Quinnipiac’s creative writing program’s open dialogue on creativity and the arts, is free and open to the public.

For more information, call 203-582-8652.

Connecticut’s former Poet Laureate Marilyn Nelson to read and discuss her work Feb. 5

Marilyn Nelson, Connecticut’s poet laureate from 2001-2006, will read from her work during an open dialogue on creativity and the arts at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 5, in the Carl Hansen Student Center, Room 119, on Quinnipiac University’s Mount Carmel Campus.

This event, sponsored by the Quinnipiac Bookstore and the English Department in the College of Arts and Sciences at Quinnipiac, is free and open to the public.

Of her work, Poet Mark Doty writes, “Nelson’s bold and sure poems long for heaven and—happily for us—continue a lifelong affair with the occasions of earth.”

Among Nelson’s books are: “The Homeplace;” “The Fields of Praise, Carver;” “Fortune’s Bones;” “Miss Crandall’s School,” which she wrote with Elizabeth Alexander; “The Freedom Business;” “Sweethearts of Rhythm;” and “A Wreath for Emmett Till.”

Nelson’s honors include two National Education Association creative writing fellowships, the 1990 Connecticut Arts Award, a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, a fellowship from the J.S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the Frost Medal, the Poetry Society of America’s most prestigious award, for a “distinguished lifetime achievement in poetry.”

Nelson’s reading is part of the annual poetry tour of the Connecticut Poetry Circuit, which also sponsors readings by Connecticut student poets each spring.

For more information, call 203-582-8652.