January/February Highlights

Smart Museum of Art
“Landscapes of Retrospection: The Magoon Collection of British Drawings and Prints, 1739-1860”
Thursday, Jan. 25-Sunday, March 25
10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday; 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday; noon-6 p.m. Saturday-Sunday.
Smart Museum, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. 702-0200. Free.
Opening reception: 5-7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 26
Exhibition tour at 5 p.m.; program at 6:15 p.m.
Public tour: 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28
This exhibition assembles for the first time the finest British works on paper from the Magoon Collection of Vassar College. This highly regarded collection includes antiquarian and picturesque drawings and prints by the most accomplished landscape and architectural draftsmen and artists of the period. “Landscapes of Retrospection” marks the creative intersection of landscape esthetics, architectural design, literary illustration and documentary archaeology most strongly associated with the rich visual culture of British romanticism.

eighth blackbird

eighth blackbird
8 p.m. Friday, Jan. 19
Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. 702-7300. $15 general, $8 students
The Contemporary Chamber Players will begin its 37th season with a program by newly-appointed Associate Artists-in-Residence eighth blackbird. The program will focus on the music of young American composers, including Davis Schober’s Variations, Daniel Kellogg’s Divinum Mysterium, Kenneth Eberhard’s The Road to Las Cruces and Kevin Putz’s Obsessive Nature. Frederic Rzewski’s Coming Together will round out the program.

Image reproduced from: Terence, P Terentii Aphri Comico[rum] elegantissimi comedie (1505)

Department of Special Collections
“The Book in the Age of Theater, 1550-1750”
Monday, Jan. 22-Monday, April 9
8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Monday-Friday; 9 a.m.-12:45 p.m. Saturday
Special Collections, Regenstein Library, 1100 E. 57th St. 702-8705. Free.
This exhibition will explore the relationship between the printed book and the theater in Europe, specifically in 17th-century France, in Golden Age Spain and in Elizabethan, Jacobean and Restoration England. The dynamic between the two realms raises unusually rich and suggestive problems because of the unique status of the dramatic text as both a script for living performances and a literary work for private reading. Through a display of printed plays and related books from the period, this exhibition will explore such key issues as the visualization of the theatrical experiences through frontispieces and page layout, the publicizing of theatrical court festivities in sumptuous fetes-books and the birth of modern drama criticism.

Hay Fever

Court Theatre
Hay Fever
Wednesday, Jan. 24-Sunday, March 4. Previews are Wednesday, Jan. 24 through Friday, Feb. 2, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays; 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays; and 2:30 p.m. on Sundays. Regular performances run from Saturday, Feb. 3 through Sunday, March 4. Regular performance times are the same as for the preview performances, with the addition of a performance at 3 p.m. on Saturdays. There will be one weekday matinee performance at 2 p.m. on Thursday, March 1.
Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. (773) 753-4472. $24-$38. $9 student rush tickets may be available on the day of the show.
Court Theatre turns its attention to the theatrical world of the 1920s for Noel Coward’s 1925 masterpiece Hay Fever, directed by Gary Griffin, Associate Artistic Director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Court’s production of this comedy classic filled with Coward’s trademark wit and sophistication, as well as biting commentary on the theatrical profession, stars the “first couple of Chicago theater,” Paula Scrofano and Resident Artist John Reeger, as Judith and David Bliss.