April - May Highlights

Doc Films
Lucky Dragons performance and films by Albert Lamorisse and Rose Lowder
7 p.m. Tuesday, May 5

Lucky Dragons, a Los Angeles-based experimental music group, has released nearly two dozen records, CDs and EPs since forming in 1999. Their mixture of live and computer sounds create music that is both conceptually rich and often mysteriously beautiful. Their utopian performance style involves improvisation and audience participation. The event features Lamorisse’s film The Red Balloon, winner of the 1956 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, even though it includes almost no dialogue. French experimental filmmaker and painter Rose Lowder brings her pictorial gifts to cinema in vivid and exciting work, perfectly suited to Lucky Dragon’s sensibilities. The program also will include Lowder’s Bouquets 21-30 (2001-05), Voiliers et Coqulicots (2001), Scènes de la vie française: Avignon (1986), and Scènes de la vie française: La Ciotat (1986). Cost is $5. For more information on Lucky Dragons, visit http://www.myspace.com/luckydragons.
Ida Noyes Hall, 1212 E. 59th St.

Court Theatre
The Piano Lesson
Thursday, May 7 through Sunday, June 7

Master playwright August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play is the story of two siblings’ struggle to come to terms with their inheritance and the ghosts of their dead. The work is Wilson’s 1930s entry in his monumental 20th-century play cycle—a rich family history with origins in slavery is carved into the wood of the piano that could be Boy Willie’s ticket to self-sufficiency or Berniece’s legacy to her daughter. Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson will direct. University of Chicago Student Night will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, May 14, with free pizza and soda after the show along with a discussion featuring members of the cast, staff and University faculty and alumni. For tickets, call (773) 753-4472 or visit www.courttheatre.org.
5535 S. Ellis Ave.

Renaissance Society
“Several Silences”
Through Sunday, June 7

Titled after an essay by the late French theoretician Jean-François Lyotard, “Several Silences” is an investigation into various kinds of silence. As a discourse, the aesthetic of silence ha been thoroughly domesticated within the visual arts. Although silence arose out of conditions calling for the negation of art, it has subsequently become a familiar subject—no longer the avant-garde ideal it once was. This is not to say silence has lost significance; if anything, it has become a more potent antidote to a culture of distraction. “Several Silences” features two works taking “Two Times 4’33,” one of the 20th century’s most notorious art works in medium, as their subject. Hamza Walker, curator, will lead a gallery tour at noon Sunday, May 2.
5811 S. Ellis Ave.

Artspeaks Series
Kara Walker conversation and discussion
7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 13

Walker, a visual artist on the faculty of Columbia University’s MFA program, is known for exploring the raw intersection of race, gender and sexuality through her iconic, silhouetted figures. Walker will reflect on her work in a presentation and dialogue Amy Dru Stanley, Associate Professor in History, whose research and teaching focus on capitalism, slavery and emancipation, and the historical experience of moral problems. Tickets are $20, $5 for students. For more information, call (773) 792-8080 or visit http://artspeaks.uchicago.edu.
Kent Hall, 1020 E. 58th St., Room 107