Calendar Highlights

Strindberg's Miss Julie to open Nov. 13 at Court Theatre (with photo)

"Miss Julie," originally scheduled to open on Monday, Nov. 14, will open at 7 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 13, at Court Theatre. The play, which began previews earlier this week, will continue its run through Dec. 18.

Carmen Roman directs and Kate Collins plays the leading role in August Strindberg's tragic tale of forbidden passion and social constraint. The play also stars Johnny Lee Davenport as Jean, Julie's forbidden love interest.

"A biracial cast will give modern American audiences an emotional parallel to the class barriers Strindberg portrayed," Roman said. "We're re-adapting the location of the play from Strindberg's Sweden to the American Midwest and setting the characters' dilemmas in the history and immediacy of race divisions."

Guest director Roman is co-artistic director of American Blues Theater in Chicago. She most recently directed the critically acclaimed Real Women Have Curves for Victory Gardens Theater.

See the Continuing section of the Calendar for ticket prices and information.

Highly acclaimed Pomerium to open Early Music Series

Pomerium, the 13-voice a cappella early-music ensemble described by the New York Times as "one of the finest early-music ensembles in the country and perhaps the world," will open the 1994-95 Howard Mayer Brown International Early Music Series at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11, in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel.

Directed by early-music scholar and conductor Alexander Blachly, Pomerium will present "Return to the Light," a program of music of the Italian Renaissance. The concert will include works by Guillaume Dufay, Josquin Desprez, Claudio Monteverdi and Carlo Gesualdo.

Pomerium has performed in numerous prestigious festivals, including the International Conference on Performance Practice, the Utrecht Early Music Festival, the San Antonio Early Music Festival, the Taege Alter Musik festival in Germany and the Boston Early Music Festival. In 1992, the group won the American Musicological Society's Noah Greenberg Award. Most recently, Pomerium has recorded vocal music by Antoine Busnoys on the Dorian label, and the ensemble will next record two compact discs with Deutsche Grammophon.

The International Early Music Series will continue with three concerts in Mandel Hall: Ensemble Project Ars Nova at 8 p.m. Friday, Dec. 2; the Locke Consort at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 24; and the Arcadian Academy at 8 p.m. Tuesday, March 14.

Subscriptions to the four-concert series are $66 (students $28). Individual tickets are $22, $19 or $17 (students $8). For tickets and information, call the Concert Office, 702-8068.

Free night of comedy Nov. 18

Home Box Office (HBO) and US Concepts, in conjunction with University Theater, will bring comedians and comic actors to campus to audition for the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival. Auditions will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, in the Francis X. Kinahan Theater in Reynolds Club. Members of the University community are invited to attend free of charge. Tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis with UCID in the University Theater box office beginning Monday, Nov. 14.

Three of the comedy troupes associated with University Theater -- Off-Off-Campus, Sheila and the cast of Sitcom -- will audition for the festival, which will be held in Aspen, Colo., next spring. The regular Friday-night performance of Off-Off-Campus has been rescheduled for 10 p.m. in University Church to accommodate the open audition.

The U.S. Comedy Arts Festival is a co-production of HBO and US Concepts, a New York-based company that produces large-scale comedy events, including Jerry Seinfeld's last three national tours.