FESTIVAL OF THE "AVANT-GARDE"
Sandi Shackelford, chair of the Department of Theater and co- creator of the event, calls the four-day festival “a celebration of the off-beat, the cutting edge, the lunatic fringe, the alternative and experimental of the 20th century.” The festival will present both a historical homage to the 20th-century avant-garde – represented by short works by playwrights Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Megan Terry, among others – and a sampling of new original work by Coastal students, faculty and community members.
The festival kicks off Wednesday, April 18 at 4 p.m. in Wheelwright Auditorium with a talk by Hercule Vandergrift of the Universite de Kafkasel in Belgium titled “Defining Avant-garde.” Performances follow in Wheelwright Auditorium.
Harry Miller, professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina, will deliver the festival’s keynote address, “Art Today – What is it?” on Thursday, April 19 at 4 p.m. in Wheelwright Auditorium. Teresa Burns, assistant professor of chemistry and physics at Coastal, will give a talk titled “Einstein Naked: Relativity Revealed” following the keynote address.
Mladen Milicevic, a composer of film music and professor of music at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, will speak on “Avant- garde Thinking about Music: Making Sense of Sound” Saturday, April 21 at 4 p.m. in Wheelwright Auditorium. Performances follow.
For more information, contact the Wheelwright Box Office at 349- 2502.