Coastal Carolina University's Department of Theater will attempt something a little different for its next offering. From Wednesday, April 18 to Sunday, April 22, Coastal will present "A Festival of the Avant-garde," featuring drama, dance, art, music, lectures and more. Tickets are $10, $5 for students under the age of 18. One ticket is good for all events. Coastal students, faculty and staff are admitted free.

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.