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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (April 13, 1978)
Representatives from Findhorn, one of the world's most famous and interesting new age communities, will be speaking and conducting a workshop this weekend. Gordon Davidson and Corinne McLaughlin will speak on “Findhorn and Planetary Transformation” tommorrow at 7:30 p.m. in the Unitarian Fellow ship Hall, 40th and Donald. Donation is $3. Saturday and Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the two will present a “Weekend Experience in Spiritual Community” at the Faculty Club Building, 13th and University. The weekend costs $24. The event is sponsored by the Cascadian Regional Library, 485-0366_ If you don’t know by now, the Saturday Market is open for business again. Entertainment this week is Tommy Smith at 1 p.m. and the Family Circus at 2 p.m_The Fifth Annual Hobby Fair is scheduled for Portland’s Memorial Coliseum April 22 and 23 from noon to 8 p.m. Over 50 exhibits are planned ... Volunteer dancers, dance groups, student groups, dance teachers and other interested persons are being sought to participate in a spring dance festival planned in Eugene June 3 and 4. The event will be sponsored by Eugene Dance and the Eugene Parks and Recreation Department. Interested people should call 687-5311,344-9524, or 344-1800 .... Coming up at Portland's Civic Auditorium: the Sweet Adelines regional convention Friday and Saturday; the Oregon Symphony Pops Orchestra Sunday and Monday, and Chet Atkins on Wednesday ... At the Paramount, Harry Chapin will be performing on April 21 and Bob Welch on April 24_ In Eugene, Esther Phillips will be at The Place April 21-22... and the Fourth Annual Bluegrass Festival at Lane County Fairgrounds will be presented April 28-30. Headlining will be John Hartford_ " The Community Center for the Performing Arts is now offer ing a poster hanging service to individuals and organizations. Cost is $2 per route for non-profit organizations and $2.50 per route general charge, and 13 routes are offered. Contact Amanda Wilcox or Alex Dunnetee at 687-2476_ The latest on the luau this Saturday: starting time is 6 p.m. Tickets for the Hawaii Club’s event are $5.50 general, $5 for students, and $3.50 for children, and are available at the EMU Main Desk, in front of the bookstore, outside the fishbowl and at Meier and Frank's_ TheThunderbird Motor Inn’s first Cabaret production starting April 21 will be an original — Eugene, We Kinda Love You!, written and directed by Tom Gressler_ Hear and Now is edited by Eric Maloney and Jerril Nilson. All contributions are welcome, but should be submitted one week prior to the event or on the Monday prior to expected publication. All contributions to Out and About MUST be submitted the Friday before publication EMU Cultural Forum presents The Annual Undergraduate Art Show April 24 - 28 12-4 pm 167 EMU The Following Guidelines Should Be Followed When Submitting A Work: 1. Each artist may submit a total of two works. They may be drawings, photographs, paintings or self-standing sculpture. All pieces must be properly mounted, and 2-dimensional works no larger than 4’ x 4’. 2. Each entry must have an entry card and jury card filled out; the entry card must be returned to the Forum by April 21 (Fri day). Jury cards should be attached to the works. Cards are available in Suite 2, EMU. 3. Pieces must be brought to Room 167 EMU between 3 and 4 pm Saturday, April 22. The works will be juried and rejected works should be picked up between 5 & 6 pm Sunday. 4. The pieces may be picked up after the show on Friday evening, April 28, between 6:30 & 7:30 pm. D O O P University production sets landmarks in Argentine play By DAN WEBSTER The stage is bare, except for two hollow box-like structures. On the left side stands a small musician’s platform with two chairs and various percussive in struments. As a backdrop there is a large multicolor mural of a city scene, with a lone figure wander ing through empty streets. Six other murals, rolled up like win dow shades, surround the stage. The lighting is muted, causing the blues, browns and greens of the painted city to blend into — what? New York? Chicago? Buenos Aires? Suddenly, six figures emerge from the audience and stride pur posefully across the stage, each to a specific position: two to the musician’s stands, the others to stand or sit around the boxes. One beat, two, the strum of a guitar — and the play begins. Friday night’s University Theatre production of Osvaldo Dragun's Historias para ser Con tadas (Stories to be Told) marks two landmark occurences in re cent university theater experi ence. One is the presentation of a play by one of the best known Latin American playwrights, Argentina's Osvaldo Dragun. The other is that the play is directed by Lowell Fiet, the man responsible for last spring’s riveting University Theatre offering of Mother Cour age. It’s difficult to decide which event is more important. An assistant professor in the Oregon speech department, Lowell Fiet is an anomaly. While other directors mount more and more lavish productions, Fiet cuts his to the bare necessities. While other directors consider it a badge of honor to present a main season production in the barn-like atmos phere of Robinson Theatre, he prefers the intimacy of Villard Hall’s Pocket or Arena theatres. While other directors watch ticket prices rise higher and higher, Fiet insists that his shows be as inex pensive as possible. And while other “directors" revel in the dubi ous distinction of that title, Fiet adamantly insists that he is “an academician in the theater rather than a practitioner." But probably the biggest differ ence between Fiet and his col leagues is in the choice of material they select. In the program notes to Mother Courage, Fiet wrote, “the Univer sity Theatre’s responsibility is to the field or “art” itself and the goal to strive for standards established by the most critically valid con temporary thought about the na ture and function of theatre and by what is socially and culturally most urgent. By nearly all definitions, theatre remains an overt social act and as such it must comment on social, cultural and historical pro cesses.” To a certain extent, all four of last year's main season produc tions had the potential to fulfill these requisites. But for one reason or another, only Mother Courage did so. Macbeth was so poorly con ceived that almost nothing of im port came across. In The Time of Your Life, the character of a union dock worker, Saroyan's only attempt at social commentary, was cut for inexplic able reasons. And The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, while an interesting study of the passions of a spinsterish Scottish schoolteacher, was un fortunately staged as little more than a melodrama in which the most memorable scene was a careful bit of nudity that left the would-be sophisticated audience tittering. But Mother Courage lived up to every expectation that Fiet held for it. Because what he was able to do was capture the political rele vance of the play — the current political relevance. In Fiet’s hands, as Brecht intended, the play became much more than just a struggle for survival in 17th Cen tury Germany. Rather, it spoke as well to anyone who suffered through all the painful bullshit of the Vietnam war, six years of Richard Nixon, the race and anti-war riots, Watergate, etc., etc. And though it wasn’t well re ceived by the local critics, Brecht never is. He’s too political; too much of a “polemicist.” And, as one reviewer condescendingly worded it, Fiet's production was “the sort of play in which the ac tors shamble onstage at the be ginning, fully visible to the audi ence, chatting with each other, donning parts of their costumes, doing limbering-up exercises and so forth." But enough of such ignorance. Its only importance is that it is the same type of inanity that will prob ably be levied at Dragun and his political comments, and again at Fiet and his attempts to interpret Dragun’s play. Because there are similarities to Brecht in Dragun's style. For one, they both deal in the same themes: the effects of soci ety, especially economic effects, cxi the individual. Just as Anna Fierling describes the Thirty Years War alternately as a plague and a glorious chance for prosperity, and ultimately claims that she didn’t have a choice, that any reasonable person would have done the same as she, one of Dragun’s characters jumps at the chance to earn 5,000 pesos a month in order to supply tainted meat to the people of South Africa and then later claims that, under the circumstances, he also didn't have a choice, and that if he had it all to do over again he still doesn’t know for sure what his decision would be. “After all,” he says, “5,000 pesos is 5,000 pesos." For another, the structure of Dragun’s play is told in short story form similar to Brecht's use of Epic Theatre. The difference is that Brecht’s plays, like Mother Cour age, are split into several acts that weave together into a continuous narrative. Dragun’s Historias, on the other hand, are three separate stories that are linked together only by theme. “The Story of the Abscessed Tooth,” "The Story of Our Friend Panchito Gonzalez Who Felt Responsible for the Out break of Bubonic Plague in South Africa," and “The Story of the Man Who Turned into a Dog,” all reflect the pitfalls of economic oppres sion, and what ends a person will go to in order to scratch a living And as for Fiet's part, he has further brought the two play wrights together by incorporating music into the production, a Brechtian convention. For the music, Fiet has employed the ser vices of the talented Lee Heuer mann, who co-authored the score for Fiet’s Mother Courage. Oscar Oragun’s Historias para ser Contadas, (Stories to be Told), a University Theatre pro duction, will be performed in ViI lard Hall’s Arena Theatre April 14, 15 and 19, 20, 21, 22 under the direction of Lowell Fiet. All tickets are $1.25. Performances are at 8 p.m. Ticket information can be ob tained at the Robinson Theatre ticket office, or by calling 686-4191, Monday through Fri day, noon to 5 p.m. In Concert inti-illimani 4 Chile’s Musicians in Exile SUNDAY APRIL 16 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm EMU Ballroom —) l TICKETS: Matinee: $4°° in advance, SS°° at door; Evening: S5°» in advance, $6°° at door AILABLE. EMU Mam Desk, Sun Shop, Everybody’s. Odyssey Records. SPONSORED by the EMU Cultural Forum. Chilean Support Committee. Eugene Comm.ttee lor a Free Chile
