ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 25, 1997 TAG: 9704250026
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: out & about
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS
On Nov. 24, 1941, a camp was set up in the 18th-century fortress of the Bohemian town of Theresienstadt.
It was to become one of the most shameful of the Nazi concentration camps.
Many of the Jews sent there were deported from Vienna, Prague, Berlin and other cities of Western Europe. Many were women, children and old people.
They died at Theresienstadt.
Their spirit did not.
"Songs and Lives: The Art of Spiritual Resistance" is Virginia Tech's tribute to those whose lives transcended the Holocaust. The multimedia program is Sunday at 7 p.m. in Squires Student Center's Haymarket Theatre.
The Audubon Quartet will perform music that originated from behind the gates of concentration camps, particularly Theresienstadt. The music accompanies a program written and directed by Andy Belser, assistant director of Tech's Honors Program.
"I got together with the Audubon Quartet," Belser explained, "because we wanted to present the human story surrounding this music."
"We're trying to look at individual lives," he said. "We're trying to tell the story of hope, not horror."
The Audubon Quartet will play works by composers who may be unknown to you - Gideon Klein, Egon Ledec, Hans Krasa, Zikmund Schul, Frantisek Domazlicky and Pavel Haas.
Haas, like many others, died in the concentration camp.
"He would have been a household name as a composer," Belser noted.
Sunday's program also includes performances by actors in Tech's theater department and some words from Holocaust survivor John Marek, now a resident at Warm Hearth Village.
Belser even found poetry written by little ones who spent their childhood in the camps. "The Butterfly," a poem written in 1942 by a child at Terezin, is one of the pieces on the program:
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzingly yellow,
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone ...
Such, such a yellow
Is carried way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished to
kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto,
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
in the ghetto.
Sunday's program is free and open to the public. Donations will be accepted at the door.
HUMAN NATURE: Moliere found it laughable, ludicrous and lacking.
The French playwright pokes fun at human nature in his comic expose of 17th-century life and manners, "The Misanthrope." It's the current Virginia Tech Theatre Arts-University Theatre production.
The play concerns Alceste (played by Dennis Price) and his belief that complete, unadulterated honesty is the only way to avoid living a two-faced life. He detests the superficiality of high society, yet falls in love with Celimene (Alison Latta), a stylish coquette who embraces it.
It's thought that Moliere based Alceste's and Celimene's conflicting relationship on his own unhappy marriage to Armande Bejart. As in most of his work, "The Misanthrope" shows the absurd disparity between how people see themselves and how others see them.
The comedy (costumed and staged with historical accuracy) shows tonight and Saturday at 8 in Squires Studio Theatre. Tickets are $8 for adults or $6 for students and senior citizens. Call 231-5615 for reservations.
RUMORS ARE FLYING: Playmakers & Company community theater's newest production, "Rumors," opens tonight at University Mall in Blacksburg. The Neil Simon farce is directed by Steve Brown with assistant Jane Browning.
If you like a comedy that moves at the speed of light, you'll like this one.
Shows are tonight and Saturday at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 2 in Playmakers Playhouse. The production continues weekends through May 11.
Advance tickets are available at the Easy Chair Coffee Shop in the mall. The cost is $7 for adults, $5 for students and senior citizens.
BURSTING OUT: The violins, the cymbals, the flutes - they'll all be bursting out in sound tonight when the New River Valley Symphony takes the stage of Virginia Tech's Burruss Hall.
Jim Glazebrook will lead the orchestra in performances of works from Sergey Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Johannes Brahms' Academic Festival Overture and others. The concert features a solo by Virginia Tech student Noriko Okabe, piano, on Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto in G.
"I love Romantic music, like Ravel, but I also like jazz," Okabe said, "and this concerto by Ravel is so jazzy I immediately fell in love with it."
Tickets for tonight's concert are $5 for adults or $3 for students and senior citizens. They're available at the box office in Squires Student Center or you may pay at the door.
REACAIRE: How do you pronounce it?
Rack-er-ah
What is it?
It's an ancient Celtic role, the reciter who accompanied the bard.
And who is the reacaire?
She's Treasa O'Driscoll - actress, storyteller, singer, maker of magic.
O'Driscoll, an authentic Irish performer who commands an audience wherever she goes, will visit Blacksburg for several performances. You can catch her program, "Speech of the Heart," tonight at Christ Episcopal Church and again Tuesday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall. Both shows start at 8. Admission is $12 for adults or $6 for students.
O'Driscoll will also present a workshop, "Living Poetry in the Presence of Paradox," during her local visit. It runs from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall. The fee is $45. Call Robert Turner Jr., 552-4729, for more information.
APRIL IS ... flowers, showers, lots of things. Most importantly, April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.
To bring awareness of the need to stop the abuse and neglect of children, the Giles Multidiscipline Team has organized a special community event. The annual "Celebrity Night" dinner is Saturday at Anna's Restaurant in Narrows. Seatings are available from 5 to 7 and from 7 to 9.
Local "celebrities" will serve up your choice of chicken or barbecue with veggies and iced tea. Dinners are $6 per plate for adults or $3 per plate for children. Door prizes and live entertainment are part of the excitement, too. Rocky Thorne, the River's Edge, Heather Huffman and the Virginia Tech Jazz Combo are donating their musical talents.
The local luminaries participating include Police Chief Bill Whitsett, school Principal Dean Rowe and Mayor Don Richardson. All together, 22 local celebs will be there to help with this good benefit.
LENGTH: Long : 135 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) O'Driscollby CNB