MTU CAMPUS
Monday, March 17, from noon to 1:30pm, MTU CAMPUS - Walker 202.
Over the past 20 years, Sadashi Inuzuka, a "transcendent ceramic artist," will be on the MTU campus
in programs open to all the public.
Inuzuka used his visual impairment (he is almost blind) as a motivation to reach out to other disabled
individals, to help develop their own artistic identities. At Tech, he will help people to move beyond
their perceived creative limitations at a brown bag luncheon discussion - Monday, March 17, from
noon to 1:30pm, Walker 202.
On Tuesday, March 18, from 7 to 8pm, at the Noblet Forestry Building G002, he will give a lecture on
his current artistic endeavors, especially his "Whaletown" project.
At the University of Michigan, Inuzuka has been awarded the highest award, a U of M Thurnau Professorship, where he is considered a pioneer in the design & implementation of community engagement
courses - enabling students to see first-hand the role art can play in social change.
MTU EVENT - Rozsa Center
Wednesday, March 19, 2014 ~ Features one of Gilbert & Sullivan's prime musical comedies,
"H.M.S. PINAFORE," as a delightful introduction to the precursors of the American musicals.
It was the comedy duo's fourth comic operatic collaboration and their first international sensation in
which we learned of the pattern set for all their comic operas to round out decades of massive successes in the late 1800s.
The story, a romantic love tale between the daughter of the admiral and a common sailor, also takes a
hilarious blast at all things aboard a British ship, where as in many of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas,
a surprise disclosure changes things dramatically near the end of the story, to wrap up a tangle of
complications involving Victorian propriety and social status, fiercely lampooning the British class
system in general.
Mirth, satire, and silliness abound, following a pattern set by other G&S musicals, including the introduction, first, of the male chorus ("We sail the ocean blue"), followed by a female chorus and solos
("Poor Little Buttercup"), plunging into one satirical event after another to a patter song describing
the nature of officer responsibilities, winding up with a grand finale in which the entire company takes
a rousing part in concluding the fun.
"Pinafore" also pokes good-natured fun at patriotism, party politics, the navy, and the rise of unqualified people to positions of authority. (The title comically applies the name of a women's garment to the
fearsome symbol of a naval warship.)
Concern that the G&S operettas might suffer on the American stage vanished with the very first showing. Popularity in the U.S. reached magnificent heights, and in an on-again, off-again rise and fall in
popularity, still holds audiences whenever the most popular of the G&S shows were presented. In
New York, for example, where popularity has never died, there is still one production or another
somewhere in a borough theater today.
Here's the opportunity to be introduced to a sampling of a musical genre that will never die with this
traveling production at the Rozsa Center. For tickets and further information, call 487-2073.