Come back to campus on Friday, Sept. 16th to help kick off the Redfern Art Center’s 30th year of bringing great performances to the Monadnock Region. The festivities run from 4–6 p.m. and are free and open to the public. The evening will include refreshments and performances by acclaimed contemporary dancer Adele Myers, Music Department artist-in-residence Don Baldini and professor and guitarist José Lezcano, and Theatre and Dance students Deirdre Lewis, Riley Ahern, and Amanda Jones.

You’ll also get a chance to meet the Redfern’s new director, Shannon Mayers.  If you’re coming, please RSVP to 603-358-2168 or boxoffice@keene.edu.

The Redfern has a brilliant program of performances scheduled to mark it’s big anniversary year. Come on back to hear all about it and get ready for the fun!

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This year’s Dr. Lila C. Murphy ’52 Women and Leadership Lecture Series will feature Sarah Weddington, who, in 1973, successfully argued the Roe v. Wade case before the US Supreme Court, giving women the constitutional right to privacy and the right to choose an abortion. Today, legislators are using the ongoing health care debate as an opportunity to severely restrict women’s access to abortion, or to overturn the landmark ruling altogether. Through her unique lens, Weddington examines the current abortion debate and provides insight into what it all means.

The lecture will be held on Wednesday, October 5, at 7:30 p.m. in the Mabel Brown Room (L.P. Young Student Center) and is free and open to the public.

Carleton Carpenter, one of the stars of the 1949 film, Lost Boundaries, will be in Keene on Monday, April 18th, at 7 p.m., to introduce a screening of the film and answer audience questions afterward. Lost Boundaries, produced by two-time Academy Award winner and New Hampshire resident Louis de Rochemont, was a ground-breaking film, one of the earliest post-war Hollywood films to depict African Americans as real subjects.

The film is based on the true story of the light-skinned African American doctor Albert Johnston who, with his family, moved to Keene and passed for white until his heritage was discovered during a Navy background check at the outbreak of the second world war. Shot in New Hampshire and Maine and starring Mel Ferrer, Beatrice Pearson, and Carleton Carpenter, Lost Boundaries won a Cannes Film Festival award and a New York Times award and played in midtown Manhattan for six months.

Continue reading Noted Character Actor to Introduce Historic Keene Film →

The KSC Chamber Singers, under the direction of Dr. Elaine Broad Ginsberg, participated recently in Together in Song, a competition that WGBY, the PBS station out of Springfield, MA, is hosting. This community-minded program celebrates the choral tradition of western New England in five categories: children’s choirs, high school choruses, college ensembles, small adult groups, and large adult ensembles. The Together in Song series first aired on March 19, and the KSC Chamber Singers will be featured in the program broadcast this Saturday, March 26, at 8 p.m., and again at 8:30 p.m.

This 10-part series is presented each Saturday, concluding on April 16. A panel of judges, as well as the viewing audience, will select four semi finalists from each category. All semi finalists will perform at the Together in Song Festival in downtown Springfield on April 30 and May 1. All performances will be broadcast live on WGBY.

On March 10, the Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies partners with the Lantos Foundation to present the Keene premier of Surviving Hitler: A Love Story.

The documentary presents a remarkable story of love, bravery, and determination, documented with rare historical footage. Jutta, a teenager in Nazi Germany, is shocked to learn she is Jewish. She joins the German resistance and meets Helmuth, an injured soldier, and the two become romantically entwined. They also become entangled in the Valykrie plot to assassinate Hitler. When the plot fails, the two are hunted, and theirs is a harrowing tale of war, resistance, and survival. Jutta herself narrates the story, and the movie includes rare 8mm footage that Helmuth took during the war years.

Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for non-students and can be purchased on-line at the Cohen Center website. The film starts at 7 p.m. in KSC’s Putnam Theater, and a ticket gets you admission to the 6 p.m. pre-film reception in the Thorne-Sagendorph Art Gallery, where you can meet Jutta Cords, the subject of the documentary.

The American College Dance Festival Association New England Conference is coming to the Redfern Arts Center from Wednesday to Saturday, March 9–12. The four-day event will open with a performance by the acclaimed New York choreographer Monica Bill Barnes. The conference, presented by KSC’s Theatre and Dance Department, will also include four adjudicated dance concerts highlighting the work of faculty, guest artists, and student choreographers, culminating with a special gala performance by guest artists.

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Rugby is a grueling, demanding game. Like most tough sports, if you’re a player, you gotta love it. Meghan Frechette, a Keene State senior, has gotta love it more than most, because she came up with the idea to play continuously for 24 hours to raise money to fight breast cancer and get her team’s name in the Guinness Book of World Records. The Owls will meet the women from the Williams College rugby team at 8 a.m., Sunday, April 24, at Cole Field on the Williams College campus.

So come on down to Williamstown, Mass., any time between 8 a.m. that Sunday and 8 a.m. on Monday (April 25) to cheer on these hardy souls, support Tackle for a Cure, and be part of a record-setting event. Can’t make the game? Use “comments” to drop them a line of encouragement. It will sure come in handy!

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