Creative Matters Lecture Series, 2017-2018
2017-2018 Creative Matters lecture series
The Creative Matters lecture series seeks to demonstrate that creativity is not only at the core of all research and discovery, but also central to our human experience. The exciting lineup of invited speakers includes artists, thinkers, builders, and doers who challenge conventional thinking about creativity, science, and artistic expression, and borrow from a range of influences and disciplines in their work.
Click here for the current Creative Matters lecture series lineup.
KJ Sanchez, playwright and director
Thursday, September 7, 2017
5:30 PM
Strauss Hall, Hancher Auditorium
Co-sponsored by Hancher
In this Creative Matters conversation, theater artist KJ Sanchez will discuss the work of her company American Records, which is dedicated to making theater that chronicles our time and serves as a bridge between people. Sanchez’s presentation will focus on two subjects of her recent work: the concussion crisis in American football, and immigrants and resettlement in the United States. She’ll explore what these two issues say about who we are as Americans.
Sanchez is the director, co-author and producer of the play ReEntry, which has been performed at theaters across the country as well as over 50 military bases and hospitals in the US and abroad, the author of X’s and O’s, a documentary about American Football. She is also an Associate Professor at UT Austin and head of the MFA Directing program.
Tobias Wolff, writer
Thursday, September 14, 2017
5:30 PM
Room 240 of Art Building West
Tobias Wolff’s books include the memoirs This Boy’s Life and In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War; the short novel The Barracks Thief; the novel Old School, and four collections of short stories. Born in Alabama in 1945, Wolff traveled the country with his peripatetic mother, finally settling in Washington State, where he grew up. He spent four years as a paratrooper, including a tour in Vietnam. Following his discharge he attended Oxford University in England. Returning to the United States, he worked variously as a reporter, a night watchman, a waiter and a high school teacher before receiving a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University in 1975. He is the Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor of English, Emeritus, at Stanford. In 2015 he received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama.
Camille Brown, choreographer
Friday, January 26, 2018
7:30 PM
Strauss Hall, Hancher Auditorium
Co-sponsored by Hancher
Camille Brown, a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow, creates choreography that utilizes musical composition as storytelling in order to investigate the silent space within the measure. Informed by her background as a clarinetist, she makes a claim on history through the lens of a modern Black female perspective and leads her dancers through excavations of ancestral stories, both timeless and traditional. She develops and teaches community-based dance and social justice activities that engage the Black community and Black allies. Most recently, her TED-Ed Talk A Visual History of Social Dance in 25 Moves was chosen as one of the most notable talks of 2016. Her work has been commissioned by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Philadanco!, Complexions and Urban Bush Women. Her theater credits as choreographer include Broadway’s A Streetcar Named Desire, and Fortress of Solitude, among many others.
Marin Alsop, conductor
Wednesday, March 28, 2018
5:30 PM
Voxman Recital Hall
Marin Alsop, music director of the Baltimore Symphony, made history in 2007 as the first woman to head a major American orchestra. Alsop is an inspiring and powerful voice in Baltimore and the international music scene, a music director of vision and distinction who passionately believes that “music has the power to change lives.” She is recognized across the world for her innovative approach to programming and for her deep commitment to education and to the development of audiences of all ages. Marin Alsop is the recipient of numerous awards and is the only symphony conductor to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, given to U.S. residents in recognition of exceptional creative work.
Taylor Mac in conversation with Garth Greenwell
Thursday, April 26, 2018
7 PM
Strauss Hall, Hancher Auditorium
Co-sponsored by Hancher
Taylor Mac “doesn’t just defy categorization; he makes the categories themselves seem irrelevant” (Time Out New York). As a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, and performance artist, Mac has created internationally award-winning performance events that at once provoke and embrace diverse audiences for nearly two decades. Mac’s work has been performed at Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn, London’s Hackney Empire (with the LIFT Festival), LA’s Royce Hall, San Francisco’s Curran Theater, Magic Theater and MOMA, the Sydney Opera House, Minneapolis’s Guthrie Theater, Chicago’s MCA and Steppenwolf Theater, Stockholm’s Sodra Theatern, the Spoleto Festival, and literally hundreds of other theatres, museums, music halls, opera houses, and festivals around the globe.
On April 28 at Hancher Auditorium, he will perform 24-Decade History of Popular Music (Abridged), a subjective history of the past 240 years since America’s founding, told through the music of the times.
Garth Greenwell, the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, will join him on stage as they discuss and demonstrate his creative process.