ENTERTAINMENT NOTES

TheatreSquared will stage 4,000 Miles by Amy Herzog

A 21-year-old college dropout and his 91-year-old communist grandmother become unlikely roommates in her Greenwich Village apartment in 4,000 Miles by Amy Herzog, which Fayetteville theater company TheatreSquared opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Studio Theatre at Walton Arts Center’s Nadine Baum Studios, 505 W. Spring St., Fayetteville. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday through Oct. 13.

The show is recommended for audiences age 13 and older. Tickets are $15-$34; audience members under 30 may get in for $10 through the theater’s “30 Under 30” access program. Call (479) 443-5600 or visit the website, theatre2.org.

Conway ArtsFest

The Conway Alliance for the Arts will host its seventh annual Conway ArtsFest, a week of music, art, theater, dance, creative writing and film via local arts organizations and departments from Conway’s three colleges, starting at 7 p.m. Friday in Simon Park, Front and Main streets, Conway, and running through 10 p.m. Oct. 5.

Friday’s kickoff will feature the unveiling of a yarn-bombing piece by artist Julie Isom involving Conway’s red caboose. The Conway Symphony Orchestra will give a free concert at the park’s Kris Allen Stage at 7:30 p.m. (take lawn chairs).

The Arkansas Saxophone Quartet will put on a multimedia concert at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 1 at the Lantern Theater, 1021 Van Ronkle St., featuring The Modern Art Suite by Rusty Dedrick, Line Drawings After Mark Tobey by Samuel Adler and Heartbreakers by Jacob Ter Veldius, accompanied by projections of corresponding works of art and video.

The Manhattan-based Cassatt String Quartet will premiere Mary Cassatt: Scenes From Her Life by American composer Bruce Adolphe, 7:30 p.m. Oct. 3 in the Donald W. Reynolds Performance Hall, University of Central Arkansas, 201 Donaghey Ave., Conway. Inspiration for the piece, commissioned by the UCA College of Fine Arts and Communication, came from works at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.

Two sculptures by lightand-sound artist Jen Lewin will premiere at 5 p.m. Oct. 3: “The Pool,” an interactive light installation of 106 circular platforms that change as visitors move, at the UCA Alumni Circle at UCA; and “Chandelier Harps” in Simon Park, with which viewers can make music by “plucking” beams of light. Lewin will give a lecture at 1:30 p.m. in the Art Lecture Hall in UCA’s McCastlain Hall.

A full schedule is availableat artsfestconway.com or visit the Facebook page, facebook.com/ConwayArtsFest.

Chamber quintets

“Brahms the Romantic” is the theme for the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra’s first 2013-14 River Rhapsodies Chamber Series concert, 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Great Hall of the Clinton Presidential Center, 1200 President Clinton Ave., Little Rock.

Lyle Wong, clarinet, will join the orchestra’s Rockefeller Quartet - Geoffrey Robson and Trisha McGovern, violins; Katherine Reynolds, viola; and Daniel Cline, cello - for Johanes Brahms’ Clarinet Quintet in b minor, op.115.

Algimantas Staskevicius and Geoffrey Robson, violins; Ryan Mooney and Tatiana Kotcherguina, viola; and Rafael Leon, cello, will play the String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K.515, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. And Rick Dimond, vibraphone, and Norman Weinberg and Erick Saoud, marimba, will play Rain Tree by Toru Takemitsu.

Series sponsor is Parker Lexus. Tickets are $23, $10 for students. Call (501) 666-1761 or visit the website, ArkansasSymphony.org.

Bluegrass Monday

Banjo player Mike Sniderwill perform at 7 p.m. Monday at the Collins Theatre, 120 W. Emerson St., Paragould, part of Jonesboro public radio station KASU-FM, 91.9’s Bluegrass Monday concert series. The station will pass the hat to pay the band; suggested donation is $5 per person.

Joining Snider will be Brian Christianson (who has played fiddle with Ricky Skaggs), Roland White, Russ Barenberg and Frances Cunningham, a guitarist who also plays the Irish bouzouki.

Call (870) 972-2367, email [email protected] or visit the Bluegrass Monday Facebook page.

Staples tickets

Tickets - $35 for general admission pew seats, $20 for side-of-stage standing room - go on sale Monday for a show by gospel/soul singer Mavis Staples and her band at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 11 in the main sanctuary of Christ Episcopal Church, 509 Scott St., Little Rock. Call (501) 375-2342.

Staples recorded hits and anthems for the civil rights movement in the 1950s through the ’70s as a member of her family’s band, the Staple Singers, including her father’s composition, “Why Am I Treated So Bad,” inspired by the Little Rock Nine. The group also had hits with “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself.” She won a Grammy for her 2010 solo album You Are Not Alone; her album One True Vine came out earlier this year.

Film premiere

Danny (Chris Fritzges), the world’s worst comedian, has morning sickness when his wife (Courtney Bennett) tells him she’s pregnant in the feature film comedy Sympathy Pains. The film, written and directed by Joe Dull, associate professor of digital filmmaking at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, and filmed in 36 Arkansas locations, most of them in and around Conway, will have its world premiere at 7:30 p.m. Monday in the Reynolds Performance Hall at UCA.

Red-carpet events begin at 7. Admission is free. Call (501) 852-2377, email [email protected] or visit the website, sympathypainsthemovie.com.

Dance workshop

The Thea Foundation andArkansas Dance Network are sponsoring a dance workshop by Broadway hoofer Bill Hastings and Kathy Calahan, who recently finished a five-year run in Mary Poppins on Broadway, Oct. 12 at the Dance Studio and Haislip Theatre, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. University Ave., Little Rock. Workshop fee is $25. Register by Oct. 9 and find a complete schedule at theafoundation. org/dance.

Taking over podium

Geoffrey Robson, the associate conductor of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, will conduct the Conway Symphony Orchestra for its 2013-14 season. Robson will take over the podium while Music Director Israel Getzov “pursues professional opportunities and continues musician recruitment in China,” according to a news release.Getzov will return for the orchestra’s 2014-15, 30th anniversary season. Robson will also serve as visiting assistant professor of music at the University of Central Arkansas. Call (501) 269-1066 or visit the website, ConwaySymphony. org.

Style, Pages 47 on 09/22/2013

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