Thursday 13
THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK. It's a first for the city of Sierra Vista's Hauser Museum--an exhibit collaboratively hosted by the city's Parks and Leisure Department and Zamani Refuge African Culture Center.
The show brings together a mix of African art, artifacts and Black Americana, plus a display on the Human Genome project where local kids interpret the idea of sameness in the midst of apparent differences. Local residents have donated artifacts to the show, plus there's a video oral history of Sierra Vista's African-American pioneers.
But the collection of artifacts comes mostly from Los Angeles' Museum in Black. It's the first traveling show of its kind with everyday objects, many of which hold a spiritual sway. Black Americana mirrors the degradations of slavery, but also the African relationship to the earth as mother, as home and the connection to the spirit world.
Expand your knowledge of the history of Black Americans not only in Cochise County, but beyond. Museum hours are Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Fridays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The show continues through Feb. 28 and the Hauser Museum is located in Sierra Vista at 2950 E. Tacoma St. Call (520) 417-6980 for directions or information.
Friday 14
CUPID'S LISTENING. Celebrate Valentine's Day with an evening of sultry blues featuring our own Arizona Blues Hall of Famer and a boogie woogie keyboardist/singer from the Netherlands.
Lisa Otey and Mr. Boogie Woogie team up again to play tunes from their new CD, simply titled, Boogie Woogie Baby. They're joined by locals Hurricane Carla on sax, Danny Krieger on guitar, Steve Grams on bass and Jon Westfall on drums. When these folks get together, they play foot-stomping music sprinkled with a love song here and there.
Tickets cost $12 in advance at Hear's Music, Antigone Books, all Zia locations or $10 for members of TBS, TJS, TKMA and KXCI. (You know the acronym, you're a member.) Get tickets at the door for $15 or call (800) 594-TIXX. The smoke-free show starts at 8 p.m. at the Rialto Theater, 318 E. Congress St. Proceeds go to help with the restoration of the aging theater.
A LOVE STORY ON THE MOST ELEMENTAL LEVEL. Wo De Fu Qin Mu Qin. Translated that means, "The Road Home," and also happens to be the title of a 1999 film by Chinese director Zhang Yimou.
Yimou has extraordinary versatility. His 1987 film, Red Sorghum, was an epic tale that spanned 30 years of Chinese history in the 20th century. A few years later, he came out with Raise the Red Lantern that took a domestic theme, the story of the "fifth wife," and offered a stunning critique of Chinese society. And in The Shanghai Triad, Yimou churned out a brilliant gangster flick.
The Road Home is again a departure in style, this time delicately weaving a love story in superlatives. It's the tale of a young girl who becomes infatuated by the voice of the new teacher in the village. Their story is remembered by their son, but it's also already woven within the fabric of village life, a life that remains whole despite the encroachment of modernity.
The free screening starts at 7:30 p.m., part of the weekly International Arts Society Film series held at the UA's Modern Languages Auditorium, located just below Second Street near Mountain Avenue. Free parking is available in Zone 1 lots or at meters.
DANCING HEARTS, PSYCHIC FULL MOONS. Take a sweetie (yours or someone else's, we don't care) to Bisbee's Club Kilimanjahro Valentine's Day Dance tonight from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m.
The Tucson band Bass Culture offers upbeat reggae and ska tunes. (We know how creative you can be when you try to move to that music.) Suggested donation at the door is $7 and the club is located next to the Bisbee Chamber of Commerce and Visitor's Center in Old Bisbee.
Find a cozy B & B and stay the night so you can get up early for the 11 a.m. start of the Valentine's Day/Full Moon Psychic Fair and Gift Show on Saturday at 55 Main Gallery, located at (you guessed it) 55 Main St. in Old Bisbee. John Galleher offers astrological readings as well as readings from tarot; Mackenzie offers palmistry; clairvoyant and spiritual counselor Linda Romano tells you what to expect, post V-day; and Angel Runninghawk, Native American shaman, healer and transmedium, advises for the day. All readings cost $15. Reserve an appointment or find out more information by calling (520) 432-3726.
Saturday 15
Get Your War On! Are you sick of having that faux Texan that you didn't even vote for wage global war in your name?
Meet a trio of peace-loving Americans at a community forum to bitch about the whole chaotic miasma. Panelists include local writer Mark Zepezauer. His newest book is Boomerang! How Our Covert Wars Have Created Enemies Across the Middle East and Brought Terror to America (an all-encompassing subtitle). Fourteen blistering chapters tell the tangled story of U.S. interventions and why we're just not the most popular kids in the schoolyard anymore.
Otis Carney, who hails from Bonita, Ariz., is a prolific political writer. His new book, Wars R' Us: Taking Action for Peace, talks truth about how the numbing onslaught of war propaganda makes us all feel powerless to stop the United States-fed (and -led) violence and maintains our couch-potato mantra of war-as-the-only-solution. He suggests ways each patriotic American can demand changes in our political system.
Tucsonan Nancy Mairs rounds out the panel. She's a writer, feminist and political activist, author of The Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories, a collection of essays confronting our cultural unease over death in its many forms. A longtime war protester, Mairs has spent decades fighting for peace.
Join in the discussion beginning at 2 p.m. at Reader's Oasis, located at 3400 E. Speedway Blvd. The program is free and open to all. Call 319-7887 with questions.
LOVE, LOYALTY, FRIENDSHIP. In a world seemingly far removed from reality, set in an idyllic forest, where else could you find young lovers in pursuit of happiness, brother fighting against brother, women dressed as men and a quadruple wedding? Nowhere but in one of Shakespeare's most brilliant and joyous comedies.
As You Like It finds Duke Senior usurped by his wicked brother, while his daughter, Rosalind, is banished from the court. Dressed as a boy to protect herself from the evils of the dense trees, she stumbles upon Orlando. Of course she falls for him, but she's dressed as a boy, so she has to convince him that she can cure him of his lovesickness by pretending to be Rosalind and allowing him to court her.
There are many more plot twists plus cameos by a courtly fool, a lovesick shepherd and Hymen, the God of marriage. Live Theater Workshop presents the frolicking mess in performances on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. through March 23. Tickets range from $12 to $14. This week's previews take place on Thursday and Friday, Feb. 13-14 for $9.
The theater is located at 5317 E. Speedway Blvd. Call the box office at 327-4242 for reservations or details.
LIGHT RAINFALL, CATACLYSMIC THUNDER. The Japanese drummers of Kodo produce sound fusion as light as drizzling rain and as thunderous as a hurricane.
Parse their name and it contains two characters that literally mean drum and child. It's their desire to play the drum purely, with the heart of a child and the sound resembling a mother's heartbeat as felt in the womb.
UApresents brings the acclaimed drummers for one performance only at 8 p.m. tonight at Centennial Hall. Their ability to transcend the barriers of language and custom is evident in wave after wave of percussive sound--rooted in tradition yet invigorated in contemporary spirit and energy. "Their sound stretches from pleasant laughter to discordant fear, from silence to a wall of sound," raves The Guardian.
Centennial Hall is located on University Boulevard just inside UA's Main Gate at Park Avenue. The local taiko drummers, Odaiko Sonora, host a free Arts Encounter at 7:15 p.m. in the Social Sciences auditorium. Tickets cost $18 to $48. Call the box office for reservations or details at 621-3341.
Sunday 16
BATHROOM ON THE RIGHT. Many a stoner in the '70s mistook what Creedence Clearwater Revival was crooning.
And now, as Creedence Clearwater Revisited, two of the band's original songwriters have taken their Bad Moon Rising rock classic on the road. Stu Cook and Doug Clifford actually founded CCR, singing such tunes as Suzy Q, Proud Mary, Who'll Stop the Rain and Lodi. Their show is a veritable late-night infomercial of rock classics available nowhere else, including 10 of the band's singles that reached the Top 10 in just three years, from '68 to '71.
Tonight's concert starts at 7 p.m. at Centennial Hall, located just inside UA's Main Gate on University Boulevard. It's a benefit for the University's Hillel Foundation and honors community leader Alice Baker. Tickets cost $35 to $45. Call 621-3341 to get yours.
Monday 17
CONNECT THE DOTS. In a recent interview, Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congressperson from Washington, D.C., said that it wasn't until she got to college in the '50s that she heard about this awful event called the Holocaust--a mere decade after one of the most heinous crimes in Western culture. Educated in segregated D.C., Norton's own African-American heritage was blind-sided--no one thought to connect the oppression of one group of people to another.
The UA's Hillel Foundation is doing just that--a week devoted to making connections--with their 11th annual conference on the Holocaust.
Starting at 1 p.m. today, there's a Memorial Vigil where students read aloud 22,000 names of victims of the Holocaust. At 2 p.m., join in the discussion with UA Judaic Studies professor Marc Krell about Jewish and Christian responses to the events some 60 years ago. At 5 p.m., there's Talmudic study with Rabbi Israel Becker.
Later in the week, there are film screenings and discussions. On Thursday, Feb. 20, at 4:45 p.m., Jewish, Muslim and Christian students who've created a mural install the first phase of the project. Personal stories from survivors--their numbers are dwindling and their stories die with them--and remembrance services take place on Thursday and Friday.
Events are free and open to all. To find out exact times and locations, visit www.uahillel.org or call 624-6561.
Tuesday 18
THIS NEW HOUSE. Nestled in the luxurious gated community of Sabino Mountain is a 3,497-square-foot, multi-bedroom Monterey Home. It features a flexible open design, boasts a tile entry, views through the living area to the landscaped back yard, a large kitchen, a den (or fourth bedroom), a master bedroom and lots of bathrooms.
Want to win it? How about just a chance to peek inside?
The Tucson Museum of Art League's Designer Showhouse 2003 opens its elegant doors to the public today at 10 a.m. and stays open through March 30. In April, the house goes up for Grand Prize in the Estate of the Art Raffle House fund-raiser.
The home is the end-result of the creativity and energy of 23 Tucson top designers. Come fantasize living in grand style, view the house and meet the designers. The entry fee is $15 (or fork over $125 for a raffle ticket). Today through Sunday, munch on a catered lunch in the adjacent pavilion (reservations must be made the day before at 760-6008).
Get entry tickets at the Tucson Museum of Art, House 'N Garden, Marc's New West Interior, Studio Encanto or call 624-2333.
Wednesday 19
ONE-ACT, TIMES TWO. Invisible Theater offers a double-feature of one-act plays that dove-tail well together.
Walking Between Worlds weaves ritual, prayer, chant, audience participation and storytelling. Written and performed by Artist-Educator To-Reé-Neé Wolf Keiser, the play meanders through the thickets of Dream Time using prose and song. Keiser incorporates events in her own life and the broader world we live in.
The piece is a premiere for Keiser, who was most recently seen as Elizabeth Borny in IT's season opener The Old Settler. She's been a core member of the Bad Girl Storytelling Brigade in Tucson for the last decade.
Act II features a performance based on the acclaimed Sandra Cisneros book, The House on Mango Street. Leigh-Ann Santillanes nabs the lead--a tracing of Esperanza Cordero's coming-of-age in her Chicago Latino neighborhood. Santillanes came to Tucson in 2001 and this performance marks her debut with IT. She's appeared in productions with Borderlands Theater and Live Theater Workshop.
The double-feature opens tonight and continues through Saturday. Shows start at 7:30 p.m.(at 8 p.m. Friday) and there's a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday. Tickets cost $16 with discounts for student groups. The theater is located at 1400 N. First Ave. Call the box office for reservations or details at 882-9721.
