APSU brings arts and music to preschool-aged children

It isn't unusual to find a preschool-age child singing aloud or coloring a picture he or she painted. That's how young children have acted for centuries.

"In my opinion, children are innately musical and artistic at that age," Eric Branscome, assistant professor and coordinator of music education at Austin Peay State University, said. "They love drawing, they love coloring, they love singing, they love painting."

But with several preschools and child care centers doing away with music and arts programs, today's youngsters aren't getting much of an opportunity to delve into creative activities. A new APSU-sponsored program is looking to remedy this problem.

Beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Feb. 7, APSU faculty and students will host the Children’s Arts InterAction Program in the Children's Library of the Clarksville-Montgomery County Public Library. The program, which is free and open to all pre-school and early elementary aged children, will continue on the first Tuesday of each month throughout the semester.

"The program is basically targeting younger children, preschool-aged children, early elementary school-age children," Branscome said. "It will have music, singing time, music activities. A lot of our student organizations will be going over to perform for the kids. And at the end of the time, the (APSU) art education students will lead a craft or related art activity for the kids."

The activities will all be focused around literacy concepts developed by the library staff.

In addition to providing a valuable service for the community, the Children's Arts InterAction program will also help prepare APSU students for their future careers.

"One of the main reasons we wanted to start this, in addition to community outreach, was so that our students in music education and art education could get extra experience working with these young kids before they go out and do student teaching," Branscome said.

The program will meet at 4:30 at the library on the following days:

Feb. 7
March 6
April 10
May 8

For more information on Children’s Arts InterAction, contact Branscome at branscomee@apsu.edu or Jennifer Snyder, APSU assistant professor of art education, at snyderj@apsu.edu.

Roxy Presents Happily Ever After

Children in the audience will run the show when the Roxy Regional Theatre presents HAPPILY EVER AFTER at 2 pm Saturday matinees beginning January 14.

The children will have a say in choosing the order of the classic Brothers Grimm stories of "Snow White," "The Bremen Town Musicians," "The Hare and The Hedgehog," "The Elves and The Shoemaker" and "Hansel and Gretel," adapted for the stage by John McDonald and performed by Heather Anderson, Josh Bernaski, Travis Kendrick, Ashley Laverty and Brandon Meeks.

HAPPILY EVER AFTER plays Saturdays at 2pm, January 14 through February 11.

Tickets are $15 (adults) and $10 (ages 13 and under) and may be purchased online at www.roxyregionaltheatre.org, by phone at (931) 645-7699, or at the theatre during regular box office hours (9 am to 2 pm, Monday through Friday).

Online Exhibit expands to the Physical World

Have you ever remembered something that you never actually experienced? Maybe it was the vivid terrain of a place you haven't visited, or the familiar smile of someone you don't know. These strange recollections, arising from the millions of images we are exposed to on the Internet and television, fascinate the California-based artist McLean Fahnestock, and her new exhibit, 'Republic of Champions," examines the public's collective memory, created by our constant exposure to images in the media.

"I seek out footage, images and items that tap into the collective memory - recalling events that I never physically participated in but because of constant exposure through the media, I have absorbed as my own," Fahnestock said. "I select imagery from journalism, news and sports, paying close attention to examples of competition in all arenas, from politics to family."

The exhibit opens Jan. 12 on the website TERMINALapsu.org, a space sponsored by Austin Peay State University's Department of Art and the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts to showcase and examine Internet and new media art. It runs through Jan. 27.

"The characters that populate pageantry and politics, from astronauts to ice-skaters, are just as real as they are fictionalized," she said. "I actively search for the points where things open up and a gesture becomes a tell. It is that moment, the slight failure that taints a triumph and creates a blemish that with time and picking does not heal but becomes a fissure into which I shine my flashlight."

Fahnestock's work has been exhibited in New York, California, Tennessee, Indiana, Ireland, Japan and Canada. She is the recipient of grants from the Hoff Foundation, Arts Council for Long Beach and the Durfee Foundation.

Her "Republic of Champions" exhibit also begins a new phase for APSU’s online gallery, with the introduction of the Terminal Physical Space.

"We have dedicated a portion of the Trahern lobby (on the APSU campus) to present video/sound/new media work by national and international artists," Barry Jones, APSU associate professor of art, said.

Viewers can now either go online to check out Fahnestock’s work, or they can gather around a computer screen in the Trahern building to see the exhibit. Future TERMINALapsu.org exhibits will also be available in this space throughout the spring semester.

For more information on the artist or her online exhibit, contact Jones at jonesb@apsu.edu.

The video clips seem to be strung together randomly, with no connection to each other at all. They include a ship tossing in the waves of a storm, a close-up shot of a stuffed animal's eyes and a music video for the rock band Heart’s 1986 hit These Dreams."

But these aren't simply arbitrary videos compiled from the Internet. The media artist xtine burrough found the clips by typing keywords from Walt Whitman's 1865 poem commemorating the death of President Abraham Lincoln, "O Captain, My Captain," into the website YouTube. The resulting videos have been linked together to create a new piece of Web art, "O BROWSER, MY BROWSER," an allegory on "the impending death of the Web," she said.

The work is a part of a new exhibit, "Browser Poems by xtine burrough," which opened last month on the website TERMINALapsu.org, a space sponsored by Austin Peay State University's Department of Art and the Center of Excellence for the Creative Arts to showcase and examine Internet and new media art.

In addition to "O BROWSER, MY BROWSER," the exhibit offers new interpretations of two other classic works of American literature - Jack Kerouac's novel "On the Road" and Adrienne Rich's poem "Waiting For You at the Mystery Spot." Burrough created these works using hyper text markup language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS), both Web-based languages.

For the piece, "On the Web," she presents the original, single scroll of paper that Kerouac famously typed his novel on, but she replaces all instances of the word “road” with the word "browser."

In burrough's piece based on Rich’s poem "Waiting For You at the Mystery Spot," she invites viewers to find the "mystery spot" link on a screen featuring floating text from the poem. The link takes visitors to the website www.mysteryspot.com, which promotes a strange, alternative tourist destination in California.

Burrough, co-author of Digital Foundations (2009), is a renowned media artist who, according to the TerminalAPSU.org site, "uses social networking, databases, search engines, blogs and applications in combination with popular sites like Facebook, YouTube, or Mechanical Turk, to create web communities promoting interpretation and autonomy."

For more information on the artist or her online exhibit, contact APSU associate professor of art Barry Jones at jonesb@apsu.edu.

With the musical hit Beehive: The '60s Musical Sensation bringing down the house nightly through October 15, the Roxy Regional Theatre, Clarksville, has opened its 29th season of classics, musicals, regional premieres and world premieres.

For two nights only, October 21 and 22, New York actor Ashton Crosby brings his tour of Mark Twain: Adventures in American Humor back to the Roxy stage. Then on October 28 and 29, the infamous Mercury Theatre 1938 radio broadcast will be recreated live on stage with The War of the Worlds.

Fall at the Roxy brings the works of Charles Dickens with A Tale of Two Cities, November 4, 5, 11, 12*, 18, 19 and the Roxy's delightful holiday tradition A Christmas Carol, starring Artistic Director John McDonald, November 25, 26, December 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10*, 14, 15, 16, 17*.

After the holidays, audiences can look forward to The Vagina Monologues (back for the tenth year) on January 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27, 28 February 2, 3, 4 and presented in the theatre's otherspace; Happily Ever After, a stage adaptation of children's tales that will be presented at 2pm on January 14, 21, 28, February 4, 11; then, the hilarious musical revue I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change will pay tribute to those who have loved and lost and to those who have fallen on their face at the portal of romance on February 10, 11**, 15, 16, 17, 18**, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, March 1, 2, 3.

As the oldest theatre in Tennessee that annually produces with works of William Shakespeare, this season The Winter's Tale will spin its web on the stage on March 9, 10, 16, 17. Moises Kaufman's will play a limited run in the theatre's otherspace on March 21, 22, 23, 24, followed by John McDonald's adaptation of The Red Badge of Courage on March 30, 31, April 6, 7.

Telling of the experience of war from the point of view of an ordinary soldier, Stephen Crane's tale of heroism is considered the first modern war novel.

For the spring, middle Tennessee audiences can look forward to the award-winning Spring Awakening on April 13, 14, 25, 26, 27, 28, May 2, 3, 4, 5. Winner of 8 Tony Awards including "Best Musical," this musical celebrates the unforgettable journey from youth to adulthood with a power, poignancy and passion that you will never forget.

Adapted from Frank Wedekind's 1891 expressionist play about the trials, tears and exhilaration of the teen years, it has been hailed as the "Best Musical of the Year" by the New York Times, New York Post, Star Ledger, Journal News, New York Observer and USA Today. This production contains language and subject matter not appropriate for all audiences.

Also playing this season will be Schoolhouse Rock Live! at 2pm on April 14, 28, May 5; the hit musical The Wedding Singer, starring Josh Bernaski, on May 25, 26, 30, 31, June 1, 2*, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20, 21, 22, 23; the hit musical '13' at 6pm on May 11, 12*, 16, 17, 18, 19*, 23, 24, 25, 26*; and the regional premieres of the Stephen Schwartz musical Captain Louie at 6pm on June 22, 23*, 27, 28, 29, 30* July 5, 6, 7 and the Garry Marshall/Paul Williams musical Happy Days: The Musical on July 13, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21*, 25, 26, 27, 28, August 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16, 17, 18, wrapping up the season.

This new musical reintroduces one of America's best-loved families, the Cunninghams, and the days of 1959 Milwaukee complete with varsity sweaters, hula hoops and jukebox sock-hoppin'. This perfect family-friendly musical will have you rockin' and rollin' all week long!

Already the busiest theatre in the south, the Roxy Regional Theatre is also brewing special events of Standing on Ceremony: The Gay Marriage Plays on Monday, November 7, at 7pm, and a premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis" Motherf**ker with the Hat in the spring.