UpDate - Vol. 13, No. 8, Page 4
October 21, 1993
Up and coming

Barbie takes center stage in premiere of new musical
     Barbie, the idealized teenage doll who has it all and has been an icon
for generations of American girls, will take center stage in As She Dreams
It (Barbie: the Musical), a new production premiering in November.
     Performances are scheduled at 8:15 p.m., Fridays and Saturday, Nov.
12-13 and 19-20, in Bacchus Cabaret Theatre of the Perkins Student Center.
Tickets are $10 for the public, $7 for senior citizens and $5 for students.
     A special sneak preview will be held at 8 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 6, in
the theatre at Delaware Technical and Community College in Georgetown.
Tickets for this performance, sponsored by the Office of Alumni and
University Relations, are $8 for the general public and $5 for students and
University faculty and staff.
     As She Dreams It is based on Shakespeare's As You Like It, with Barbie
as Rosalind and Ken as Orlando in a 12-year-old tomboy's dream. In the
musical, the heroine, who has always wanted to be as beautiful as Barbie,
learns there is much more to life than prettiness. As She Dreams It
investigates the transformation of Barbie, the "all-American dream girl,"
into a "liberated woman."
     Delaware playgoers will have an opportunity to compare As She Dreams
It with Shakespeare's original As You Like It, which will be produced by
the Professional Theatre Training Program in early December.
     The book to As She Dreams It is written by Scott F. Mason, assistant
director of the Perkins Student Center and the author of eight produced
plays. Joyce Hill Stoner, chairperson of the Department of Art
Conservation, has written the music and lyrics. She has had 14 of her
musicals produced in Delaware, Toronto, Cleveland and New York City,
including an off-Broadway musical, I'll Die If I Can't Live Forever, which
The New York Times hailed as "the best mini-musical in town."
     The cast of eight includes local actors from the Three Little Bakers
Dinner Theatre, the Brandywiners and the Wilmington Drama League, as well
as two University of Delaware students who are members of the Golden Blues.
     The musical is designed as a "company" show, in which the performers
must work together as a group of children in the opening sequences and then
be transformed into Barbie and Ken dolls.
     In the play, Linda, a 12-year-old tomboy, has seen one too many
Shakespeare productions, thanks to her actress mother. When she is hit on
the head with a baseball, she dreams that her dolls have come to life and
fled under the bed to escape from her cat.
     Just as Orlando seeks Rosalind in the woods, decorating the trees with
poems in As You Like It, Ken composes verses to Barbie and does not
recognize her when he encounters her in male disguise.
     Wigs and costumes for the show have been designed by Elaine M. Morgan,
who also has costumed Barbra Streisand, John Belushi, Mick Jagger and
George Thorogood. Musical direction, arrangements and accompaniment are
provided by David W. Strauss, who also has worked with the Covered Bridge
Theatre. Special choreography is by Cynthia L. Ventriglia, who has starred
as Evita at the Three Little Bakers and as Esther in the Bacchus Players'
Swan Esther.
     For additional information contact Stoner at 831-2479. For tickets to
the Bacchus performances, call 831-2204.
     For tickets to the Georgetown preview, call 855-1620 in Georgetown or
at 735-8200 in Dover.

John Bayless to perform Oct. 27
     An evening with critically acclaimed pianist John Bayless, featuring
such selections as "Bach Meets the Beatles," "West Side Story Variations,"
a selection of Puccini's arias for the piano and improvisations with the
audience, will be presented at 8 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 27 in Mitchell Hall.
     Sponsored by the Perkins Student Center, the performance is free and
open to the public.
     Bayless, who studied at the Juilliard School of Music, is known for
his classical and improvisational repertoire.
     The solo artist has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the "Mostly
Mozart" festival at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City and has performed
with orchestras throughout the United States, including special programs
with the New York Philharmonic and Cleveland orchestras.
     In addition, Bayless has made two tours of Japan, performed at the
Budapest Spring Festival and was artist-in-residence for the London
Symphony Orchestra's Leonard Bernstein Festival, performing at a gala for
Queen Elizabeth.
     Bayless has recorded several albums, including his Happy Birthday
Bach, Bach Meets the Beatles, Bach on Abbey Road, Bayless Meets
Bernstein--West Side Story Variations and The Puccini Album--Arias for
Piano, which was number one on Billboard magazine's classical crossover
chart.
     A critic for The New York Times wrote that Bayless "is an evocative
pianist...and persuasively sells his off-the-cuff ideas by means of a
lovely piano sound and considerable personal pizzazz."
     The Washington Post critic said his recordings celebrating Bach's
birthday "are played with a brilliant technique and a solid sense of form
that make it hard to believe they were pure improvisations. And both are a
lot of fun for open-minded lovers of Bach."
     The Republican critic described Bayless as "an elegant pianist, a
stylist, brilliant improviser and a winning musical personality."
     The concert is made possible by the Comprehensive Student Fee.

Lecture to focus on views of race
     The focus and approaches used by Nobel Prize-winning authors William
Faulkner and Toni Morrison will be compared in the lecture "Faulkner/
Morrison: Thinking About Race, Gender and Value," to be presented at 4:30
p.m., Thursday, Oct. 28 in Room 120 of Memorial Hall.
     Speaking will be Philip M. Weinstein, Alexander Griswold Cummins
Professor of English at Swarthmore College.
     Weinstein's many publications include Faulkner's Subject: A Cosmos No
One Owns published in 1992 by the Cambridge University Press; The Semantics
of Desire: Changing Models of Identity from Dickens to Joyce, published by
Princeton University Press in 1984 and nominated for the James Russell
Lowell Prize; and The Requirements of Imagination, published by Harvard
University Press in 1971.
     Weinstein is the recipient of numerous awards, including two NEH
fellowships, a Mellon Grant and a Woodrow Wilson Felloswhip. He has taught
at Darwin College of Cambridge University, Ecole Normale Superieure in
Paris and Rhodes College.
     Editor of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner, he
is currently working on a book-length study of Faulkner and Morrison.
     The free public talk is sponsored by the University's Department of
English.

Delaware Brass in concert Nov. 7
     The Department of Music will sponsor a free concert featuring the
Delaware Brass Quintet at 3 p.m., Sunday, Nov. 7, in the Loudis Recital
Hall of the Amy E. du Pont Music Building.
     The program will include the Suite from the Monteregian Hills by
Morley Calvert, Exhibition by Fisher Tull, George Gershwin's Prelude # 2,
Children of the Dancing Valley by Michael Mauldin, Fanfare by Robert
Gibson, a rendition of "Little Brown Jug" and arrangements of four by
Charles Ives Songs.
     For more information, call 831-2577.

Robert Gregg to discuss U.S.-U.N.
     Robert W. Gregg, author of About Face? The United States and the
United Nations, will present a lecture on "The United Nations Confronts the
Post-Cold War World" at 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 26, in 125 Clayton Hall.
     The free public lecture is being held in observance of the 48th
birthday celebration of the founding of the United Nations.
     Professor of international relations at the American University School
of International Studies, Gregg has taught courses for many years in the
fields of international organization, world politics and U.S. foreign
policy.
     His research interests lie in the area of international organization,
with an emphasis on United Nations affairs. He has written on the U.N.'s
work in the fields of economic development, narcotic drugs and program
administration.
     His new book, About Face?, explores the changes in U.S.-U.N.
relations, contrasting the U.N. bashing during the financial crisis of the
1980s with the quest for U.N. legitimization of U.S. policy in the Gulf
crisis of 1990-91.
     A founding member of the Academic Council on the United Nations
System, Gregg is currently engaged in research on the problem of U.N.
restructuring and reform.
     A graduate of Colgate University, he received his doctorate from
Cornell University. He has taught at Wake Forest, Syracuse and Victoria
universities and briefly held posts with the U.S. Department of State and
the U.N.
     Sponsors of the Oct. 26 talk include the Delaware Division of the
United Nations Association, the University's Department of Political
Science and International Relations, Pi Sigma Alpha and Sigma Iota Rho,
People to People Delaware, Cosmopolitan Club and College Model U.N.
Association.

Leading theologian to speak Oct. 26
     Pablo Richard, one of the world's leading figures in the liberation
theology movement, will discuss "Liberation Theology in a Post-Cold War
World" at 7 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 26, in Room 006 of the Kirkbride Lecture
Hall.
     Active in the Latin American and world liberation theology movements,
Richard is the director of DEI in San Jose, Costa Rica, which is a study
and training center for liberation theologians. Liberation theology, a
political, social and theological movement, has been as the center of
events in Latin America since 1965.
     Richard is the author of many books, several of which have been
translated into English, including Death of Christendoms, Birth of the
Church and Political Organizations of Christians in Latin America: From
Christian Democracy to a New Model.
     The free public talk is sponsored by the Latin American Studies
Program and the Department of Political Science and International Relations
at the University.