Theater and Dance
Into the Breeches! by George Brandt
- When: Sept. 26, 27, 28, 7:30 p.m.; Sept. 29, 2 p.m.
- Where: Lenfest Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center (map it)
Directed by Domenick Scudera
It is 1942 and a local theater’s director and leading men are off fighting in World War II. Back home, the director’s determined wife proposes an all-female version of Shakespeare’s Henriad and she assembles an unexpected team of amateurs to keep the theater alive. This hilarious and heartfelt backstage comedy is a celebration of the collaboration and persistence that inspires us when the show must go on!
Afternoon at the Seaside and The Patient. (An Agatha Christie Double Bill)
- When: Oct. 31, Nov. 1, Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m.; Nov. 3, 2 p.m. (ASL-interpreted performance)
- Where: Blackbox Studio Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center (map it)
Directed by Meghan Brodie
A priceless emerald necklace goes missing and everyone enjoying a beach holiday becomes a suspect in the one-act play Afternoon at the Seaside. Will Inspector Foley catch his culprit? Nothing is quite as it seems in this imaginative mystery by the dame of detective fiction, Agatha Christie. In The Patient, after falling from a second-story balcony, Mrs. Wingfield, narrowly escaping death, is hospitalized and it is Inspector Cray’s job to investigate whether Mrs. Wingfield fell, jumped, or was pushed. Christie keeps audiences guessing in this mystery-thriller one act!
UCDC Fall Dance Concert: Home is Here/Hear
- When: Dec. 5, 6, and 7, 7:30 p.m.
- Where: Lenfest Theater, Kaleidoscope Performing Arts Center (map it)
Produced by Michael J. Love
With Home Is Here/ Hear, the Ursinus College Dance Company will engage in an embodied and sound-based exploration of notions of community and belonging. In this cohesive, narrative dance-theatre piece, the work of faculty, special guest, and select student choreographers will reimagine East Main Street as a composite geographic and temporal location—a simultaneously urban, suburban, and rural thoroughfare of the then, now, and thereafter upon which myriad visions of “home” may be cast.
All other events are free.
Music
Junction Saxophone Quartet
- When: September 22, 4 p.m.
- Where: Bomberger Auditorium (map it)
The Junction Saxophone Quartet is a Pennsylvania-based chamber ensemble comprised of Dr. Todd Goranson (Messiah University), Dr. Amanda Heim (Gettysburg College), Dr. Holly Hubbs (Ursinus College), and Mr. Tim Puglio (Annville-Cleona School District). This program will feature music for saxophone, inspired by many locations from around the world.
Heefner Memorial Organ Recital: Mina Choi
- When: October 6, 4 p.m.
- Where: Bomberger Auditorium (map it)
Mina Choi performs at Ursinus as first Heefner Memorial Organ Series guest artist of the year.
Ursinus College Wind Ensemble presents Haunted Harmonies & Cinematic Thrills
- When: October 25, 7:30 p.m.
- Where: The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum Of Art (map it)
Don your favorite Halloween costumes for a spooktacular evening of music and art at our Halloween event! Hosted by the Berman Museum of Art, this free event will have the Ursinus College Wind Ensemble, directed by Harry Oehler, bring you on a musical journey of thrilling Halloween tunes and unforgettable movie soundtracks while you explore the museum.
Our Halloween bash will have light food offerings and will give you free roam of the art museum’s exhibitions.
Ursinus String Ensemble
- When: November 17, 4 p.m.
- Where: Bomberger Auditorium (map it)
Join the String Ensemble for this program investigating the intertwining of life and work.
This concert, under the direction of Melinda Rice, is illuminated by the ensemble’s partnership this semester with the Wharton Esherick Museum, and we are offering music that looks at our participation in community, including a setting that Esherick illustrated of Philip Dalmas’ “As I watched the ploughman ploughing.” Look for special guests, including a violin soloist from the ensemble and members of the Ursinus Wind Ensemble.
Ursinus Wind Ensemble
- When: December 6, 7:30 p.m.
- Where: Bomberger Auditorium (map it)
Let the Ursinus College Wind Ensemble take you on a wintery adventure through the enchanting sounds of the holiday season. In the second half of the program, the Ursinus College String Ensemble joins the wind ensemble on stage to bring you such classics as Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia” and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker.” From festive carols to winter classics, immerse yourself in the joy and nostalgia of this magical time of year.
Voices of Ursinus and Ursinus College Singers
- When: December 7, 4 p.m.
- Where: Bomberger Auditorium (map it)
The Ursinus College Fall Choral Concert, directed by Nicole Snodgrass, will feature the Voices of Ursinus as well as debut the newly founded Ursinus College Singers. The concert will highlight music by award-winning Chinese-Australian American composer Melissa Dunphy, prolific African American composer Victor C. Johnson, and Canadian composer Sarah Quartel. The Voices of Ursinus will perform a stunning arrangement of Handel’s “Joy To The World” by Dan Forrest, featuring members of the Ursinus Wind Ensemble. The Ursinus College Singers will perform Alexandra Olsavsky’s “What Happens When A Woman,” which is a song for the strong women of our world who seek to empower themselves by asking important questions.
Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art
Enrique Bostelmann: Apertures and Borderscapes
- When: Through December 15
- Where: The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum Of Art (map it)
- Enrique Bostelmann exhibit page
Enrique Bostelmann: Apertures and Borderscapes takes boundaries—literal, figurative, and fluid—as the organizing principle for an exhibition of selected works by the genre-bending photographer. Over his forty-year career, Bostelmann (b. Guadalajara, 1939, d. Mexico City, 2003) fused modernist formal elegance, social documentary, conceptualism, and humor with experimental vision. Here, Bostelmann’s expansive use of photography disrupts perceived margins between justice and injustice, indigenous and colonial, rural and urban, and two- and three-dimensions, advancing understandings of his practice as transgressive.
Françoise Gilot: Shaping Freedom Through Abstraction
- When: Through December 15
- Where: The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum Of Art (map it)
- Françoise Gilot Exhibit page
Françoise Gilot (1921-2023) established a life-long career as a painter and printmaker through a distinct, intuitive style inspired by her memories and the subconscious. In her body of work, she often delved into themes of mythology, irony, time, and relationships. Working in abstraction allowed her to investigate multiple understandings in a work simultaneously. Her abstract compositions also challenge the viewer’s perception and invite them to find their own interpretations. This exhibition features a selection of Gilot’s works alongside archival materials dated from the 1970s through 1990s from the Berman Museum’s permanent collection and Françoise Gilot Archival Collection.
Adriane Colburn: Paths of Extraction
- When: Through December 15
- Where: The Philip and Muriel Berman Museum Of Art (map it)
- Adriane Colburn exhibit page
In partnership with Ursinus students, Adriane Colburn is researching raw materials extracted from the land near Ursinus College. Extractive industries remove local resources—such as coal, oil, iron, and asphalt—from the ground and distribute them around the globe. Colburn is most interested in the environmental and economic impacts of these industries: Why these raw materials travel through our local area, where they end up, and how traces of them filter into our atmosphere, communities, and bodies. The artist will interpret her team’s findings with mapping and data visualization techniques alongside traditional woodworking, drawing, video, and photography.
Speakers and Special Events
James Baldwin, History, Responsibility, and Atonement
- When: September 23, 4:30 p.m.
- Where: Musser Auditorium, located in Pfaler Hall (map it)
Melvin Rogers, professor of political Science at Brown University, is the author of The Darkened Light of Faith: Race, Democracy, and Freedom in African-American Political Thought (2023). In this talk he will pursue the themes of his book as they unfold in the work of the civil rights era essayist, novelist, and activist, James Baldwin.
Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and Freedom of Speech: Navigating the Post-10/7 Landscape
- When: September 30, 7 p.m.
- Where: Musser Auditorium, located in Pfaler Hall (map it)
Samantha Harris of Allen Harris Law, a prominent attorney specializing in student and faculty rights, will discuss, with Jonathan Marks of Ursinus College’s Department of Politics, how colleges and universities have handled protests, as well as the charges of antisemitism they have attracted, and how they should be handling them. A question-and-answer session will follow.
For more details on the events above, visit the LIVE! on Main website.
