Recap of Spring 2021 Courses

Stephen Sondheim, Songwriter with Marc Strauss
A nonagenarian since last year, Stephen Sondheim (b. March 22, 1930) remains arguably the most consequential musical theatre songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century. With songs from before his work on West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959) through the groundbreaking Company (1970), Follies (1971), Sweeney Todd (1979), and Assassins(1990), and many projects between and aft, Sondheim’s complex and sophisticated and dissonant and melodic and tangled investigations into the realistic ambivalence of personal relationships continue to challenge and delight new and old fans. 

This Open University of Wellfleet spring course will present to the student via CD audio and DVD/YouTube video dozens of Sondheim tunes in their historical and cultural context. Marc Strauss, Professor Emeritus in the Dobbins Conservatory of Theatre and Dance at Southeast Missouri State University, has taught courses in musical theatre, dance history, aesthetics, and film for over thirty years, and shares his love and knowledge of the arts in ways that encourage discussion, participation, and engagement. Come re-live or experience for the first time major events and songs from the hugely influential Sondheim canon. 


Great Printmakers in New England with Lewis Shepard
New England, with its great museums, book publishers, and printers universities and art schools has fostered a long tradition in the graphic arts. Whistler and his adherents here and abroad, drew inspiration from many sources and created and followed international trends. We will examine and discuss both subject matter (landscape, portraiture, abstraction) and the various media (etching, engraving, monotype, lithography etc.).


Comparing Plays of Recollection by Eugene O'Neill and Brian Friel with Steve Reynolds
In this seminar I want to explore the connections between two plays I have directed, Ah, Wilderness! and Dancing at Lughnasa. They are the childhood recollections of two of the greatest playwrights of the American and Irish theatres: Eugene O’Neill and Brian Friel. We will look at some critical analysis, read scenes, and question the plot, character, thought, music, language and spectacle of each. I’m particularly fascinated by how each play holds a mirror up to the societal expectations of each place and time period. 
The first play we will consider is by the American (of Irish descent) Eugene O’Neill. He wrote Ah, Wilderness! in 1932 and it became a star vehicle for both George M. Cohan and Will Rogers. Now considered a “problem comedy” by scholar Andrew Sofer, the play focuses on how O’Neill wished his family had behaved during the summer before he entered college.  
The second play we will examine is Brian Friel’s masterpiece, Dancing at Lughnasa. It is his imaginative and poetic recreation of his family life during a few significant summer days in 1936 when he was seven years old. This play about the five Mundy sisters and their brother is brought back to life by young Michael playing the “seanchaí.” 


Here Comes Dickens! with Rhoda Flaxman
“Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea.” With this evocative, visually-oriented sentence we plunge into the Dickens novel many consider his greatest. Perhaps you recall reading Great Expectations as a child. But it is not just for children, because it contains depths of psychoanalytic, gender, and cultural revelations for us to explore together. We’ll ask such questions as: why are there two endings to the novel? Why did the Victorians write so many novels about orphans? How does Dickens keep the plot open all the way through? What are the issues around class? Who is Miss Havisham and why is her wedding cake moldy? Who is the mysterious convict who terrifies Pip and generates the mystery at the center of the work? How does Dickens use various plot structures to keep the story going (bildungsroman, fairy tale, the marriage plot, realism, etc.)? 

Where appropriate along the way we’ll also observe some social satire concerning Regency and some history of mid-century England in the heyday of the Victorian novel. And thanks to Zoom, we will enrich our reading with images from Victorian art and book illustration.


Politics in Fiction and Film: Lost and Found in Translation with Linda B. Miller
Is translation an art? When politics are the focus whose world views are prominent? Are historical memories a problem for both original authors and their translators? Why does it matter? Are novels especially rich as a source for films whose distortions could be prominent when fictional standards are themselves shifting over time and space? How, if at all, do our own expectations about form and structure shape our responses to novels and films? 

Explore these and other questions in a provocative set of readings and related videos including Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five; Elliot Ackerman, Waiting for Eden; Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient or Warlight; Toni Morrison, Beloved; James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk; Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, Waking Lions; Khaled Khalifa, Death is Hard Work; Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita; Tommy Orange, There, There.


Studying the ArtSTRANDers with Grace Hopkins
The artSTRAND gallery was a unique endeavor in Provincetown from 2005 to 2016. It was a gallery owned and operated by the artists, rather than a single owner, a director, or a collective. The artists themselves chose the artwork. They described themselves as a cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation and felt that they all had a stake in the town’s legacy, its relevance, and its future. 

During its heyday, artSTRAND served sophisticated art lovers and offered its six male and six female artists extraordinary creative freedom, enduring friendships, and continuing creative connections. An inheritor of the spirit of the Long Point Gallery, artSTRAND took on the mission of re-invigorating Provincetown’s artist colony with annual projects and a philosophy that allowed artists to show what they wanted. A cultural cross-section of a Provincetown generation, artSTRAND was a catalytic locus for the best that American artists have to offer. Many of the artSTRAND artists are still creating inspirational and forward-looking work today.