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ZOOM: Ohio Connection to “Hemingway in Idaho”

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Join us for a virtual screening and panel discussion in partnership with WOUB Public Media of Ohio and Idaho Public Television. 

The event will be held virtually over Zoom on June 29 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern (5:00 p.m. Mountain). 

Those in attendance will see an excerpt from the recent PBS “Hemingway” documentary series, as well as an episode of IPTV’s Idaho Experience, “Hemingway’s Idaho,” which focuses on the extraordinary home Hemingway lived in during his time in Idaho. The Ketchum home and its associated 13.9 acres of land alongside the Big Wood River is listed on the National Register of Historic Places for its association with the great writer and because it is an exquisite example of mid-century architecture. Hemingway worked on For Whom the Bell Tolls, Islands in the Stream and a memoir, A Moveable Feast, while in Idaho. However, the memoir was never finished. Hemingway committed suicide on July 2, 1961, at the Idaho home.

The event’s panel will feature Van Gordon Sauter, former president of CBS News and Fox News; Lynn Novick, who directed and produced the “Hemingway” documentary series with Ken Burns that premiered on PBS in April; Jenny Emery Davidson of the Community Library in Ketchum, which currently owns and manages the home; and Gary Holcomb, an African American Studies professor at Ohio University, who published a critical collection called “Teaching Hemingway and Race.” The group will discuss the life of Hemingway, the history of the Ketchum home and take questions from those in attendance.

Sauter, a Ohio University Alumnus, lived in Idaho and became involved in the effort to preserve Hemingway’s legacy and will discuss his time as the head of a committee that was trying to find or become the manager/protector of the Hemingway House in Ketchum. Sauter is also the other of The Sun Valley Story, a history of the area and resort. 

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is required. You can sign up for the event here: https://bit.ly/HemingwayWOUB

“Churchill and the Royals” with Lee Pollock

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August 16, 2021

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From the august days of Queen Victoria, when the sun never set on the British Empire, to the shocking abdication of Edward VIII and the long reign of Elizabeth II, the saga of Britain’s kings and queens has fascinated the world for over two centuries, regularly dramatized on stage and screen.

No public figure in British history had a longer or more consequential relationship with the royal family than Winston Churchill, justly regarded as the greatest statesman of modern times. As a young officer in Victoria’s army in 1898, he rode in one of the last cavalry charges of the British empire; when he proclaimed a new Elizabethan age upon the accession of her great-great granddaughter in 1952, Britain had entered the atomic age.

Churchill served the monarchy with reverence and devotion all his life, recognizing its essential role in Britain’s island story. But he was never unappreciative of the distinctive personalities who occupied the throne and the foibles, quirks and even peccadillos they brought to their august role.

Join acclaimed historian Lee Pollock as he explores the singular relationship between Winston Churchill and the British crown and sheds new light on one of history’s most enduring institutions.

Lee Pollock is a popular writer, historian and public speaker on the life and times of Sir Winston Churchill and a regular presenter at The Community Library. He serves as a Trustee and Advisor to the Board of The International Churchill Society and was the Society’s long-time Executive Director. He also served as Publisher of the Society’s Journal, “Finest Hour,” and led the development of the National Churchill Library and Center in Washington, DC. A native of Montreal, Canada, Lee is a graduate of McGill University and hold’s a master’s degree from The University of Chicago.  He is a frequent editorial writer on Churchill topics for The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion and other publications.  He is the author of Action This Day: Adventures with Winston Churchill.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

“Cage Shuffle” by Paul Lazar

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June 21, 2021

Presented in collaboration with Sawtooth Productions, LLC.

Cage Shuffle is a 50-minute dance/theater solo. In Cage Shuffle Paul Lazar speaks a series of one-minute stories by John Cage from his 1963 score Indeterminacy, while simultaneously performing a complex choreographic score by Annie-B Parson, choreographer of David Byrne’s American Utopia on Broadway. The stories are spoken in random order with no predetermined relationship to the dancing, yet chance serves up its inevitable and uncanny connection between text and movement. Cage’s humor, intellect and iconoclasm find ideal expression in this new work which adds dance to Cage’s original performance instructions: Read stories aloud, paced so that each story takes one minute, using chance procedures or not.

This performance was held outdoors on the Library’s Donaldson Robb Family Green.

Cage Shuffle premiered in 2017 at the American Realness Festival in New York. It has since toured throughout the United States, Europe, and Brazil, at venues such as North Carolina’s Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, Seattle’s Base: Experimental Arts + Space, Chicago’s Links Hall, Minneapolis’ Walker Art Museum, New York’s Town Hall, as well as at universities and festivals .

“One of my favorite pieces ever. The Cage stories are good to begin with, amusing in a zen kind of way, but when further randomized and amplified with the dance, and with Paul’s voice – well, it becomes no longer a rarified Cage piece but is transformed into something accessible to everyone.”
– David Byrne

Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has directed, co-directed, and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Classic Stage Company, and Japan Society. 

Outside of Big Dance, Paul has directed numerous productions including Young Jean Lee’s Obie Award-winning, “We’re Gonna Die.” Paul also directed “Bodycast: An Artist Lecture” by Suzanne Bocanegra and featuring Frances McDormand at the BAM Next Wave Festival in 2014, as well as “Major Bang” for The Foundry Theatre at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Paul has performed in numerous works by The Wooster Group, and he has acted in over 40 feature films, including Snowpiercer, The Host, Mickey Blue Eyes, Silence of the Lambs, Beloved, Lorenzo’s Oil and Philadelphia. His awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award in 2007, and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award in 2014, as well as an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Paul has taught at Yale, Rutgers, The William Esper Studio, and The Michael Howard Studio, and he currently teaches at New York University.

Watch excerpts from Cage Shuffle HERE, courtesy of Wave Farm.

Paul is also directing the Sawtooth Production of Samuel Hunter’s A Case For the Existence of God, a play set in Twin Falls, Idaho, running June 30 through July 10, 2021, at the Reinheimer Ranch in Ketchum.

YOUTUBE: Stamping their Legacy: Honoring the Nisei Soldiers of WWII

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The United States Postal Service has issued a commemorative stamp titled Go for Broke: Japanese American Soldiers of WWII that will be available beginning June 3, 2021. The Postal Service announced:
 
With this commemorative stamp, the Postal Service recognizes the contributions of Japanese American soldiers, some 33,000 altogether, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II.
 
For a time, these second-generation Japanese Americans, known as Nisei, were denied the opportunity to fight despite being American citizens. Many were forcibly removed to incarceration camps for fear their loyalty lay with the country of their parents rather than the country in which they were born and raised.
 
They were, however, eventually formed into what became one of the most distinguished American fighting units of World War II: the all-Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team.
 
Thousands of other Nisei served as translators, interpreters, and interrogators in the Pacific Theater for the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), nearly a thousand served in the 1399th Engineer Construction Battalion, and more than 100 Nisei women joined the Women’s Army Corp.
 
The stamp art is based on a photograph of a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, whose motto was “Go for Broke.” The photograph was taken in 1944 at a railroad station in France. The stamp was printed in the intaglio print method. The color scheme of the stamp is patriotic, and the type runs up the side in a manner suggestive of the vertical style in which Japanese text was traditionally written. The stamp was designed by art director Antonio Alcalá.
 
As part of our 2021 virtual education series in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Minidoka National Historic Site, the National Park Service and Friends of Minidoka invite you to join on Sunday, June 13th, for a special program to dedicate the Go for Broke stamp and commemorate the rich legacy of Idaho’s Japanese American soldiers who served in the US Army during WWII. 
 
This program is brought to you by the National Park Service and Friends of Minidoka in partnership with Boise State University School of Public Service, ACLU of Idaho, The Community Library, the Boise City Department of Arts and History, and the Japanese American Citizens League and produced by Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages.
 
Join the livestream on the Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages YouTube or visit www.minidoka.org/events for more information. 

A Conversation with Playwright Samuel D. Hunter

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UPDATE: This program is moving indoors to the Library’s John A. and Carole O. Moran Lecture Hall. Chairs will be spaced out in the room. If you would prefer to join us virtually, you can watch the event HERE on Livestream.

MacArthur Genius award-winning playwright and Idaho native Samuel D. Hunter will discuss bringing his new play to the stage this summer in Sun Valley. Like all of Hunter’s work, this play, A Case For the Existence of God, is set in Idaho, this time in Twin Falls. Paul Lazar, a staple of the downtown New York theater scene, directs.

In conversation with Jenny Emery Davidson, the Library’s executive director, and Jonathan Kane of Sawtooth Productions, LLC, Hunter will discuss his process as well as the challenges of taking a play from the page into a fully fledged production.

 

Sam Hunter

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