THE PITTSBURGH CULTURAL TRUST AND THE HUMANITIES CENTER AT CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY PRESENT THE INAUGURAL
FEATURING 23 INTIMATE CONVERSATIONS OVER 4 DAYS IN PITTSBURGH’S CULTURAL DISTRICT
MARCH 26-29, 2015 TRUSTARTS.ORG/SMARTTALK
BOX OFFICE AT THEATER SQUARE • 412-456-6666
welcome The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Humanities Center of Carnegie Mellon University are proud to welcome you to join us at the inaugural Pittsburgh Humanities Festival. The Pittsburgh Humanities Festival features internationally renowned academics, artists and intellectual innovators offering interviews, intimate conversations and select performances focused on topics ranging from art, literature and music to science, policy and politics. Events will be held Thursday, March 26, 2015 through Sunday, March 29, 2015, throughout Pittsburgh’s Cultural District, as well as at select venues of partnering organizations and galleries. Presented by The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival is supported by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Penn State University, the Humanities Center of the University of Pittsburgh, the Humanities Scholars Program of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh Law School, City of Asylum, the Andy Warhol Museum, WYEP/WESA, the Center for the Arts in Society and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
tickets full festival pass: $20 general $10 students Includes one individual admission to each session taking place on Saturday and Sunday.
special event tickets: Special events are available at an additional charge. Full festival pass holders may receive discounted tickets to these events on a first come, first served basis.
for tickets: TrustArts.org/smarttalk 412-456-6666 Box Office at Theater Square Groups 10+ Tickets 412-471-6930
schedule SPECIAL EVENTS:
azar nafisi
Humanities & the Future of Democracies Thursday March 26, 7:00PM Byham Theater PAGE 7
twilight country
By Robert Myers featuring Kathleen Chalfant & Tonya Pinkins Friday March 27, 7:30PM and Saturday March 28, 7:30PM Peirce Studio PAGE 8
SATURDAY MARCH 28
SPACE 10:00AM
Marcus Rediker and Tony Buba: Ghosts of Amistad PAGE 12
11:30AM
Tonya Pinkins: Word Medicine PAGE 13
1:30PM
Charis Kubrin and Erik Nielson: Rap Lyrics on Trial PAGE 14
3:00PM
Independent Music in Mexico PAGE 15
4:30PM
9PM
VIA FESTIVAL
SUNDAY MARCH 29
VIA-HQ.COM/HUMANITIES-FEST
1:00PM
Jennifer Keating Miller and John Carson: Performing Peace in the North of Ireland PAGE 16
2:30PM
Israel Centeno: in conversation PAGE 17
cynthia hopkins
A Living Documentary Saturday March 28, 8:00PM The Warhol Theater PAGE 9
george takei
#1 most influential person on Facebook Sunday March 29, 7:00PM Byham Theater PAGE 11
TRUST ARTS EDUCATION CENTER PEIRCE STUDIO
4TH FLOOR
Fran Bartkowski: Kissing Cousins PAGE 18
Christopher Warren: Six Degrees of Francis Bacon PAGE 24
Sarah Thornton: The Secret Lives of Artists PAGE 19
Kiron Skinner: on Ronald Reagan PAGE 25
John Sayles and Maggie Renzie: Independent Filmmakers PAGE 20
Tim Haggerty and Harrison Apple: The History of Queer Pittsburgh PAGE 26
Vanessa German: Artist and Activist PAGE 21
Susan Russell: Dignity PAGE 27
Blake Gopnik: “Andy Warhol: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Yinzer” PAGE 28 NAAFI - Smurphy, Mexican Jihad, + special guests BALLROOM (ABOVE ROUND CORNER CANTINA) | 202 38TH ST
PAGE 10 Anthony DeCurtis: on Lou Reed and other Rock Stars PAGE 22
Tim Dawson: Deliberative Theater and the Art of Democracy PAGE 29
Terrance Hayes: in conversation PAGE 23
Paula Kane: Religious Innovation in Pittsburgh PAGE 30
locations
TEN TH STR EET BY PA SS
WARHOL THEATER
FOR T DU QU ESN E BO ULE VAR D BYHAM THEATER
EIGHTH STREET
PENN AVENUE
TITO WAY
SEVENTH STREET
SIXTH STREET
TRUST ARTS EDUCATION CENTER
LIBERTY AVENUE SPACE
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SPECIAL EVENT
TICKETS $15
azar nafisi
HUMANITIES & THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACIES
THURSDAY MARCH 26, 7:00PM BYHAM THEATER
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NINTH STREET
Ten PENN years ago Azar Nafisi electrified readers with AVENUE her memoir Reading Lolita in Tehran, a multi-million copy bestseller that made a passionate case for the vital role of imagination—and great English and American novels EXCHANGEin WAYparticular—in preserving the soul and combating noxious ideology of a totalitarian society. She now turns her attention back to the democratic society that gave birth to these great novels and makes as powerful and passionate a case for the vital role of LIBERTY AVENUE fiction in society today. Why we need Humanities today at a time of crisis, how Efar is the present economic and T RE Tin S political crisis rooted the larger crisis of vision? How LD FIE P H far does imagination open the spaces that a totalitarian IT AM SM LLI I W regime closes? And finally can a democracy thrive without a democratic imagination? She will try to respond to these questions based on her experiences in Iran and in America. E
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A LLI TrustArts.org/SmartTalk WI E
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SPECIAL EVENT
TICKETS $15 BY ROBERT FEATURING
MYERS
twilight country
KATHLEEN CHALFANT AND TONYA PINKINS FRI MARCH 27 & SAT MARCH 28 AT 8:00PM PEIRCE THEATER Twilight Country is about the relationship between a white female writer and the mother of a deceased black veteran who meet in Asheville, North Carolina in 1948 and develop a friendship as they read Dante’s Inferno together. Robert Myers is the author of over fifteen plays which deal with history, race and cultural encounters. They include Atwater: Fixin’ to Die, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Dead of Night, Unmanned, Drone Pilots, and Twilight Country.
Kathleen Chalfant was nominated for Broadway’s 1993 Tony Award as Best Actress (Featured Role — Play) for her role in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches. She earned kudos for her performance as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson’s play Wit; and her awards for her performance include the Outer Circle Critics, Drama Desk, Obie and Lucille Lortel awards. Tonya Pinkins, an award winner actress, singer, author, activist and educator, just completed a successful run of Rasheeda Speaking opposite Dianne Wiest at The New Group in Manhattan. She is known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children and for her roles on Broadway. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards winning the Tony for Jelly’s Last Jam, and has won the Obie, 2 Lortel Awards, the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, AUDLECO, Garland, LA Drama Critic’s, Clarence Derwent and NAACP Theater Awards. Her Broadway credits include Play On!, in Caroline, or Change, where she played the title role, Merrily We Roll Along, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, The Wild Party, House of Flowers, Radio Golf, A Time To Kill and Holler If Ya Hear Me. 8
SPECIAL EVENT
TICKETS $15
cynthia hopkins A LIVING DOCUMENTARY
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 8:00PM THE WARHOL THEATER (THE ANDY WARHOL MUSEUM) Performance artist Cynthia Hopkins, whose highly praised ensemble work, Accidental Nostalgia, was one of the first larger theater productions presented by the museum and the New Hazlett Theater in 2007. In stark contrast, Hopkins returns with the strippeddown, one-woman-show, A Living Documentary, in which Hopkins plays both herself and an eclectic cast of characters, driven by a song cycle of original compositions. The show combines elements of musical comedy, documentary, and fiction, and it asks a myriad of questions about the realities of artistic life in New York City. This performance contains nudity and strong language.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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HO A U FT RS E EV R EN T
SPECIAL EVENT
TICKETS $10
via festival NAAFI - SMURPHY MEXICAN JIHAD + SPECIAL GUESTS SATURDAY MARCH 28, 9PM BALLROOM ABOVE ROUND CORNER CANTINA 202 28TH STREET N.A.A.F.I. is both a music label and series of events in Mexico City —experience their “noche de ritmos periféricos,” or “night of peripheral rhythms” in Pittsburgh with two of the label’s core artists. Their unencumbered sonic explorations incorporate club music trends, regional Mexican references, seapunk and vaporwave aesthetics, chaos magick spirituality, and more. Smurphy’s live performance is a hybrid reflection of her background in pop-punk bands and urban dance music, while Mexican Jihad’s DJ sets blend hip-hop, house, techno, and experimental sounds with subversive political messaging.
Tickets: via-hq.com/humanities-fest 10
SPECIAL EVENT VIP TICKETS INCLUDES MEET & GREET
$80
SINGLE TICKETS $40-$60 WITH FESTIVAL PASS LIMITED AVAILABILITY
$15
george takei
#1 MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON ON FACEBOOK
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 7:00PM BYHAM THEATER George Takei is an actor, social justice activist, social media mega-power, star of the Broadway musical Allegiance, and host of the AARP produced YouTube series Takei’s Take where he explores the world of technology, trends, current events and pop culture. With a career spanning five decades, George Takei is known around the world for his founding role in the acclaimed television series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise. Takei starred in three seasons of Star Trek and later reprised his iconic role in six movies. Mashable.com in 2012 reported Takei is the #1 mostinfluential person on Facebook, currently with more than 7.2 million likes. Takei has more than 1.25 million followers on Twitter. Takei authored Lions and Tigers and Bears: The Internet Strikes Back and Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet, released in ebook and paperback in 2012, and it ranked #10 on the New York Times E-book nonfiction list. In addition to a busy acting career, Takei regularly appears on Howard Stern’s Sirius XM satellite radio show.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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marcus rediker and tony buba GHOSTS OF AMISTAD
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 10:00AM SPACE Writer Marcus Rediker and filmmaker Tony Buba will discuss the recent film Ghosts of Amistad, with WESA Morning Edition host Josh Raulerson. This documentary by Tony Buba is based on Marcus Rediker’s The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom. It chronicles a trip to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the people who seized the slave schooner Amistad in 1839, to interview elders about local memory of the case, and to search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko, the slave trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. The film uses the knowledge of villagers, fishermen, and truck drivers to recover a lost history from below in the struggle against slavery.
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tonya pinkins WORD MEDICINE
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 11:30AM SPACE Tonya Pinkins, award winning actress, singer, author, activist and educator, will use techniques from her Actorpreneur Attitude™ and her book Get Over Yourself to demonstrate how the words that we use to describe ourself and others in our life and in our art can build a better world in this interactive workshop.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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charis kubrin and erik nielson RAP LYRICS ON TRIAL
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 1:30PM SPACE The criminalization of rap music has intensified dramatically in recent months, as rap artists have lent their voices and influence to support the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement. Professors Erik Nielson and Charis Kubrin are experts on the use of rap lyrics as evidence of criminal activity. They will discuss this important issue within the context of the Elonis case, which is currently before the United States Supreme Court, as well as the Jamal Knox case, involving a Pittsburgh rapper who is in prison for his song that protested the shooting of his friend by a Pittsburgh police officer.
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damian romero, thomas davo, alberto and smurphy INDEPENDENT MUSIC IN MEXICO
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 3:00PM SPACE Damian Romero (Director of MUTEK Mexico festival), Thomas Davo (NAAFI music label co-founder), Mexican Jihad (NAAFI music label co-founder / DJ), Smurphy (producer/musician). Moderated by VIA (Pittsburgh). A bold and unique representation of Mexico City’s (mostly underground) electronic music scene, this panel between emerging musicians, label founders, and festival directors discuss both their local impact and position in a global network of musicians and digital artists. Followed by evening label showcase.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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jennifer keating miller and john carson PERFORMING PEACE IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 1:00PM SPACE Today in Northern Ireland walls separate historically contentious neighborhoods in the name of ‘peace;’ tripling in number since the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement. In this discussion, John Carson, head of the CMU School of Art, and Jennifer Keating-Miller, CMU Assistant Director of Undergraduate Research and National Fellowships, explore the work of literary and visual artists who describe, catalog or craft work that interrupts evidence of a fragile peace in the region’s built environment, a peace that is contained as the population emerges from a legacy of violence in hardfought efforts to build an integrated and democratic post-conflict society.
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israel centeno IN CONVERSATION
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 2:30PM SPACE Israel Centeno will discuss his recently translated novel The Conspiracy with World Affairs Council Director Steve Sokol. Israel is the author of poetry, short stories, and ten novels and is regarded as one of the most important Venezuelan literary figures of the past fifty years. Through his narratives he conveys a sense of the many shortcomings of a society that feeds on grandiose historical myths that lead to poverty and violence. His fictions also accommodate his own experience as an exile. The Conspiracy was published in 2002, shortly after the alleged coup against Hugo Chávez. The novel was interpreted by Chávez and his revolutionary party as an affront to their myth of origin. They launched a campaign against Israel Centeno that escalated from harassment and threats to violence, ultimately forcing him into exile.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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fran bartkowski KISSING COUSINS
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 10:00AM PEIRCE THEATER Frances Bartkowski, author of Kissing Cousins: A New Kinship Bestiary, is interested in that place where curiosity, fascination and fear meet up between humans and other animals. In our daily lives Facebook feeds flood us with still and moving images of how we humans and our animals tickle each other’s fancies, touch each other’s bodies, hearts, minds and spirits, and sometimes terrify in their real and imaginary forms that visit our homes, our yards, our streets, our dark dream spaces. We are moved from lust to disgust, from desire to repulsion, from delicious proximity to compulsory distance. Before there was Facebook to delight and instruct us when we least expected it, there were family trips, school trips, photographs and films that made it possible to safely stand or sit, and see and look. There were zoos, circuses, and reserves where we got as close as was permissible and accessible. We painted them on cave walls, not self-portraits or other humans whom we could look at any time. 18
sarah thornton THE SECRET LIVES OF ARTISTS
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 11:30AM PEIRCE THEATER Sarah Thornton, formerly the chief correspondent on contemporary art for The Economist, is a bestselling author and sociologist of art. In a conversation with Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, Sarah will discusses her new book 33 Artists in 3 Acts, which offers unprecedented access to a dazzling range of artists, from international superstars to unheralded art teachers. Called “the Jane Goodall of the art world” by the Washington Post, Thornton talks with leading contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Jeff Koons, and Cindy Sherman and turns a wry, analytical eye on their different answers to the question, “What is an Artist?”
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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john sayles and maggie renzie INDEPENDENT FILMMAKERS
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 1:30PM PEIRCE THEATER Often called the Godfather of independent film, the writer and director of more than 17 films, John Sayles and his producing partner Maggie Renzie, discuss their careers and the current state of independent cinema with David Shumway, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, and author of a book on the filmmaker.
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vanessa german
ARTIST AND ACTIVIST
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 3:00PM PEIRCE THEATER Vanessa German is an internationally renowned sculptor and multidisciplinary artist: photographer, painter, actress and poet based in Homewood whose work delves into identity, race, and racism. Her sculptures transform found objects into “21st Century Ju Ju”, and her spoken-word performances give a voice to the African-American female experience. Vanessa is also an activist, she initiated an anti-violence campaign in Homewood and established an “Art House” where neighborhood children have the opportunity to express themselves through art. She will talk about her work with Heather Arnet, Filmmaker, Playwright, and CEO of the Women and Girls Foundation.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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anthony decurtis ON LOU REED AND OTHER ROCK STARS
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 1:00PM PEIRCE THEATER Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty years. He has met and interviewed virtually everyone of significance to popular music during that period. He is at work on biography of Lou Reed. He holds a PhD in American literature from Indiana University, and is a Distinguished Lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania.
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terrance hayes
IN CONVERSATION
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 2:30PM PEIRCE THEATER 2014 MacArthur Fellow Terrance Hayes is a poet who reflects on race, gender and family in works marked by dexterity and a reverence for history and the artistry of crafting verse. He is the author of Lighthead, which won the National Book Award for Poetry; Wind in a Box, Hip Logic and Muscular Music. His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a United States Artists Zell Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. How To Be Drawn, his new collection of poems, is forthcoming from Penguin in 2015.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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christopher warren SIX DEGREES OF FRANCIS BACON
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 10:00AM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR Historians and literary critics have long studied the way that early modern people associated with each other and participated in various kinds of formal and informal groups. Using modern technology, Christopher Warren, who teaches Shakespeare and Milton at Carnegie Mellon University, has analyzed vast quantities of data to establish how people in early modern England were connected. He will introduce a public, digital humanities project that seeks to redress the common caricature of Shakespeare’s world that it consists of, in Adam Gopnik’s words, “populated by the Queen and Ben Jonson and the Dark Lady and the Bard and a theatre full of groundlings,” and to flesh out the social networks of the real early modern Britain.
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kiron skinner
ON RONALD REAGAN
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 11:30AM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR Kiron Skinner is the founding director of the Center for International Relations at CMU and her areas of expertise include international relations, international security, US foreign policy, and political strategy. Kiron’s coauthored book, Reagan, in His Own Hand, and Reagan, a Life in Letters were New York Times bestsellers. Well known as a leading authority, she talks about Reagan’s private and public life.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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tim haggerty and harrison apple THE HISTORY OF QUEER PITTSBURGH
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 1:30PM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR Historians Tim Haggerty and Harrison Apple, codirectors of the Queer History Project, explore the world of Pittsburgh’s gay social clubs from 1967 to 1990, making use of an extensive collection of photographs and material objects contributed by owners, employees, performers and patrons, including publications, posters, announcements and newsletters that reflect a world that is disappearing: one of drag names and pseudonyms, passwords and codes, a shared patois of high camp and a relationship to the state that could be fraught, deceitful, and criminal, a twilight world of desire and camouflage that emerged in response to a culture that reacted to homosexuality with social criticism and legal prosecution.
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susan russell DIGNITY
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 3:00PM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR Penn State laureate for 2014-15, Susan will lead an interactive discussion about who we can be in the 21st century, and how we can contribute to the human experience by living and giving the dignity we want for ourselves. The conversation is premised on the proposition, “If everything begins with a story, then the story of this moment begins with your decision to “show up.” Once you decide to show up, anything is possible. Once anything is possible, then everything can change. So...what’s your story now?”
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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blake gopnik
ANDY WARHOL: PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG YINZER
SATURDAY MARCH 28, 4:30PM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR Blake Gopnik was born in Philadelphia in 1963 and raised in Montreal, where he received his B.A. from McGill University, with a concentration in medieval studies and Latin. He then earned a PhD in art history from Oxford University for a dissertation on Renaissance realism and the philosophy of representation. Returning to Canada, in 1995 Gopnik became the editor of Insite, Canada’s leading magazine on architecture and design, and then fine-arts editor, and finally art critic, at the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper. In 2001, he was hired as the chief art critic of the Washington Post, where he spent the following decade writing about art and other aesthetic topics, including design and gastronomy. He left Washington for New York in January, 2011, to become art and design critic for Newsweek magazine and its Daily Beast Web site. In 2013, he began writing Andy Warhol: A Life as Art, the first comprehensive biography of the Pop artist, while also accepting feature commissions from the The Art Newspaper and other publications. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times, a frequent guest on Marketplace radio and his Daily Pic column goes out to more than 130,000 followers on Tumblr and Twitter and at ArtnetNews.com, where he holds the post of Critic at Large. 28
tim dawson
DELIBERATIVE THEATER AND THE ART OF DEMOCRACY
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 1:00PM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR Tim Dawson is a writer, theater artist, and a Ph.D. Candidate in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University. Formerly a program manager at Carnegie Mellon’s Program for Deliberative Democracy and a director of community outreach programs for Pittsburgh’s Unseam’d Shakespeare Company, Tim is the founder of The Art of Democracy, a consultancy that engages difference as a resource for civic innovation by facilitating opportunities for informed and inclusive public engagement among citizens, community groups, and public officials. Deliberative Theater capitalizes on theater’s ability to concisely represent the various and complex ways that beliefs, situated knowledge, and expert information can come together to inform different perspectives, competing policy proposals, and people’s actions on critical issues. It allows people to consider hypothetical interactions between the various “moving parts” of a complex issue, and helps them gain greater clarity and depth of understanding than can be realized by seeing each “part” in isolation. Deliberative Theater also humanizes complex issues, providing people with an access point for public policy discussions that may otherwise seem overwhelmingly technical or removed from everyday experience.
TrustArts.org/SmartTalk
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paula kane
RELIGIOUS INNOVATION IN PITTSBURGH
SUNDAY MARCH 29, 2:30PM TRUST EDUCATION CENTER, 4TH FLOOR A Religious Studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Paula Kane’s courses include Religion in Early and Modern America, and Popular Religions in America. Paula will talk about the historical face of religion in Pittsburgh, how that has dramatically shifted over the years, and the fastest growing religions in our city today.
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The inaugural Pittsburgh Humanities Festival features internationally renowned academics, artists and intellectual innovators offering interviews, intimate conversations and select performances focused on topics ranging from art, literature and music to science, policy and politics.
TrustArts.org/smarttalk 412-456-6666 • Box Office at Theater Square G roups 10+ Tickets 412- 47 1 - 6930