Celebrating Studs Terkel The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago will host “Let’s Get Working,” a three-day festival honoring the life and work of Louis “Studs” Terkel, a Chicago legend and UChicago alumnus. The May 9-11 festival will introduce Terkel’s legacy to new and younger audiences while highlighting individuals and groups, both local and national, who have been impacted, influenced and inspired by his work as a broadcaster, historian, actor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author. In addition to new works and original programming, the festival will include videos of Terkel and listening stations for people to more deeply engage his radio archive. There also will be screenings of Terkel’s early work in television and industrial, educational, and documentary films from the Media Burn Independent Video Archive. In anticipation of the festival, a sampling of festival participants, Studs collaborators and admirers, tell us who Studs was… Illustration by Illustrated Press (2014)
“Studs was the lovable, humorous, feisty dowsing diviner of humanity in the 20th century.”
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– Sydney Lewis, Terkel’s longtime collaborator on radio and books
“Studs Terkel was a master interviewer because he knew how to listen. Whether famous, or not so, Studs drew the extraordinary out of ordinary conversations which helped us all better understand our neighborhood, city, country and our world.” – Tom Clark, President, Community Media Workshop
“Studs was a friend to the friendless.” – Rick Perlstein, author, historian and journalist
“Studs was in the middle of it all; no matter who we were— rich or poor; young or old; white or black; man or woman— he kept us all connected by constantly reminding us of our shared humanity. “ – Thomas Dyja, author, Third Coast
“Studs’ justly renowned empathy, generosity, and endless curiosity were matched by an intellect and a memory that in themselves were unmatched. And somehow, on top of all of his skills, commitments, and attributes, he also had impeccable taste in literature, music—both classical and popular, theatre, and film, and a perfect style as radio presenter, public speaker, and writer.” -- Andrew Patner, author and Critic-at-Large, WFMT
“Studs was an adventure every day, both on the radio “Studs was wide awake to the worlds around him.” and in ‘real life.’ He loved doing shtick with everyone he encountered...and so did all of us who were lucky enough to – Audrey Petty, author, High Rise Stories be with him.” – Tom Weinberg, Founder, Media Burn Independent Video Archive “It’s not possible for me to speak about Studs in the past tense. With the words that are his legacy, Studs IS a voice “Studs was a righteous interviewer. He had all the right of truth and reason that lives in me and many others.” capacities: empathy, attention, good humor, charm, and – Haskell Wexler, two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer, film most of all, an enduring interest in the ‘quintessential producer, and director truths’ to be found in each and every one of us.” – Alison Cuddy, Arts and Cultural Reporter, WBEZ “Studs is the guy on the bus going to work. He’s wearing a red checked shirt with blue blazer, has a half-smoked cigar in his hand, a rubber band on his wrist, likes to have a “Studs was dedicated to the common man. And because scotch at Riccardo’s, talk with people, is hopeful, and has a of him, we have access to knowing Chicago in a way that twinkle in his eyes.” people near and far would never have had without him.” – Leigh Fagin, Assistant Director of Collaborative Programming, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
– Judy Hoffman, Professor of Practice in Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago
WORKING FEATURING Library
1001 Chicago Afternoons
Community Media Workshop
Brewery
The Hideout
Anthology of Chicago Andrew Davis
Illinois Labor History Society
Tom Dyja
MAY 9-11, 2014
A festival celebrating Studs Terkel through oral histories, screenings, concerts, talks, art installations, storytelling, and more.
Matt Austin Ira Glass
Illustrated Press
Maggie Brown
Chicago Public
Guild Literary Complex
David Isay
Haymarket
Jane Addams Hull-House
Museum Rick Kogan Alex Kotlowitz Sydney Lewis Manual Cinema Maria’s Community Bar Media Burn Archive The Museum of Broadcast Communications The New Press Old Town School of Folk Music Rick Perlstein Audrey Petty
Pleasant House Bakery
Public Media Institute Read/Write Library
South Side Projections
StoryCorps
Street-Level Youth Media Studs Terkel Centenary Committee The Third Coast Audio Festival Voice of Witness WBEZ Haskell Wexler WFMT and The University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture Chicago Studies Committee on Creative Writing Department of Cinema and Media Studies Theater and Performance Studies Franke Institute for the Humanities Human Rights Center Institute of Politics Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts Smart Museum of Art
773.702.ARTS
studs.uchicago.edu
