Southeastern Louisiana University

Hodding Carter III headlines Fanfare's second week

Contact: Christina Chapple

10/3/08

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     Hodding Carter III, best known as the public face of the Iran hostage crisis during the Carter administration, will present a special Fanfare lecture on Oct. 16, 7 p.m., at the Columbia Theatre for the Performing Arts, Southeastern’s downtown Hammond performing arts center.

     Although Hodding Carter III grew up in Greenville, Miss., his family’s roots are deep in the Hammond area. In the early 1930s, Carter’s parents, Hodding Carter and Betty Werlein Carter, operated the “Hammond Daily Courier,” a publication noted for its outspoken opposition to Louisiana Governor Huey P. Long. A decade earlier, Carter’s grandfather, Will Carter, was instrumental in founding Southeastern as Hammond Junior College.

     After graduating from Princeton University, Carter returned to his family’s “Greenville Delta Democrat-Times” where for 17 years he was a prize-winning reporter, managing editor and editor/associate publisher. Active in racial and political reform, he served in the Johnson and Carter campaigns before joining the Carter administration as assistant secretary of state and state department spokesman. He has been a member of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences faculty since 2006. He also spent eight years as president and chief executive officer of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a Miami-based organization that promotes excellence in journalism. In 1961, he won the Society of Professional Journalists’ national award for editorial writing. He was a Harvard University Nieman Fellow from 1965-66.

     Carter’s Fanfare presentation is free and is sponsored by the Leon Ford Family Foundation in cooperation with Southeastern’s Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies.

     Fanfare’s second full week opens on Monday, Oct. 13, with the American Place Theatre’s stage version of Khaled Hosseini’s acclaimed novel “The Kite Runner,” the first English language novel about contemporary Afghanistan. Actor Sorab Wadia brings the novel to life as a one-person theatrical adaptation.

     The performance, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. at Vonnie Borden Theatre in D Vickers Hall, tells the story of the improbable friendship of two boys – Amir, a privileged Pashtun, and Hassan, a Hazara servant set against the tumultuous backdrop of 1970s Afghanistan.

     Tickets,  available at the Columbia Theatre box office, 220 E. Thomas St. in downtown Hammond (985-543-4371),  are $12, adults; $10.50, senior citizens, Southeastern faculty, staff and alumni, and $9, non-Southeastern students. It is free for Southeastern students with I.D.

     On Tuesday, Oct. 14, action on stage moves to the Pottle Music Building Auditorium for the Southeastern Opera/Music Theatre Workshop’s contribution to Fanfare, “Rodgers and Hart: A Celebration.” Running nightly at 7:30 p.m. through Oct. 17, the lively review will feature 10 Southeastern students performing 60 of the prolific songwriting duo’s classics – best summed up by master tunesmith Irving Berlin: “Tuneful and tasty, schmaltzy and smart -- music by Rodgers, lyrics by Hart.”

     Rodgers and Hart continually redefined musical theatre and film scores with their wit, freshness, sophistication and intelligence. The revue highlights the variety and vigor of songs such as “My Funny Valentine,” “Blue Moon,” “Ten Cents a Dance,” “The Lady is a Tramp,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “This Can’t Be Love,” “Manhattan,” and “With a Song in My Heart.”

     Tickets -- $14 adults; $10, senior citizens, Southeastern faculty, staff and alumni, and non-Southeastern students – are available at the Columbia Theatre box office and at the door one hour prior to performance time. Southeastern students are admitted free with their university I.D.

     Fanfare’s second week also includes:

     ▪ The Sunday With the Arts free concert series at area churches continues on Oct. 12 with organist Collin Anthony Richardson at Greenfield Baptist Church, 100 J.W. Davis Dr. in Hammond. Richardson currently serves as assistant organist at Hillside Presbyterian Church in Atlanta and chapel organist at Emory University’s Cannon Chapel. A graduate of Morehouse College and Emory, he was a finalist in the National Association of Negro Musicians Organ Competition and was an award winner in the American Guild of Organists Competition.

     ▪ “Even More Evans,” a discussion of one of Southeastern’s most famous alumni, the late great jazz pianist Bill Evans. Ron Nethercutt, retired Southeastern music professor, alumnus and former KSLU 90.9 FM general manager, will highlight Evans’ days as a Southeastern student in the 1950s on Oct. 14, 2 p.m., at the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies in Sims Memorial Library. Nethercutt developed Southeastern’s Bill Evans Archive shortly after Evans’ death in 1980. He has made many appearances as moderator and soloist at Southeastern’s Bill Evans Jazz Festival and in 2003 he donated much of his personal Bill Evans holdings to the Sims Memorial Library to anchor an archive of Evans recordings, interviews, manuscripts, letters, and other memorabilia. The lecture is free.

     ▪ Another award-winning foreign film – the German movie “Go for Zucker,” Oct. 14, 5 p.m., in the Student Union Theatre. An enormous hit in Germany, the comedy, rated R, was widely hailed as the sign of a renaissance in German-Jewish humor. The film stars Henry Hübchen as Jaecki Zucker (born Jakob Zuckermann), a member of a family divided in 1961 by the Berlin Wall. When Jaecki's mother dies, the family is forced back together -- and neither very secular Jaecki nor his estranged Orthodox brother can receive their inheritance unless they put aside their differences. Fanfare’s Foreign Film Series is free.

     ▪ A “Then and Now” lecture on “Women and Terrorism” by Southeastern history professor Margaret Gonzalez-Perez, Oct. 15, 1 p.m., in Pottle Music Building Auditorium.

     Gonzalez-Perez is the author of a new study that examines terrorist groups with significant female participation in the Americas, Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. She demonstrates that women are inclined to participate in greater numbers and at higher levels in domestic terrorist groups, where they have the opportunity to change their own society and its restrictions on women, than in international groups that oppose external forces such as capitalism, imperialism, or the West. A book-signing will follow her free presentation.

     ▪ An exhibit and reception hosted at the Hammond home of community activist and art supporter Guy Recotta. Artists will be on hand to answer questions about their work at the event, scheduled for Oct. 16, 5-7 p.m., at 502 W. Charles St., which will also define opportunities for participating in adult art education programs at the Art Station in Ponchatoula. 

     ▪ “Stories and Jazz” for children at the Hammond Library, 314 E. Thomas St., Oct. 18, 10 a.m. Before families head to Southeastern’s campus to join in Homecoming Day festivities (www.selu.edu/homecoming), kids can enjoy librarian Karen Plauche’s special program blending stories and toe-tapping jazz. The program of musical and literary fun is free.

     ▪ A Homecoming Day (Oct. 18) exhibit highlighting the talents of Southeastern alumni artists, at the Contemporary Art Gallery in East Stadium. The free exhibit will be open from 2-5:30 p.m. during Homecoming activities.  

     For additional information about Fanfare 2008, visit columbiatheatre.org