Arts Ambassadors Arrive in D.C.

The InCite Arts Festival conquers more of the Eastern seaboard this weekend, armed with neuroses, NASA, and the history of the universe.

Conceived to showcase the College of Fine Arts schools of music, theatre, and visual arts, InCite 2009 makes its Washington, D.C., debut this weekend, running October 30 through November 2. This time around, after two years in New York City, the festival celebrates the intersection of arts, science, and politics in the nation’s capital.

“This is the perfect opportunity to push students out of their comfort zone,” says Jim Petosa, director of the school of theatre. “It’s giving them the opportunity to feel what it’s like to be in a professional setting.”

The BU Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Hoose, a CFA professor and director of orchestral activities, offers what could be described as a musical history of the universe at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on November 2. The program includes the world premiere of Nolan Gasser’s Cosmic Reflection: A Narrated Symphony, op. 15, narrated by novelist and playwright Carey Harrison, with a NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center video. Cosmic Reflection celebrates the launch of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and is part of the First Fermi International Science Symposium; symposium partners include the Department of Energy, NASA, the National Science Foundation, Stanford University, and BU.

The school of visual arts honors John Walker, a CFA professor, at the Phillips Collection, where his work is represented. Richard Raiselis, a CFA associate professor, leads a tour of the collection and talks about works by Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, and Sam Gilliam, as well as Walker, on October 30.

“We thought, let’s do something in D.C. that’s different to showcase what we do, but also reach out to the alumni, parents, and the broader community in the area,” says Lynne Allen, director of the school of visual arts.

On the theatrical side, Petosa chose to bring The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Every Good Boy Deserves Favour to D.C. Both are 2008 InCite festival veterans, and both delve into aspects of mental illness. In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, a one-act opera adapted from an essay by Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, a singer, and the singer’s wife are featured in a humorous tale about the diagnosis of the singer’s rare mental disorder. In Tom Stoppard’s and André Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, the setting is a Soviet asylum in 1977. Sharing a cell, Ivanov is a genuine mental patient who believes he’s conducting a full orchestra, which appears on stage, and Alexander is a political prisoner who claims mental illness to regain his freedom.

Color and Light: Reception and Gallery Talk is at 6:30 p.m. October 30 at the Phillips Collection Annex, 1600 21st St. NW, Washington. Richard Raiselis discusses how painters quantify color and how color proportion and choice of medium influence how paintings look. He will talk about the work of John Walker and others in the museum. Free, but reservations are recommended.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, directed by Jim Petosa, will be performed at 5 p.m. October 31 and November 1 at the Olney Theatre Center.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, directed by Petosa and conducted by William Lumpkin, a CFA associate professor, will be performed at 8 p.m. October 31 and 2 p.m. November 1 at the Olney Theatre Center.

Both productions are at the Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd., Olney, Md. Tickets are $38 and are available by phone at 301-924-3400 or online. Discounts are available for BU alumni (promo code “BUALUM09”), Olney Theatre Center subscribers, seniors, students, and groups.

The BU Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Hoose, performs at 8 p.m. November 2 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, 2700 F St. NW, Washington. Presented by Classical Archives, the concert is part of the First Fermi International Science Symposium. A limited number of tickets are available to the general public at $20 each, at the Kennedy Center box office, by phone at 202-467-4600, or at the center’s Web site. Details about a limited number of complimentary tickets for BU alumni are available here.

Kimberly Cornuelle can be reached at kcornuel@bu.edu.