arts & entertainment The Michigan Daily-Saturday, April 14, 1979-Page 7 More firepower In Musket lineup Study break? Try Yeats, By ANTHONY VOGEL The Yeats Theatre Festival, resurrected because of the enthusiasm generated by last year's triumph, will make its second appearance in Ann Ar- bor next week, beginning Tuesday, April 17. This year's Festival will con- tinue to celebrate the drama of the great poet-playwright William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), featuring three more of his brilliant experimental plays, a four day series of symposia, and two evenings of Irish pub. Irene Connors, an assistant professor in UM's theatre department,. and ar- tistic director of the Festival, will direct a program of two short plays, The Cat and the Moon and A Full Moon in March, to be performed April 18 and 19 at 8 p.m. and April 20 at 11 p.m. in Trueblood Aud. The Cat and the Moon enacts a cen- turies-old Irish legend about two beggars, one blind and one lame, who seek a sacred well for cure. The blind man carries the lame man on his back, and, bound together, the precursors of Beckett's pairs of cripples in Waiting for Godot, and Endgame form a grotesque parody of a whole man. There is rich comedy in their bickering, .,and beating and cursing of each other as they amble towards Saint Colman's well. As much a charlatan as a saint, the cat-like holy man asks roguishly: "Will you be cured or will you be blessed?" The proud, cynical, blind man opts for curing his body, while the By JOSHUA PECK Drastic changes are underway at MUSKET, the student theater organization. The group, which for the past several years has produced one musical show each semester, and never any "straight" plays, will stage a greater number of shows, and a greater variety as well. Of the many projects Gary Rubin, new MUSKET chief is planning, the most exciting is the upcoming original musical, tentatively called Ghost Story, that the group will stage in the fall. The show's score is the work of Bill Holab and Scott Eyerly, two of the music school's best and brightest. Andrew Kurtzman, many-time Hopwood Award winner, penned the book and the lyrics, partly in collaboration with Eyerly. Until the present, non-musical theater for University students has been the province of the Speech Department, and small, low budget groups like the Ac- tors' Ensemble and the Back Alley Players. Musket now joins the fray with plans for contemporary drama to be staged at the Mendelssohn Theater and Canterbury Loft, also in the fall. Rubin won't reveal just what plays he has in mind, but he dismissed Williams and O'Neill works as possibilities, saying they are "too old." THE MUSKET crew is also mulling over the idea of presenting some children's shows in the fall, perhaps in the Union's Pendleton Room. Winter term will bring the company's traditional big-budget musical, but new dramatic values are afloat here too. Whereas three of the last four winter shows have been of the mostly-for-entertainment variety (Hello Dolly, Music Man, On The Town), Rubin is looking for scripts with a degee, at least, of artistic merit, and perhaps a greater measure of contemporary flavor. If all goes well, these best-laid plans won't go astray. r No, he's not asking for spare change. These actors performed "A Full Moon in March" last January as part of a promotion for the Yeats Festival this month at the University. FOR LEOTARDS at SPECIAL PRICES'come to ERIC'S SECOND SERVE Factory Outlet for Discount Sports Apparel. Name Brands, Overruns and Seconds Long-Sleeve Leotards $6.80 /Short-Sleeve $6.30 Tights $3.70/ Any Top and Bottom $9.i5 406 E. Liberty 2 Blks. off State St. 663-677 I foolish, thieving, lame man chooses the blessing of his soul. The saint's magic is performed and the counterparts separate, equally well-deceived in new TNino Rotal19O-79 At the time of his death in Italy earlier this week, composer Nino Rota stood virtually alone atop his chosen profession, a giant among too many dirivitive, eager-to-please pygmyes. His work exemplified the very best of an art all too often dismissed as a poor stepchild of motion pic- tures: Film music. Those who,: write movie scores are usually scorned as second-rate composers, yetmost of the time they aren't so much jeered at as simply ignored. The, recent burgeoning, voluminous craft of film criticism has produced virtually nothing in the analysis of movie music; huge tomes are written without any mention of it at all, as if film scores were the least important element in the cinematic process, afsilent partner exercising no influence whatsoever. Nothing could be much further from the truth. Few elements in a film exert a greater effect upon an audiences' perception of it, either for better or worse. At its loftiest, film music can mold and focus the viewer's reac- tion to what he's watching, can reveal thoughts and emotions in the film that visuals alone cannot. At its worst, movie music can simply obliterate the entire picture, numbing potentially sensitive nuances with smarmy, rotund scores totally at odds with anything happening on the screen. (How often one wants to yell "shut up!" at the schmaltz scores by Max Steiner and others galumphing through the 30's and 40's). OF THOSE COMPOSERS who remained fully dedicated to the film profession, two stood alone in defying condescention: Bernard Herr- mann, who redefined the concept of suspense for Alfred Hitchcock; and Rota, whose work for Federico Fellini comprises the most imaginative legacy of musical-cinematic synthesis the art of motion pictures has ever produced. Though he was best known to American audiences for his scores for Romeo and Juliet and the Godfather films (which earned him a pair of Oscars), it was Rota's music for Fellini that immortalized his genius. By turns poignantly lyric or impishly diabolical, his scores throbbed with a phantasmic energy that welded them so perfectly to the director's work that visual and aural seemed one in the same. For a quarter of a century, filmmaker and composer worked as if in- side a single brain, moving from Rota's wrenching violin solo of La Strada through the wild, pulsating circus finale of 8/ to the softly terrifying robot ballerina's dance in their final collaboration, Casanova. Rota's music was amazingly diverse and encompassing, yet never for a moment did it lapse into pompous self-importance, a malady which oc- casionaly afflicted even Bernard Herrmann. Rota's work remained gossamer, nimbly effortless, the things dreams are made of. That those dreams often turned nightmarishly spooky was simply testimony to his nefarious virtuosity. When he was fatally stricken by a bboodclot, Rota was at work on the score for Fellini's yet-unfinished Women's City. One is hard-pressed to imagine what the film will be like without him-indeed, what the state of film music in general will become. In a time when simplistic bombast seems to be resurrectng itself not only in film but also the music which accompanies it, Rota's mosaic subtlety will be desparately missed. -Christopher Potter found pleasure. THE TIGHT KNIT of dialogue, dan- ce, and poetry transforms the legend into a forceful, suggestive myth. Mar- shall Levijoki (Blind Man) and Kathy Badgerow (Lame Man) together give a strong, well-balanced, physically comic performance and John Kolars is ap- pealingly feline as the Saint. In A Full M'oon in March, a contest is the subject. He whose singing pleases the Queen best shall win her for a wife. A proud rag-befouled swineherd comes to answer the challenge, but the Queen, claiming insult, has him beheaded, whereupon she places the severed head upon her throne. Magically, the head sings, and the Queen performs a dance of sexual adoration, climaxing it with a kiss upon the head's lips. Gay DeLanghe, the Queen, sustains this play, built around the action of the horrible, fascinating ritual of dance. Framing the dance are the compelling songs of the court attendants, sung to a haunting original score composed by William Albright. AL PHILLIPS will direct Words Upon the Windowpane, an entrancing play in which the tortured spirit of Jonathan Swift is accidentally raised in a Dublin seance. Windowpane will be performed April 17 and 20 at 8 p.m. and April 21 at 2 p.m. in the Pendleton Room. This year's symposia, to be held in the Pendleton Room April 17-20, at 2 p.m. each day, will examine the following topics: Irish Politics and Society in the Irish Dramatic Movement; 20th Century Experiments in -Western European Drama; Psychology and Yeats' Mysticism; and Magic and Ritual in Yeat's Theatre. Assistant professor of English Peter Ferran will moderate. lesbian & Gay Ma/e Celebration Dance Saturday, April 14 9 p.m.-1 o.m. Michigan Union Ballroom $1.50 Donation For information call: 763-4186 ~1 I 71 ALL MEDIA COMPANY PRESENTS Original Multi-Media Musical Theatre You Never Know What They'll Do Next with the NON RETURNABLES April 13 & 14-8:00 pm R.C. Aud.-East Quad TICKETS $1.50, Mich. Union Box Office Sponsored by L.S.A.-S.G., Mich. Student Assembly R.C., UA.C. I0 noti ~00 I on your first jo interview: 4-r 1.) 2.) 3.) 4.) 5.) 6.) 7.) Don't bring your mother. Don't wear your Hula-girl tie. If your stomach growls, don't say "Down, boy!" Don't explain why everyone calls you "Animal:" Don't wear your flower that squirts. Don't wear sneakers, even if they're new. Don't ask for a salary that could be mistaken for your phone number. 8.) Don't take a job with a company that doesn't serve Stroh's at its Christmas party. - ilk-A I - a - - - I MMEM Im