"Cecilia Kucera" Archive

Concert to benefit The Shalom Project

unbroken.circle.membersMark your calendars for The Shalom Project Benefit Concert featuring Unbroken Circle, Wake Forest’s multi-generational string band. The event will be held Sat., February 1. at 7 p.m. in Kulynych Auditorium in Byrum Welcome Center.

Band members include:
Bailey Allman: Fiddle
Ella Allman: Guitar, mandolin, vocals
Joe Allman: Bass
Martha Allman: Autoharp
Nick Bennett: Banjo, vocals
Linda Bridges: Accordion, vocals
Kate Brooks: Guitar
Billy Hamilton: Banjo, vocals
Jodi Hildebran: Guitar
Will Huesman: Guitar, vocals
Graylyn Sage Kersh: Muse, musical apprentice
Cecilia Kucera: Fiddle
Jordan Lee: Guitar, vocals
Linda Luvaas: Mandolin, vocals
Sara Pesek: Banjo
Ed Wilson: Poetry

All proceeds go to support the work of The Shalom Project.

Categories: Events

Band of Wake Foresters raises money for local nonprofit

The Unbroken Circle performs“The Unbroken Circle,” a bluegrass band that incubated in the living rooms of Wake Forest faculty and staff, played a concert recently that raised $5,000 for the Shalom Project, a nonprofit that offers vital programs to its West Salem neighborhood.

The multigenerational band, whose members all have ties to Wake Forest, teamed up on Jan. 29 at the Green Street Church with professional blues musician Big Ron Hunter to perform a benefit entitled “Come Home.” Provost Emeritus Ed Wilson also read from the poetry of W. B. Yeats to an audience that exceeded 250.

“Wake Forest students, faculty and staff have a long history with both Green Street Church and the Shalom Project, be it serving the homeless through the Wake Saturdays program, tutoring children in the after school program, or serving meals at Wednesday night dinners,” said Martha Allman, dean of admissions and one of the Unbroken Circle’s founding members.

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Categories: Events

It takes a village to put on 'The Grapes of Wrath'

Grapes of WrathSharon Andrews and her colleagues in the theatre and dance department would like to make the University Theatre the community’s theatre. Andrews, an associate professor of theatre, is directing the University Theatre’s current production of “The Grapes of Wrath” on the Mainstage Theatre.

The play has the usual large cast of undergraduates, but Andrews has sought to make it more of a community play, reaching out to faculty and staff and graduate students, and she is using the play as a springboard to partner with other academic departments on campus and a local high school.

“We want the theatre to ripple out to the campus community and to the larger community and integrate the community into what we are doing,” Andrews said.

Grapes of WrathRead more campus news at Inside WFU.
Read more about the importance of props in stage shows
Read more about stage manager Suzanne Spicer (’11)

The play, adapted by Frank Galati, is based on John Steinbeck’s classic 1939 novel of a desperately poor family fleeing the “Dust Bowl” of Oklahoma during the Great Depression for what they hoped would be a better life in California. In addition to about 30 undergraduates, the play’s cast also includes several graduate students and others with connections to Wake Forest. Owen Rask, the son of Provost Jill Tiefenthaler and Professor of Economics Kevin Rask, auditioned for and landed the part of Winfield, the youngest son of the Joad family.

Grapes of WrathThe play features an old-time string bandcomposed of faculty and staff and others associated with Wake Forest: Martha Allman (’82, MBA ’92) (autoharp), director of undergraduate admissions, and her daughter, Ella (bass fiddle); Linda Bridges (accordion), director of admissions for the divinity school; Rick Davidson (banjo), husband of Joanne Davidson, who works in the Schools of Business; Cecilia Kucera (fiddle), a sophomore Presidential Scholar; and Bill McIlwain (MAEd ’94) (guitar). McIlwain also plays “the man with the guitar” in the play.

The production is presenting several opportunities for related events over the next week to explore the play’s themes. “More and more, we are striving to provide opportunities for theatre students to have a larger conversation about the issues that plays bring up,” Andrews said. “We are looking for shows that serve our students — first of all, the University theatre is the ‘lab’ for theatre students — but that can also be integrated with other departments on campus.”

Grapes of WrathFrank Galati, the playwright who adapted “The Grapes of Wrath” in 1988, will discuss the economic, social and political issues raised in the story with several Wake Forest professors on Feb. 24 at 4:30 p.m. in the Mainstage Theatre. The panel will also include Worrell Professor of Political Science David Coates; Professor of Economics Robert Whaples; and cultural historian and journalist Brian Berger, who will take about the social context of the play. The panel discussion is sponsored by Wake Forest’s BB&T Center for the Study of Capitalism.

Andrews is also taking the play’s themes of poverty, homelessness and the Great Depression to two history classes at Parkland High School, and the students are coming to campus to see the play. Wake Forest has a partnership with the IB program at Parkland.

Also, McIlwain is presenting a one-man musical, “Woody Guthrie, Tonight!,” in the Mainstage Theatre on Feb. 22 at 7:30 p.m. The show will follow Guthrie’s life from Oklahoma to California to New York and feature 16 of his most memorable songs, including, “This Land Is Your Land,” and “So Long, It’s Been Good To Know You.”

“We want the community to know that Wake Forest University Theatre is your theatre and that we belong to the community,” Andrews said.

— By Kerry M. King (’85), Office of Communications and External Relations

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