Date: Monday, December 2, 2013. 7:30 PM.
Location: Cubberley Auditorium (School of Education)
This year is the 50th anniversary of Robert Frost’s death, and the passing years have not displaced him from his standing as one of America’s favorite poets. His poems invest commonplace realities with eerie significance, give voice to bittersweet ironies in crisp vernacular language, and cultivate a sense of wonder (and often elegiac loss) in a mythic New England landscape. Frost’s poems are often little dramas, quirky soliloquies and darkly comic monologues, plain spoken, deceptively simple yet complex and ambiguous—perfect for the stage. In Fire and Ice, Frost’s poems will be performed as dramatic readings in a unique production assembled and produced by Hilton Obenzinger and directed and performed by Kay Kostopoulos with acclaimed actor James Carpenter. The performance will be followed by a discussion with Professor of English Emeritus Albert Gelpi on Frost’s reputation and the understanding of his work in the 21st century. Hilton Obenzinger Lecturer, Departments of English and American Studies, Stanford Hilton Obenzinger has hosted the “How I Write” series of conversations for ten years and has co-produced theatrical programs of Moby-Dick, Whitman’s Song of Myself, and the poems of Emily Dickinson. Kay Kostopoulos Lecturer in Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford Kay Kostopoulos has performed extensively around the Bay Area, including at the American Conservatory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, and Stanford Summer Theater. James Carpenter Associate Artist, California Shakespeare Theater James Carpenter is a long-standing member of the Bay Area theatrical community, a past associate artist at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and a 2010 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow. Albert Gelpi Coe Professor of American Literature, Emeritus, Stanford Albert Gelpi has written numerous books on American poetry, including The Tenth Muse: The Psyche of the American Poet, the first volume of a study of the American poetic tradition, and its sequel, A Coherent Splendor: The American Poetic Renaissance 1910–1950.