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<FONT FACE="Verdana"><B>This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Water (PG-13)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>Thursday, Friday & Saturday, August 10, 11 & 12<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
Sunday, August 13<BR>
4:15 & 7:00 PM<BR>
</B>$5/adult, $3/child under 13<BR>
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies<BR>
<B>(See movie review below)<BR>
</B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
<B>Early next week at the Kenworthy!<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT SIZE="5"><U>On Monday, August 14<BR>
</U><I>Sirius Idaho Theatre</I> holds<BR>
</FONT><BR>
<FONT SIZE="5"><B>Auditions</B></FONT><B> for the World Premiere of<BR>
</B><FONT COLOR="#800080"><H2><I>Cow-Tipping and Other Signs of Stress<BR>
</I></H2></FONT><B>By Gregory Fletcher<BR>
</B><BR>
Winner of the 2005 Mark Twain Award for Comic Playwriting<BR>
<BR>
Directed by Stan Brown<BR>
<BR>
<H2>Monday, August 14<BR>
6:00 – 8:00 pm<BR>
</H2>Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
<B>To schedule appointment, call Pam at 208.596.2270 or email ppalmer@moscow.com<BR>
</B><BR>
One contemporary piece for auditions<BR>
<BR>
Four characters<BR>
2M (25-45), 2W (35-50)<BR>
<BR>
After years of perseverance and rejection letters, undiscovered playwright Christopher Post asks for a sign from the universe confirming that he’s on the right path. The signs flood in, each contradicting the next. When Christopher runs into an old college buddy who works for role model and star playwright Ward Edington, Christopher begins sneaking, stealing, hiding, conniving, teasing, fighting, and his life continues to snowball from there. Saving his marriage and career will be the hardest rewrite of his life. A romantic dramedy laced with farce and cows.<BR>
<BR>
<B>Copy of the script available for preview at BookPeople of Moscow.<BR>
</B><BR>
Non-equity stipend for actors<BR>
Housing provided<BR>
Four week rehearsals start August 20<BR>
Six performances, September 21 – 30<BR>
<BR>
www.SiriusIdahoTheatre.com<BR>
<BR>
<I>Sirius Idaho Theatre</I> is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.<BR>
Tax-deductible donations are appreciated!<BR>
<BR>
Pamela Palmer, Managing Artistic Director<BR>
<B><I>Sirius Idaho Theatre<BR>
</I></B>P.O. Box 8762<BR>
Moscow, Idaho 83843<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
Next week at the Kenworthy-<BR>
<BR>
</B><FONT COLOR="#000080"><H2>An Inconvenient Truth (PG)<BR>
</H2></FONT><B>August 17, 18 & 19<BR>
7:00 PM<BR>
August 20<BR>
4:45 & 7:00 PM<BR>
</B>Panel discussion Aug. 20, 8:45 PM<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
August 1, 2006<BR>
<B>For immediate release:<BR>
</B><BR>
On <B>Friday, August 25</B> the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre and NorthWest Public Radio will join together for a very special night at the movies.<BR>
<BR>
The fun will begin at 6:30 PM with live music featuring Moscow's own Charlie Sutton and Ben Walden, food, prizes, and a <B>screening of the new Robert Altman film, A Prairie Home Companion</B> at 8:00 PM.<BR>
<BR>
The event will be held at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre and proceeds will be shared equally with Northwest Public Radio.<BR>
<BR>
"We are very excited about this event," says Tom Hungate from NorthWest Public Radio. It will be a great time on a Friday night to support two worthwhile community groups." This is a match made on the Palouse, says Julie Ketchum, executive director of KPAC.<BR>
<BR>
Tickets for the event are $20 and are on sale at Bookpeople in Moscow and Brused Books in Pullman. Tickets may be charged to Visa or MC by calling 882-4127.<BR>
<BR>
For more information, visit www.kenworthy.org or nwpr.org.<BR>
* * *<BR>
<BR>
<B>Coming in August at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre:</B> <BR>
<BR>
KPAC & NWPR present<BR>
<B>A Prairie Home Companion Benefit<BR>
</B>August 25, 6:30 PM<BR>
$20/general admission<BR>
<BR>
<B>A Prairie Home Companion (PG-13)<BR>
</B>August 26, 7:00 PM<BR>
August 27, 4:30 & 7:00 PM<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
</B><BR>
<B>Coming in September:</B> <BR>
Superman Returns; <I>Sirius Idaho Theatre</I> presents <I>Cow-Tipping and Other Signs of Stress<BR>
</I><BR>
Regular movie prices: $5/adult, $3/child 12 or younger<BR>
Wednesday matinee prices: $4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger<BR>
KFS series pass prices: $30/10 films, $75/30 films. KFS pass good only for Sunday movies.<BR>
<BR>
For more information on movies, events, rental rates, and/or to download a schedule, visit our website at www.kenworthy.org<BR>
<B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
This week’s movie review-<BR>
</B><BR>
<FONT COLOR="#800000"><H2>Water<BR>
</H2></FONT><BR>
Written and directed by Deepa Mehta <BR>
Presented in Hindi, with English subtitles <BR>
Rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It contains a suggestion of prostitution and some brief drug use.<BR>
Running time: 1 hour, 54 minutes.<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Ruthe Stein writing for the San Francisco Chronicle<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
"Water'' is an elegiac lament for a sorrowful chapter of Indian history. The title can be interpreted metaphorically as the cleansing of body and soul. At its simplest it refers to the Ganges, which serves as a backdrop to this overwhelmingly sad story of a country holding onto a tradition that vastly inhibits the lives of widows even while Mahatma Gandhi offers the possibility of liberation for all.<BR>
<BR>
The film opens on the river in 1938. A bright-eyed 8-year-old is being taken to the other side along with an obviously ailing older man. The assumption is that he's her father. But it's soon revealed that they are husband and wife, joined together in an arranged marriage that the girl, Chuyia, doesn't remember. He soon dies, sentencing Chuyia to a kind of life imprisonment.<BR>
<BR>
Hindu law, remnants of which remain in modern-day India, dictates that widows must live together in ashrams. Swathed in white saris, they atone for sins that somehow brought about the demise of their spouses. By focusing on a youngster, writer-director Deepa Mehta, exposes the illogic of the repressive law. What possible transgressions could Chuyia have committed in her short time on Earth?<BR>
<BR>
Mehta has created the perfect guide to this strange female world. Chuyia's first rite of passage is to have her long hair shorn. Bald, her intense eyes pop out even more, and she seems to see the hypocrisy of the system more clearly than longtime residents whose spirits have been crushed, resigning them to their fate. Read the riot act by the bloated tyrannical head of the house, Chuyia dismissively calls her "fatty.'' With the energy of youth, she skips through the long gloomy rooms as if they were a labyrinthine playground.<BR>
<BR>
By some extraordinary karma, Mehta located the perfect child for the role, a Sri Lankan who goes by her first name, Sarala, and who had never acted before. The naturalism of her performance contributes to its power and the heartbreaking effect of watching Chuyia pushed into adulthood long before her time.<BR>
<BR>
As Mehta showed in "Fire'' and "Earth,'' the first two films in what she calls her elemental trilogy, she has a tendency toward the melodramatic. A subplot in "Water'' involving a beautiful cloistered woman named Kalyani (Lisa Ray) and her unlikely romance with Gandhi supporter Narayan (John Abraham) has the whiff of soap opera. They fall in love at first sight after he rescues her little dog, which wisely has run away from the ashram. The two continue to meet clandestinely. On one trip, Narayan drives her to the British border where, he tells her, people don't care if she's a widow. Their reality, however, is quite different. Narayan's Brahmin mother gasps when he tells her his plans to marry a resident of a house of widows.<BR>
<BR>
Ray and Abraham, both big stars in India, are so fabulous looking that it becomes distracting. Abraham, in particular, isn't a strong enough actor to make you forget he's a hunk. Ray is never seen without extravagant eye makeup. When Kalyani's rendezvous with her lover are discovered, she is punished by getting her long, luxurious hair chopped off. But the results look like a Vidal Sassoon creation.<BR>
<BR>
Because so much of "Water'' is set inside, it has a claustrophobic feel. So it's a relief when Mehta and her gifted cinematographer Giles Nuttgens (who worked on "Star Wars'') open the movie up, and the sights and sounds of India come alive. During a festival, the widows are allowed to wear something other than white and to extravagantly color their faces. Chuyia laughs as bright pink powder is splashed all over her cheeks. The unmistakable rhythmic patterns of Indian music can be heard in the background.<BR>
<BR>
This vivid re-creation of India is especially impressive considering that violent protests by Hindu fundamentalists forced filming to stop there. Most of "Water'' was shot years later in Sri Lanka. Fortunately Mehta didn't give up. She's made an important movie that captures the beginning of modern India in scenes of Gandhi preaching his message of freedom. Although it took decades before the country was receptive to the idea of feminism, its roots can be seen in the eyes of the film's magical young heroine.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Marjorie Baumgarten writing for the Austin (Texas) Chronicle<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
Water, which examines the second-class status of women in traditional Hindu society, concludes director Mehta’s “elemental trilogy” (the other two films in the series are Fire and Earth). Although the story is set in colonial India of 1938 and coincides with Gandhi’s rise to power, the film paints a picture of religious fundamentalism that remains intrinsically unchanged despite secular social advances that have occurred during the intervening decades. Only three options exist for a widow in traditional Hindu society: She can burn her body along with her husband’s on his funeral pyre, she can marry her husband’s brother if he is willing, or she can move into a group ashram for widows where the women live in penance and poverty. A note at the end of the film tells us that conditions have changed little for many women in present-day India. <BR>
<BR>
We are ushered into the widows’ ashram of Water through the experiences of 8-year-old Chuyia (Sarala), who, at the start of the film, is awakened by her father who asks, “Do you remember getting married?” The question is as disturbingly irrelevant as the child’s answer, for now she is a widow, and her meager past will shape her entire future. Her father takes Chuyia to a widows’ home and leaves her there – confused, distraught, yet nevertheless curious and bursting with life. For the longest time, Chuyia is convinced her parents will eventually come to retrieve her from this strange place, but while she waits she explores her environs and gets to know the women living there. The widows all have shorn heads and wear only white, unstyled saris, which make their station in life immediately evident to all. Only one woman, a beauty named Kalyani (Ray), has long hair, but this, too, is her sad fate rather than a kindly dispensation. She is the one woman appointed by the domineering “house mother” to prostitute herself to the local gentry and thereby earn money to keep their ashram functioning. (She is accompanied on her nightly visits by a transvestite eunuch.) Kalyani and Chuyia form an instant friendship and become the main sources of unruliness in the home. Soon Kalyani meets future lawyer Narayana (Abraham), who is a follower of Gandhi and wants to start a new life with Kalynai, away from their scandalized family and community members. <BR>
<BR>
Whether or not it’s really possible for them to escape the rigid religious demands of their society becomes the film’s central question. Meanwhile, Mehta and her cameraman, Giles Nuttgens, capture the area’s rich interplay of light and color, land and water, and riches and poverty. The story they tell is beautiful yet sad, a tale drenched in centuries of stagnant, holy water that cleanses the body but putrefies the soul.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<B><I><U>As reviewed by Jeannette Catsoulis writing for the New York Times<BR>
</U></I></B><BR>
Set in 1938 in the twilight of colonial India, "Water" focuses on a group of women condemned by Hindu law to spend the rest of their lives in an institution, or ashram, on the banks of the Ganges because they are widows. While the devout Shakuntula spends her days assisting a local holy man, the limpid-eyed Kalyani — the only widow whose head has not been shaved — is forced into prostitution by the ashram's domineering housemother. Employing a sly eunuch as go-between, the housemother sells Kalyani's services to a wealthy Brahmin on the other side of the river.<BR>
<BR>
Written and directed by Deepa Mehta, "Water" is an exquisite film about the institutionalized oppression of an entire class of women and the way patriarchal imperatives inform religious belief. Serene on the surface yet roiling underneath, the film neatly parallels the plight of widows under Hindu fundamentalism to that of India under British colonialism. Though Gandhi and his followers are an insistent background presence, the movie is never didactic, trusting the simple rhythms of the women's lives to tell their story.<BR>
<BR>
Mustering a whole spectrum of luminous blues and greens, Ms. Mehta and her cinematographer, Giles Nuttgens, paint a vibrant world of lambent light and indigo shade. The lushness and texture of the ashram's surroundings are in stark contrast to the widows' unflattering white robes, which hang from their bodies like dirty bandages; but here even images of deprivation gleam like gold. Never has the Ganges looked so inviting.<BR>
<BR>
Shifting between romantic melodrama and spiritual inquiry, "Water" flows with the simplicity of a fairy tale. The lovers' struggle may be the heart of the film, but Shakuntula's awakening is its soul. In the triumphant and moving final scene, her selfless act of bravery offers hope to Chuyia and India alike.<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<I>Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart<BR>
</I><B>* * *<BR>
<BR>
<I>Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
</I>508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho<BR>
</B>208-882-4127<BR>
Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by logging onto our website <BR>
<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U>http://www.kenworthy.org<BR>
<BR>
</U></FONT>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<BR>
PAMELA PALMER, <B>Volunteer<BR>
</B>Mailto:ppalmer@moscow.com<BR>
Film and Events Committee <BR>
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre<BR>
<BR>
http://www.kenworthy.org<BR>
To speak with a KPAC staff member, <BR>
call (208) 882-4127<BR>
Mailto:kpac@moscow.com<BR>
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