Everything Nac

A Stephen F. Austin State University School of Theatre event on Feb. 11 will help raise funds for theatre students to travel Edinburgh, Scotland, in August to participate in the two-week Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“An Evening of Love Scenes and Songs” will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 11, in the Upstage Theatre in the Griffith Fine Arts Building on the SFA campus. The show will feature theatre faculty members and students performing scenes from William Shakespeare’s plays and singing love songs.

“We are really excited to get started planning our trip to Edinburgh this year,” SFA Professor of Theatre Angela Bacarisse said. “This year’s production will include musical numbers, so we decided to put together a special Valentine’s fundraiser including popular love songs.” Purchasing tickets makes a great early Valentine gift for one’s sweetheart and supports student study abroad, she added.

This year, the School of Theatre will produce the play “Closed For Repairs” by Bobby Britton, senior theatre student from Angleton. The play is about a young man’s struggle to accept himself as it relates to his faith. It will be performed in Fringe Venue 45, the same theatre in which SFA performed in 2015.

That year, SFA students performed original works by an SFA student playwright on the international stage in Edinburgh. In 2015, the plays were “Hate Mail” by SFA playwright-in-residence Jack Heifner and the student-written “Mom and Dad” by Nick Pinelli, an SFA graduate from The Woodlands, and Allison Day, an SFA graduate from San Antonio. Pinelli and Day wrote the play as an honors project for their class with Heifner.

“Our trip in 2015 was eye opening for the students who participated,” Bacarisse said. “They had an opportunity to see theatre companies from all over the world perform. They were so excited to talk to each other and recommend the shows that they had seen. They also made friends with the students who were participating from other universities. It was a very supportive group.”

Begun in 1947, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of several festivals that will take place in Edinburgh while the SFA students are there, has become the largest international theatre arts festival in the world. During festival season, which is three weeks in August, the International Festival, the Festival Fringe, jazz festival, art festival and book festival all take place in Edinburgh.

In addition to acting in shows, SFA students will house manage, run the lighting and soundboards and stage-manage for their performances. Students will get experience touring shows at an international festival and learn organizational skills while being exposed to art, music, theatre and dance from around the world, Bacarisse said.

“We are so grateful for everyone who supports the arts and our students,” she said. “Allowing them the opportunity to perform abroad and learn more about our global community is a great gift.”

Attending the fundraiser is just one way to support the School of Theatre in this endeavor. Tax-exempt donations for the trip can be made at sfasu.edu/giving by clicking on the “give online” tab and writing “Scotland trip” for special instructions.

Tickets to the fundraiser are $10 for general admission and $5 for students. For tickets or more information, call the SFA Fine Arts Box Office at (936) 468-6407 or (888) 240-ARTS or visit www.finearts.sfasu.edu.

Through the Cooking Matters program, more than 40 Stephen F. Austin State University students enrolled in the School of Human Sciences promoted healthy eating during the fall semester while taking HMS 409: Community Nutrition.

During the six-week Cooking Matters program, students taught community members essential nutrition education and cooking tips and took on different roles each week, including marketer, chef instructor, grocery shopper, nutrition instructor and class manager.

Justin Pelham, food, nutrition and dietetics clinical instructor at SFA, explained this allowed students to “experience the different dynamics of realistically participating in a community nutrition project.”

The program was divided into different lessons with lectures and cooking opportunities. The final lesson involved shopping at a local grocery store and included games, food comparisons, a budgeting exercise and more.

According to Pelham, the project allowed students to see the impact they can personally have on other individuals to live a healthier lifestyle within a budget. He also said the project was a success, and based on participant feedback, students and community members are already asking when the next course offering will occur.

“We are excited for future classes and hope the word spreads in our community,” Pelham said.

The Stephen F. Austin State University Department of Biology will host its second annual Darwin Day program. The program will include a seminar by Dr. Charles Pence, assistant professor of philosophy and religious studies at Louisiana State University. Pence’s seminar is titled “Evolution and Chance: From Darwin to the Pioneers of Statistics in Biology.”

Darwin Day is an annual celebration that takes place on or around Feb. 12 — the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday. The day celebrates the contributions Charles Darwin made to the field of biology as well as science, reason, exploration and intellectual bravery in general. The day’s goal is to recognize science as a universal language capable of transcending border and culture.

Pence’s seminar will focus on the history of chance, probability and statistical tools that modern biologists use when discussing evolution and how Charles Darwin managed to refine his theory without those tools.

“In this talk, I’ll begin to focus on these questions by analyzing the history of these two questions,” Pence said. “What did Darwin say was going on in cases where we now consider the influence of chance to be essential? And what did the historical biologists who were the first to introduce statistics and probability into evolution say about what they were doing?”

Pence’s seminar will be held from noon to 1 p.m. Friday, Feb. 10, in the Kennedy Auditorium on SFA’s campus. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, contact Dr. Stephen Mullin, chair of the Department of Biology, at (936) 468-3601 or mullinsj1@sfasu.edu.