`Pirates of Penzance` a timeless bit of whimsy

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E-mail: [email protected]
Linda Brazill, features editor
Jacob Stockinger, culture desk editor
252-6424
252-6480
Hot tip
Tonight’s Concert on the Square is
“American Fanfare”. Electric violinist
Tracy Silverman joins the Wisconsin
Chamber Orchestra at 7 p.m. on the
King and Main streets corner of the
Capitol Square. He will perform two of
his own compositions.
The annual Independence Day con■ Advice 3B
Dictionary
experts give
last word
Concerts on the Square
■ TV 7B
■ Weather 8B
cert also includes Tchaikovsky’s “1812
Overture,” complete with the ringing of
the bells performed on the Circus World
Museum’s Bell Wagon.
Other program highlights include M.W.
Smith’s “Freedom,” Cohan/Cacavas’ “A
Star-Spangled Spectacular” and
Strauss’ “Explosions Polka.”
Wednesday, July 6, 2005
Visitors will be able to add to grand mural
Barbara Wallraff
WORD COURT
Can you stand one more column
about dictionaries and whether
they’re the right tools for all the jobs
you want them to do?
I sent last week’s column about dictionaries to some of my fellow speakers at the recent Dictionary Society
of North America convention, inviting their comments by e-mail. They
lobbed back more than 6,000 words
of comments!
This column is about 500 words
long — so I can’t possibly share with
you even the main points my correspondents made.
Here, though, are a few of the bits I
found most interesting:
■ Sidney Landau, whose distinguished career includes having edited
the Cambridge Dictionary of
American English, wrote: “Readers
who want dictionaries to tell them
what is ‘correct’ or ‘traditional’ do
not understand the nature and purpose of general dictionaries. The purpose of general dictionaries is to represent as accurately as possible how
the language is actually used. The
dictionary editor may have his or her
own ideas and preferences in usage,
but it’s not part of the task to express
them in a general dictionary, because
anything in a dictionary should be
based on the record of actual usage
collected, nowadays in vast electronic files, showing particular meanings
and uses.”
■ Michael Adams, editor of the
DSNA’s journal, Dictionaries, and an
associate professor of linguistics,
wrote: “Your notion of ‘traditional,
correct language’ is a fiction.
‘Traditional’ and ‘correct’ are both
notions constructed, often very sloppily, by a small group of speakers of
American English.”
■ Joseph Pickett, editor of the
American Heritage Dictionary, wrote:
“Some people I know view the project of English usage largely as an
exercise in class bigotry. They maintain that usage commentary is more
distinguished by snobbery than intellectual rigor, that many usage prescriptions are based on fantasy rather
than fact and that many usage writers
violate their principles in their own
works. So the whole notion of wanting to know what is right or correct
is misguided, in this view.
“In the books that American
Heritage publishes, I try not to imply
some kind of moral value in using
one form of English over another. I
look at things from a rhetorical point
of view: How will using this expression or that one be received by a
readership expecting to engage with
See WORDS, Page 4B
Julie Sutter-Blair is the featured artist for Art Fair Off the Square this weekend and her botanical work (above) prompted
the participatory public art project’s theme “Blooming Art” (see story on page 5B).
Art fair, your flair
By Kevin Lynch
The Capital Times
he art fairgoer typically interacts with art and artists as a
browser and a buyer.
But fairgoer interaction will
take on creative new dimensions at this year’s Art Fair on the
Square, which runs 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday.
(See Page 3B for information about the
Art Fair off the Square.)
One sort of interaction will be as big as
a billboard, another as small as the iris in
your eye.
A 12-by-24-foot mural will be the fair’s
public art project, and anyone is invited
to participate. It figures to be a kaleidoscopic coloring project, but not collective chaos. Participants will make their
markings within the parameters of a line
design with several familiar faces. Pick
up a color marker and you can act out
your fantasies of creating a famous
work of art.
Woven into the huge design are fanciful
likenesses of da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,”
T
At Art Fair On the Square, the art collective
Spectacle has reincarnated discarded visiontesting machines to provide visitors with
evocative “tests” to interpret imagery that may
provide insight into one’s own psyche.
Picasso’s unabashed “Girl Before a
Mirror,” one of Degas’ insouciant ballerinas, Rembrandt’s exquisite self-portrait
and an elegantly trussed sun-worshiper
from Seurat’s “An Afternoon on the
Island of La Grande Jatte.” They all hover
sublimely around the State Capitol,
Madison’s own masterpiece.
You’ll also get a stab at adding a few
spots to “Maddog,” from the fair’s featured artwork, created by Illinois painter
Keith Grace.
The billboard art project will be divided
into panels on work tables located at the
corner of the Square and Hamilton
Street, at a promotion booth for WKOWTV, the project sponsor.
“We wanted to have images that were
recognizable so we included famous
works of art,” says Chris Eichenberger,
general manager of Adams Outdoor
Advertising, which created the design from
a drawing by agency artist Patricia Hand.
“We wanted to give kids and adults the
opportunity to have their own little
spaces to work with,” Eichenberger says.
See ART FAIR, Page 5B
‘Pirates of Penzance’ a timeless bit of whimsy
By Jacob Stockinger
The Capital Times
Last summer, the Madison Savoyards — the local
amateur group devoted to performances of Gilbert
and Sullivan operettas — tapped Brian Bizzell, a
graduate in theater and music from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, to serve as stage director for its
44th annual summer production.
What he delivered was an updated version of
“Ruddigore,” one of the less well known works of
G&S that nonetheless proved popular with audiences
and critics.
This summer, Bizzell returns with a production of
“The Pirates of Penzance, or the Slave of Duty,” one
of the best known and most popular works by the
19th century British musical theater duo famous for
sophisticated silliness and social satire.
(The production, under music director Blake Walter
of Edgewood College, opens Friday night at 7:30 in
Old Music Hall and will be repeated Saturday at 7:30
p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m.; and then next Friday,
Saturday and Sunday at the same times. Tickets are
$25 for adults, $23 for seniors, $10 for students and
$5 for children under 13. Call 231-9005.)
“Pirates” — a send-up of the Victorian sense of duty
— is a work that centers on a misunderstanding
when a hard-of-hearing nurse is told to apprentice an
aristocratic boy Frederic to a pilot but mishears the
word as “pirate.” By legal contract, he is to be
released on his 21st birthday, but the pirates, whom
he has come to lead and who love him, find a loophole in the contract to keep him from leaving.
The work features some favorite stock characters
including the Pirate King, the Major General (famous
for his lickety-split patter song “I Am the Very Model
of a Modern Major General”) and a chorus of
Keystone-like police.
Bizzell recently spoke to The Capital Times about
his new production:
• • •
BIZZELL: “Pirates” is not only one of the most
widely performed and popular of Gilbert and
Sullivan’s works, it has come to be iconic in so many
way in our culture.
It’s one of those shows that, whether they know it
or not, the public will recognize the music from.
From the modern major general to the pirate king
and nurse, the gang’s all here and problems are
resolved in the most outlandish way.
It’s a pretty exciting opportunity for me to get to
direct it. It was daunting at first because I wanted to
do it from my own point of view. I know it is already
performed quite a bit in the area, and I wanted to
make a point of acknowledging the fact that it is an
iconic piece of theater that can stand on its own.
See ‘PIRATES’, Page 4B
Brian Bizzell (right) directs Jeremy Wetherald as the Major General (left) and
Bill Rosholt as the Pirate King for the Madison Savoyards’ upcoming production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance.”