Tag Archives: Parkview Arts & Science Magnet High School

Arkansas Literary Festival preview – Kevin Brockmeier

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Kevin Brockmeier

Today (March 17) is the 109th birthday of Missouri State University – the alma mater of the Little Rock Culture Vulture.  It is also the alma mater for one of Arkansas’ most popular young writers, Kevin Brockmeier.

A graduate of Little Rock Parkview Arts & Science Magnet High School, Kevin will be one of the featured writers at the 2014 Arkansas Literary Festival. He has been a participant in every previous Arkansas Literary Festival as well.

His newest book is A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade.  It is already receiving praise from writers, editors and literary professionals throughout the country – “Can’t put it down,” “sweet & brutal,” “excellent” are just some of the descriptions being used for this new book.

Kevin is the author of the novels The Illumination, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Truth About Celia; the children’s novels City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery; and the story collections Things That Fall from the Sky and The View from the Seventh Layer. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. He lives in Little Rock, where he was raised.

The schedule for the 2014 Arkansas Literary Festival has not yet been released, but more information on this year’s festival is available at the ALF website.

The Play’s The Thing at UALR Shakespeare Scene Festival

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bardofavonThe annual Shakespeare Scene Festival started yesterday at UALR.  It continues this morning. The Shakespeare Scene Festival is a UALR event sponsored by the Departments of English and Theatre Arts and Dance. It takes place in March in the UALR Center for the Performing Arts (University Theater). Its main purpose is to provide teachers and students a venue for the performance of Shakespeare’s plays.  One of the purposes is to demystify Shakespeare for students in school.

It was founded by Roslyn Knutson in 1998 and inspired by a workshop at the Folger Shakespeare Library.

The schedule for today includes:

9:35 – 10:00
In Fair Verona
Central High, Drama I
Instructor: Dr. Rhonda Fowler

10:05-10:20
From A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sheridan Middle
Instructor: Amber Forbush

10:25 – 10:50
Richard III
J.A. Fair High, GT 10
Instructor: Allison McMath

10:55 – 11:20
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act III, Scenes 1 & 2 and Act V, Scene 1
J.A. Fair High, Freshmen Troupe
Instructor: Christina Cereghini

11:25 – 11:40
The Banquet Scene from Macbeth
Mayflower High, Drama
Instructor: Di Baldwin

11:45 – 12:00
From A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Sheridan Middle
Instructor: Amanda Honea

12:05 – 12:30
From Much Ado about Nothing, The Tempest, Othello, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, and The Taming of the Shrew
Parkview Arts-Science Magnet High School
Classic Scene Study
Instructor: Fred Boosey

Among yesterday’s presenters were Central High, Mayflower High, Sheridan Middle and Warren Dupree Elementary.

Tales of the Crypt Tonight

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A Parkview student portraying former LR Mayor Woodson.

A Parkview student portraying former LR Mayor Woodson.

The ghosts of Little Rock past will arise tonight at Mt. Holly Cemetery for the 19th Annual Tales from the Crypt.

Held the second Tuesday of October, Tales of the Crypt is an annual Mount Holly event.  Under the direction of Fred Boosey & Tamara Zinck, drama students from Parkview Arts & Science Magnet High School are each given a person buried in the cemetery to research. They then prepare short monologues or dialogues, complete with period costumes, to be performed in front of the researched person’s grave.

Among the highlights this year John and Lucinda Kumpe, Paramount actor Eleanor Counts, Richard Flannigan (who served as Mt. Holly Sexton), Myra Blackbun, Albert and Mollie Stocking and former Little Rock Mayor James A. Woodson.

Award-winning local costumer Debi Manire will once again provide the wonderful historical characters’ costumes.  Audiences are led through the cemetery from grave to grave by guides with candles. Although it takes place around the same time as the American holiday Halloween, the event is meant to be historic rather than spooky.  Many local teachers award extra credit to students who attend.

The Nineteenth Annual “Tales of the Crypt” will be sponsored by Mount Holly Cemetery Association and Parview Arts-Science Magnet High School.

The event will be held  at Mount Holly Cemetery, 1200 South Broadway, Little Rock, Arkansas on Tuesday, October 8, 2013, from 5:30 pm until 8:30 pm.  Admission is free to the public, however donations to Mount Holly Cemetery are appreciated and aid in the maintenance of the cemetery.

Arts & Humanities Month: Mount Holly Cemetery – “Tales of the Crypt” by Parkview Arts Magnet High School

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The 17th Annual Tales of the Crypt takes place at historic Mount Holly Cemetery tonight from 5:30pm to 8:30pm.  As they have for the past sixteen years, students from Little Rock Parkview Arts & Science Magnet High School will portray the lives of few of the residents at the Mount Holly Cemetery.

Under the direction of Fred Boosey and Tamara Zinck, students have researched the life and times of the selected characters they are portraying and have written original scripts.  The actors are costumed in period clothes by Debi Manire. Among the fifteen grave sites which are stops along the way this year is David O. Dodd, boy martyr of the Confederacy.  He will be portrayed by a distant relative Walter Dodd, who is a senior at Parkview.

Mount Holly Cemetery is the final resting place of the famous, infamous and many ordinary Arkansans.  Eleven Arkansas governors, thirteen state Supreme Court Justices, four United States senators, twenty-one Little Rock mayors and two Pulitzer Prize winners are all residents of Mount Holly.  The land for the cemetery was deeded in February 1843 by Chester Ashley and Roswell Beebe.  Since 1915, the Mount Holly Cemetery Association has been the administrative organization for the cemetery.  In 1970, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, one of the first cemeteries to receive this designation.

Parkview Arts & Science Magnet High School opened in 1968. In 1987 it received magnet school designation focusing on arts and sciences.  Within the fine arts program, students select an area of emphasis in dance, drama, instrumental music, vocal music or visual arts.