The Missoula Children’s Theatre (MCT), the nation’s largest touring children’s theatre, will visit Radford to audition and select a cast of more than 50 Radford children, rehearse for a week and put on a production of a children’s play, Jack and the Beanstalk, by week’s end.

Auditions will be held Monday, March 1, from 4 p.m.  to 6 p.m. at Belle Heth Gymnasium. Those auditioning should arrive at 3:45 p.m. and plan to stay through 6 p.m. Some of the cast members will be asked to stay for a rehearsal immediately following the auditions.

Among the more than 50 roles to be cast are Jack, a vegetarian Giant, the Magic Harp, Jill, Mother, Milky White, the Farmers, the Merchants, the Circus Performers and the Magic Beans.
All Radford city students in kindergarten through eighth grade are encouraged to audition. No advance preparation is necessary. Assistant Directors will also be cast to aid in rehearsals throughout the week and to take on essential backstage responsibilities.

The MCT Tour Actor/Directors will conduct rehearsals throughout the week from 4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. for older students, and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. for younger students.  Jack and the Beanstalk will be presented on Saturday, March 6, at the Radford High School auditorium.

Missoula Children’s Theatre touring productions are complete with costumes, scenery, props and makeup.  The Missoula Children’s Theatre residency in Radford is presented locally by Radford Children’s Theatre, a Radford volunteer-based organization.

MCT’s mission is the development of lifeskills in children through participation in the performing arts. Throughout the week, children will have fun learning lines, songs, and dances. And they’ll learn that if they work hard they can create something wonderful.

For more information, call RCT at 540.731.8686. For more information regarding the Missoula Children’s Theatre, go to www.mctinc.org.

The March calendar of events in the College of Visual and Performing Arts features diverse performances, including the play Baby and the International Guitar Festival.Baby is a tuneful, touching musical gem featuring a trio of couples—each at a different stage of their relationship—as they face the joys and travails surrounding the universal experience of life’s beginning.

Performance times are March 24-27 at 8 p.m., and March 28, at 2 p.m., in the Pridemore Playhouse, Porterfield Hall. Tickets go on sale one week prior to the opening at the Pridemore Box Office. Admission is $8 for the general public, $5 for RU faculty and staff, free with RU student I.D., and $5 for seniors 55 and over and groups of 10 or more.

The International Guitar Festival will open with a gala concert at 8 p.m. on March 19 at Christ Episcopal Church in Roanoke and will continue at Radford University’s Covington Center for Visual and Performing Arts March 20 and 21. Under the direction of music professor Robert Trent, the weekend, themed “Women Guitarists and Composers,” will feature Paraguayan guitarist and Barrios expert Luz Maria Bobadilla and Flamenco guitarist/singer/dancer Marija Temo. RU flutist Leslie Marrs will join Trent in works of women composers, and a youth guitar program and a guitar orchestra will round out the program.

Admission is free. Visit www.radford.edu/~rstrent and click on Radford International Guitar Festival for detailed information or email Trent at rstrent@radford.edu.

Other Visual and Performing Arts events in March include:

Department of Music
(All events are at 8 p.m. in the Performance Hall of the Covington Center. Admission is free.)

• Monday, March 1 – RU Choral Mid-Winter Concert featuring the Madrigal Singers

• Wednesday, March 3 – RU Band Concert featuring the Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band directed by Wayne Gallops. Featuring works by Barnes, Nelhybel, Sparke, Barber, Kabalevsky, Milhaud, Gregson

• Monday, March 15 – Nitza Kats “Almost Spring” piano recital

• Tuesday, March 16 – Organ recital featuring faculty and guests

• Wednesday March 17 – Chamber Brass Ensembles featuring Fort Lee Army Band

• Monday March 22 – Clarinet concert featuring David Allen

• Thursday, March 30 – RU Faculty Jazz Concert

Department of Interior Design and Fashion Design

• Tuesday, March 16 through Monday, March 22, The Gallery at the Covington Center – Capstone Celebrations and the Interior Design and Fashion Design Majors Exhibition

• Saturday, March 20, 7 p.m., Preston Hall, Bondurant Auditorium – Annual Fashion Show; Admission is $7 in advance and $10 at the door. Tickets may be purchased in McGuffey 211 or by calling 540.831.5386. A reception will take place in the foyer of the Covington Center from 4 to 6 p.m.

Department of Art

• Continuing through Friday, March 5, The Gallery at the Covington Center – RU Juried Student Show

• Tuesday, March 16 through Monday, March 22, The Gallery at the Covington Center – Interior Design Exhibition featuring works by graduating interior design students; exhibit includes designs and impressions from home to office, business motifs and more.

• Continuing through Friday, April 2, Gallery 205, Powell Hall – Graduate Art Student Association Exhibition; students mount their installations in various media.

Admission to art events is free. Hours in the Gallery at the Covington Center are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon – 4 p.m. Gallery 205 in Powell Hall exhibition hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. - noon and 1 - 5 p.m.

For the second year in a row, the task of moving almost 10,000 books from Blacksburg to the NRV Mall got easier thanks to Premier Transfer and Storage, who donated use of a driver and semi truck to the cause.

Literacy Volunteers of the New River Valley (LV-NRV) is preparing for its 12^th Annual Used Book Sale at the New River Valley Mall Feb. 25-28.

The four-day sale runs during mall hours. The driver and the semi will also return on Sunday night to transfer unsold books back to Blacksburg. The books are currently being stored at the Old Blacksburg Middle School.
Many more volunteers are needed for the event so anyone interested in volunteering to help move or help during the sale is encouraged to call Literacy Volunteers of the NRV at 540.382.7262 or e-mail them at lvnrv@verizon.net. More information about the book sale can be found at www.lvnrv.org.
LV-NRV trains volunteers to tutor reading and writing to low-literate NRV adults and adults that cannot speak English.

The statewide celebration MINDS WIDE OPEN: Virginia Celebrates Women in the Arts will have its regional kick-off celebration on March 6 at 7:15 p.m. at The Barter Café. The reception will be followed by an 8:15 p.m. performance of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Everyone is invited to the kick-off reception and tickets are still available for purchase to the performance following the reception. Call Barter Theatre’s Box Office for details at 276.628.3991.

The Diary of Anne Frank, presented by Barter Theatre, is part of Virginia’s statewide initiative MINDS WIDE OPEN: Virginia Celebrates Women in the Arts. This is the first statewide celebration of its kind. Between March and June of 2010, thousands of special programs and events including plays, choreography, compositions, and exhibitions of paintings, photography, or films that have been created by women or feature women as the primary focus, will occur across the Commonwealth to honor contributions by women to arts and culture.

Other Barter Theatre productions part of MINDS WIDE OPEN include Dead Man’s Cell Phone (currently playing at Barter Stage II through April), Violet (a southern musical celebrating the courage and adventures of a young woman as she discovers the true meaning of healing and self), Always…Patsy Cline (a true story celebrating the musical pioneer) and The Blue-Sky Boys (a celebration of the creative and playful genius that landed the first man on the moon and winner of Barter’s Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights) by contemporary, female playwright Deborah Brevoort.

The Virginia Tech Department of Theatre and Cinema presents “The Skin of Our Teeth” by Thornton Wilder, Feb. 18-20 at 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; and Feb. 23-27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Squires Studio Theatre on the campus of Virginia Tech. The performance is a part of the Mainstage Theatre Series in the School of Performing Arts and Cinema at Virginia Tech.

In the play, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and other ancient allegorical figures are juxtaposed with a modern-day family against an epochal Ice Age, Noah’s flood, war, book burning, and more. Wilder’s unconventional drama, a fun and complex spectacle written in 1942, reveals the cyclical nature of human existence and man’s unwavering resilience to survive and build new worlds over and over again. (more…)

The art of Sandy Horton will be featured in an exhibit at Radford’s Glencoe Museum Feb. 18 - April 11.

Originally from Lynchburg, Horton graduated from Lynchburg College with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and later from New River Community College with an Associates’ Degree in Computer Programming. When she is not in front of her easel, she works as a programmer/analyst for Moog Components Group in Blacksburg. She presently resides in Radford with her husband David and their dog Bandit.

This event marks Horton’s first solo show in Radford. She has exhibited in solo shows in Blacksburg at the CODA gallery in 2009 and at the Fine Arts Center for the New River Valley in 2008. Her regional shows have included the Lynchburg’s annual Kaleidoscope Festival and she has also exhibited works at Art Pannonia in Blacksburg.

Horton’s artwork has been called mischievous, mesmerizing, and magical. From simple doodles to complex cubism, Horton has always been interested in shapes, forms, textures, and colors.  As a child, she loved to draw and to make paper cutouts, a pastime which blossomed and evolved into her current style.

Sandy’s inspirations range from celestial bodies to the mundane. The power of the sun is a common subject for Sandy, and one that she has interpreted in several different styles, but her most popular works have been of the bovine variety. Red cows, pigmented for no other reason than a fondness for the shade, are far and away the favorites of those who have viewed her work.