 Claudia Stevens |
In celebration of the arts at Wabash, admission to all events on this year’s Visiting Artists Series are FREE. However, you must obtain your FREE tickets at the Fine Arts Box Office before attending Visiting Artists Series productions. Tickets are available from the Fine Arts Box Office Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. until curtain time. For phone reservations, call 765-361-6411.
“An Evening with Madame F” is a work of musical drama created by Claudia Stevens for her one-person performance as pianist, singer, and actor. Adopting the persona of an elderly concentration camp survivor who performed as a musician at Auschwitz, Stevens uses music actually played and sung by women musicians at Auschwitz, as well as first-hand accounts, to depict the struggle and moral dilemma of camp inmates who survived by prostituting their art. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she also meditates on the issue of treating the Holocaust as the subject for artistic expression. One of the most honored Holocaust-related performances before the public, “An Evening with Madame F” has been presented in over 100 communities, including New York, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Kansas City, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. It has been produced for television by PBS affiliate WCVE and broadcast over “Voice of America.” Claudia Stevens was commissioned to create this work by the Jewish Federation of Richmond, Va.
Claudia Stevens amazed audiences when she crossed over from an established career as a concert pianist, scholar, and recording artist to become one of the most innovative and noteworthy multidisciplinary performers before the public. In less than a dozen years she has created a unique body of works—several produced by Public Television and National Public Radio (NPR Playhouse), as well as in current publication—which she performs at major venues nationwide, conveying their wide variety and richness with a magnificent singing voice and mastery of dramatic idioms.
A native of California, Stevens holds degrees from Vassar College, the University of California at Berkeley, and Boston University and has held academic positions at Williams College and the College of William and Mary. As a pianist she appeared in concert at Carnegie Recital Hall, among other national venues, and was the featured artist on several “Performance Today on NPR” broadcasts. As an interdisciplinary artist, she is the recipient of grants from the International Theater Institute, ten touring and project grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, numerous artist residencies including the MacDowell Colony, and a NEA “New Forms” grant, among others. Recent publication of her original work for the stage includes the journal Exquisite Corpse.
Claudia Stevens constantly seeks to enlarge the scope and range of her creative output. Her performance has been called “one of the most profound theater moments of recent times.”