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On Thursday, October 25th, ALC’s Caney Convocation Series will be pleased to feature two women who are making a mark on the dramatic arts in the state of Kentucky, as well as forging new and exciting paths for women on and behind the stage. At 1 PM our audience will be treated to an informative session with Ms. Kathi E. B. Ellis, and later on in the evening, at 7:30 PM, everyone will be able to see ALC’s very own Megan Burnett perform her one-woman show Shame the Devil!: An Audience with Fanny Kemble. These convos rank as must-sees on the Fall 2012 schedule.

Kathi E. B. Ellis

Ms. Ellis, the director of the play, will deliver a lecture about the production as a prelude to the night’s performance. Kathi Ellis is a professional theatre director who received her MFA as a director from the University of Louisville. Ms. Ellis conducts drama residencies at schools throughout the Commonwealth, both as an independent teaching artist and with the Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, and the Kentucky Arts Council’s Roster of Artists. She has conducted arts professional development sessions for Jefferson County Public Schools, the Kentucky Center, and the Kentucky Theatre Association.

Ms. Ellis is a member of the Lincoln Center Theater’s Director’s Lab, NY, and an associate member of the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. She serves as a board member for Louisville’s premier women’s theatre company, Pleiades Theatre, and for Juneteenth Legacy Theatre, Louisville’s only African-American theatre. She is a member of the editorial board of Southern Theatre, a Southeastern Theatre Conference publication, and serves on SETC’s K-12 committee. Ellis is the executive director of the Kentucky Alliance for Arts Education. In 2003 she received the first annual Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau Gender Equity Award from the University of Louisville’s Women’s Center.

During the 7:30 PM convo, Ms. Megan Burnett, an actress and ALC professor, will be sure to delight the crowd as she takes the stage in Shame the Devil!: An Audience with Fanny Kemble

Burnett as Fanny Kemble

Frances Ann Kemble (1809-1893) is an idiosyncratic and forceful character, an actress and a writer. From her earliest days on the Covent Garden stage to her successful American tours with her father, she attracted mostly laudatory reviews. Beyond the world of the arts, Fanny Kemble is most known for her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839. This publication was embraced by the anti-slavery movement in America for its searing criticisms of the “peculiar institution” – but is it an anti-slavery tract, or is it one passionate woman’s personal response to an intense exposure to the workings of the slave system? You be the judge.

Please join us on this special day at 1 and 7:30 PM in the Estelle Campbell Center for the Arts (CAC). 

* Click here to watch a video featuring Kathi E. B. Ellis speaking about her passion for the performing arts.