VETERANS' VOICES, a Memorial Day Reading at the Byrne-Reed House, May 27, 2013

(image © www.torange.biz)

Texas Veterans' Voices and Humanities Texas present
Veterans' Voices

a Memorial Day reading for veterans and their loved ones

May 27, 2013 10 a.m.

Byrne-Reed House, 1410 Rio Grande Street, Austin, Texas 78701   View Map

All are invited to participate in group readings from ancient Greek dramas, including Ajax, Herakles, and The Odyssey. Discussion will follow, led by veterans including Paul Woodruff (Army), Johnny Meyer (Army), Mike Flynn (Navy), Lon Olson (Navy), and Luke Perez (Air National Guard).
While the event is free and open to the public, space is limited and an RSVP is required. RSVP to rsvp@humanitiestexas.org or 512.440.1991.
Free parking is available at St. Martin's Lutheran Church on the northwest corner of 15th and Rio Grande Streets. Light refreshments will be served.
http://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/events/veterans-voices

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Event & Book: The Necessity of Theatre, Texas Book Festival, November 2

Texas Book Festival
Sunday, November 2
Texas State Capitol: Capitol Extension Room E2.016
3:00 – 3:45 p.m.
Admission FREE

Paul Woodruff, UT professor of ethics, discusses his newly published book-length essay, The Necessity of Theatre. Moderator: Steve Tomlinson

From review by Leah Hager Cohen in NYT, June 1, 2008:

Theater’s tendency to promote empathy serves as the leitmotif of Paul Woodruff’s book “The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched.” It also lies near the heart of the rather brave claim with which he opens the book: “People need theater.” He acknowledges that the assertion might meet with skepticism but insists he means it literally.

Theater is necessary, he says, for no less than “to secure our bare, naked cultural survival.” For Woodruff, a professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, theater is essential to the development not only of healthy individuals but of healthy societies. It is not empathy alone he extols, but the way it fosters ethicality. This deep link, then, between theater and ethics forms the philosophical underpinning of his ambitious, somewhat plodding, occasionally transcendent book.

Woodruff has modeled his text, loosely but explicitly, on Aristotle’s “Poetics.” We know as much because he tells us in his preface: “I have written a kind of poetics of my own.” (You’ve got to hand it to him — when it comes to making brave claims, the man’s no slouch.) . . .

If this book succeeds in any measure as a defense of theater, it will also have succeeded at something much larger. Nowhere is Woodruff more eloquent than in this beautifully stripped-down plea: “We must all listen to each other because we are human, because we see only what we can see from where we stand, because there is more to be seen than any one of us can appreciate alone.” (Click for full text of review)

THE NECESSITY OF THEATER The Art of Watching and Being Watched. By Paul Woodruff. 257 pp. Oxford University Press. $27.95. Pub. Date: April 2008 ISBN-13: 9780195332001