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Should Nov. 8, 2016 — the day on which the most recent U.S. Presidential Election was held — be considered one of the most important dates in history?

“My answer is ‘Yes,’ ” said James B. Bruce.

With his talk, “Russian Covert Intervention in the 2016 U.S. Election and the Role of Intelligence in American Democracy,” Bruce will open the 2019 Contemporary Issues Forum, sponsored by the Chautauqua Women’s Club, at 2 p.m. Saturday, June 29 in the Hall of Philosophy. 

“This is a hugely important issue,” he said. “This is not ‘meddling.’ … This is interference with the explicit objective of influencing the outcome. … Did the Russians steal the 2016 election?”

Bruce has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service since 1995, where he won the Vicennial Medal, and has worked at Pardee RAND Graduate School and Florida Atlantic University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute since 2014. He is also an adjunct researcher at the RAND Corporation, the American global policy think tank created after World War II. For nearly 11 years, from 2006 to 2016, he served as a senior political scientist at RAND.

For close to 24 years, Bruce worked for the CIA, including as a senior executive officer in the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service from 1982 to 2005. At both RAND and the CIA he won numerous awards, including for exceptional performance, outstanding accomplishments, creativity and innovation.

Bruce served as the vice chair, and before that the executive secretary, of the Director of National Intelligence’s Foreign Denial and Deception Committee from 1995 to 2004, and as the National Intelligence Council’s Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Science and Technology from 1999 to 2002. In addition to several other NIC positions, he was chief of counterintelligence training at the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterintelligence Center from 1991 to 1993. From 2017 to 2018, Bruce provided research and consultation support to the NIC and FDDC.

His CIF lecture will precede Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s public and private testimony before the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees of the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, July 17. Bruce himself has testified before several Congressional committees as a lead witness or principal briefer.

According to Bruce, Mueller’s two volume, 440-page, “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election,” released in March 2019, produced “the big breakthrough.”

At first, he said, the information was very sketchy.

“It is more fulsome because of the investigations, mostly by The New York Times, CNN and other news organizations,” Bruce said. “They did exceptional research.”

Despite its length, “people ought to read (the Mueller Report) because it’s intrinsically important in American history,” he said.

Based on knowledge he gleaned from open-source reporting and the Mueller Report, he added, “there are a lot of things (Mueller) missed, and some things he should have done differently, so it’s not a perfect report.”

As the lead author or principal investigator for more than 30 RAND research studies, Bruce is an authority on research and analysis, especially that requiring top-secret clearance, and has a professional commitment to objectivity and nonpartisanship.

His RAND studies included “secrecy management, operational security, military deception, unauthorized disclosures, intelligence protection and sharing, intelligence methodology (analytic tradecraft) … (and) evaluation of human and technical intelligence collection.”

As he grew up in an east-side suburb of Cleveland, Bruce did not yearn to work for the CIA. After high school he joined the United States Navy, where he said he spent four years as a gun fire control technician on three different destroyers cruising the western Pacific from Pearl Harbor to Asia. He said he left the Navy about the time the Vietnam War was starting up.

At Kent State University, Bruce earned his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts in political science, and his Ph.D. at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Relations. His mentor was Josef Korbel, the father of Madeleine K. Albright and mentor of Condoleezza Rice, the 64th and 66th U.S. secretaries of state, respectively.

Before joining the CIA, Bruce served as a full-time political science faculty member at Kent State University and Marshall University, and as professor of national security policy at the National War College in Washington, D.C.

He said that with the exception of writing style, the transition from academia to the CIA was “pretty seamless.”

While he was working for the CIA, Bruce taught undergraduate courses in Soviet politics and foreign policy as an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service from 1987 to 1990.

As a senior analyst at the NIC from 1982 to 1984, he was the principal drafter of the National Intelligence Assessment on Soviet Research and Development. In addition, he wrote a “controversial research study of growing civil unrest and emerging political instability in the USSR.”

For the 2019 summer season, Chautauqua Theater Company is bringing more music to its lineup than ever before.

In both CTC mainstage shows, the traveling performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and one of the company’s New Play Workshop shows, Agent 355, music is key in bringing the works to life.

In The Christians, which opens this weekend with performances at 6 p.m. Saturday, and 2:15 and 8 p.m. Sunday in Bratton Theater, music is a key element. Alongside actors dressed in their Sunday best and a set that turns the theater into a lavish megachurch, the Motet Choir will perform in force each night.

Instead of recorded hymns played from theater speakers, choir members will fill the theater with live sound, something CTC Artistic Director Andrew Borba thinks makes all the difference.

“(Live music) can add everything to a show, which is why we’re so excited about it,” Borba said. “It literally moves you. You are experiencing vibrations that you weren’t experiencing before you came into the theater, and that’s something I think we all love.”

Jared Jacobsen, Chautauqua’s organist and coordinator of worship and sacred music, took on the role of music director for this show. Jacobsen said he was glad to have a chance to merge the live choir with live theater.

“I just thought that this was such a good opportunity, I got the choir into this without even asking a lot of them,” Jacobsen said. “Of course, I allowed people to bow out, but I think when all the smoke clears, everyone will realize that this is so similar to what we do in church.”

Although they will be on a different stage performing for a different gathering of people, the choir will be doing what they do best — singing, swaying and making audience members tap their feet. According to Jacobsen, it’s that similarity between how the choir performs in the show and how they perform for worship and Vespers that makes the collaboration work so well.

“It’s not like I asked (the choir members) to do Don Quixote,” Jacobsen said. “We basically took what we do in a service and moved it to a different building. (CTC) is doing what they do best, which is bringing a world to life, and they’ve invited us into that, and that’s been priceless.” 

The show addresses themes of community and how changes in belief can drive people apart. Borba said the inclusion of the choir in The Christians does the exact opposite for Chautauqua.

“Something inherent in the Chautauqua Choir being onstage is not just in the amount of people onstage, it’s a bringing together of different aspects of this Chautauqua community,” Borba said. “A literal bringing together; we get to do this all together.”

CTC Managing Director Sarah Clare Corporandy said that by embracing the use of live music, the company is exploring frontiers it hasn’t been able to in years past.

“We know Chautauquans love music in a variety of ways,” Corporandy said. “They’re exposed to it from a variety of different platforms: the symphony, the opera and through us a tiny bit, but we haven’t always focused on that. But music is a huge part of theater, and when we decided to step into that, it sort of opened up doors for other shows, and we thought ‘let’s just dive into that.’ ”

And while the use of livemusic has been exciting for CTC, according to Borba, it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing.

“(At Bratton), we’re not really quite built for it,” Borba said. “It’s stretching us technically quite a bit, so there are some extra issues we haven’t had to think about before, but there’s also excitement in that newness.” 

All technical challenges aside, Borba, Corporandy and Jacobsen agreed that the collaborative experience between CTC and the Motet Choir will be a valuable experience.

“We’re bringing two worlds together, and that’s a classic Chautauqua move,” Jacobsen said. “By doing it, and learning from it, both of those worlds will come out stronger for it.”

Welcome to the second week of our 146th Assembly. It has been such a joy to spend our opening week with so many Chautauquans and to welcome all those who are joining us for the first time on the grounds.

Week Two at Chautauqua is a week of hope. So much of our national discourse and media points to a nation that is fractured and broken. But as our longtime friends Jim and Deb Fallows remind us, the narrative at the local level is quite different. Communities across the nation are discovering and working through solutions that defy labels. Neighbors are still working with neighbors in many places, and they are finding routes to some incredible progress. That’s the entire point of Week Two and its theme, “Uncommon Ground: Communities Working Toward Solutions.”

In this week, we collectively explore: In an age of divisive posturing at the national level, are communities uniquely positioned to come together on the toughest issues, to find a way forward for the common good? Each day, we highlight case studies of communities at work, finding sustainable solutions to society’s most pressing problems. And we ask:

• What conditions must exist for community stakeholders to engage one another, and who needs to be at the table? 
• What’s possible when there isn’t a shared sense of community? 
• Do differences need to be bridged in order for solutions to be found and sustained?

We’re thrilled to start the week with two-term former Governor of Ohio John R. Kasich, and also grateful that Jim Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, will moderate our Interfaith Lecture Series platform at 2 p.m. every day, under the theme “Common Good Change Agents.” At times when the world seems conflicted, humanity continues to find ways to be its best advocate toward its highest aspirations. In this week we welcome examples of change agents who are recognizing needs and responding in life-enhancing ways to actualize their hearts’ best intentions for the common good — and leading by powerful example.

Special thanks to our friends at Erie Insurance for their sponsorship of not only this week, but also of our sold-out performance by Diana Ross.

I want to thank everyone who was with us for our first week and certainly underscore the enthusiasm you shared for our first-ever rabbi serving as chaplain of the week. Rabbi Sharon Brous was a force of nature. Thank you for welcoming her with such warmth; I think we all experienced that when we do, we are enriched, challenged and inspired.

There are so many special things happening this week. Our artistic companies are all in full swing, we have two very special Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle author presentations, with Beth Macy’s Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America and David Blight’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, and we’ll celebrate worldwide Pride and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, a moment that many believe launched the LGBTQ civil rights movement. I’m honored to welcome Judy and Dennis Shepard to Chautauqua. The murder of their son Matthew was a seminal moment in my own life, and they have continued to be signs of courage, love and hope, turning unspeakable tragedy into a mission against hatred.

As if all of that was not a full enough plate, I hope you’ll join us for our master planning, strategic planning, and inclusion, diversity, equity and accessibility sessions, as we together, as a community, form the future of Chautauqua. See the yellow program listing inserted in your Daily for details.

If this is your first week with us, welcome. If you are continuing your journey from Week One, thank you for an incredible start to our season, and may your second week be even richer than the first.

• 
  Dancers Antonina Skobina and Denys Drozdyuk perform a ballet routine named “Irresistible”, during the Stars of America Ballet Recital on Wednesday night, June 26, 2019 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater. “Irresistible”, features music by Michael Jackson and choreography by Denys Drozdyuk. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
• 
  Dancers Antonina Skobina and Denys Drozdyuk perform a ballet routine named “Irresistible”, during the Stars of America Ballet Recital on Wednesday night, June 26, 2019 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater. “Irresistible”, features music by Michael Jackson and choreography by Denys Drozdyuk. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
• 
  Dancer Denys Drozdyuk performs a ballet routine named “Tres Hombres”, during the Stars of America Ballet Recital on Wednesday night, June 26, 2019 in the Chautauqua Amphitheater. “Tres Hombres”, features music by Astor Piazzolla and choreography by Drozdyuk, Lex Ishimoto, and Daniel Ulbricht. ALEXANDER WADLEY/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Review by Steve Sucato:

One of several dancer-founded dance showcases touring the United States each year, New York City Ballet principal dancer Daniel Ulbricht’s Stars of American Ballet made its triumphant debut Wednesday in the Amphitheater, in a mixed-repertoire program that brought the audience to its feet multiple times and left them wanting much more at program’s end.

A former student of the School of Dance in the late-1990s, Ulbricht, a St. Petersburg, Florida, native, formed Stars of American Ballet a decade ago after his mother was diagnosed with cancer and was unable to travel to see him dance. The idea was to bring top-flight dance to her and others who might not otherwise get the opportunity to experience it.

Ulbricht and company — which for Wednesday’s program might have been more aptly named, “Stars of New York City Ballet,” given seven of the 10 dancers were either soloists or principal dancers with the company — all lived up to their star billing in a stylistic variety of works.

The program opened with George Balanchine’s “Apollo,” the often performed, 30-minute ballet classic, that Balanchine originally created for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in 1928, and one of the iconic choreographer’s earliest works. Set to Igor Stravinsky’s composition, “Apollon Musagète,” the ballet depicted Apollo (Adrian Danchig-Waring), the young god of music being visited by his three half-sister muses who instruct him in their individual talents via a series of solo dances.

The first of them, Calliope, muse of poetry, carried with her a tablet. Danced by Sara Adams, who is also a School of Dance alum, Balanchine’s illustrative choreography for Calliope saw Adams mimicking writing poetry, and then, with her mouth agape, used her hands to trail a line outward from her mouth to indicate the recitation of said poetry.

Polyhymnia, muse of mime, whose symbol was a mask, came next. The unfortunate victim of a technical glitch, Carlisle, Pennsylvania-native Abi Stafford danced Polyhymnia, and was left standing onstage for an uncomfortably long time, waiting for the music for her solo to start. When it finally did, she too performed gestural movement illustrative of her talent, most noticeably holding one finger to her lips in a shushing gesture as she danced.

The last of the half-sisters, the lyre-carrying Terpsichore, muse of song and dance, was portrayed by Unity Phelan dancing the role for the very first time. She powered through her vibrant solo, full of waving arms and high kicks, that showcased her wonderful facility and skillfulness as a dancer.

Each of the women were marvelous in their solos and in group dances that saw them twisting in and out of pretzel-like formations, on their heels in duck walks or moving one after the other across the stage on pointe in bourrée en couru (a series of tiny steps) that had them looking like mechanical dolls. But the ballet ultimately belonged to Danchig-Waring, who appeared every bit a Greek god in his commanding stage presence and in his technically brilliant dancing. His quick, sharp movements, jumps, leaps and turns were near flawless.

After an intermission, the program majorly switched gears with “Irresistible,” a ballroom dance duet performed to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal.” Denys Drozdyuk, a former winner of the TV program “So You Think You Can Dance Canada,” choreographed the number and performed it with fellow ballroom champion and Ukraine native Antonina Skobina. The pair delighted the audience with fast-moving, daring and adroitly danced contemporary ballroom movement, infused with Jackson signature dance moves. The killer duet surely would have landed the pair on the coveted “Hot Tamale Train,” a term coined by Mary Murphy, ballroom expert and judge on America’s “So You Think You Can Dance.”

Next, Ulbricht made his first appearance onstage in the 15-minute solo, “(A) Suite of Dances,” choreographed by Jerome Robbins in 1994 to music by Johann Sebastian Bach that was played live by cellist Ann Kim. The playful and charming ballet was originally created for dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, whose footprints remained all over it. Looking like a blend of improvisation from Baryshnikov mixed with bits of Robbins’ ballet and Broadway stylings, including cartwheels and somersaults, the solo created banter between dancer and musician that Ulbricht and Kim, who is a member of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, executed deliciously.

For his part Ulbricht brought a carefree ease and humor to the sometimes difficult and taxing choreography, while Kim brought poetry to Bach’s music in her playing. Perhaps the only letdown in the ballet choreographically was a rather bland, slow section — an obvious breather for the dancer, but also a momentum killer — which saw an introspective Ulbricht amble about the stage in thought. 

In the first of two dancer-choreographed ballets to round out the program, Danish dancer Ask la Cour’s pas de deux, “Change of Heart,” took the stage like a runaway freight train in its drive and unyielding pace. Performed to music by Edvard Grieg, la Cour and dancer Teresa Reichlen ripped through contemporary ballet choreography, that while lovely enough, provided little emotional connection between the dancers. The relationship piece could have benefitted from some purposeful pace changes to better explore the characters’ tumultuous bond.

Capping the program was perhaps its biggest “wow” piece, “Tres Hombres,” choreographed by Ulbricht, Drozdyuk and Lex Ishimoto. Danced to music by Astor Piazzolla, the trio of Ulbricht, Drozdyuk and former Boston Ballet first soloist Joseph Gatti, released the bravura dance hounds in a barrage of high flying jumps, blurringly fast turns, spins and leg beats. Steeped in machismo attitude and flamenco flair, “Tres Hombres” left many in the audience gleefully wondering what just hit them.

In the end, Stars of American Ballet was the perfect example of what happens when you give the keys to the luxury sports car to world-class dancers and let them drive the programming. They put the pedal to the metal, do donuts in the parking lot and take us all on a thrill ride we will never forget.

Based in Painesville, Ohio, Steve Sucato is a contributing writer, critic and reporter. His work has appeared in such publications as The Plain Dealer, The Buffalo News, Pittsburgh City Paper and Dance Magazine, among others.

Review by Johanna Keller:

The 90th season of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra opened with heavenly performances of three works that, in various ways, revolved around the theme of Hell.

Conductor Rossen Milanov, beginning his fifth season as music director, chose Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Francesca da Rimini, Symphonic Fantasy after Dante, Op. 32, as his challenging opener, which immediately plunges the listener into darkness and the swirling, stormy sufferings of the underworld. Programming it as an opener was a bold move, since the slashing strings and eddying woodwinds allow no time for orchestra players to warm up — welcome to Hades.

Doomed lovers abound in literature and myth: think of Orpheus and Eurydice, Tristan and Iseult, Romeo and Juliet. Once just as well-known, the story of Francesca’s illicit love affair with her brother-in-law Paolo inspired numerous operas, including one by Sergei Rachmaninoff. The tale comes from Dante Alighieri’s epic “The Divine Comedy,” and there are no more beloved passages than those of the fifth canto of The Inferno, when the author Dante reaches the second ring of Hell. There, raging winds eternally buffet those who committed the sin of lust. In the midst of this storm, Francesca tenderly recounts how she and Paolo fell in love. Rendered in Dante’s delicately rhymed three-line stanzas (terza rima), Francesca’s story so moves Dante that when she finishes speaking, he writes that he faints from emotion.

Tchaikovsky’s 1876 fantasy on the Francesca theme alternates lyrical moments (props to the soaring phrasing by Chautauqua’s principal clarinetist Eli Eban) with thunderous tutti passages that depict the netherworld’s storms as well as the storms of sexual passion. Milanov drew on his enormous range of communicative gestures to pull out of the orchestra sweeping, singing phrases that built to a final climactic accelerando, and was answered by cheers from the audience. It was an auspicious beginning.

In the world of classical music, one of the most bizarre characters has to be violinist and composer, Nicolò Paganini (1782-1840), who played so brilliantly, he was rumored to have sold his soul to Satan. Paganini’s abilities on the violin — he also played the viola and guitar — were the stuff of legend, and he invented new ways of playing the instrument in his 24 Caprices that bedevil violinists to the present day. A tall, spectrally thin man, Paganini brought some audience members to shrieks with the physicality of his performances — think of Mick Jagger crossed with a young Elvis. In recent years, much has been written about the theory — which was referenced by Chautauqua’s resident musicologist David Levy in his excellent pre-concert lecture in the Hall of Christ — that Paganini had Marfan syndrome, and was double-jointed, accounting perhaps for some of his unusual dexterity.

Pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk took the stage for the fiendish, knuckle-breaking challenge of Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for Piano and Orchestra, Op. 43. Like Paganini, Rachmaninoff was a virtuoso performer, one of the great pianists of his century, so the keyboard technical challenges are abundant.

Gavrylyuk, who also serves as the Heintzelman Family Artistic Advisor and artist-in-residence for the Chautauqua School of Music Piano Program, delivered an electrifying interpretation with propulsive energy, cascades of notes transformed into sheer veils and gigantic Rachmaninoff chords that demand not only power but astute voicing. Better known outside of the United States, Gavrylyuk is on track for a stellar international career. Milanov kept the orchestra with him every step of the way, with plaintive solo violin work by acting concertmaster Vahn Armstrong.

Theme and variations are playful forms that show off the inventiveness of the composer. Early on, Rachmaninoff gives us a wink with hints of the Dies Irae — the often-quoted Gregorian chant that summons up images of death — to allude to Paganini’s demonic reputation.

Most famously in this work, at the apogee comes a most exquisite tune (I hear it in my mind’s ear as I write these words), a tune you would recognize. Tchaikovsky invented it, or discovered it, when he inverted Paganini’s theme and recognized it as a stunner. He treats it with a full-out sobbing rendition in the orchestra and then lets the piano caress it alone, just once, before the next variation begins. A lesser composer than Tchaikovsky would have brought the hit tune back at the end, but instead, it gains all the more poignancy for its brief but spectacular, singular appearance. Milanov drove his orchestra through the final variations that pound out the Dies Irae to the shattering conclusion, with the tiny tail of a piano flourish at the very end that always brings a laugh from the audience. Wit indeed. The loudest cheering of the night came for Gavrylyuk, a favorite at Chautauqua.

At intermission, some of the audience filtered away, unfortunately missing one of the rare opportunities to hear Dmitri Shostakovich’s Sixth Symphony from 1939. On the surface, this extremely unusual work has nothing whatsoever to do with Hell. There are no infernos, no hellish storms, no Dies Irae, and no souls sold to the devil — or are there?

Throughout his early life, Shostakovich (1906-1975) suffered from the vicissitudes of the dictator Stalin, living in an atmosphere of terror that most of us (I hope) have never experienced and can scarcely imagine. Unfortunately for Russian artists, Stalin took a great interest in them and their work. A word misspoken or misunderstood, a work of art deemed “too formal” or “not socialist realism,” could land one on the wrong side of history — or in the gulag. Or shot. The midnight knock at the door: Such things happened under Stalin, when it is estimated that more than a million Russians died in the gulags over 20 years; others died uncounted.

In 1934, Shostakovich had written an opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, that got him denounced by the Communist Party after an anonymous article appeared, perhaps written by Stalin himself. Shostakovich managed to redeem himself by composing, as his Fifth Symphony, a triumphant celebration of Soviet might. For his next symphony, he announced he would use poet Vladimir Mayakovsky’s paean, “Vladimir Ilyich Lenin,” and would convey “spring, joy, youth.” On the surface, this plan sounded like a surefire way to further ingratiate himself to Stalin. But when it comes to Shostakovich — his music or his life story — the surface is always a betrayal.

Mayakovsky had been one of the most famous poets in Russia and tapped the young Shostakovich years before to provide some stage music. But the poet had his own political problems. He was a futurist: Stalin disapproved. The poet died by suicide in 1930, and afterward, and still to this day, there are arguments that it was actually an assassination.

So, for whatever reason, the symphony Shostakovich wrote was not as announced. There is no Mayakovsky poem, no chorus. Instead, it begins with a Largo that takes up more than half the work. Somber and based on minor third and diminished seventh motifs, its thickly orchestrated passages give way to moments when one instrument — piccolo, flute or English horn — are virtually isolated. It is impossible to hear this effect without thinking of the way Stalinist terror could isolate and silence individual voices. The composer finishes with two shorter movements: an Allegro and then a Presto that, for all their energy and verve, are underpinned with the bitter irony that mark this great composer’s work. There are various kinds of hell — and perhaps this symphony describes one of them.

Milanov and the orchestra members turned in an unforgettable performance — the strings bearing down on the lacerating passages, outstanding solo turns from the woodwinds and brass and percussion providing what sometimes sounded like an alarm. Milanov whipped up a galloping finale that propelled the audience to its feet and, after a sustained ovation, out into the safe and peaceful darkness of the charming streets of Chautauqua.

Johanna Keller received the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for her essays on music in The New York Times. She writes for Opera and The Hopkins Review and teaches journalism at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School.

Last weekend, the Chautauqua Foundation Board of Directors hosted its annual dinner in the Athenaeum Hotel. During the dinner, past and present directors and current members of the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees gathered to celebrate the start of a new season.

“It’s always been one of my favorite nights to start off the new season because it’s a really strong community,” said Karen Goodell, vice chair of the Foundation board of directors. “(These are) volunteers who are really thoughtful and caring about Chautauqua Institution — I feel like so many of them have given so much of themselves and their treasure and their time.”

Goodell said that she finds pleasure in being in the company of her fellow volunteers. She appreciates how dedicated the members of the boards are and how much they care about the community.

Opening remarks were delivered by Cathy Bonner, chair of the Chautauqua Foundation Board of Directors, who acknowledged former directors, current directors and Institution trustees. There was also a special welcome for Tim Renjilian, current co-chair of the Chautauqua Fund and the new chair-elect of the Foundation board, as well as Candy Maxwell, chair-elect of the Institution’s board of trustees.

After opening remarks, Geof Follansbee, Foundation CEO and vice president of development, said a prayer.

Bonner is the first woman to serve as chair of the Foundation board of directors. She has held her position as chair for four years and will no longer serve on the board when her term ends in August. Bonner was taken by surprise when she was then honored at the dinner.

“It was such a lovely tribute,” Bonner said. “Totally unexpected.”

In honor of Bonner’s accomplishments and service, and for her efforts with the garden restoration of the Miller Edison Cottage, Goodell took to the podium to announce that two pink dogwood trees were planted in front of the cottage.

“They have pink flowers and you can see them blooming all over Chautauqua right now,” she said. “It was an incredible honor they dedicated to me and the work that we did on the cottage.”

To end the night, the Chautauqua Theater Company performed a special excerpt from A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Goodell particularly enjoyed the performance because of Bonner’s love of theater.

“To have the theater company come and honor her, in front of her peers,” Goodell said, “it’s just so Chautauqua-esque.”

The Women’s Golf Association at the Chautauqua Golf Club is celebrating its 65th anniversary this season, and expanding its horizons.

The Chautauqua WGA started its 2019 season with a two-person team, best-ball tournament on the Chautauqua Golf Club’s Lake Course. Twenty women came out to play, and the tournament ended with a tie between two teams at a 67-stroke stalemate.

This season there is a new option for those looking to play but who have less time. WGA is now offering nine-hole games in addition to 18-hole games, starting at 8:30 a.m. Tuesdays at the Chautauqua Golf Club.

Association member Judy Kullberg said golf is in a slight popularity decline because of how long people might spend during an 18-hole game.

“They don’t feel they have the time, which is one reason we went to a nine-hole option, so that people could come out and play in the league and not have to spend 4 1/2 hours,” Kullberg said. “They don’t have that time. If the morning lecture is something that they really wanted to go to, they can play nine holes and then go there.”

WGA is also beginning to expand efforts outside the Institution, offering a $40 WGA season membership, as well as discounted green fees and cart fees on Tuesdays for playing with other members of WGA.

In addition, the WGA has also started a program running on Thursdays and Saturdays, throughout the season called Par Pals that is open to the public in an effort to get golfers in the surrounding area involved.

Troy Moss, head golf professional at the Chautauqua Golf Club, said the club had previously been searching for ways to include more women in its tournaments and create a more inclusive environment.

In years past, women and men had separate tournaments on opposing courses on the golf club grounds, the Lake Course and the Hill Course. Now these groups have merged, leading to all-female teams in last Monday’s club tournament, the Score One for the Lake fundraiser.

All of these initiatives through the season show a growing spirit for the club, which had struggled with memberships in the past. These new initiatives from the WGA are meant to continue to push new golfers interested in different forms of the sport to come and try their hand.

WGA member Monica Gardner said these plans were to allow players with limited time and of all levels of experience the chance to take up golf. The implementation of nine-hole play and less restrictive time constraints for signing up were meant to be more inviting to potential members.

Following the opening tournament, WGA gathered for lunch and a meeting to discuss future plans related to fees, public entries to the course and other matters.

Amy Brown Hughes was hesitant to start on the path of becoming a theologian.

With an age-old narrative that largely excluded women from the field, her classrooms lacked the representation she needed to envision her own success. But, Hughes refused to sit this one out. Instead, she decided to write a new narrative.

At 2 p.m. Friday, June 28 in the Hall of Philosophy, Hughes, assistant professor of theology at Gordon College, will open Chautauqua’s Interfaith Friday Series with “With One Eye Squinted: God, Evil, and Suffering.”

Hughes originally went to school to become an English literature teacher, but said it quickly became clear she needed to pursue what she was really good at: theology. With a lack of female representation in the profession, she said it was initially difficult to justify the switch.

“I did a theology degree without knowing what I was going to do with it,” Hughes said. “I had a lot of encouragement to do missions work, but not so much to be a clergy person, so it didn’t even occur to me that I could be a theologian as a woman. I wasn’t actively told in my degree that was the case, but it was just the narrative. … I had biblical studies professors who were women, but I never had a theologian.”

After graduating from Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, Hughes went to Texas to work for a missions organization, and shortly after starting, she realized it was not something she wanted to do as a career. Instead, she decided to go to Wheaton College, a Christian liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois, to earn her master’s degree so she could teach.

It was at Wheaton that she took her first class with a female professor and gained the inspiration she needed to move forward in her program. 

“It was some really awesome mentors there that said, ‘Hey, you should really pursue this, you should write a thesis, you should teach my class, you can do this,’ ” she said. “Having a woman as my professor really helped. I could see myself doing the job.”

One of those mentors encouraged Hughes to stay with Wheaton to earn her doctorate. When she was working on her dissertation, her adviser asked if she knew of any other Evangelical women doing work in theology.

“I sat there and I felt stupid because I couldn’t think of a single one,” she said. “After about 30 seconds, he put me out of my misery and told me there isn’t anyone. I am the first woman to graduate from the Ph.D. program at Wheaton College.”

In 2015, Hughes started teaching at Gordon, a private Christian college in Wenham, Massachusetts. After almost four years, Hughes said the experience has been better than she could have ever imagined.

“I was made to do this,” Hughes said. “I find it to be challenging in really good ways.”

According to Hughes, Gordon stands out due to its ability to make theology accessible to everyone.

“Theology is not just about what you think about things, or having a position on something, or just being able to argue your point,” she said. “I bring to the table a real commitment to an accessible understanding of what theology is. Just watching these students realize that they can participate in the broader, really important conversations is super rewarding for me.”

As a representative from the “broader Evangelical tradition,” Hughes is going to discuss how to think about difficult questions, specifically questions about instances of suffering around the world.

“I am going to talk about how we can discuss what it means to be a person of faith without alienating everyone around us,” she said. “Every major world religion has resources for how we as humans can think about difficult things and how we overlap with other people and other religions. How can we work together so that we can come alongside one another and walk with each other through those difficult times?”

Not only does she want to discuss how to work through the questions, Hughes also wants to use her lecture to help start conversations that will prevent additional conflict.

“You have to think about being with people in those moments of suffering, but also think about how we cannot continue finding ourselves in those situations,” Hughes said. “What are the larger conversations we need to have with one another to mitigate some of these larger issues and restrict those impulses by saying, ‘Hey, this thing that you are bringing into the world is actually causing other people to suffer’? It is so important that we learn to start these conversations so we can really start moving forward.”

Eric Einhorn, stage director of Chautauqua Opera Company’s ¡Figaro! (90210), has directed different operatic versions of The Marriage of Figaro, The Barber of Seville and The Ghosts of Versailles several times throughout his career.

“I was thrilled when given the opportunity to come up here, especially that it was this piece,” Einhorn said. “These characters are characters that I’ve spent many years with.”

In this version of The Marriage of Figaro, the characters are dealing with current “hot button issues,” which the opera showcases in a “thoughtful” and “elegant way,” according to Einhorn.

At 4 p.m. Friday, June 28 in Norton Hall, Chautauqua Opera Company will open its 2019 mainstage season with ¡Figaro! (90210), a modern adaptation of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, by librettist Vid Guerrerio.

The classic opera tells the story of a “single day of madness,” following main characters Figaro and his bride-to-be Susanna, who are both employed by Count Almaviva. It comes three years after Figaro helped the Count marry his wife, Countess Rosine, in the story of The Barber of Seville.

But in the adapted version of The Marriage of Figaro, Guerrerio’s ¡Figaro! (90210), the count and his wife are Hollywood elites living a luxurious lifestyle as Paul and Roxanne Conti. Figaro and his fiancé Susana — originally referred to as Susanna in the classic version — are undocumented workers on Paul and Roxanne’s estate.

Guerrerio introduces these characters to a new world, transitioning them to what would be their modern-day equivalents.

“Rather than it just becoming about sliding somebody over into a new costume and all of a sudden they are modern, Vid has done a wonderful job of recasting who these characters are,” Einhorn said.

With the revived plot comes new, specific casting requirements. Not only does the opera have Figaro and Susana as undocumented immigrants from Mexico, but many characters from different ethnic backgrounds. These characters bring different perspectives not only to the stage, but behind the scenes.

“It is a great step forward for representation on stage,” Einhorn said. “It’s amazing to look out into the rehearsal room to see such a diverse bunch of singers.”

The Chautauqua Opera Young Artists make up the cast for ¡Figaro! (90210). Many of the Young Artists are from an array of backgrounds and experiences, bringing a different outlook to their characters. Throughout the rehearsal process, Einhorn said it was more of his job to listen, especially when it comes to character development. 

“It’s been about turning the conversation outward to talk to everybody in the cast as we discover who these characters are,” Einhorn said. “There has to be a big element of themselves brought to it.”

For this opera, the audience will be able to sit on the stage. The set isn’t extravagant, with only certain required pieces to show the story is in a modern Beverly Hills mansion. Einhorn said the opera is about the story, not about the spectacle.

“Whenever I work on The Marriage of Figaro, whether it’s Mozart’s original or this, for me this is all about people,” Einhorn said. “I like creating a space where the characters drive the storytelling.”

¡Figaro! (90210) will be performed five times by Chautauqua Opera, which is a long run for the company. The Young Artists are new to the roles in this opera, and with less than three weeks to put the show together, it was an exciting thrill, Einhorn said.

“We’re starting with Young Artists that have never done these roles before, which in a lot of ways is really exciting because as a director you get to take them through that for the first time,” Einhorn said. “That’s a huge gift that I was given.”

He said this opera is not only a way to open conversations about certain national issues but also simply to see a beautiful story unfold.

“I think what you have to do is come in and allow yourself to be taken away by the incredible artistry of the company,” Einhorn said. “I hope people come in with an open mind to conversation and discussion about what the themes are.”

Steve Osgood, the general and artistic director of Chautauqua Opera, will lead a ¡Figaro! (90210) Operalogue at 2:30 p.m. today in Fletcher Music Hall.

With the musical stylings of a 20th century jazz and swing band, and the glitz and glam to match, Postmodern Jukebox is a roaring retro band on the surface. But upon further inspection, the songs the group performs are not vintage. They are modern hits from a wide variety of genres, rearranged and retrofitted to bump and sway like jazzy tunes from a bygone era.

The musical group, with a cast of rotating musicians and vocalists, will bring its popular performance to Chautauqua Institution at 8:15 p.m. tonight (June 28) in the Amphitheater, as a part of its Welcome to the Twenties 2.0 Tour. 

Officially known as Scott Bradlee’s Postmodern Jukebox, the group got its start in 2010, when creator Scott Bradlee first brought a group of musicians together under the Postmodern Jukebox name. According to the group’s website, Bradlee founded the collective as a way to bring the sound and spirit of older music back into the mainstream.

The show that Postmodern Jukebox is bringing to Chautauqua is one aimed at ringing in the second coming of the 1920s with style. Bradlee said he hopes the new decade will bring with it a return to the style and quality of past generations.

In an interview with ticketing company AXS in 2017, Bradlee explained why he began arranging newer songs in an older style, and why he thinks people like it.

“People were always interested in hearing how the songs that they loved would sound in these earlier genres,” Bradlee said. “And I think that Postmodern Jukebox kind of taps into this nostalgia.”

Onstage, the members of Postmodern Jukebox don costumes reminiscent of jazz lounge singers or flamboyant flappers from the ’20s. The glamorous performers treat audiences to renditions of songs like “Feel it Still” by Portugal. The Man; “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee; and “Closer” by The Chainsmokers in styles completely unlike their original compositions.

Postmodern Jukebox found much of its early success online. The group’s YouTube channel has amassed over 4 million subscribers and 1.2 billion total views since its creation in 2008. Since the very first video, the group has brought musicians from all across the United States together under the same banner.

Speaking to Fine Magazine in 2015, Bradlee said he enjoys bringing the show to people around the world and giving Postmodern Jukebox performers a chance to shine.

“My goal right now is to bring the Postmodern Jukebox touring act to the entire world, so that everyone can get to experience it,” Bradlee said. “The show is just so fun — we tour with a dozen amazing musicians that really bring the arrangements to life, and I’m really passionate about sharing their talents with the world.”

Cathy Nowosielski and Jeff Lutz are partially underwriting the Postmodern Jukebox concert at 8:15 p.m. Friday, June 28 in the Amphitheater. Nowosielski and Lutz are excited for the event and believe that Chautauquans of all ages will enjoy the show.

“I really think that it will appeal to all ages and demographics at Chautauqua because they use current songs and then put an old twist on them,” Nowosielski said. “So it appeals to both generations.”

Nowosielski and Lutz were introduced to Postmodern Jukebox’s music through close friends whose daughter was dating the then-part-time drummer of the group.

“Our friends told me to turn on a YouTube video and we saw Chip (Thomas) in the background of a living room playing with this very cool band,” Nowosielski said. “Our older son then saw them in concert in Atlanta, and we’ve been working with the Institution for three to four years to try to get Postmodern Jukebox to Chautauqua.”

Now engaged to their friends’ daughter, Chip Thomas will play drums for Postmodern Jukebox tonight, as the group’s membership is characterized by a set of rotating musicians and vocalists.

Nowosielski and Lutz were glad to supply some of the funds to sponsor this event. Aside from their personal connection to PMJ, they are longtime Chautauquans and have been very involved in the community.

“One of the things that appealed to me was that in sponsoring this concert, our funds count towards the 2019 annual fund,” Nowosielski said. “You can have dedicated gifts that actually count towards the annual fund.”

Through their contributions to the annual fund, they are also members of the Bestor Society and were co-chairs of the Chautauqua Fund for three years.

Additionally, both Lutz and Nowosielski have held multiple volunteer positions in the community.

“We were chairs of the Chautauqua Fund already for a year when I retired,” Lutz said. “Cathy was active at the Catholic House. I then became the treasurer of the Chautauqua Property Owners Association, then the Catholic House needed a treasurer, so I volunteered for that and also joined that board. Then last year, the Women’s Club needed a house manager so Cathy jumped in. We just are very involved in a whole lot of places around here.”

Nowosielski first arrived at Chautauqua 23 years ago. A close friend frequently told her about the Chautauqua experience and encouraged her to visit. Lutz missed that first visit, but has now attended 21 seasons. After setting foot on the grounds, Nowosielski never looked back.

“Chautauqua felt like home the moment I came here,” Nowosielski said. “It combines education, which was important to me even after retirement, with faith-based activities which are also very important to me. But also the opportunity to feel like you’re in a small town community with real relationships being built over the course of years was totally different than any neighborhood I had previously known.”

Lutz also enjoys Chautauqua’s close-knit community. Other places just cannot compare.

“For me, it’s one word: community,” Lutz said. “It’s just something you don’t get anymore in other places. There are all kinds of different communities here.”

In preparation for the concert, Lutz and Nowosielski are throwing a themed pre-party. The attire is “vintage clothing optional” because of Postmodern Jukebox’s old-style twists on modern music.

Postmodern Jukebox will make its way to Chautauqua during the group’s Welcome to the Twenties 2.0 Tour. The group was started in 2009 and has gained over 1.2 billion YouTube views and 4 million subscribers. Their music has topped Billboard and iTunes charts and has grabbed the attention of NPR Music and NBC News. The band currently has a Las Vegas residency and will be touring in the United States, Russia, Canada, Australia and Europe.

In their upcoming lecture, “Art History as Storytelling,” School of Art curators-in-residence Alpesh Kantilal Patel and Yasmeen Siddiqui will speak on the importance of collaboration. As the co-editors of an upcoming art history anthology — featuring 35 historians, curators, archivists and museum directors — collaboration is something they know a thing or two about.

“One thing we want to impress upon the students we work with is that they need to engage with, not only other artists, but writers (and) curators,” Patel said. “They need to create a network of people.”

Patel and Siddiqui will speak at 7 p.m. Friday, June 28 in the Hultquist Center as part of the Visual Arts Lecture Series.

They will spend the summer compiling submissions for their anthology, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life: Art History, which will be one of a nine-book anthology series overseen by Sharon Louden, Chautauqua Institution’s Sydelle Sonkin and Herb Siegel Artistic Director of the Visual Arts.

At their lecture, Patel and Siddiqui will discuss perceptions around art history they hope to change.

“We feel that art history is often presented as a fixed narrative that is very Euro-American, very heteronormative,” Patel said. “We want to sort of implode that.”

They said that viewing art history as a process of continually evolving storytelling is essential when bringing attention to the contributions of historically underrepresented artists.

“I think it’s a very Chautauquan idea,” Siddiqui said. “Honoring tradition but looking forward into the future; having a vision for a future … while not forgetting the incredible work that has been underway for a millennium.”

Starting next week, Patel and Siddiqui will be available from 2 to 5 p.m. every Friday at the Chautauqua School of Art Students and Emerging Artists Exhibition on the second floor of the Fowler-Kellogg Art Center for open gallery talks. Besides lecturing on art movements and global exhibition histories, they will provide visitors with an opportunity to connect with the students and emerging artists at the School of Art, who will be present in the gallery to discuss their own pieces through different personal and theoretical contexts.

They hope their work will encourage more diverse perspectives within the art history community.

“We want (students) to think of their artwork as having multiple stories within them, and through the process of creating these multiple stories they’re going to see that they’re in conversation with a lot of different artists, theorists or curators,” Patel said.

As the lights dim, while the Motet Choir sings reverently and the character of Pastor Paul delivers an impassioned sermon to the amassed crowd, Bratton Theater will seemingly shift from a stage for the arts to a house of worship.

The Christians, by Lucas Hnath, the first play in Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2019 mainstage season, opens at 8 p.m. tonight. June 28 in Bratton Theater. The show runs through July 14, and places audiences in the pews of a church in turmoil.

But despite the fact Hnath writes in his stage directions that, in a way, “the whole play is a kind of sermon,” audiences are in for a very different experience than the one they would get attending a Sunday service.

The Christians examines what happens when deep-seated faith and a drastic shift in identity collide. Show director Taibi Magar said the play brings up a lot of difficult questions — and it does so intentionally.

“It’s a piece intended to question and spark debate about religion, belief and power structures in how they relate to our daily lives,” Magar said.

In the show, the spark that ignites the fire of debate comes when Paul, the charismatic pastor of an influential megachurch, announces to his congregation that, based on a direct conversation with God, he no longer believes that Hell is real.

Cue the shaking of the congregation to its very core.

And after the church is left truly shocked, Pastor Paul, played by guest artist Jamison Jones, is left to deal with the resounding ripples that tear through each and every one of his relationships. Jones said the play examines how a single change in belief can turn a person’s entire world upside down.

“I think where we get to the heart of the play, is when we look at the external effect of how these changes affect (Pastor Paul’s) interpersonal relationships,” Jones said. “They’re detrimental not just to his life in the church, but to his family as well. They break things in a way that I don’t know I expected.”

The depth and nuance of the play’s narrative proved popular among critics. The Christians premiered Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons in 2015, and won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play in 2016. Hnath himself also won the Kesselring Prize and an Obie Award for Playwriting for The Christians in 2016.

Now that the show is coming to Chautauqua, CTC Artistic Director Andrew Borba wants to assure audiences that, despite the name, The Christians is a show for everyone.

“It’s our job to let the audiences know that it’s not just about being a Christian,” Borba said. “It really is about and does apply to everyone, since it looks at confronting not just our own foundational beliefs, but also what happens when other people in our life confront their foundational beliefs.”

Borba believes the Chautauqua community is the perfect place to stage the play, since Chautauqua is a place committed to lifelong learning and fostering thoughtful conversation, and also a place that is deeply tied to religious understanding and exploration.

To CTC Managing Director Sarah Clare Corporandy, these values of education and faith give Chautauqua audiences a unique perspective on the themes of the show.

“In a place that has a great familiarity with religion and a great history with religion, and also a great sense of community, I think the Chautauquans are going to eat it up,” Corporandy said.

Both Borba and Corporandy agreed that the show’s themes are worth discussing well after the curtain has fallen.

“We are a porch society,” Borba said. “Our experience in the theater doesn’t end when you leave the theater. We will have talk-backs after every show and we also want it to permeate not only your dinner conversation, but also your conversation for the week, for the season.”

But despite the profound themes and intense conflict the show wrestles with, Borba wants prospective audience members to know that The Christians isn’t a lecture; it isn’t all lessons and opinions.

“This play is not soft, but it’s not aggressive,” Borba said. “It’s not mean. It is open and human and empathic. It is a deep, civilized conversation. An investigation. And that feels perfectly Chautauquan.”

JonSchmitz will shine a light on the history of Chautauqua as both a place and an idea when he discusses “ChautauqWhat? A short history of the Chautauqua Movement,”  at 3:30 p.m. today in the Hall of Christ.

The talk is the second in this summer’s Oliver Archives Heritage Lecture Series, a series of 18 lectures about historical events and people that are in some way related to Chautauqua.

“The theory that I have is that just about everything has something to do with Chautauqua, and Chautauqua has pretty much something to do with everything,” said Schmitz, Institution archivist and historian.

The lectures will be about things that were either going on at the same time that the Chautauqua Movement evolved, things that the people at Chautauqua were interested in or affected by at the time, things that were similar to Chautauqua or things directly related to Chautauqua.

Schmitz’s lecture today will be about the history of Chautauqua and the movement that resulted from it — its rise, decline and resurgence.

“I think it’s important to have a historical perspective on Chautauqua in order to understand it,” Schmitz said. “People want a way to be able to tell other people what it is or how the various aspects of the program fit together, and I think, to do that, it really helps to have a historical view.”

Another main aspect he will discuss is the three things Chautauqua can give back to America — things Schmitz thinks the country needs. The first is a physical place for people to gather together to have shared experiences, even when their interests and opinions differ; the second is a special time of rest and appreciation for creation and the completion of work, a sort of “Sabbath time”; the third is a special, spontaneous community of the sort that springs up at the Institution every season.

“Chautauqua has changed a great deal over the years, but it has still maintained a consistency, a continuity, through that change, which defines its identity,” Schmitz said. “It’s important to see history not just as the past, but as the past, the present and even the future.”

The Heritage Lecture Series has occurred every season for about 12 years, Schmitz said. As a lifelong lover of history, Schmitz is glad to have the opportunity to not only work in the Institution’s archives but also to speak and teach about history and its preservation.

“Hopefully (people will get) some view that might help them think more about what Chautauqua is,” Schmitz said.

In January 2020, the Chautauqua Foundation will be undergoing a transition when the majority of the Foundation staff will become employees of Chautauqua Institution.

The Chautauqua Foundation is a nonprofit establishment, independent from the Institution. It is responsible for philanthropic funding of the Institution, its programs and facilities.

As part of the planning that went into Chautauqua Institution’s new strategic plan, 150 Forward, the Foundation’s board of directors and Institution leadership reexamined the current structure of how these organizations work in cooperation with one another.

“We began to have discussions about whether the development operation, the fundraising team, was better situated in the Foundation or the Institution,” said Geof Follansbee, vice president of development and CEO of the Chautauqua Foundation.

To help achieve the objectives of 150 Forward, the majority of Foundation operating costs, which have been annually charged against the endowment funds held by the Foundation, will become part of the Institution’s operating budget. This will alleviate the burden placed on endowment funds and, over time, increase the growth and payout of those funds to support Institution programming, thus growing endowment revenue.

Prior to 1991, development office employees were employed by the Institution. In 1991, a decision was made to move that same staff and its operating costs to the Foundation. While considering another switch, the board of directors decided to bring in professional assistance.

“Approximately 14 months ago we hired a firm to come in and look at how well our development program was staffed,” Follansbee said. “They were not evaluating the people we had, but simply assessing what was our structure and did it make sense.”

The firm advised a three-year plan for an expansion of the development office. This plan also corresponded with the ambitious goals of the new strategic plan that Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees approved in May.

“(The consultants) were quite clear that they felt our lack of investment in development was limiting our ability to raise money,” Follansbee said. “Investing more would provide a return over and beyond the cost of the investment. With that, they recommended that the development team move back to the Institution.”

Philanthropic support to the Chautauqua Fund and capital projects will be directed to the Institution beginning in January 2020. Gifts to the endowment will continue to be held by the Foundation for investment. These gifts will then be made available to the Institution according to the spending policy established by the Foundation’s board of directors.

By ramping up staffing leading into the summer season, with the understanding that the Institution would be assuming operational costs in 2020, “the Foundation board agreed to make that investment to allow us to move forward in 2019,” Follansbee said. “We laid out a plan for a multiyear staging of additional investment into our development program.”

Growing and diversifying revenue, philanthropic revenue, in particular, is a goal within 150 Forward. To help reach this goal, the Foundation’s board of directors, in collaboration with the board of trustees and Institution President Michael E. Hill, have made investments in staff resources to secure the philanthropy necessary to achieve the goals of 150 Forward.

“I’ve spent more time managing the office than I have fundraising,” Follansbee said. “We could benefit from more of my time fundraising and working with President Hill on development activities and we could benefit from some other fundraising resources.”

Follansbee is confident this transition will benefit both the Institution and the Foundation.

“In terms of our day-to-day responsibilities we’re going to be doing the same work; we’re going to be doing it better,” Follansbee said. “We will significantly expand our fundraising horizons and our success.”

Amy Laura Hall nannied to pay her way through college and graduate school. As much as she enjoyed instructing children, her first time leading an adult Sunday school class is where she found her calling. Having the opportunity to teach, or re-teach adults, is why she calls lecturing at Chautauqua her “dream gig.”

At 2 p.m. Wednesday, June 26 in the Hall of Philosophy, Hall, Duke University’s Divinity School Associate Professor of Christian Ethics, will continue Week One’s interfaith theme, “Religious Moments That Changed the World,” with her lecture “Is Fear Your Only God? How a Medieval Visionary, Julian of Norwich, Teaches Courage, Still, Today.”

“What I absolutely love is watching people who are grown-ups learn new things,” Hall said. “They learn new things about themselves, new things about people they already thought they knew; things about history they thought they knew. Teaching groups of adults complicated questions that I can then try to help them figure out, it is what most makes my heart sing.”

When Hall started teaching at Duke in 1999, her first class was a group of 100 Christian ethics students. The syllabus only consisted of men. 

“That’s an embarrassing fact but it’s just true,” she said. “I’ve been a feminist since I could sing ‘I am woman, I am strong’ as a little girl so it was nuts that I had no women in the class. I started asking around for a woman in the tradition that I could assign as a basic text and several people said I should teach Julian of Norwich.”

Julian of Norwich was a medieval anchorite and the author of the earliest known book written in English by a woman, Revelations of Divine Love. Despite the numerous recommendations, Hall initially felt Julian’s words were naive and blatantly irresponsible.

“I had no interest in teaching a woman who wrote and thought that ‘all would be well,’ ” Hall said. “I didn’t see how that could possibly be helpful to anyone.”

In an effort to give Julian’s work a second chance, Hall started reading the text alongside the Penguin Classics translation.

“Adding a translation was an absolute game-changer,” she said. “It analyzed her text within the time period using lots of historical sources to explain how to get to the bottom of what she was trying to say. It changed my perspective about how significant it was that she had seen a vision of God’s all-lovingness at the time that she did.”

Hall went on to teach the translation alongside Julian’s two original texts for the next 20 years. Finally, she decided to tell Julian’s story in her own words with her latest book published in 2018, Laughing at the Devil: Seeing the World with Julian of Norwich, the inspiration behind today’s lecture. 

“Teaching her words to students at the Divinity School who are overwhelmingly Protestant, and many of them trained, as I was, to think that texts by men are more important than texts by women, changed everything for me,” she said. “It has helped me try to figure out how best to introduce seeing the world with Julian of Norwich to a general readership, how to claim that her words matter.”

Unlike Shakespeare, Julian wasn’t writing for royalty. Revolutionary for her time, she chose to speak to the masses, the reason Hall believes she fits so perfectly into Week One’s theme.

“That right there makes her a moment in history that really matters,” Hall said. “She was writing in the vernacular, she was writing in English. She was writing in the language of farmers in England, not of the chains in command. Reading her closely today can help people see the possibilities for defying the strictures of conformity, obedience and hierarchy.”