The Arts

Chautauqua Theater Company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” is set as the topic of discussion at the Brown Bag lunch at 12:15 p.m. today in Bratton Theater. General Manager Robert Chelimsky said the event will focus on the choices made in the CTC production, which means that a lot of attention may be turned to guest director Brian Mertes. “The director becomes the interviewee to a great degree,” Chelimsky said. “It tends to be very focused on what they were going for conceptually.”

For Voice Program faculty member Donald St. Pierre, teaching music is not just about the notes on a page. It is about reminding students why they got involved with music in the first place. At 7:30 p.m. tonight in McKnight Hall, singers will bestow another warm greeting to the Chautauqua community through song with a voice concert. It is the first concert in a series of Wednesday night performances that will offer a glimpse into the hard work these students have done throughout their stay at the Institution.

In the south of Switzerland, they speak Italian. So the first time Sharon Creech visited Switzerland in 1982, she made sure to learn Italian. But when the Newbery Award-winning author of Walk Two Moons returned to the country in 2007, she found that hopping between English and Italian was much more difficult than it used to be.

Chautauqua Theater Company begins the first of 15 performances of its production of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” with a preview of the play at 8 p.m. tonight in Bratton Theater. The company’s preview performance is open to the public and allows the guest director to see the show with an audience before he leaves Chautauqua.

Three shows filled with color, creativity and artistic interpretation will have opening receptions from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. today in the Fowler-Kellogg Art Center.

When pianist Rose Chancler Feinbloom submitted an advertisement to Craigslist looking for a musician to play contemporary chamber music with her, she never expected the ad to be answered by a marimba player. Jane Boxall, classical marimba player by day and rock drummer by night, answered the ad within three hours of its being posted to the Internet. That was back in 2008. The two, now officially known as the Ricochet Duo, will perform a concert at 4 p.m. today in Fletcher Music Hall.

An orchestra has many musicians, but it breathes as a unit. For some symphony orchestras, it may take years to foster the kind of bond necessary to produce top quality music, but students in the Music School Festival Orchestra have only seven weeks. At 8:15 p.m. tonight, the MSFO will perform its first of five concerts in the Amphitheater. Led by music director and conductor Timothy Muffitt, the concert will feature four works that would appear at home on any professional symphony’s program. However, there will be something that sets the MSFO apart.

Some say poetry should address only universal themes, while others argue the work of a poet is inseparable from his life. Week Two poet-in-residence Andrew Mulvania will address the debate that is older than Walt Whitman. Mulvania will present his lecture “Poetry and the Self: Autobiography in American Poetry” at 12:15 p.m. today on the front porch of Alumni Hall.

In 2006, Ruth Ezell, a television producer in St. Louis, aired a documentary about world-renowned soprano Christine Brewer, calling her “the antithesis of the stereotypical prima donna.” At 6:15 p.m. tonight in Elizabeth S. Lenna Hall, the Grammy Award-winning opera star will perform alongside her longtime colleague, pianist Craig Rutenberg, in a free All-American concert celebrating the July 4 holiday. Each musician will also conduct two master classes, which will be open to the public for a small fee, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tuesday in McKnight Hall.

As the opening of Chautauqua Theater Company’s production of “Three Sisters” approaches, the production team finds itself finishing an evolving set of needs for the play. Production Manager Joe Stoltman said while this is his third time working on a production of “Three Sisters,” each time has presented different challenges. For this production, directed by Brian Mertes, the team has responded to aspects of the show that have changed during rehearsals.

The writers-in-residence for Week Two will help writers channel the dead in their poetry and push their fiction characters into danger. Poet-in-residence Andrew Mulvania and prose writer-in-residence Toni Jensen will lead workshops throughout the week, and both will give readings of their work at 3:30 p.m. Sunday on the front porch of Alumni Hall.

Guest Review Such the wonder of a new way of being in the world: the proposals that remake our visions, rare celebrations like the turn toward abstraction in art during the last century. Humankind at its best suggests new worldviews — that our ground is round instead of flat, for instance, and it is a shared amazement, like the suggestion that a star is at the center of things rather than us. And with these understandings, we are transformed.

Brian Mertes, well-known theater and television director, looks at things differently than traditional directors. This might be evident to audience members who come to see the Chautauqua Theater Company’s 2011 Season production of “Three Sisters” that Mertes is directing. The play, which takes place in a provincial town in Russia, follows the search for meaning and happiness in life by three sisters — Irina, Olga and Masha — as they long to go back to their hometown of Moscow.

Maybe you think you understood it and could even situate it within the dance vocabulary of traditional poses, moves, couplings. Perhaps that charge of Sarah Hayes Watson onto the Amphitheater stage seemed like a violation by some primal creature. Maybe you felt comfortable with that association.

When pianist John Milbauer first came to the School of Music in 1989, he was on the verge of giving up music forever. Playing the piano was a physical struggle. He was frustrated with the technical aspect of the piano, and he just didn’t have the right teacher — until Chautauqua changed all that.

The Chautauqua Theater Company costume shop is accustomed to the process of constructing garments for plays, but a modern twist on Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” has made this time a unique blend of Victorian and modern styles. Olivera Gajic, designer of the costumes for the production, said she has worked with Brian Mertes, director of the production, approximately a dozen times on past productions, and nearly half of those times involved Chekhov plays. This has allowed them to develop a comfortable system for getting the design of costumes fitted with each play and character.