
Butler Theatre Presents 'The Little Prince'
PUBLISHED ON Apr 05 2018
Butler Theatre closes its 2017–2018 season with The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery's tale of love and loyalty, April 11-22 in the Lilly Hall Studio Theatre 168.
Show times are:
Wednesday, April 11, 7:00 PM (Preview)
Thursday, April 12, 7:00 PM (Preview)
Friday, April 13, 7:00 PM
Saturday, April 14, 7:00 PM
Sunday, April 15, 2:00 PM
Friday, April 20, 7:00 PM
Saturday, April 21, 7:00 PM
Sunday, April 22, 2:00 PM
Tickets are $5-$15. They are available online at ButlerArtsCenter.org or at the box office before each performance.
The Little Prince, a childhood favorite, is the story of a pilot stranded in the desert who meets an enigmatic young prince who has recently fallen from the sky. Audience members can let their imagination take flight in an adventure that celebrates fantasy and friendship.
The cast:
Aviator: Zane Franklin, Morgantown, Indiana
Lamplighter/Geographer/Businessman: Ryan Moskalick, Highland, Indiana
The Little Prince: Abby Glaws, Deerfield, Illinois
Snake/King: Mary Hensel, Indianapolis
Rose/Conceited man: Kitty Compton, Evansville, Indiana
Fox: Lexy Weixel, Columbus, Ohio
(In the photo: Zane Franklin and Abby Glaws)
Media contact:
Marc Allan MFA '18
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
Butler Theatre Presents 'The Little Prince'
The final show of the season runs April 11-22.
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Professor Stark to Conduct at Carnegie Hall
BY
PUBLISHED ON Oct 10 2016
Professor of Music Eric Stark will conduct the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir at Carnegie Hall on Sunday, October 16, in a performance that will include New York composer Mohammed Fairouz’s new oratorio, Zabur, which the choir commissioned.
Stark, who is Butler’s Director of Choral Activities and also serves as the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir’s Artistic Director, told New York’s Downtown magazine, that conducting in New York “feels like going to the musical version of Mount Olympus.”
“Our musical gods lived, worked, performed and made history in New York,” he said. “The world knows the United States through New York City. It’s a platform for music making that serves a universal audience.”
Read more of the interview here.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822

Professor Stark to Conduct at Carnegie Hall
“The world knows the United States through New York City. It’s a platform for music making that serves a universal audience.”
“The world knows the United States through New York City. It’s a platform for music making that serves a universal audience.”

Prestigious Fulbright Grant Awarded to Choral Director Eric Stark
BY Marc Allan MFA `18
PUBLISHED ON Apr 04 2019
When he was working on his doctorate in choral conducting, Eric Stark would come home to Indianapolis from Bloomington, have dinner, then drive to Butler University and sneak into one of the practice rooms in Lilly Hall to do his homework because he needed access to a piano.
"I would always think: If I could only get a job at a place like this," he says.
In 1996, he did, and since then his choral activities have taken him to Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, and around the world. The next stop is Brazil, where he will be a Fulbright Scholar conducting and studying in residence during the first half of 2020 at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
For Stark, Butler's Director of Choral Activities, it's another milestone in a career filled with them.
Over the years, he has conducted in the Oriental Art Center Concert Hall in Shanghai and the Forbidden City Concert Hall in Beijing. He has made conducting appearances in Greece, Italy, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay, and has led choirs on domestic tours in New York City, Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans, Orlando, and Tampa.
When Madonna performed Like a Prayer at halftime of Super Bowl XLVI in Indianapolis, Stark directed a 200-person choir that included 22 members of the Butler Chorale.
"I'm astounded this is my life, this is my career, because you roll the dice on being a musician and you just never know what's going to happen," he says.
Stark plans to teach at Butler through the 2019 fall semester—he's still leading the popular Rejoice! holiday concerts—then leave for Brazil over winter break. The school year in Brazil starts in March, so he and his husband, Adriano Caldeira, who is Brazilian, will travel around the country in January and February to observe some music-making.
Stark will teach at Federal University from March through June. He will be teaching in Portuguese—some of which he already knows from studying the language for a couple of years ("I feel like I could lead a rehearsal right now in Portuguese"), and some of which he's going to learn this summer at the University of Coimbra in Portugal, thanks to a grant from Butler.
In addition to his work at Butler, Stark has been Artistic Director of the Indianapolis Symphonic Choir since 2002.
The Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants annually. Roughly 1,600 U.S. students, 4,000 foreign students, 1,200 U.S. scholars, and 900 visiting scholars receive awards, in addition to several hundred teachers and professionals.
Stark discovered his love for music growing up in Columbus, Indiana, where he was inspired by the music at First Presbyterian Church. He sang in church choirs for 12 years and took piano and organ lessons from the choir director, Ray Hass.
The church, he says, was his musical awakening.
"He was a great musician and a great organist, and I can remember even as a 7 or 8 year old how much I enjoyed hearing him play the organ," he says. "That tickled something in my head I had never been aware of before. From time to time, I take the Butler Chorale down there and we sing concerts at that church, which is always fun."
Stark earned his bachelor’s from Wabash College, and both his master’s and doctorate in choral conducting from Indiana University.
When a job opened at Butler, Henry Leck, Butler's longtime Director of Choral Activities, got Stark in to see then-Dean Michael Sells, who hired Stark on a one-year, part-time contract. That turned into a one-year appointment, and then a full-time hiring. In the interim, Stark also taught at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, and Christian Theological Seminary.
In 2014, he succeeded Leck as Butler's Director of Choral Activities.
“It’s no surprise to any of us in the Jordan College of the Arts that the significance of Eric’s work as a choral conductor and pedagogue has been recognized on an international level," says Lisa Brooks, Dean of Butler's Jordan College of the Arts. "The connections he will make while in South America will be invaluable to our students, and to the greater Indianapolis community.”
Stark says he's hopeful that his time in Brazil will lead to interesting partnerships and projects.Indianapolis has a sister city relationship with Campinas, Brazil, just outside Sao Paulo, and there is "a lot of multinational cross pollination between businesses here and there."
"There's positives on all sides of the equation, and that's what's so exciting for me about this—that possibility of sharing," he says. "Maybe I'll meet some undergraduate students in Brazil who study with me and might want to come to Butler for graduate studies. That's happened in the past. I'm certain that folks down there would love to do a concert date together with the Butler Chorale or the Symphonic Choir or both down the road. That's pretty exciting to think about."

Prestigious Fulbright Grant Awarded to Choral Director Eric Stark
Butler's Director of Choral Activities will travel in early 2020 to Brazil as a Fulbright Scholar.
Butler's Director of Choral Activities will travel in early 2020 to Brazil as a Fulbright Scholar.

Lisa Brooks Named New Dean of JCA
BY
PUBLISHED ON Nov 16 2017
Lisa Brooks’ career at Butler has been a series of progressions—from Violin Professor to Assistant Chair of the School of Music and Director of the Graduate Program to Chair of the School of Music to Interim Dean of the Jordan College of the Arts.
And now, Dean.
Provost Kate Morris announced Brooks’ appointment as Dean of Butler’s Jordan College of the Arts on November 15 at the conclusion of a two-year national search.
“With each role she has held, Lisa has demonstrated her commitment to students, faculty, and staff, both within the College and across the University,” Morris said.
Brooks said when she took over as Interim Dean on June 1, there was a question about whether she would be able to advocate for the other departments in JCA—Dance, Theatre, Arts Administration, and Art + Design.
“I’m a music professor,” she said. “I’m a musician. I’m sure there were people in the college saying, ‘Will she be able to not be music-centric?’ And I didn’t know, either. So I took over June 1, and by mid-August I thought, ‘I can do this job.’ I believe that I’ve proven to my colleagues in the other disciplines that I can be their advocate.”
So she applied for the position.
As Interim Dean, Brooks has already put her stamp on the College. She and the JCA department chairs have replaced the 4-year-old Butler ArtsFest with JCA Signature Events, which provide more student-centered experiences followed by a public performance. The Signature Event on November 14-15, for example, featured theatre artist Tim Miller, who presented workshops for students and an evening show for the public.
Brooks said her immediate goals for JCA are to reconnect with and energize alumni, and to become “a major player in arts education in Indianapolis.”
“The college’s vision is to become a nexus of the arts in Indianapolis through education and performance, and to become a destination for innovative undergraduate arts education,” she said.
Brooks received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Violin Performance from West Virginia University and earned her doctorate in Violin Performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She came to Butler from Baylor University in fall 1994 with her husband, Davis, as part of Butler’s first tenure-track faculty job share.
“It was actually quite forward-looking for Butler to hire us as a job-sharing couple,” she said. “That enabled us to do a lot of performing in the community as violinists. We also have two kids, so it was a great way to balance life, and it worked out well. They knew that they got more than 100 percent from the two of us, and they didn’t care how we split the position. They said, ‘Here are the duties. Do it.'”
They did. Lisa plays in the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and both serve as substitutes for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. (Davis retired from full-time teaching in spring 2014.)
Brooks said she will continue to teach—she has six students this semester—and serve as an academic adviser.
“You can really lose touch with students when you sit in this office,” she said. “You don’t see them frequently, and you can lose touch with the very thing you’re advocating for. So I think it’s important for a Dean to teach, and I’m going to continue to do so.”
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822

Lisa Brooks Named New Dean of JCA
Provost Kate Morris announced Brooks’ appointment as Dean of Butler’s Jordan College of the Arts on November 15 at the conclusion of a two-year national search.
Provost Kate Morris announced Brooks’ appointment as Dean of Butler’s Jordan College of the Arts on November 15 at the conclusion of a two-year national search.