George Takei, Tonya Pinkins & More Set for Pittsburgh Humanities Festival

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Humanities Center of Carnegie Mellon University announce the launch of the inaugural Pittsburgh Humanities Festival, scheduled for March 26-29, 2015. The Festival will take place throughout Pittsburgh's Cultural District and neighboring locales.

The Pittsburgh Humanities Festival will feature internationally renowned academics, artists and intellectual innovators offering interviews, intimate conversations and select performances focused on topics ranging from art, literature and music to science, policy and politics. To view the complete schedule, visit TrustArts.org/SmartTalk.

Events will be held Thursday, March 26, 2015 through Sunday, March 29, 2015, throughout Pittsburgh's Cultural District, as well as at select venues of partnering organizations and galleries.

Presented by the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival is supported by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, the Institute of Arts and Humanities at Penn State University, the Humanities Center of the University of Pittsburgh, the Humanities Scholars Program of Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh Law School, City of Asylum, The Andy Warhol Museum, WYEP/WESA, and Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

Festival Passes and Single Tickets are currently on sale for the inaugural Pittsburgh Humanities Festival. Full festival passes ($20, $10 for students) include one ticket to one event during each of the Saturday and Sunday concurrent sessions. Single tickets to special events, including Azar Nafisi (Thursday, March 26), Twilight Country by Robert Myers with Kathleen Chalfant (Friday & Saturday, March 27-28) Cynthia Hopkins: A Living Documentary (Saturday, March 28) and George Takei (Sunday, March 29) are available for purchase. All online purchases are subject to a handling fee. To purchase tickets, visit TrustArts.org/SmartTalk or call 412-456-6666.

2015 Pittsburgh Humanities Festival Events:

Azar Nafisi, Humanities & the Future of Democracies
Byham Theater | Thursday March 26 at 7:00 p.m.
Ten years ago Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her memoir Reading Lolita In Tehran, a multi-million copy bestseller that made a passionate case for the vital role of imagination-and great English and American novels in particular-in preserving the soul and combating noxious ideology of a totalitarian society. She now turns her attention back to the democratic society that gave birth to these great novels and makes as powerful and passionate a case for the vital role of fiction in society today. Why do we need Humanities today at a time of crisis? How far is the present economic and political crisis rooted in the larger crisis of vision? How far does imagination open the spaces that a totalitarian regime closes? Can a democracy thrive without a democratic imagination? Nafisi will try to respond to these questions based on her experiences in Iran and in America.

"Twilight Country" by Robert Myers featuring Kathleen Chalfant and Tonya Pinkins
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Fri., March 27-Sat., March 28 at 8:00 p.m.
Twilight Country is about the relationship between a white female writer and the mother of a deceased black veteran who meet in Asheville, North Carolina in 1948 and develop a friendship as they read Dante's Inferno together.

Robert Myers is the author of over fifteen plays that deal with history, race and cultural encounters, including Atwater: "Fixin' to Die," "The Lynching of Leo Frank," "Dead of Night," "Unmanned," and "Drone Pilots."

Kathleen Chalfant was nominated for Broadway's 1993 Tony Award as Best Actress (Featured Role - Play) for her role in Tony Kushner's "Angels in America: Millennium Approaches." She earned accolades for her performance as Vivian Bearing in Margaret Edson's play "Wit." Chalfant has been honored with the Outer Circle Critics, Drama Desk, Obie and Lucille Lortel awards.

Tonya Pinkins, an award winner actress, singer, author, activist and educator, just completed a successful run of "Rasheeda Speaking" opposite Dianne Wiest at The New Group in Manhattan. She is known for her portrayal of Livia Frye on the soap opera All My Children and for her roles on Broadway. She has been nominated for three Tony Awards winning the Tony for "Jelly's Last Jam," and has won the Obie, 2 Lortel Awards, the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, AUDLECO, Garland, LA Drama Critic's, Clarence Derwent and NAACP Theater Awards. Her Broadway credits include "Play On!," "Caroline, or Change,"-within which she played the title role-"Merrily We Roll Along," "Chronicle of a Death Foretold," "The Wild Party," "House of Flowers," "Radio Golf," "A Time To Kill," and "Holler If Ya Hear Me."

The Ghosts of Amistad
Harris Theater | Friday, 4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
Screening is also part of the Faces of Work International Film Festival
This documentary by Tony Buba is based on Marcus Rediker's The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (Viking-Penguin, 2012). The Ghosts of Amistad chronicles a trip to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the people who seized the slave schooner Amistad in 1839 and includes interviews with elders about local memory of the case, as well as a search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko-the slave-trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. The film uses the knowledge of villagers, fishermen, and truck drivers to recover a lost history in the struggle against slavery.

Blake Gopnik: "Andy Warhol: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Yinzer"
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Saturday, 4:30 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
Blake Gopnik is writing a biography of Andy Warhol. In this talk, Gopnik will discuss Warhol's formative years in Pittsburgh. A contributing critic to The Daily Beast,Gopnik writes on art and design for a wide range of publications and previously spent a decade as chief art critic of The Washington Post and, prior to that, as an arts editor and critic in Canada. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from Facebook to gastronomy.

Cynthia Hopkins: A Living Documentary
The Warhol Theater (The Andy Warhol Museum)
Saturday, March 28 at 8:00 p.m. | $15 / $12 members & students
Performance artist Cynthia Hopkins, whose highly praised ensemble work, Accidental Nostalgia, was one of the first larger theater productions presented by The Warhol and the New Hazlett Theater in 2007. In stark contrast, Hopkins returns with the stripped-down, one-woman-show, A Living Documentary, in which Hopkins plays both herself and an eclectic cast of characters, driven by a song cycle of original compositions. The show combines elements of musical comedy, documentary, and fiction, and it asks a myriad of questions about the realities of artistic life in New York City. This performance contains nudity and strong languag

VIA Festival Music: NAAFI - Smurphy, Mexican Jihad + special guests
Ballroom (above Round Corner Cantina)
202 38th Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201 | Saturday, March 28 | 9:00 p.m.-2:00 a.m.
Tickets: http://via-hq.com/humanities-fest/
N.A.A.F.I. is both a music label and series of events in Mexico City. Experience their "noche de ritmos periféricos," or "night of peripheral rhythms" in Pittsburgh with two of the label's core artists. NAAFI's unencumbered sonic explorations incorporate club music trends, regional Mexican references, seapunk and vaporwave aesthetics, chaos magick spirituality, and more. Smurphy's live performance is a hybrid reflection of her background in pop-punk bands and urban dance music, while Mexican Jihad's DJ sets blend hip-hop, house, techno, and experimental sounds with subversive political messaging.

Kissing Cousins: Touched and Terrified by Difference
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Saturday, March 28 | 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
Frances Bartkowski, author of Kissing Cousins: A New Kinship Bestiary, is interested in that place where curiosity, fascination and fear meet up between humans and other animals. In our daily lives, Facebook feeds flood us with still and moving images of how we humans-and our animals-tickle each other's fancies, touch each other's bodies, hearts, minds and spirits, and sometimes terrify in their real and imaginary forms that visit our homes, our yards, our streets, our dark dream spaces. We are moved from lust to disgust, from desire to repulsion, from delicious proximity to compulsory distance. Before there was Facebook to delight and instruct us, when we least expected it, there were family trips, school trips, photographs and films that made it possible to safely stand or sit, and see and look; there were zoos, circuses, and reserves where we got as close as was permissible and accessible. We painted experiences on cave walls, instead of recording them through self-portraits or upon other humans-whom we could look at any time.

Sarah Thornton: The Secret Lives of Artists
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Saturday, March 28 | 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Sarah Thornton, formerly the chief correspondent on contemporary art for The Economist, is a bestselling author and sociologist of art. In a conversation with Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum, Sarah will discusses her new book 33 Artists in 3 Acts, which offers unprecedented access to a dazzling range of artists, from international superstars to unheralded art teachers. Called "...the Jane Goodall of the art world" by The Washington Post, Thornton talks with leading contemporary artists such as Ai Weiwei, Jeff Koons, and Cindy Sherman and turns a wry, analytical eye on their different answers to the question, "What is an Artist?"

John Sayles and Maggie Renzie: Independent Filmmakers
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Saturday, March 28 | 1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
Often called the Godfather of independent film, the writer and director of more than 17 films, John Sayles and his producing partner Maggie Renzie, discuss their careers and the current state of independent cinema with David Shumway, Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University, and author of a book on the filmmaker.

Vanessa German: Artist and Activist
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Saturday, March 28 | 3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
Vanessa German is an internationally renowned sculptor and multidisciplinary artist: photographer, painter, actress and poet. Based in Homewood, her work delves into identity, race, and racism. Her sculptures transform found objects into "21st Century Ju Ju," and her spoken-word performances give a voice to the African-American female experience. Vanessa is also an activist; she initiated an anti-violence campaign in Homewood and established an "Art House" where neighborhood children have the opportunity to express themselves through art. She will talk about her work with Heather Arnet, Filmmaker, Playwright, and CEO of the Women and Girls Foundation.

Anthony DeCurtis: on Lou Reed and other Rock Stars
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Sunday, March 29 | 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty years. DeCurtis will discuss Lou Reed, whose biography he is writing, and other rock stars he has met with WYEP Production Director Brian Siewiorek. Anthony DeCurtis holds a PhD in American literature from Indiana University, and is a Distinguished Lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Terrance Hayes in conversation
Trust Arts Education Center, Peirce Studio | Sunday, March 29 | 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
2014 MacArthur Fellow Terrance Hayes is a poet who reflects on race, gender and family in works marked by dexterity and a reverence for history and the artistry of crafting verse. He is the author of Lighthead, which won the National Book Award for Poetry; Wind in a Box, Hip Logic and Muscular Music. His honors include a Whiting Writers Award, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a United States Artists Zell Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur Fellowship. How To Be Drawn, his new collection of poems, is forthcoming from Penguin in 2015.

Six Degrees of Francis Bacon
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Saturday, March 28 | 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
Historians and literary critics have long studied the way that early modern people associated with each other and participated in various kinds of formal and informal groups. Using modern technology, Christopher Warren, who teaches Shakespeare and Milton at Carnegie Mellon University, has analyzed vast quantities of data to establish how people in early modern England were connected. He will introduce a public, digital humanities project that seeks to redress the common caricature of Shakespeare's world that it consists of, in New Yorker Contributor Adam Gopnik's words, "the Queen and Ben Jonson and the Dark Lady and the Bard and a theatre full of groundlings," and to flesh out the social networks of the real early modern Britain.

Kiron Skinner on Ronald Reagan
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Saturday, March 28 | 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Kiron Skinner is the founding director of the Center for International Relations at CMU and her areas of expertise include international relations, international security, US foreign policy, and political strategy. Kiron's coauthored books, Reagan, in His Own Hand, and Reagan, a Life in Letters were New York Times bestsellers. Well known as a leading authority, she talks about Reagan's private and public life.

The History of Queer Pittsburgh
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Saturday, March 28 | 1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
Carnegie Mellon Historians Tim Haggerty and Harrison Apple, co-directors of the Queer History Project, explore the world of Pittsburgh's gay social clubs from 1967 to 1990, making use of an extensive collection of photographs and material objects contributed by owners, employees, performers and patrons. The collection will feature publications, posters, announcements and newsletters that reflect a world that is disappearing: one of drag names and pseudonyms, passwords and codes, a shared patois of high camp and a relationship to the state that could be fraught, deceitful, and criminal-a twilight world of desire and camouflage that emerged in response to a culture that reacted to homosexuality with social criticism and legal prosecution.

Susan Russell: Dignity
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Saturday, March 29 | 3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
Penn State laureate for 2014-15, Susan Russell will lead an interactive discussion about who we can be in the 21st century, and how we can contribute to the human experience by living and giving the dignity we want for ourselves. The conversation is premised on the proposition, "If everything begins with a story, then the story of this moment begins with your decision to 'show up.'" Once you decide to show up, anything is possible. Once anything is possible, then everything can change. So...what's your story now?

Deliberative Theater and the Art of Democracy
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Sunday, March 29 | 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Tim Dawson is a writer, theater artist, and a Ph.D. Candidate in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University. Formerly a program manager at Carnegie Mellon's Program for Deliberative Democracy and a director of community outreach programs for Pittsburgh's Unseam'd Shakespeare Company, Tim is the founder of The Art of Democracy, a consultancy that engages difference as a resource for civic innovation by facilitating opportunities for informed and inclusive public engagement among citizens, community groups, and public officials. Deliberative Theater capitalizes on theater's ability to concisely represent the various and complex ways that beliefs, situated knowledge, and expert information can come together to inform different perspectives, competing policy proposals, and people's actions on critical issues. Deliberative Theater allows people to consider hypothetical interactions between the various "moving parts" of a complex issue, and helps them gain greater clarity and depth of understanding than can be realized by seeing each "part" in isolation. Deliberative Theater also humanizes complex issues, providing people with an access point for public policy discussions that may otherwise seem overwhelmingly technical or removed from everyday experience.

Religious Innovation in Pittsburgh
Trust Arts Education Center, 4th Floor | Sunday, March 29 | 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
A Religious Studies professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Paula Kane's courses include Religion in Early and Modern America, and Popular Religions in America. Kane will talk about the historical face of religion in Pittsburgh, how that has dramatically shifted over the years and highlight the fastest growing religions in our city today.

Ghosts of Amistad
SPACE | Saturday, March 28 | 10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.
Writer Marcus Rediker and filmmaker Tony Buba will discuss the recent film The Ghosts of Amistad, (shown Friday, March 27th at 4:30 p.m.) with WESA Morning Edition host Josh Raulerson. This documentary by Tony Buba is based on Marcus Rediker's The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom. It chronicles a trip to Sierra Leone in 2013 to visit the home villages of the people who seized the slave schooner Amistad in 1839 and includes interviews with elders about local memory of the case, as well as a search for the long-lost ruins of Lomboko-the slave-trading factory where their cruel transatlantic voyage began. The film uses the knowledge of villagers, fishermen, and truck drivers to recover a lost history in the struggle against slavery.

Tonya Pinkins: Word Medicine
SPACE | Saturday, March 28 | 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Tonya Pinkins, award winning actress, singer, author, activist and educator, will use techniques from her Actorpreneur Attitude™ and her book Get Over Yourself to demonstrate how the words that we use to describe ourselves and others-in our life and in our art-can build a better world in this interactive workshop.

Rap Lyrics on Trial
SPACE | Saturday, March 28 | 1:30 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
The criminalization of rap music has intensified dramatically in recent months, as rap artists have lent their voices and influence to support the 'Black Lives Matter' movement. Professors Erik Nielson and Charis Kubrin are experts on the use of rap lyrics as evidence of criminal activity. They will discuss this important issue within the context of the Elonis case, which is currently before the United States Supreme Court, as well as the Jamal Knox case, involving a Pittsburgh rapper who is in prison for his song that protested the shooting of his friend by a Pittsburgh police officer.

Independent Music in Mexico
SPACE | Saturday, March 28 | 3:00 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
A bold and unique representation of Mexico City's (mostly underground) electronic music scene, this panel between emerging musicians, label founders, and festival directors discuss both their local impact and position in a global network of musicians and digital artists. Followed by evening label showcase. Featuring: Damian Romero (Director of MUTEK Mexico festival), Thomas Davo (NAAFI music label co-founder), Mexican Jihad (NAAFI music label co-founder / DJ), Smurphy (producer/musician). Moderated by VIA (Pittsburgh).

Performing Peace in the North of Ireland
SPACE | Sunday, March 29 | 1:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m.
Today in Northern Ireland walls separate historically contentious neighborhoods in the name of 'peace;' tripling in number since the 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement. In this discussion, John Carson, head of the CMU School of Art, and Jennifer Keating-Miller, CMU Assistant Director of Undergraduate Research and National Fellowships, explore the work of literary and visual artists who describe, catalog or craft work that interrupts evidence of a fragile peace in the region's built environment, a peace that is contained as the population emerges from a legacy of violence in hard-fought efforts to build an integrated and democratic post-conflict society.

Israel Centeno in conversation
SPACE | Sunday, March 29 | 2:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
Israel Centeno will discuss his recently translated novel The Conspiracy with World Affairs Council Director Steve Sokol. Israel is the author of poetry, short stories, and ten novels and is regarded as one of the most important Venezuelan literary figures of the past fifty years. Through his narratives, he conveys a sense of the many shortcomings of a society that feeds on grandiose historical myths that lead to poverty and violence. His fictions also accommodate his own experience as an exile. The Conspiracy was published in 2002, shortly after the alleged coup against Hugo Chávez. The novel was interpreted by Chávez-along with his revolutionary party-as an affront to their myth of origin. They launched a campaign against Israel Centeno that escalated from harassment and threats to violence, ultimately forcing him into exile.

George Takei: #1 most influential person on Facebook
Byham Theater | Sunday, March 29 at 7:00 p.m. | $40 - $80
Exclusive VIP Meet & Greet will begin at 5:30 p.m. | Included with $80 ticket purchase
George Takei is an actor, social justice activist, social media mega-power, star of the Broadway musical "Allegiance," and host of the AARP produced YouTube series "Takei's Take" where he explores the world of technology, trends, current events and pop culture.

With a career spanning five decades, George Takei is known around the world for his founding role in the acclaimed television series Star Trek, in which he played Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the Starship Enterprise. Takei starred in three seasons of Star Trek and later reprised his iconic role in six movies.

Mashable.com in 2012 reported Takei is the #1 most-influential person on Facebook, currently with more than 7.2 million likes. Takei has more than 1.25 million followers on Twitter. Takei authored Lions and Tigers and Bears: The Internet Strikes Back and Oh Myyy! There Goes the Internet, released in ebook and paperback in 2012, and ranked #10 on The New York Times E-book nonfiction list.

In addition to a busy acting career, Takei regularly appears on Howard Stern's Sirius XM satellite radio show.

Takei's on-camera television credits include guest appearances on Lost Girl, The Neighbors, Hawaii Five-0, The New Normal, Supah Ninjas, Malcolm in the Middle, Scrubs, Miami Vice, MacGyver, The Six Million Dollar Man, Mission: Impossible, My Three Sons, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and The Twilight Zone. He has appeared on The Big Bang Theory, Psych, 3rd Rock from the Sun and Will & Grace.

Takei has brought his voiceover talent to hundreds of characters in film, television, video games and commercials during his prolific career. In film, Takei can be heard voicing characters in such films as Mulan, Mulan II and Batman Beyond: The Movie. He has voiced characters for numerous animated series including The Simpsons, Transformers: Animated, Kim Possible, Futurama, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Spider-Man, The Smurfs and George Lucas' Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Adding to his resume, Takei has provided narration on many projects including the 2009 PBS series The National Parks: America's Best Idea, the 2006 Peabody Award-winning radio documentary, Crossing East, centered on the history of Asian American immigration to the United States and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (cassette) which garnered Takei a Grammy Award nomination for Best Spoken Word Album.

Takei, a Japanese American who from age 4 to 8 was unjustly interned in two U.S. internment camps during World War II, is an outspoken supporter of human right issues and is a community activist. Takei is chairman emeritus and a trustee of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. The openly gay Takei has served as the spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign "Coming Out Project," and was cultural affairs chairman of the Japanese American Citizens League. He was appointed to the JapanU.S. Friendship Commission by former President Clinton and the government of Japan awarded Takei the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his contribution to U.S. - Japanese relations; the decoration was conferred by His Majesty, Emperor Akihito, at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. In 2007, Asteroid 7307 Takei, located between Mars and Jupiter, was named in the performer's honor in appreciation for his social work.

Photo by Stephen Lovekin/ D Dipasupil Getty Images for GLAAD

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