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The best little play on campus
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Miss Mona Stangley (Angela Bray) and Sheriff Ed Earl (Brad Kula) perform a scene from the UA’s production of ‘The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.’
By Dallas Williamson Arizona Daily Wildcat
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Justyn Dillingham Arts Editor 520•621•3106 arts@wildcat.arizona.edu
wednesday, november ,
Stilettos, lingerie, music, a few nice spring beds, not to mention several scantily-clad men and women.Yes, it was a fun Friday night. I must admit, I never thought I would ever find myself at a brothel. But hey! There’s a first time for everything, right? Before you dive into that gutter in your mind, maybe I should clarify. Yes, I did indeed visit a brothel this past Friday night, but this house of lust was not what you might expect. Far from some back-alley dive, this pleasure palace was the UA’s Marroney Theatre. Better known as the Chicken Ranch, it was the setting for the Arizona Repertory Theatre’s production of the rowdy musical“The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” I am an avid fan of musicals, but I had never seen this rambunctious show. Although I had heard it described as “risqué” and “bawdy,” I was unsure of what to expect as I took my seat.
Photo courtesy of UA School of Theatre Arts
Before the show even began, the elaborate set established a sultry and tantalizing tone. Designed by graduate student Ashley Stephenson, the two-level structure depicted the interior of the brothel, the Chicken Ranch. With smoky pink walls and a second-level banister, the stage was set for sexual innuendo. As soon as the cast burst onto the stage with its
first song,“20 Fans,”I knew for sure that I was in for an interesting night. As the balladeer, played by musical theater senior Travis Brown, recounted the history of the Chicken Ranch, I knew that hardly anything was going to be left to the imagination. When one of the women takes an excited cowboy upstairs, the lights WHOREHOUSE, page B5
Scratching the surface of the Arizona State Museum
Timothy Galaz/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Ancient artifacts from around the Southwest sit in the climate-controlled archives of the Arizona State Museum’s pottery collection.
Ordinary building houses surprising collections By Steven Kwan Arizona Daily Wildcat The Arizona State Museum might be the last thing that most people walking near Park Avenue and University Boulevard would want to visit. I was one of those people. Yet walking by the building’s red brick façade almost every day, I couldn’t help but wonder what was going on behind the scenes. What I discovered was more than I expected.
Do not handle with care
Timothy Galaz/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Arthur Vokes, curator of the Arizona State Museum’s repository, goes through some of his inventory of artifacts. He is in the process of moving the inventory into archival and acid-free storage.
ARIZONA STATE MUSEUM 1013 E. University Blvd.
Mon. - Sat., 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Closed Sundays, federal and state holidays.
Admission:
Adults 18+ Children 0–17 years ASM Members UA and Pima CC staff/students with ID Researchers/Scholars with appointments Library visitors Store visitors Admission on days of public programs
$5 Free Free Free Free Free Free Free
Patrick Lyons, head of collections and acting associate director at the museum, leads me to a room full of pottery on the ground floor. This room, which displays the museum’s permanent collection of Southwestern pottery, is rather small.You can walk around the entire room in less than a minute and impatient visitors can see everything on display within a half-hour. But the room holds many surprises. The museum houses the largest and most comprehensive collection of Southwestern pottery anywhere, of which a small percentage is on actual display in this room. The Arnold and Doris Roland Wall of Pots serves as the room’s impressive centerpiece, and provides a cross section of ancient and contemporary Southwestern ceramics. One innovative way in which the state museum provides visitors with access to its comprehensive research collection is through the Virtual Vault, which consists of a monitor and an interactive touchscreen display connected a multimedia database of artifacts. Many of the items from the actual vault, located directly behind the display, have been photographed from multiple angles to create a virtual version of that object. You can select, say, a Hopi grain storage pot and manipulate it virtually to see it from different angles without fear of breaking it. Lyons then leads me into the Agnese and Emil Haury Southwest
Timothy Galaz/Arizona Daily Wildcat
Patrick Lyons, head of collections and acting associate director at Arizona State Museum, displays some ancient Native American artifacts in the museum’s pottery vault.
Native Nations Pottery Vault, a project that was developed over eight years. Entering the state-of-the-art conservation laboratory is like walking into a library. The vault’s constant room conditions — 72 degrees Fahrenheit at 32 percent humidity — and the way our voices easily bounce off the walls contribute to the hushed atmosphere. Lyons directs me to a wide filing cabinet with short drawers. He pulls out a drawer. Nestled within acid-free boxes are pots smaller than your palm that come from the Point of Pines area near the San Carlos Apache Reservation of San Carlos, Ariz. As he puts on a white fabric glove and picks up a miniature, Lyons’ arms and hands move with a smooth ease that comes from years of experience. This was an experience that was
different than using the Virtual Vault where you can also choose to watch a featurette about the history behind the object, complete with soothing music and voiceover.
A methodical mess
The processing room of the museum’s archeological repository on the second floor looks cluttered. On the day of my visit, Arthur Vokes, curator of archaeological repository, and his team of student employees are preparing for a move to the museum’s south building. Binders and reports dating back 20 years or more fill the cabinets and shelves. Desks are buried beneath stacks of papers and stuffed manila folders. White acid-free storage boxes MUSEUM, page B5