Southeastern NEWS

                                                       Southeastern Louisiana University
                                           Office of University Relations
                                           SLU 880, Hammond, LA 70402
                                           504/549-2341/fax 504-549-2061
                                           publicinfo@selu.edu
                                           www.selu.edu/NewsEvents
    Date: 3/27/98
      Contact:                           Christina Chapple  96

Editors: Photo accompanies release
SLU "ENCORE!" SERIES CONTINUES WITH "A BITTER GLORY"
     HAMMOND -- "Encore!", the Southeastern Louisiana University Music Department's
spring concert series, continues April 2 with "A Bitter Glory," a musical drama by New Orleans
playwright Dalt Wonk and jazz musician, composer Alvin Batiste.
     The event, co-sponsored by Southeastern's Cultural Resource Management Program, is
scheduled for 7:30 p.m. in the Pottle Music Building Auditorium and is free to the public.
     "A Bitter Glory" is based on an incident from Louisiana history fictionalized by 19th
century New Orleans author George Washington Cable. The play will be performed in a concert
version with six musicians, including Batiste, and five singers with New Orleans actress Carol
Sutten, winner of the Big Easy best actress award, as narrator.
     Wonk drew the subject matter for "A Bitter Glory" from newspaper accounts and Cable's
"The Grandissimes," a novel based on an historical figure, a one-armed slave, "Bras Coupe,"
who led a band of fugitives in Louisiana swamps. "A Bitter Glory" traces Bras Coupe's story
from his arrival on a French Colonial Louisiana plantation until his first escape. The play details
the legendary figure's on the lives of a family of house servants.
     Following the  performance, University of New Orleans history professor Raphael
Cassimere will present an approximately 20-minute talk on the Bras Coupe. "'A Bitter Glory'
deals with the beginning of the Bras Coupe's phenomenal story," said Wonk. "The lecture will
tell the rest of the story." Wonk said  Cassimere will also "relate the real historical incident to its
fictional treatment." 
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A BITTER GLORY -- Add One
     "A Bitter Glory" is funded by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, the Jazz and 
Heritage Foundation, the Louisiana State Arts Council, the Louisiana Division of the Arts and
the Arts Council of New Orleans.
     Batiste, who teaches music and composition at Southern University in Baton Rouge,
is well-known and highly respected as a jazz musician and composer. His 1993 compact disc,
"Late," was chosen as "one of the ten best jazz recordings of the year" by the New York Times.
He has performed with Ray Charles, Smiley Lewis, Guitar Slim, Lil Willie John, Nat Adderly,
Freddie Hubbard, David Murray, Ron Carter and Wynton Marsalis. After his Carnegie Hall
debut, the Village Voice lauded Batiste as "one of the major instrumentalists of our day."
     Wonk, a free-lance writer who lives in the French Quarter, has had his plays produced in
New York, London, Munich, San Francisco, Atlanta, Minneapolis and New Orleans. His musical
collaborators have included Charles Neville of the Neville Brothers and avant-guard jazz great
Julius Hemphill. He also is the author of four books of verse. Wonk currently is the theatre critic
for New Orleans' Gambit weekly newspaper.
     For additional information about "A Bitter Glory," call Don Marshall, 504-549-
2193/5080.
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