Tucson Weekly: City Week (August 21

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Thursday 21

BIG SHEIK UP. Those masters of melodrama at Gaslight Theatre are at it again with their production of The Sheik. The setting is the North African desert, where wicked Grand Wazir cooks up dastardly deeds amidst mandatory flying carpets, the mysterious Star of Shamir, and a pair of spies ingeniously disguised as a twin-peaked dromedary.
City Week This production marks the theater's 20th anniversary, a remarkable accomplishment in a town where thespian troupes regularly rise and fall like so many shifting dunes in the night. In celebration, The Sheik will feature a herd of Gaslight veterans--Joe Cooper, Brooke Davis, John Brownlee and Nancy La Viola, just to name a few.
Show times are 8 p.m. tonight and tomorrow in the Gaslight Theater, 7010 E. Broadway. Continuing show times are 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 7 and 9:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 3 and 7 p.m. Sunday, through November 1. Tickets are $12.95, $10.95 for students, seniors and military, $6 for children ages 12 and under, and available by calling 886-9428.
FIGURES AND FRAGMENTS. From surrealist dancing figures to fragments of a family's past, a new exhibit at the Tucson Jewish Community Center highlights three powerful artists.
Tucson printmaker Jack Remington uses both silver and non-silver photo techniques to create tension between his moving forms and ethereal landscapes, while Shawn Michelle Smith's Fragments From a Family Album taps triptychs and diptychs in her poignant exploration a of girlhood that "resists the frames of pretty pictures."
Lila Wahrhaftig says the underlying inspiration for her print and paper pieces "is the duality of Judaism and nature.
"This knowledge colors most of my work, from a view of what is man's or woman's relationship to God, to what that relationship is to nature."
Exhibit runs through September 14, with an opening reception from 5 to 7 tonight in the JCC Fine Art Gallery, 3800 E. River Road. Regular gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday and Friday. For details, call 299-3000.

Friday 22

HARD-WROUGHT MIX. Musical tour-de-force Arm and Hammer bring their unique sound to the Pima Friends Meeting House tonight, in celebration of the release of their new CD, À la Carte. Veteran Tucson guitarist Stefan George and hammer dulcimer master Anna Duff pour out a sound that "takes traditional music into the Southwestern realm," George says.
"It's pretty eclectic. Actually, the traditionalists accuse us of being too eclectic, while non-traditionalists say we're too traditional. So I guess we're somewhere in the middle, with about 70 percent of our music being originals. And we even have a few Mexican folk tunes sprinkled in."
Performance is 8 p.m. in the Pima Friends Meeting House, 931 N. Fifth Ave. Tickets are $5, and available at the door. For information, call 323-0704.
FRESH FANDANGO. For more than a decade Argentinean Pablo Zielger was the pianist behind the throne of tango king Astor Piazzolla. It was a fertile musical court, and today he's busily establishing his own dynasty with the Quintet for New Tango.
In his hands, New Tango blends classic tango music patterns, rhythms and counterpoint phrasing with jazz improvisations and piano melodies. Tonight, KXCI brings Ziegler's steamy Latin sound to the Temple of Music of Art. Mara Luna and El Brujo will present a tango exhibition after the concert, followed by a rollicking dance party on the temple patio.
Performance is 8 p.m. in the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $17, with a $3 discount for KXCI and TJS members, available at Hear's Music and KXCI offices. For details, call 623-1000.

Saturday 23

HINTERLANDS HOWDY-DO. The vast Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument stretches for 331,000 rugged acres along the U.S.-Mexico border. Within its confines is a range of plant life found nowhere else in the country, sharing the Sonoran Desert landscape with everything from gray and kit foxes to ringtail, coatimundi and bighorn.
The monument also remains one of the most beautifully remote areas in this neck of the woods, with a minimum of trails, and thankfully little access for moronic ATV-heads and their ilk. But one thing Organ Pipe does have is bureaucracy, in the form of the National Parks Service. And today the monument welcomes new superintendent Bill Wellman and his wife, Carol, with an open house.
Wellman, a 27-year Park Service vet, lands in southern Arizona via the Grand Sand Dunes National Monument in Colorado, and his arrival gives you and yours the opportunity to visit this lovely stretch of federal real estate, with entrance fees waived for the day.
Free event runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the monument visitor center. Travel west on Ajo Way to the City of Ajo, turning south on Highway 85 for 35 miles to the center's entrance. Drive time is approximately three hours. Call (520) 387-6849 for details.
DATELINE MOSCOW. Phoenician Rick Furamanek transplanted his family to the Russian capital in March, 1993, and the result was Stranded in Moscow, a book portraying life there as rife with mounting greed and organized crime, even as the society grapples with growing religious freedoms and jungle politics. And no doubt Furamanek's viewpoint was colored by the death of his brother, Paul Tatum, an American executive who was gunned down in Moscow last year over a multi-million-dollar hotel deal gone awry.
Furamanek lectures and signs copies of Stranded in Moscow from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Foothills Mall Barnes & Noble, 7325 N. La Cholla Blvd. Call 742-6402 for details.

Sunday 24

MORTAL SEASONINGS. The Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation teams up with a fistful of local luminaries and three eateries to present "Spice for Life III," billed as a "fun and wacky evening of celebrity food schlepping that benefits people who are affected by HIV/AIDS.
Actually, it's a three-night chowfest, beginning this evening at Suite 102, where your humble wait-folk will include COOL FM's Alan Michaels, KVOA's Lupita Murillo and Tony Paniagua, and Olympic swimmer Crissy Ahman. All gratuities will help fund the SAAF's crucial services. Tomorrow the action moves to Cafe Terra Cotta, and Tuesday to Presidio Grill.
To make reservations, call 745-9555 for Suite 102; 577-8100 for Café Terra Cotta; and 327-4667 for Presidio Grill.
GLOBAL JOLT. Zap Mama is a five-woman, two-man powerhouse combining the rhythmic wallop of African music with theater and dance, and they've been variously described as a "conduit between Africa and the rest of the world," and "a global block-party."
Led by the mesmerizing, Congo-born Marie Daulne, members hail from far-flung climes like Cameroon and Denmark. After her Belgian-born father was killed in the 1964 Congo rebellion, Daulne's remaining family escaped to Belgium. It was nearly two decades before she'd return to her mother's Bantu homeland and begin a deep exploration of the continent's musical traditions. The result is Zap Mama, which turns the vocal polyphony of pygmies, street-corner harmony, modern funk, world beat and "female gabfest" into a soulful, high-energy show.
Tonight Zap Mama performs at 7:30 in the Temple of Music and Art Alice Holsclaw Theater, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $18 and $20, available at Hear's Music, Antigone Books, Zip's University, or by calling 327-4809.

Monday 25

HAND-FED HISTORY. The diaries of Tucson pioneer George Hand contain all the rugged pageantry of frontier existence, celebrating life, death, festivals and darn near everything else occurring in the territorial Old Pueblo up to his death in 1887.
Today, the Arizona Historical Society unveils an exhibit of those prolific journals and scrapbooks--along with tons of memorabilia--in George Hand's Tucson, 1862-1887. Historic photos further illuminate early times, accented with writings by several of Hand's contemporaries.
Free exhibit runs through November 28 at the Sosa-Carillo-Fremont House, located in the Tucson Convention Center complex at 151 S. Granada Ave. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. For information, call 622-0586.

FRAYED EMERGENCE. It was two short decades back that tiny Uruguay was called "the torture chamber of Latin America" by the United Nations. Nestled on the coast between Argentina and Brazil, it was a land of ruthless dictatorship and terrified citizenry.
Uruguay has since emerged from those dark times to experience newfound freedom. Unfortunately, such political liberty hasn't meant complete emancipation for the country's women, who, according to author Eduardo Galeano, still "live in the shadow of the shadow of the shadow," facing the timeless oppressions of discrimination, domestic violence and economic inequality.
Today, a remarkable exhibit sheds light on that ongoing struggle with Las (In)Visibles: Women Artists of Uruguay, now on display at the UA Museum of Art. Through pen, brush, photography and song, the women speak not only of strife, but also of beauty, mystery, love, even joy. Created between 1965 and the present, these works establish a powerful testament to inner strength and perseverance.
Free exhibit runs through September 21 in the UA Museum of Art, located on campus at the southeast corner of Park Avenue and Speedway. Today's hours are 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Starting tomorrow, gallery hours will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday. Call 621-7567 for details.

Tuesday 26

HISTORICAL PILGRIM. Explorer-anthropologist Martin Gray has spent 12 years wandering through 800 sacred sites scattered around the globe. Since ancient times, those spots like Stonehenge, Machu Pichu, Jerusalem and Mt. Fuji have beckoned millions of fellow pilgrims, evoking myths and legends of their miraculous spiritual magnetism.
"What is the key to the mystery of the sacred sites?" Gray asks. "How are we to explain their power?"
Tonight, he'll explore such queries with a slide show presentation titled Places of Peace and Power. Featuring hundreds of photographs, the show is described as a "magical blend of art, history and travel adventure, shamanism, inspiration and spiritual ecology."
Event is 7 p.m. in the PCC Proscenium Theater, 2202 W. Anklam Road. Admission is $15. Call 206-6988 for information.

Wednesday 27

RIGOR MORTIS RENDERINGS. Established just last year, the UA's illustrated anatomy class is traveling the well-worn path of combining scientific and mathematical knowledge with aesthetics in art. As a result, art students are given the opportunity to explore representation of human anatomy and the figure through studying human cadavers.
Morbid as it may sound, the practice has solid roots, having gained popularity in the 16th century when it was viewed as essential to students in the field. The trend resulted in the continued collaboration between anatomists and artists, perhaps best revealed in the works of masters like da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo.
Now the university puts its own students to the test with Stilled Life: Cadaver Studies. Exhibit is on display through September 19, with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. today, in the UA Lionel Rombach Gallery, on the southeast corner of Park Avenue and Speedway. Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Admission is free. For information, call 626-4215.

City Week includes events selected by Calendar Editor Tim Vanderpool. Event information is accurate as of press time. The Weekly recommends calling event organizers to check for last-minute changes in location, time, price, etc. To have material considered, please send complete information at least 11 days prior to the Thursday issue date to: Tucson Weekly, P.O. Box 2429, Tucson, Arizona 85702, or fax information to 792-2096, or email us at listings@tucsonweekly.com.

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