Mondavi's last program of 2010: Messiah

The Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts continues its holiday tradition of bringing in the American Bach Soloists to perform Handel's Messiah. UC Davis Choral Director Jeffrey Thomas leads the early music ensemble.

The ABS has presented Messiah at the Mondavi Center every year since the center's opening in 2002.

This year, according to the Mondavi Center, the ABS presents Handel's final version as he conducted it in 1754.

The program is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 18, in Jackson Hall. Tickets and more information. Or call (530) 754-2787 or (866) 754-2787.

Auditions: The Flood and Moby Dick Variations

The Department of Theatre and Dance announced auditions Jan. 3-4 for two productions: The Flood, devised and directed by Granada Artist-in-Residence Dominique Serrand; and Moby Dick Variations, devised and directed by Master of Fine Arts candidate John Zibell.

Each person who plans to audition is asked to prepare a contemporary monologue of 60 to 90 seconds, plus one unaccompanied verse of song. Audition signups are being taken in 101 Art Building.

Audition hours are 6 to 9 p.m. both days in Main Theatre. Callbacks are scheduled for Jan. 5.

Serrand's newest devised work, The Flood, is scheduled to be presented March 3-6 and 11-13 in Main Theatre. Rehearsals are set to begin Jan. 10.

In exploring the epic forces of a flood, the work takes the structure of an oratorio built from song, dance, story and character, according to a news release from the Department of Theatre and Dance.

"Just as Faulkner’s novella Old Man used the Mississippi flood of 1927 as the backdrop for his story, here the key elements of Faulkner’s story form the point of departure: two convicts set free by the rising of the river, a young pregnant woman marooned in a tree, a riverboat full of refugees, a deer swimming for its life, the birth of a child, the bursting of the levees, and the reconciliation of the river meeting the sea," the news release states.

Moby Dick Variations is scheduled to be presented May 5-8 and 12-15 in Vanderhoef Studio Theatre at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Like Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick, Zibell's work is "about perspectives and is a polycultural, polytheistic, polyrhythmic, polyvocal, nonlinear exploration of being in the universe," according to the Department of Theatre and Dance news release.

Set in the here and now, Moby Dick Variations investigates the disappearance of the human animal from the natural landscape.