Showing at The Lark
Heralded as Willa Cather's first great novel, O Pioneers! is coming off of a banner year in 2013. Not only was the book named as the "One Book One Nebraska" selection, but the novel also celebrated its 100th publication anniversary.
The Willa Cather Foundation, in partnership with The Lark, will be hosting two viewings of the film version of O Pioneers! staring Jessica Lang on Saturday, February 22.
A 1:00 p.m. family matinee will feature a short educational program prior to the show by Tracy Tucker, Education Director at the Willa Cather Foundation. Concession tickets are $5 per person and include unlimited popcorn and beverages.
The feature presentation will begin at 7:00 p.m. with a program by Patricia Oman, Assistant Professor of English at Hastings College. Concession tickets for this show are $20 and include coffee, wine and dessert. Hastings College students may purchase a concession ticket for $10.
O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first novel to feature Nebraska as its setting, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier-and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make her farm prosperous. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra's devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.
At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were.
Tickets for both showings are for sale at the following Hastings locations: The Lark, Back Alley Bakery, the Hastings Public Library, Prairie Books & Gifts, and The Well-Read Book. In Red Cloud, tickets can be purchased at the Willa Cather Foundation and also online. Proceeds from the two showings will benefit arts programming at The Lark and The Willa Cather Foundation's Red Cloud Opera House.
About the organizations:
The Willa Cather Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes the legacy of Willa Cather through education, historic preservation, and the arts. Since its founding in 1955, it has been headquartered in Red Cloud, Nebraska.
The Lark is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization housed in a fully renovated performance and gathering space. In addition to The Listening Room concert series, The Lark produces in-house arts programming and hosts visiting arts organizations as well as a variety of community and family meetings and events.
The Lark is located at 809 West 2nd Street in Hastings, NE.