KU News Release

Acclaimed filmmaker Neil LaBute to headline international conference at KU

LAWRENCE — International scholars and an acclaimed filmmaker trained at the University of Kansas will be part of a film conference to be held Oct. 11-14 at KU.

Director and KU alumnus Neil LaBute will be the keynote speaker for the 2007 Literature/Film Association conference “Adaptation, from Stage and Page to Screen.”

Presenters from England, Canada, Turkey, Australia and throughout the United States will discuss topics such as vaudeville on screen, American gangsters, drama and film, innovative directors, reinventing the biopic, European adaptations and minorities, and adaptation and cinema.

“This is the first time this prestigious academic organization has held its annual conference in the Midwest,” said John C. Tibbetts, associate professor of theatre and film and conference director. “Not only does it bring renowned figures in the theater and film community to our campus, but it affords us an opportunity to showcase the activities and interactions of our own faculty and students of the Department of Theatre and Film. Our sponsors are the Department of Theatre and Film, the Hall Center for the Humanities and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, making this a truly campuswide event.”

LaBute will give the keynote address at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 12, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. Titled “Life Onstage and on Film,” his speech will include clips of films adapted from his plays, including “The Shape of Things” and “In the Company of Men.” The event is free for conference registrants and $5 for the public.

A native of Detroit, LaBute also spent part of his youth in Spokane, Wash, and he studied theater at Brigham Young University. He earned a master’s in theatre and film history from KU and went on to write screenplays for major motion pictures “Your Friends and Neighbors,” “The Shape of Things” and “In the Company of Men,” which won the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival. He went on to direct other well-known films such as “Nurse Betty,” “Possession” and “Wicker Man.” He lives in Chicago with his wife and two children.
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“Theater and film are a contact sport,” LaBute said. “I think my job is to provoke something. There’s a very reasonable, banal evil that says to the audience, ‘Hey, you understand what I’m saying, and you could be this way, too, couldn’t you?”

“Vaudeville on Screen” will be the focus at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 13, at Woodruff Auditorium. A 35mm screening of the 1953 biopic of Eva Tanguay, “The I Don’t Care Girl,” will be held. It will be introduced by Andrew Erdman, author of “Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass-Marketing of Amusement, 1895-1915” and of the forthcoming “The Queen of Vaudeville: Eva Tanguay and the Rise of Modern Female Celebrity.” The event is free and open to the public.

KU faculty members, including Tibbets, Catherine Preston, associate professor of theatre and film; Mechele Leon, assistant professor of theatre and film; and Iris Fischer, associate professor of English, as well as graduate teaching assistants Brian Faucete and William Harper, will take part in the presentations and discussions throughout the conference. Joseph Steinmetz, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Paul D’Anieri associate dean, will give a welcome address at the Literature/Film Association reception for conference registrants Oct. 12.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to bring together the KU community with members of the Literature/Film Association. We also hope that the Lawrence community at large will both attend our events and help extend our Midwestern hospitality to one and all,” Tibbetts said.

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