“November Resonance Poetry Night”

The Advo presents a night with world-famous Harvard-centric poets Christina Davis, Briggs Copeland lecturer Josh Bell, Peter Gizzi, and Chris Hosea. Davis, who also serves as the curator of Lamont’s least fascist and most comfortable study space, the Woodberry Poetry Room, recently published “An Ethic,” a collection of minimalist meditations on loss—will she read from this somber collection or her more referential work from earlier in the decade? And what will Gizzi read from the recently published retrospective of his work from 1987-2011? Early work? Recent work? Work that isn’t even in the retrospective? What is advertised as a “cozy” night of poetry has an awful lot of unknowns.

Harvard Advocate House, 8 p.m.

 

Sunday, Nov. 16

 

“Sweeping Horizons”

The Newton Choral Society rolls through Sanders to offer a performance of Ralph Vaughan William’s prodigious 1910 “Sea Symphony,” a star-making work that brought the young composer to the fore of modernist symphonic music through its liberal use of voice and narrative. “A Passage to India,” the E.M. Forster-inspired climactic movement, is a whirlwind soundtrack through the colonial proclivities of Edwardian England. If you’re more nostalgic for summer days at Revere Beach (take the Blue Line to Wonderland) than institutionalized oppression, check out the second movement, “Alone on the Beach at Night,” which includes the shattering refrain “A vast similitude interlocks all / All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets.”

Sanders Theatre, 3 p.m.

 

“Players”

Alice Abracen ’15 is already a theater mainstay in the Harvard arts community—last year, her direction of Julius Caesar received high marks from Crimson Arts czar Jude D. Russo ’17. She has now written a war polemic set in an unnamed conflict-ridden city. Amidst the chaos, a director tries to get his old friends back together for a production of “A Midsummer’s Night Dream.” The play, which also features the directorial efforts of veteran auteur Lelaina E. Vogel ’15, is an intriguing cross between an Orwellian sociological hellscape and an Apatowian midlife crisis farce.

Adams Pool Theatre, 8 p.m.