“Where Art Thou” is a weekly guide to interesting and notable lectures, events, and performances for the literary/musically/theatrically-inclined

Your event wasn’t mentioned in Where Art Thou? Send us an email at arts@bwog.com and we’ll be sure to include you! Throughout the year, we do our best to promote arts at Columbia and Barnard to the entire student community, and the best way to make sure your event gets promoted and covered is by reaching out to us.

An Octoroon

  • Wednesday, January 31-February 3, 7:30pm, The Theater @ Schapiro
  • Columbia School of the Arts’ 2025 Acting Cohort presents Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon. Set on a Southern plantation, Terrebonne, this play grapples with slavery in America as owner Judge Peyton dies and his heir apparent arrives to claim it.

Art + Life: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyahj

  • Thursday, February 1, 7pm, Lenfest Center
  • As a part of the Art + Life conversation series with writers and poets, best-selling author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah will speak with Adjunct Assistant Professor and Undergraduate Creative Writing Advisor in Fiction, Molly McGhee. Organized by the Columbia Creative Writing Program, this event will engage the audience in a roundtable discussion where students will have the opportunity to ask questions to the author.

Bacchae: The Immersive Experience

  • Friday, February 2, 7pm, and February 3, 2pm and 7pm, Wang Pavilion, Lerner Hall
  • CUPAL presents this immersive nightclub experience, adapted from the Greek tragedy that follows Dionysus on a journey of retribution. 

The Making of Stop Making Sense

  • Friday, February 2, Lenfest Center
  • This newly restored Talking Heads concert Film, Stop Making Sense will be accompanied by a conversation with its distributor, Film Professor Ira Deutchman, Visual Consultant Sandy McLeod, and writer and critic Adam Reid Sexton ’93.

Ulysses Owens Jr. and Generation Y

  • Saturday, February 3, Miller Theater
  • Dynamic drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. brings his talented jazz quintet to the Miller Theater. Owens boasts eight successful albums himself, and an ensemble with a true love for the jazz tradition.

Image via Bwarchive.