CHQ&A

Dan Egan, author of the acclaimed 2018 book The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, joins Chautauqua's Emily Morris for an onstage interview in the Chautauqua Amphitheater.

Artistic Director Andrew Borba speaks with some of the actors from Chautauqua Theater Company's production of "The Christians," running June 28 to July 14 in Bratton Theater.

Celebrated musician and cultural icon Wynton Marsalis joins us to speak on his views of American music, his incredible career, and what it means to return to Chautauqua with the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra in 2019.

The iconic Judy Collins speaks about her Chautauqua experiences and extraordinary career. Collins will open the 2019 Chautauqua season with a June 22 performance in the Amphitheater.

Bishop Gene Robinson joins us to reflect on his first season as Chautauqua's vice president of religion and senior pastor, and particularly the Interfaith Fridays initiative launched in 2018, which will continue in 2019. A full DVD set of the nine 2018 Interfaith Fridays is available for purchase at the Chautauqua Bookstore.

On today's episode guest interviewer David Griffith, vice president and Emily and Richard Smucker Chair for Education, speaks with Alexandria Marzano-Lesnovich, author of “The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir,” winner of the 2018 Chautauqua Prize. Part reportage and part memoir, “The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir” follows a young law student through her early career as she digs into both her own past, and the past of a convicted murderer. In a book 10 years in the making, Marzano-Lesnevich shows how the law is more personal than we would like to believe, creating a “gripping” story of “great importance.” Chautauqua readers called it “an extraordinary memoir” that is “brave and intimate.”

On today's episode guest interviewer John Merino speaks with Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, chief executive officer of 20-first, where she works with the CEOs, executive committees and top management teams of some of the world’s best-known companies to identify the business opportunities of gender balance and how best to achieve it. She spoke in the Chautauqua Amphitheater on Aug. 1, during our week on “The Changing Nature of Work.”

Today's episode features a conversation with Derek Ham, assistant professor of graphic design in the North Carolina State University College of Design. Derek’s research interest spans the areas of game-based learning, algorithmic thinking, and digital fabrication. He is also the creator of the “I Am A Man” VR Experience, an interactive virtual reality experience set to the historic events of the Civil Rights Movement. “I Am A Man” is the basis of Derek’s two master classes through Special Studies at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday, August 13, at Chautauqua. Register for either class at chqtickets.org.

On today's episode we feature a conversation with author and professor Ralph Young, an expert on dissent and protest movements. As a history professor at Temple University, Ralph has taught the courses “Dissent in America,” “Recent U.S. History” and “Trials in America,” as well as a weekly discussion forum called the “Dissent in America Teach-ins.” His books include Dissent in America: The Voices That Shaped a Nation; Make Art Not War: Political Protest Posters from the Twentieth Century; and, most recently, Dissent: The History of An American Idea. Ralph spoke to guest interviewer John Merino following his July 23 Amphitheater lecture to open Chautauqua's week on "The Ethics of Dissent."

On today's episode we hear from Alina Polyakova, the David M. Rubenstein Fellow at the Foreign Policy Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution, where she specializes in Russian foreign policy, radical-right movements in Europe, and far-right populism and nationalism. Alina presented an Amphitheater lecture during this week on "Russia and the West," on Thursday, July 19.