for the ARTS record
TWN's "The Faith Healer" Faith healing is a fickle art in Brian Friel's beautifully written and dramatic "Faith Healer," which went up at the Theatre Workshop last week.

"Basically, it's the story of an artist, of a man who has a magnetism that people want to be around. He kind of fell into it, and never really knows when it's going to be on," said the play's director, Molly Martin.

The play consists of three monologues from each member of the story's trio: Frank, the charismatic man whose talent for healing ebbs and flows as he travels the Irish countryside (played by John Devaney); Teddy, his optimistic and avuncular manager (John Knox-Johnston) and his wife/mistress, Grace (Pam Diem).

"The play also fictionalizes different characters in his life. Whether they're the people he heals, his father, his wife, his manager - because he questions himself, ultimately. He doesn't know who he is, so he surrounds himself with fictions," Martin said.

All the characters relate the same events, but in different Roshomon-like versions. "Once the audience leaves, they'll have their own questions about who was telling the truth," Martin said.

When: Wed. - Sat., July 11-15; and Wed. - Sat.,

July 18-21; all shows at 8:30 p.m., except for

the matinee on Sun., July 15, at 3 p.m.

Where: TWN Mainstage, downstairs at the

United Methodist Church, 2 Centre St.

Cost: $25 For more information or for tickets,

please call 228- 4305 or visit www.theatrework

shop.com or the TWN box office, downstairs

at the United Methodist Church.

Geschke Lecture series: Charles Kolb In this global age, is the United States leading or following?" That is the question posed to this year's slate of speakers in the Geschke Lecture Series, hosted by the Nantucket Atheneum. The series begins this week with speaker Charles Kolb, President of the Committee For Economic Development and president and C.E.O. of Aerodyne Research, Inc.

"At the end of last year's Geschke, I solicited ideas from a variety of people and also Nan and Chuck Geschke, and this seemed like a good idea, particularly as we're in a pre-election year," said Molly Anderson, director of the Atheneum. "The opening years of the 21st century have pointed to the fact that we live in difficult and complex times. We're in a world with a lot of complex issues, and it requires thoughtful and effective leaders. So we thought it would be interesting to bring together people who are either leaders themselves and have done some thinking on the topic of leadership or who have studied leadership, to see what their thoughts were about individual leadership or organizational leadership in this complex global age."

The series intends to explore the components of leadership, not just in the political realm, but also in business, world health, the environment, education and science.

Anderson conceded that art and religion are absent, in terms of the speakers' specialties - she's leaving the subjects open as possible themes for future Geschke series.

"We tried to pull together a group of people who would give us a variety of perspectives," Anderson said. "Hopefully it will give our audience things to think about going into an election year, but also help each of them figure out what one can do, as a citizen, to make sure that we support strong leaders and are concerned about how we generate the next generation of leaders."

Kolb is President of the Committee for Economic Development with offices in New York City and Washington, D.C. CED is an independent, non-partisan organization of 250 business and education leaders dedicated to economic and social policy research and the implementation of its recommendations by the public and private sectors.

"I didn't know a lot about the CED until my neighbor, who'd had some contact with Charlie Kolb, said, 'Oh, you've got to get Charlie, because he's a really forward thinking person.' The Committee for Economic Development has been around a long time and was responsible for the Marshall Plan. … Today, the group is an interesting think tank that brings together 250 CEOS - business-minded people - who look at social policy and decide how the business community can help implement positive social change. The members of the committee come together as volunteers to put their heads together and ask, 'How can we use our expertise to solve these problems?' Their big issue right now is early childhood education."

When: Wed., July 11, 8 p.m. Where: Unitarian Church, 11 Centre St.

Cost: $25

For more information, please call 228-1110.

Book talk: William McFeely, Thomas Eakins biographer William McFeely Ph.D., author of "Portrait: The Life of Thomas Eakins" and

Pulitzer Prize winner for his biography of Ulysses S. Grant, will speak at The Egan Maritime Foundation in association with the Nantucket Historical Association and the Coffin School Trustees. The lecture is entitled "Thomas Eakins and the Women in His Life."

McFeely will explain how women, including a Nantucket woman, influenced Thomas Eakins's life and lead the audience through an examination of Eakins' portraits of the women in his life and what these deeply perceptive paintings say about his relationships with these women. The discussion will introduce Susan Macdowell Eakins, his student, Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin, and several other women.

Eakins also made frequent trips to Nantucket to visit artist Elizabeth Rebecca Coffin, who played a very important role in reopening the Coffin School after it had closed its doors in 1889. McFeely got to know Nantucket well, while writing his biography of Frederick Douglass, whose first great public speech was given on the island in 1841. Years later, Douglass preached from the island's beautiful Unitarian Church's pulpit. On the 100th anniversary of Douglass' death, McFeely gave a commemorative talk in that same church.

McFeely received his B.A. from Amherst College and holds a Ph.D. in History from Yale University. McFeely is a former professor at Mount Holyoke College, where he taught for 16 years before joining the University of Georgia in 1986. He has since retired from the University of Georgia and is currently a fellow of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. McFeely resides in Wellfleet and Cambridge, Mass. with his wife, Mary Drake McFeely, who is also a historian.

When: Thursday, July 12 at 8 p.m.

Where: Coffin School, 4 Winter St.

Cost: $5 (free for members)

Lecture: Nat Philbrick The Egan Maritime Foundation is pleased to announce that Nantucket resident, Nathaniel Philbrick, nationally acclaimed author and finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in History for his most recent work, "Mayflower," will give a lecture on "Nantucket's Alleged Smuggler, Kezia Coffin/Miriam Coffin"

Nathaniel Philbrick wrote the introduction to the 1995 edition of Joseph Hart's, "Miriam Coffin or The Whale Fisherman," published by the Mill Hill Press. Originally, the Nantucket novel was published in 1834, and it is known today that Herman Melville relied upon it as a primary source for information about the island while writing Moby Dick.

Philbrick will be talk about Kezia Coffin, the fictional Miriam Coffin of the so-named novel, but also about the novel itself. According to Philbrick, "It's a great, under-appreciated book about Nantucket that is the story of a "woman with an attitude," but it is also a fantastically detailed portrait of an island and its people during the early era of Pacific whaling."

When: Thurs, July 19 at 8 p.m. Where: Coffin School, 4 Winter St. Cost: The Lecture is free of charge to Egan

Maritime Foundation members. All others: $10. Seating Limited. Call 228-2505 for

advanced tickets. I