Breeding

If you’re part of a community-based arts group in Denton, getting attention for your work in the spring can be a tricky thing.

Artists and performers have a lot of competition. March to April in Denton is the time four outdoor festivals, starting with the Argyle Bluegrass Festival, moving on to the Texas Story­telling Festival and the Redbud Festival and usually ending with the Denton Arts & Jazz Festival. The season feels officially over with the Arts & Jazz Festival, even if Cinco de Mayo comes along a weekend later, along with some of the best food at any local festival. The Fry Street Fair is conspicuously absent from the 2008 proceedings, thanks in part to the demolition of Fry Street businesses and the Delta Lodge, the event’s laidback young-ish sponsors, falling on hard times and selling off the lodge itself.

Even with the blue skies and added daylight, there is plenty going on indoors in April.

“Merging Visions” pairs art by members of the Visual Arts Society of Texas with poetry by members of the Denton Poets Assembly. Visions and verse are coupled up at North Branch Library and Emily Fowler Cen­tral Library through the end of the month. The exhibit is a celebration of Poetry Awareness Month, and a new venture by both groups. The poets assembly meets each month to promote and nurture experienced and new writers, and the arts society promotes the visual arts in Denton.

The two groups got together to match art with poems, and the result is an exhibition that puts pictures with words. North Branch Library is at 3020 N. Locust St., and Emily Fowler Central Library is at 502 Oakland St.

The arts society also opened its national exhibit on April 10. Juror Nic Nicosia peppered a heavy painting show with extraordinary sculptures and craft. The exhibit, now in the Meadows Gallery, includes a handful of award-winners from Denton: Rachel Fischer; Millie Johnson; Tim Harding; and John Calabrese all won awards. Rhonda Unnerstall from Oak Point earned an award in the national exhibit, too. More Denton artists still got into the show: Andrew Decaen; Leah Gose; Jeanne Hartsill; Brent Hirak and Sarah Williams.

Gallery hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. The exhibit runs through May 29 at the Center for the Visual Arts, 400 E. Hickory St.

If you’re up for more entertainment and less introspection, Music Theatre of Denton presents Thoroughly Modern Millie, a musical comedy by Jeanine Tesori, Dick Scanlan and Richard Morris.

Stephanie Felton and Justin Harmon jumped into the lead roles of Millie Dilmount and Jimmy Smith in the musical. Both performers were in the company’s staging of I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, a Valentine’s Day musical that dealt with love with belt-worthy tunes and language that was a bit on the salty side. They team up again in this musical about a young woman who comes to the Big Apple to reinvent herself. This would be in a rapidly changing New York, where flappers were doing the Charleston and entering the workforce. Performances are 2 p.m. today and April 27, and at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

Texas Woman’s University opened Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, directed by talented TWU graduate Dennis Sloan. It’s a sober look at 19th-century gender roles, with Hedda learning how to be married to a promising professor in a field with cutthroat competition. The drama has been called “the female Hamlet,” and the great stages of the world have cast Ingrid Bergman, Cate Blanchett and Dame Maggie Smith in the titular role.

Sloan said the piece was appropriate for TWU, a university with a mission to educate women.

“So much of the play is about what it is to be a woman in the 1800s, in relation to what it means to be a man,” Sloan said. “It’s very much about gender roles, about Hedda Gabler’s inability to do what she wants and the impact it has on her. I think that’s something we’re certainly still dealing with now in gender roles. And if we’re still dealing with it now, think of what it was like then.”

Sherrie Wollenhaupt, a veteran of the TWU stage, plays Hedda, and Kenny Fudge, also a TWU stage veteran, plays Eilert Lov­borg. The final performance is 2 p.m. today at the New Redbud Thea­tre Complex in Hubbard Hall. Tickets are $10 for adults, $5 for students and senior adults. For reservations, call 940-898-2020, or buy tickets at the door.