Emma Gross ’15 reviews LIEBE LOVE AMOUR!

Emma Gross ’15 reflects on her experiences at Anonymous Ensemble’s Saturday performance of LIEBE LOVE AMOUR!

Here is what I knew prior to experiencing Anonymous Ensemble’s LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! First, that audience participation was an integral part of the production, and second, that the content of LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! might be about love.

What I did not realize was that ninety minutes after taking my seat in the CFA Theater, I would be up on stage participating in the marriage ceremony of a towering 1920’s German cinema star.

LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! is a one act, multimedia spectacular. It is cited as a “theatricalized live film,” a description that does not do justice to the show’s truly novel construction.

On Saturday, September 22, I along with dozens of other students, professors, and non-university associated community members filed into the theater. We took our seats opposite the stark set. A single red curtain ran the length of the stage, with a large movie screen off center, to the right.

When the lights dimmed, a compilation of early black and white, silent 20th century footage played across the screen. This montage culminated in a shot of a woman styled in signature 1920’s clothing, hair and makeup. Suddenly, the actress turned and addressed the audience. She introduced herself as Hilda and explained that she lived in Germany and was about to experience her thirty-third birthday. As Hilda spoke, the previously opaque curtain became transparent. It revealed a figure standing against a green screen performing for a camera set up on a tripod. When the woman onstage gestured, the actress on screen did the same. The words I assumed were prerecorded and emerging from the film world, were in fact spoken live on stage.

What ensued was an epic, hilariously dramatic love story, twisted with bizarre details, cliché moments, and break out musical numbers. This narrative was presented to the audience in a most innovative fashion.

Hilda’s scenes were recorded in front of the green screen and simultaneously projected for the audience. Her live footage was combined with film clips belonging to 20th century Austrian director Erich Von Stroheim. His footage was intercut with Hilda’s dialogue, creating the illusion that she was speaking to and interacting with Stroheim’s actors. Two live, on stage performers dubbed over the silent footage, providing the voiceover for these characters. These two actors also created sound effects using various tools and instruments in the style of an old school radio production.

LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! grants the audience the opportunity to witness the live creation of both an onstage play and a projected film. Our attention continuously alternated from the onstage action, to the film that simultaneously came together on screen.

As if this mode of storytelling was not complicated enough, audience participation added a dimension of unpredictability to the show’s narrative.

While the onstage action and film projection continued, a fourth performer equipped with a microphone, ventured into the audience. He called on individuals to respond to Hilda’s questions, give her advice, and provide story details. This interactive element not only kept the audience on its toes, but also heightened the comedic aspect of the performance. Viewers’ were hysterical as their friends, professors, and relatives were put on the spot to contribute to the show’s ridiculous narrative.

The performers fully took advantage of their power to turn the audience’s vulnerability into entertainment. At one point in the show, a student was brought onstage and told he was to play opposite Hilda in her audition for a movie. The film’s director, played by one of the performers standing along side the green screen, informed Hilda that their scene needed to end in a kiss.

In this moment, everyone around me shifted to the edge of his or her seat. Uncomfortable laughter rang throughout the theater, signaling our nervous excitement about how the scene would unfold.

The finale of the production elevated audience participation to the next level. At the end of the play, the red curtain was drawn, opening up the stage. Hilda suddenly emerged, towering on stilts and professed her love for us, her viewers. She invited everyone up on stage to partake in the marriage ceremony uniting herself and the audience.

Hundreds of seats emptied, and people of all ages gathered on stage. We circled around Hilda, recited vows and then celebrated with festive music, dancing, champagne and wedding cake. It was the most unusual and delicious ending to a theater production I have ever experienced.

Following the show, I was eager to read more about Anonymous Ensemble’s work and manifesto. Their online statement reads, “We are the new generation of Stage and Screen. At the nexus of film and theater, AnEn’s work draws from and then propels itself beyond both genres. AnEn accepts the pervasive power of the Screen in our current times but demands that the screen be transfigured by the unpredictable, the human, the never-to-be-repeated possibilities of the Stage. AnEn creates audience-based work and considers the audience to be the co-creators of each event.”

What is particularly pertinent about LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! is that the lead role of Hilda is played by Wesleyan graduate Jessica Weinstein. Weinstein created the persona of Tall Hilda in 2002, the year of her graduation. She assisted in the construction of Anonymous Ensemble’s two productions that focus on the relationship between Hilda and her audience, Wanderlust that premiered in 2007 and LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! which opened in 2012.

During the show I was seated in an audience largely consisting of students who are majoring in theater, taking theater classes, and or working on theater projects. I could sense my peers’ excitement watching Weinstein perform, knowing that just ten years earlier, she had been in their shoes.

LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! was a remarkable experience. It certainly granted me a new perspective on the range of storytelling formats available through the synthesis of live theater, film, and audience participation.

Katherine Clifford ’14 reviews ZOOM by ZviDance

Katherine Clifford ’14 shares her experiences with ZOOM, a piece by New York dance troupe ZviDance that made its Connecticut Premiere at the CFA Theater, last Friday, September 14.

ZviDance, a New York City-based dance company directed by Zvi Gotheiner, kicked off Wesleyan’s Center for the Art’s Performing Arts Series this weekend, September 14th and 15th, with its integrative and captivating piece, ZOOM.

This was the only performance I’ve been to where I could overtly use my cell phone during the performance, without feeling rude about texting. In fact, the audience members were urged to participate in the performance by taking cell phone pictures of the dancers and texting them to the number projected on the screen. These pictures were then integrated into the piece by being posted on the screen behind the dancers in a type of multi-media live-feed. There were also moments when the audience could text the dancers on stage. The texting conversations were projected on the screen as the dancer typed witty replies to text messages with his computer. At one point, the dancers even called the cell phones of several audience members who had submitted texts and invited them to come dance with them on stage.

The use of cell phones can often be a distraction and cause disengagement with one’s present surroundings. However, this piece was interesting, because using one’s phone actually allowed one to be engaged with the artistic and creative process. By texting photos and seeing my own photo projected on the screen, I felt like I was contributing to the performance, even if only in a minimal way. This was different than the typical mode of silently watching a performance in front of me; instead, a more participatory role was open to me as an audience member.

Through this backdrop of integrative media, there was brilliant dancing by seven company members, linking movement to various themes of technology and communication. According to Zvi Goetheiner in the pre-performance talk, the dancers were asked to improvise on different kinds of theoretical environments in constructing the piece; such as moving through a magnetic field, moving through cyberspace, and reflecting on the body as an extension of machine. This piece was “modern” in multiple sense of the term: in the style of dance and fluidity of the movement, in terms of integrating modern culture through the themes of technology and communication, and through the industrial-sounding, rhythmic beats of the music.

This deliberate incorporation of texting, technology, and media served the purpose of exposing the question of how technology affects communication and how modern relationships are transformed through texting and social networking. The last duet of the performance, for example, was about missed connection, and failed communication through texting. However, Zvi Gotheiner said in his pre-performance talk that this was not a commentary on whether technology and social networking makes us more or less connected than before. Instead, the goal was to reflect, rather than to judge, and to let the audience take away whatever message they want.

During the Q&A following the performance, an audience member brought up the point that she felt comfortable texting the dancers from the safety of her seat, but when she was called up to the stage, she felt uncomfortable. One of the dancers replied by noting that texting and social networking creates boundaries and barriers that we can hide behind, but it becomes scary to engage in real life. We are thus protected behind our phones, the internet, and digital information, but actual human contact can be frightening. The exploration of modes and quality of communication through movement and interaction with the audience was thus effective in stirring dialogue about these important themes impacting our modern time.

Creative Campus at the Student Activities Fair (Friday, September 14, 2pm)

Want to know what arts events are happening on campus? Are you involved in arts events and want to get the word out about them? Are you creative and want an outlet for that awesome expression? Or maybe you want to offer up your fresh take on what’s happening on this very creative campus.

The Creative Campus website was created collaboratively with Wesleyan students, artists, and staff. It is intended for anyone who wants to know what is going on with creative life on this vibrant and inspirational campus. It is a way of aggregating and collecting the creative life on campus, across disciplines, passions, departments, and student groups.

And speaking of student groups, Creative Campus will have a table at the Student Activities Fair tomorrow, Friday September 14, from 2-5pm! Come check us out to find out how you can get involved, to promote your student group through Creative Campus, or just to say hi. Hope to see you there!

Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on the role of Theater

“If our imaginations can lead us to profound, performative empathy, I believe even more strongly that the space of performance must be harnessed to imagine love instead of hatred. I need to believe that theorizing and documenting, witnessing and creating performance will continue to grace our lives with meaning, generosity, understanding, and memory, however provisional and fleeting.”

-Jill Dolan, forum on tragedy after 9/11

Sarah Wolfe '12 as Hecuba in "Lift Your Head," photo credit Ariella Axelbank.

Before coming to Wesleyan, theater lacked definition in my life. I understood why I did it, to some extent, but I didn’t completely understand its role in society, in the broader picture of how I interact with the world. I loved doing theater with children for its educational and confidence building qualities, and I loved performing with my peers for its incredible power to build a community over a common goal.

Photo credit Andy Ribner.

Throughout my time at Wesleyan I’ve been given the opportunity to look at not just how we perform, but why we perform and what our performances mean.  For my senior thesis this year I was particularly inspired by an essay called Notes About Political Theater by Tony Kushner. The essay is something of a manifesto on why the playwright chooses to make political theater and what in fact that term means. Mr. Kushner sees political theater as theater that responds to, that is reflective of, that understands events in contemporary society. He recognizes the stigma against political theater that prevents audiences from wanting to  see plays that make them think, or make them feel guilty, then goes on to call to all theater makers to make good political theater that negates this stigma and allows theater to be used as a tool for understanding and sparking change in the world.

It’s a big idea. Yet, at the same time, it’s not. We live in a beautiful, awesome, marvelous world filled with pain, hurt, violence, and destruction. Mr. Kushner is not asking us to fill our plays with decay and depression, but rather to engage

Photo credit Andy Ribner.

with the world that we all must be a part of in everything that we do. Theater cannot simply be an escape from that world. It must be a response to it.

My thesis, Lift Your Head, was on Euripides’ Trojan Women, an ancient story about the devastation of war that has survived to resonate and share its wounds with modern audiences who still suffer through war. It was a capstone project for me in many ways, not least of which in helping me define what kind of theater I want to watch and be a part of in the future. I have come to realize that if and when I make and watch theater in the years to come, I want it to be political theater. I want to be a part of theater that understands that the world we live in is both challenging and amazing and attempts to address that world. This is not to say that I don’t and won’t enjoy the occasional musical or light comedy, but the theater that is most enjoyable is that which makes me reflect on how I inhabit, how we all inhabit this world, and the choices we make that affect it.

I am entering a completely different industry when I graduate at the end of this month, but theater will always play a huge role in my life. The ideas and ways of talking about theater that I have learned here will stay with me as I move forward from Wesleyan into that grand, awesome, and terrifying world.

Katherine Clifford ’14 reviews the West African Drumming and Dance Concert

Katherine Clifford reviews the annual West African Drumming and Dance Concert, held on Friday, May 11, 2012.

The West African Drumming and Dance Concert was held on Friday, May 11, 2012 in the CFA Courtyard. West African Dance classes I, II, and III, taught by Artist in Residence Iddi Saaka, performed traditional West African dances with the accompaniment of the West African drumming class, taught by Adjunct Professor Abraham Adzenyah. The CFA Courtyard was filled with Wesleyan students supporting their friends, as well as professors and their families, on this warm Friday afternoon, the first day of reading period before finals. The upbeat music and dancing was the perfect anecdote for the stress accompanying impending final papers and exams.

The dances performed by the West African Dance classes were traditional dances from different ethnic groups of Ghana. These dances traditionally served different purposes; some were originally performed on special social occasions such as weddings or funerals, at times of war, or as harvest dances. The emphasis on tradition was also revealed through the attention to elaborate and colorful West African costumes.

The dances were composed of series of rhythmic movements set to the beat of the drums. Together, the dancers created a pulsating, collective energy that was contagious. Indeed, the audience cheered on the dancers and drummers, creating a supportive and energetic atmosphere. Although each dance was quite different, the style of West African dance consistently uses a lot of hip movements, stepping, and rhythmic motions. It also engages geometric patterns, in which the dancers moved collectively in circles and lines in series of repeated movements. The dances were largely about group movement to create certain feelings suited for the purpose of the dance. This was accomplished through mutual experience through movement. However, the individual was also showcased through solos and duets. Each dance contained twists and surprises that held the viewer’s attention against the backdrop of the sustained rhythm of the drums.

The ensemble of dancing, drumming, and chanting created a culturally rich and dynamic experience. The performance was a fun and engaging way to end the semester; and both the Music Department and  Dance Department’s events, as well as to showcase the hard work of all the students in these classes.

What it Means to Heal: Hannah Cressy ’13 reflects on Service-Learning in Greenpoint-Williamsburg

Hannah Cressy ’13 concludes her four-part series on Wesleyan’s interdisciplinary course Ritual, Health, and Healing.

Community members Guido and Tish Cianciotta of GREC (sitting), Laura Hofmann of OUTRAGE, Chris Henderson of St. Nicks Alliance, and Pat Dobosz of GEM, pose with ANTH 289 students and faculty Gillian Goslinga and Jill Sigman at the close of the community ritual.

After weeks of seminars, movement labs, bus rides, and a lot of bonding time, our “Ritual, Health, and Healing” class has come to a close.  We had our final movement lab on Tuesday, which gave us a chance to reflect, share our thoughts, and be together as a group for the last time; half the class will be graduating this month.  We sat in a circle, drinking lemongrass tea and allowing time for final words, though we found ourselves still talking, laughing, and shedding a few appreciative tears for an hour after “class” had ended.  One student sent an email to all of us this week that began with “Hey fam!”; we definitely feel like we have moved beyond classmates to become a family because of the work we did together at Wesleyan and especially in Brooklyn.

Students Andrew Pezzullo '13 and Kate Enright '15 talk with Guido Cianciotta at a community meeting.

I’ve been blogging for the past month and a half about our trips to Brooklyn, where the class has been working at the St. Nick’s Alliance and in surrounding Greenpoint-Williamsburg neighborhoods.  We’ve met, interviewed, gone on walks, had tea, and celebrated with community members who taught us about their lives’ work.  Pat and David Dobosz are public school teachers who talked with us about the harmful social and educational effects of charter schools’ division of neighborhoods, and have been very inspirational for the future educators of our class, including my fellow blogger Shira Engel ’14.  Guido and Tish Cianciotta are the founding directors of Greenpoint Renaissance Enterprise Corporation, and have worked for decades to keep the Greenpoint Hospital complex serving the needs of the community; a group of students created a Wikipedia page for their organization.  Jan Peterson is a tireless (and very spunky) activist, feminist, organizer, and founder of the National Congress of Neighborhood Women, among several other activist/feminist groups; several students interviewed Jan and Tish among other lifelong residents of the neighborhood for an oral history project on the women of Greenpoint.  I could go on for pages about many more incredible people we have been so lucky to learn from.

Pat Dobosz of GEM (Grassroots Education Movement) discusses with Shira Engel '14 how a public school education enriches a community.

Stepping outside the classroom walls taught us things we can’t learn from professors; it is a privilege to sit down with neighborhood residents and hear their stories of health issues due to environmental damage, struggles with educational equality, building rights, and organizing strategies, and we have truly come away with a new sense of what it means to be a neighbor.  As I’ve written before, Jan Peterson’s best advice to us was “if you live here, you have to do something.  You can’t just have brunch”.

We all began the course wondering how West African shamanism, Brooklynite activism, Japanese dolls, Wikipedia, and Peruvian water rituals would fit together.  During our final lab, we were asked to say one word each to sum up the course: I said “us”.  Any ritual, health, or healing requires a community consciousness, a sense of group wellbeing.  My classmates growing closer to each other was the overall lesson of the class:  whether you’re fighting a disease, spirit loss, or a trash dump, healing comes through a healthy community; it’s about us. 

For more reflections and information about the course, check out a recent article about the class here.

Jack Chelgren ’15 reviews the Annual Organ Romp

Jack Chelgren ’15 reflects on the many contrasting performances from the Annual Organ Romp, held on May 3, 2012. 

Sitting in the pews of Memorial Chapel during the Annual Organ Romp, I came to realize that I don’t listen to enough organ music.  I arrived at this conclusion amid a thunderous torrent of sound gushing from the pipes at the front of the hall, as I discovered that, however doggedly I tried to divorce myself from such associations, the sound of an organ kept evoking for me a clichéd sense of impending doom or peril.  I’m a little ashamed to admit this, because I worry that it reveals in me a kind of musical callowness akin to someone who associates the saxophone with Kenny G or Beethoven with a St. Bernard, and it occurred to me that if I listened to more organ music, I might be disabused of this rather inaccurate association.  I have the sense that I’m not alone in my ignorance, however: the organ, as I understand it, holds a specific and somewhat ironclad place in the public consciousness as the soundtrack to either a church service or a horror film.  And although it was billed as a performance of “new music and non-standard organ repertoire,” the Organ Romp did not necessarily reject such stereotypes about the organ and organ music, or even avoid them.  Instead, the performances seemed to contend that while the organ can and has filled such roles, it is certainly does not need to, and is in any case a vital and diverse player in contemporary music.

As if to establish right away that the concert wasn’t out to topple tradition, the program opened with a few Baroque hard-hitters, beginning with a first-rate rendition of J.S. Bach’s BWV 543: Prelude and Fugue in a minor, performed by Visiting Professor of Music Brian Parks.  It was an even blend of power and reserve, metrical precision and tempo rubato; swirling sixteenth-note passages hurtled furiously toward the bass—some sliding down chromatically, others descending a staircase of disjunct intervals—then leaping back up to begin the descent anew.  The fugue spooled out tightly coiled melodic threads that promptly unraveled into wider and wider intervals, phrases that were then woven together in an intricate contrapuntal braid.  Olivia May ’14 followed with more Bach, BWV 615: In dir ist Freude (“In You Is Joy”), a major key chorale that glowed with a kind of autumnal wisdom, during which I realized that there is something incredibly knowing, almost prophetic, to Bach’s music.  Though people often describe Beethoven as having a kind of inevitable quality to him, there is also something extremely inevitable in Bach.  Bach is lighter, certainly, than Beethoven, but no less profound.  The next piece, Buxtehude’s Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C, performed by Vivien Lung ’14, kept to the Baroque style, although, though no fault of Lung’s performance, it failed to reach the same levels of insight and verve of the prior two pieces.  The prelude featured full, heavy chords and tight melodies corkscrewing over low pedal tones, but these aspects were more or less perpetuated in the fugue and the chaconne; rather than acting as independent components of the song, the latter two sections felt like mere extensions of the first.  Again, however, this slight blandness was no doubt the doing of Buxtehude, not Lung.

Then things started to get a little weirder.  Organist Daniel Parcell and cellist Jessie Marino took the stage to perform an excerpt from Vivaldi’s Sonata VI for ‘cello and organ, Parcell in an antiquated tailcoat, Marino looking like the Corpse Bride in a white wig and a gaudy white dress, both completely deadpan as the crowd dissolved into giggles at the sight of them.  Marino, who is a member of the experimental music collective Ensemble Pamplemousse, took the lead voice, asserting the stately, handsome melody over measured downbeats in the organ.  Yet Marino soon began “bleeding” from her mouth as she played, globs and bubbles of fake gore sliding down her chin and staining her dress.  When they finished the piece, she and Parcell took a deep, deep bow, from which Marino, as though dead, did not straighten up until Parcell gave a tug on the back of her dress.  They left the stage, still totally expressionless, to cackles and gleeful applause.

“How are you gonna follow that?” somebody asked Alex Cantrel ’14 as he climbed up from the audience to perform his own composition, On Bliss Hill.  Yet Cantrel didn’t seem to feel any pressure to compete with Parcell and Marino’s antics; he made no attempts to be showy, but merely approached the bench modestly, sat down, and began to play.  His piece sounded a little bit like the overture to a film score, set in a lively compound meter with racing, expectant arpeggios that unfolded over a lower sustained melody.  It was admirable work, though, and lucidly rendered the sense of summery optimism connoted by the title.  Rain Tianyu Xie ’14 subsequently took on the American songbook, performing Vernon Duke and E.Y. Harburg’s What Is There to Say? with a weird filter on the organ that made it sound like a cross between a violin and a bamboo flute.  Xie executed the wistful, sentimental tune keenly and conservatively, and surprised me when she took what sounded like a short improvised solo between choruses of the melody.  Ashlin Aronin ’13 kept up Cantel’s precedent by performing a piece of his own, Elegy, accompanied on bassoon by Jeremy Webber ’13.  An adventuresome work full of close, new-agey harmonies, the song set off with a free meter exposition before settling into an almost sea shanty-esque canter.

Next up was Alan Rodi ’12, who had an almost playful manner onstage, quoting Monty Python—“And now for something completely different!”—as a projector screen lowered from the apse above the organ.  Rodi proceeded to play a beautiful medley of Philip Glass compositions, including the famous Mad Rush, while a clip from the 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi (itself scored by Glass) played on the screen.  Jason Sheng Jia ’13 finished off the show with French organist and composer Jehan Alain’s Litanies, a forceful yet light-footed piece of fleeting dissonances and resolutions, traversing musical styles from Baroque to Latin in moving toward its tempestuous climax.

With its playful, almost anarchic connotations, the term “romp” is an apt descriptor for what took place last Thursday night: a concert that both embraced and toyed with the conventions of organ music.  And indeed, the evening had a self-aware, almost Nietzschean character of accepting the very thing one knows to be flawed, at times adopting the well-known dramatic side of the organist (as did Parks, May, and Lung) and at others exploiting and lampooning it (as did Parcell and Marino).  Yet the concert offered still another direction, that of Cantrel, Xie, Aronin, Rodi, and Jia, which neither opposed nor played into the stereotypes surrounding the instrument, and it was these performances that best represented the prevailing tone of the evening: one of inclusivity, a celebration of music.

Sarah Wolfe ’12 previews “Junk Redemption” by Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14

Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14 about her upcoming play “Junk Redemption,” opening this Friday, May 11 through Sunday, May 13, 2012 at 8pm, in front of the Whisper Wall (on Washington Terrace).

This weekend Second Stage is presenting a new play, written and directed by Alma Sanchez-Eppler ’14. The play, Junk Redemption, goes up Friday through Sunday at 8pm in front of the Whisper Wall (located on Washington Terrace) in the Center for the Arts. Earlier this week I sat down with the student playwright to discuss the play, the process, and her aspirations as a playwright. The process of writing the play began in her Intermediate Playwriting class as an exercise in character driven playwriting, which was a new experience for Ms. Sanchez-Eppler. But as the writing process continued, Ms. Sanchez-Eppler found that historical facts from her own family history had trickled into the piece.

“It wasn’t until after the play was pretty much done and I was just editing it that I realized how much it relates to everything my grandmother has done in her life.”

The play follows the life of an isolated artist as she is discovered by a Baltimore gallery. Flashbacks narrate the story of why the artist began her work of creating sculptures out of available junk. Ms. Sanchez-Eppler calls the play “an homage” to her grandmother, who is currently suffering through the early stages of dementia.

“[My grandmother] was a social worker, and that’s a pretty big aspect of the show, and she was a tour guide in the New York Folk Art Museum for a very long time. She’s one of the most imaginative people I know. I love being around her because it is necessary for me to have an immediacy to my interactions with her. It requires a presence of being and a presence of mind and not much concern for referencing anything in the past.”

Ms. Sanchez-Eppler notes that she is someone who tries to find all of the interesting places on the Wesleyan campus, which is why Junk Redemption is not going up in a more traditional theatrical setting. The Whisper Wall, on the back side of the CFA facing Washington Terrace, is an interesting, if little known, architectural structure of the CFA. From the outside it is a semi-circle of concrete with a tree in the middle, but if one person stands inside the wall and whispers, the sound resonates so that a person standing on the other side can hear every word perfectly. Aside from this semi-magical feature, which is impossible to feature in a theatrical production, Ms. Sanchez-Eppler still felt something appropriate about the space for this particular production.

“It feels like you’ve entered this other world. It doesn’t feel like Wesleyan when you’re in that sort of enclosure, that semi-circle. The set required a tree and there was a tree there. It provides a natural stage.”

Ms. Sanchez-Eppler is a first time director, and spoke to the challenges of directing her own piece, which is what most student playwrights must do in order to show their work.

“I was lucky enough in high school to have one of my plays I wrote then directed, and it was really nice to push the bird out of the nest and just have it happen without me being there. I’d love for people to want to direct shows of mine. That would be dreamy.”

However, as she moves forward at Wesleyan, she is particularly interested in collaborative theater making. She cited Augusto Boal and The Medea Project as particular examples of theater that inspires her. Both tie into another focus of Ms. Sanchez-Eppler’s: work that is done creatively around prison reform. She has worked closely through her time here with Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins, whose classes bring students to local prisons to learn and teach about social activism through theater. She hopes to continue to have chances to learn about and create collaborative and empowering theater in her time at Wesleyan and after.

Come see Junk Redemption this weekend! The show is free and unticketed, so show up at 8pm at the Whispering Wall on Washington Terrace. Don’t miss this wonderful example of student creativity at Wesleyan!

Jack Chelgren ’15 reviews Jay Hoggard and the Sonic Hieroglyphs Ensemble

Jack Chelgren ’15 attended the Jay Hoggard Quartet concert as part of the 11th annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend, and reflects on his impressions.

Jay Hoggard. Photo courtesy of Santina Aldieri.

Last Saturday night, vibraphonist, composer, and Adjunct Professor of Music Jay Hoggard gave a concert that found Crowell Concert Hall more crowded than any performance I have been to all year.  The room was unambiguously packed, inundated with a healthy blend of students, families, friends, faculty, and a host of others scarcely connected to Wesleyan beyond their interest in the performance.  A student combo of musicians from the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra (which Mr. Hoggard directs) opened the show, playing faithful but lively renditions of standards by Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Jordan, and Sonny Rollins.  There was a short lull, and then Mr. Hoggard’s band took the stage, the man himself with a theatrical strut, sporting an ultramarine suit and a flashy silver vest.  Silence reigned after the initial applause had died down and the band readied its gear; you could hear people fidgeting in their seats as Mr. Hoggard took out his glasses case and slipped his spectacles inside.  Then he glanced up at the audience, as if just realizing we were there.  “Thank you, and goodnight,” he said flatly, and the ensuing chuckles broke the ice.

The group opened with “Swing Em Gates,” a bluesy, up-tempo chart Mr. Hoggard wrote for Lionel Hampton, one of the most significant voices in big band and an early pioneer of jazz vibraphone.  Mr. Hoggard shared the melody with Marty Ehrlich, who played soprano saxophone, and each member of the group improvised.  “Overview” followed, a slower, more expansive piece for which Mr. Ehrlich switched to bass clarinet and delivered one of his best solos of the night, a dextrous, well-crafted display that showcased his rich, vivid tone on the instrument.  The next song, “Joyful Swamp,” brought out harpist Brandee Younger and hand percussionist Kwaku Kwaakye Obeng, kicking off at a breakneck pace with a scurrying marimba and percussion intro before dropping into its slinky, meandering melody, again in the vibes and soprano.  This piece, Mr. Hoggard revealed, he wrote for another jazz great, the monumental drummer Max Roach.  Next came “Soular Power,” an off-kilter, lilting tune that smacked heavily of Dave Holland’s quintet work with vibraphonist Steve Nelson.  This, in turn, was followed by “You’re In My Heart All the Time,” a duet for piano and vibes and the most candidly gorgeous piece of the evening.  The song had a stunningly spontaneous quality, floating in the air like a cloud between the performers, who, though not rhythmically or melodically in sync with one another, played with an astounding understanding and singularity of purpose.  The subsequent medley “The Right Place / Lessons from My Dad” gamboled from a nostalgic, shimmering opening into a desolate solo by bassist Santi Debriano, whose hoarsely melancholic tone recalled the throatier, more progressive side of cellist Erik Friedlander, before giving way to yet another sinuous groove led by the soprano and vibes.  “Convergence of the Niles” closed the first half of the show, a driving McCoy Tyner-esque bop on which Mr. Hoggard let loose with a fiery solo, pulling farther and farther away from the stormy rhythmic and harmonic structures of the song without for a second coming unmoored.

The group was joined by one last guest for the shorter second half of the concert, saxophonist-composer and Professor of Music Anthony Braxton, who kicked off the song “Piety and Redemption” with a soprano sax solo of his own, lashing out flurries of thirty-second notes and blur-like glissandi. Mr. Hoggard then lead the group into the world premiere of his multi-part composition Sonic Hieroglyphs From Wood, Metal, and Skin, the title of which sounds like a cross between Sun Ra and a Fluxus score.  The group played only three of its four movements, beginning with the brightly optimistic “Let Me Make It Clear (We Need Nuclear Peace This Year)” before proceeding into “Live, Breath”—a serenely open piece with brooding and dissonant undertones which featured qigong artists performing onstage alongside the musicians—and then finally to “The Mutilation of Our Mother, Earth, by Perpetual War and DISPOSABLE CONSUMPTION,” a jaggedly collapsing tune à la Michael Formanek.

It was, in all, a highly memorable evening.  There were times when I wished the orchestration had been a little lighter—it could have been the room or where I sat in it, but the ensemble sound often felt rather cluttered and muddy.  I also noticed that communication among the musicians often seemed a little disjointed.  Mr. Hoggard would frequently look up to cue transitions or solos and have to struggle to get the rest of the band’s attention.  Yet the group held together nicely through these rough patches, in large part thanks to the indefatigable rhythm section of Yoron Israel, Mr. Debriano, and Mr. Obeng, giving a show at once through-provokingly erudite and fundamentally accessible.

To learn more about Jay Hoggard, visit his website.  Click here to watch him performing “Joyful Swamp.”

Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on “The Big Draw: Middletown”

Sarah Wolfe ’12 reflects on “The Big Draw: Middletown”, a public art event hosted by the Friends of the Davison Art Center.

In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the Friends of the Davison Art Center put together The Big Draw: Middletown this past Sunday. The event was intended to celebrate the art of drawing in its many forms and was a unique opportunity for drawers of all ages and skill levels to try their hand at different techniques for free!

Tableaux vivants. Image by Nam Anh Ta '12.

I had the pleasure of being a member of the student staff for the event. Tired and unhappy about the wet and dreary weather, I trudged over to the Davison Art Center Sunday morning to learn exactly what I would be doing. My attitude almost immediately improved as I watched about 15 Middletown High School students parade around the historic rooms of Davison dressed in costumes ranging from My Fair Lady to Pride and Prejudice to Kiss Me, Kate! That particular workshop, called “Tableaux Vivants” was organized by the students, who were members of the Middletown High School Art Club, provided an opportunity for participants to draw the costumed students in their historic setting.

I was placed at the Earth Day Collaborative Mural Project station. Stationed in the Art Workshops Lobby, I watched drawers aged 3 to 40 come and contribute a drawing of what they thought represented Earth Day on a huge piece of white paper on the wall. (“Go ahead, kids, you can actually draw on the walls today!”) The drawing skills ranged widely, as did the subject matter, the attention span, and the colors used. But by the end of the day, all of the staff was impressed by the beauty of what had been created with so many hands.

Earth Day Collaborative Mural Project. Image by Nam Anh Ta '12.

Nearby was the Scavenger Hunt, one of the activities that would have benefited from warmer, dryer weather. However, many families and students picked up a booklet to save for a later day. The hunt, entirely student designed, was a booklet of twelve different drawing challenges, ranging from: “Find a surface in nature with texture. What does it feel like? Make a rubbing of it by placing this page over and rubbing the side of your pencil on top” to “Draw a tree or a flower you see without looking at your page and without lifting your pencil.” Though there were some young boys who were disappointed with the lack of prizes involved with this particular scavenger hunt, most participants were excited to save it for a day they could do it outside.

Down the hall from where I was stationed was the Model Marathon, where supplies and a nude model were provided for participants to do some figure drawing. This was one of the most popular workshops in the event as it was a phenomenal opportunity for practice figure drawing without having to pay for a class.

These were only four of the ten workshops that were available for free to anyone who came and registered. Despite the grey weather, the turnout was good, and it was wonderful to see such a mix of Wesleyan students and outside community members participating in the joy of putting pencil/charcoal/marker to paper. There are plans to continue and grow the event, and I hope to see it become even more popular in the years to come.