Writing and Publications – Creative Campus

Sewon Kang ’14 on the impact of the “Blood, Muscle, Bone” course and performative teach-in

April 25, 2014December 12, 2013 by Andrew Chatfield

Creative Campus Intern Sewon Kang ’14 reflects on the Creative Campus course “Blood, Muscle, Bone: The Anatomy of Wealth and Poverty,” and the “Blood, Muscle, Bone” Performative Teach-In.

Amber Smith ’14 (left) and Creative Campus Intern Sewon Kang ’14 (right) during the “Blood, Muscle, Bone” Performative Teach-In on Monday, November 11, 2013 in Fayerweather Beckham Hall. Photo by Sandy Aldieri.

I’ve been thinking back on the course “Blood, Muscle, Bone: The Anatomy of Wealth and Poverty” and I must say that it was a total interruption in my squarely traditional education. Throughout the intensives, my fellow students and I explored difficult problems related to wealth distribution in the U.S. with our instructors, Liz Lerman and Jawole Zollar. In my prior post, I discussed my enthusiasm for the interdisciplinary nature of this course and the deep processing made possible through artistic exploration. Now that the class has ended, I want to share how it continues to impact my life.

Even though it was primarily a dance course, we explored the realities of disparity in a traditional, academic way—we learned facts and figures, read literature, and applied the knowledge by considering how it affects the Wesleyan community. What was unique was that once we had all of this information, we were given the freedom to respond to aspects that resonated with us. Our expressions then gave shape to the structure of the performative teach-in, the culminating event for the course. It was a truly collaborative outpouring and was the perfect way to end a process that is in reality constant and continuous. The teach-in allowed us to take some of what we learned and put it in a format that we could share with our fellow students and community—something that doesn’t happen in a typical classroom.

The night began with a talk by Anne Farrow, a journalist and author who studies enslavement in New England. She shared passages from her new book about the life of a slave trader who lived in Middletown. As performers, we listened to the lecture and responded with our bodies in ways that disrupted the usual speaker-listener dynamic. These interruptions continued during Professor William Arsenio’s lecture on economic disparity and recent psychological studies that examine how people understand wealth distribution in this country. We analyzed the facts and statistics he presented, reflected on our past experiences, and translated information visually. For the rest of the teach-in, we took numbers and words and made them tangible by sharing personal stories through song, spoken word, and movement.

This exploration was incredibly intense and was only made possible by an extraordinary willingness to participate in experimental learning—a leap that I’m grateful to my classmates for taking with me. Everyone was fully committed to the class, showing strong enthusiasm for the topic at hand and complete dedication to the process, even during times when everything was uncomfortably new. The class was a learning community so unlike any I have ever experienced.

One of the most challenging and exciting aspects for me was the act of performing. Throughout the course, Liz and Jawole expertly drew out flickers of performance from each of us and helped us develop strong structures that we could be proud of. Such in-class dynamics translated into powerfully moving moments of the teach-in, revealing how wealth and poverty touch everyone’s lives. During a discussion about white privilege, I was able to share my frustrations with other students of color in the class. Jawole and Keith Thompson, who assisted Liz and Jawole in the course, helped me eventually become comfortable with sharing my struggles with the audience at the teach-in. They taught me that vulnerability can be useful, and because I believed so strongly in the work that we were doing, I knew that my story needed to be shared.

This opened doors for me as a student who is used to articulating ideas through very specific structures, such as the five-paragraph analytic paper. What I learned is that like the academic paper, performing is a method of processing, albeit one that is less frequently encountered outside of certain circles. During “Blood, Muscle, Bone,” I was asked to perform my thoughts and became a student of a different kind of processing. For some of my classmates, it was liberating to engage in this alternative way of knowing because they had been searching for this kind of creative outlet. Personally, I learned that this kind of communicating works for me because it’s an effective way for me to address problems in a constructive manner. Once I leaned into the discomfort of vulnerability, I could let the process of performing take over.

As I walk away from this course, I do so with more awareness of my position in the world. I understand better how I operate within the global structures of wealth and poverty. I know how profoundly unequal things are; it runs hot through my blood and weighs heavy on my muscles and bones. Whether I’m complicit or not, whether I’m an agent or a casualty, wherever I situate myself, what am I going to do about it? How am I going to use my voice? We, the participants of “Blood Muscle Bone,” move to declare ourselves as a group of people who will no longer abide by inequality. We establish ourselves as a group of people who are dedicated to bringing about change and invite others to join us in this stance.

Introducing “Sonic Introductions” (Oct. 17)

October 17, 2013 by Andrew Chatfield

Matthew Chilton ’16 previews the free concert “Sonic Introductions: Graduate Student Composers at Wesleyan,” which will be held on Thursday, October 17, 2013 at 8pm in CFA Hall.

Wesleyan’s musical diversity is one of the most celebrated facets of its student life. Float between conversations as the weekend begins and you’ll inevitably hear talk of the next great show at Eclectic, Buddhist House, or another notable space on campus. But listen a little closer, and you’ll hear a quieter buzz—tune in—it sounds a little like a homemade oscillator, or a circuit-bent stylophone, perhaps a clarinetist falling down a flight of stairs. You really don’t know what it is, but your intellectual and musical curiosity implore you to check it out—after all, that’s why you’re here in this narrative, right?

deadlion_modular_450 — Photo by Derek Morton

Bring your curiosity and sharpened ears to the CFA Hall tonight at 8pm for “Sonic Introductions,” a concert dedicated to new works of Wesleyan music graduate students. This is a special type of concert that often falls under the radar for undergrads, and certainly not one to miss. Fortunately, that weird sound got your attention earlier. Each of the artists who will present their work tonight embodies part of what makes Wesleyan such a vibrant musical environment. Each composer brings a distinct background and developed musical persona, ensuring that no two pieces will sound alike.

The musicians’ approach to composition is not limited to the standard dots on paper. Peter Blasser and Daniel Fishkin, both instrument builders, liken their methods of composing to building new instruments. Mr. Blasser focuses on building a core composition, and then transforming it as if manipulating the knobs on a synthesizer. He describes his piece as something of a “product demonstration,” challenging the common performer-audience dynamic by focusing on the principles of his instrument rather than codified notions of form and intention.

Mr. Fishkin builds daxophones, bowed, amplified wooden tongues whose sounds are oddly human grunts and moans, as well as varieties of electronic music. He challenges notions of traditional composition by eschewing the pen-and-paper methods of conventional music for something more personal and intuitive. His composition is intimately bound up in his experience with tinnitus, the hallucinatory hearing disorder. In order to cope with the incessant whining in his ears, his response is to “compose himself.”

Nathan Friedman began his musical life as a classical clarinetist, before transitioning his playing into the worlds of experimental improvisation, contemporary chamber music, and klezmer. His work searches for a sound that is non-idiomatic, well beyond the reaches of a single style. He seeks to make the complex sound simple, while denying his listener a definite stylistic point of reference. The piece he premieres tonight is entitled Four Domestics for voice and piano, on texts by the Canadian socialist poet F.R. Scott. It will be sung by Stephanie Trotter, a wonderful vocalist and frequent collaborator.

Like Mr. Friedman, soprano saxophonist Jasmine Lovell-Smith is striving for a music that renders stylistic boundaries irrelevant. However, she takes a different approach, focusing on strong melodies and naturally unfolding harmonies that invite the listener to take refuge in her soundworld. Her jazz background informs her writing and improvisations, yet her composition relies on the ear rather than the analytical mind. Tonight, she premieres a setting of a poem by e.e. cummings for an ensemble of voice, clarinet, and guitar.

Violinist Dina Maccabee comes from a varied stylistic background of folk, pop, classical, and improvised music. She cites the chameleon-like versatility and easy portability of her instrument as her portal into many musical worlds. Her compositions for this concert revolve around the melodic and timbral interactions between her voice and violin, refined into short pop songs. Taken out of their original theatrical context, Ms. Maccabee uses this new setting to explore the intentionality behind her work.

Gabriel Kastelle, the other violinist on the program, eschews his instrument of choice to direct one of Wesleyan’s finest student vocal ensembles – the Mixolydians. Mr. Kastelle’s background has deep roots in everything from folk fiddle music to the avant-garde. His piece this evening is rooted in the American art of shape note singing, a simple and easy-to-read notation system for vocal ensembles that developed at the beginning of the 19th century in New England. Mr. Kastelle doesn’t complicate this accessible language, working with the interesting sounds possible within the scope of one key. His brief piece utilizes what he calls a “narrative form,” avoiding overly linear developments while letting motifs elaborate and unfold.

Also presenting works tonight are Hallie Blejewski, Sam Dickey, Sean Sonderegger, Cristohper Ramos Flores, and Jason Brogan, all powerful composers with backgrounds and stylistic aims as varied as those mentioned above. “Sonic Introductions” promises to be an unforgettable showcase of some of the most creative and groundbreaking work in music happening at Wesleyan this year. I’m excited just writing about it.

Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews “Through Children’s Eyes: Hiroshima” (through Dec. 7)

November 6, 2012 by rseidel

Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews “Through Children’s Eyes: Hiroshima,” an exhibition presented at the Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery through December 7, 2012.

Imura Tatsushi, age 9, Children’s Day on May 5, 1947

There is something magical about children’s art, something that beckons us closer. Maybe it’s the uninhibited way that kids tend to put their lives on paper, with earnest lines and splashes of color. Maybe looking at the art of children evokes nostalgia for us, memories of a purer time in our lives. The pictures on display at “Through Children’s Eyes: Hiroshima” have all these charms, but they also hold their own as visually stunning pieces of art. Above all, though, it’s the backstory of the exhibition that makes it so compelling.

In 1947, Japan was still reeling from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To aid in the relief effort, the children of the All Souls Church in Washington, D.C. sent a huge amount of art supplies overseas to the Honkawa Elementary School in Hiroshima. Using those supplies, the children there produced a vibrant collection of artwork. They drew and painted scenes from their neighborhoods, and captured moments from traditional Japanese festivities. The children of Honkawa Elementary School sent a box of nearly 50 of their drawings back to the All Souls Church as an expression of gratitude for the art supplies.

After the initial excitement of the exchange died down, the pictures were stored in a church vault and forgotten for about 50 years. But in 1996, the box was rediscovered. A new wave of interest surrounded the artwork, some of which began the journey back to Honkawa Elementary School in 2007.

A 2011 documentary, Pictures from a Hiroshima Schoolyard, tracked down some of the artists, now in their late 70s. These people recount memories of war-torn Japan and discuss the paths their lives have taken. The film chronicles their reactions as they are reunited with their former classmates and with their artwork.

At Wesleyan’s Mansfield Freeman Center, you’ll find a display of some of the original pieces of art, thoughtfully arranged by curator Patrick Dowdey. There are works by children ages 7 to 12, done in crayons, markers, watercolors, paper cutouts, and more. There are a few samples of Japanese calligraphy as well, phrases about nature, Japanese culture, and life in general. The art is grouped according to subject matter.

Looking at the artwork alone, you would never guess that all this positive creative energy arose out of a place still recovering from war, a city totally ravaged by the atomic bomb. Barely any of the pictures show evidence of destruction, nor do they illustrate feelings of despair. In fact, most of the artwork is contagiously cheerful, depicting snapshots of life at school and in bustling neighborhoods.

There are only a few pictures that hint at any sort of struggle. In an intriguing twist, a piece of calligraphy accompanying those pictures reads, “America, Our Friend.”

The art bursts with color, evoking senses of depth and movement. It’s spontaneous and free. But even beyond illustrating the natural energy of children’s creativity, the artwork on display here showcases unmistakable talent—skills way beyond these children’s years. Within this relatively small sampling, we find incredibly intricate displays of architecture and storefronts, serene landscapes of rivers and clouds, figures and faces that glow with life.

The individual pieces in this exhibit tell stories of their own—stories of Japanese culture, of natural wonders, of life as a child. But as a whole, “Through Children’s Eyes: Hiroshima” tells an unforgettable story of compassion across borders and hope in the wake of a disaster. It’s definitely worth a visit.

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

September 13, 2012 by ahunt

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!

Rebecca Seidel ’15 interviews Kamar Thomas ’12 about his work in the Thesis Art Exhibition (through May 26)

May 16, 2012May 16, 2012 by rseidel

Rebecca Seidel ’15 reviews the Thesis Art Exhibition, and sits down with Kamar Thomas ’12, to discuss his seven-painting thesis series, “me, myself, & i”.

Kamar Thomas, "Untitled" from the series "me, myself, & i"

For an incredible dose of fresh ideas manifested in artwork of all dimensions, I recommend heading over to the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery, where the Thesis Art Exhibition is currently in full swing. This annual showcase features select works from the thesis projects of seniors in the Department of Art & Art History‘s Art Studio program.

Each senior had a chance to display a larger sampling of his or her work last month, in more specialized five-day exhibits featuring five or six students each. This final exhibition brings all the senior theses together into a comprehensive spectacle. It’s astonishing to observe all the different concepts and media these seniors chose to explore. Even though each senior only gets to display one piece of art in this final showing, the walls still brim with evidence of all the thought and creativity that went into each project.

Evidence of this creativity is not limited to the Zilkha Gallery. If you’ve visited the main dining hall at the Usdan University Center recently, you’ve probably noticed that the back walls have a new infusion of color. Those vibrant faces that have caught your eye are two paintings from the thesis series of Kamar Thomas ’12, me, myself, & i. The Usdan University Center bought these paintings from Mr. Thomas and now has them on display.

All seven paintings in his thesis are self-portraits, each contributing to an exploration of self-conception and identity. As he explains in the description mounted next to his painting at the Zilkha Gallery, issues of identity are especially important to him because of the life transitions he has experienced: “I grew up on Jamaica and spent my entire life there, only moving to the United States to study at Wesleyan University four years ago. I have encountered the need to be flexible while staying connected to my past as I navigate my ever-changing present.”

For each self-portrait, Mr. Thomas would cover his own face in paint, then have his face photographed. He would then edit that photograph in Photoshop. The resulting image would be the inspiration for his painting. The resulting works of art are eye-catchingly colorful and hard to forget.

I got a chance to sit down with Mr. Thomas and talk to him about his artwork. Here is some of what he had to say.

Tell me a little bit about your thesis.

Well, it’s inspired by my own biography, having moved from Jamaica to here. Each of [the paintings] in the series is my way of making another identity that isn’t directly connected to anything else. So, for instance my skin is dark. You look and say, ‘Oh, it’s a black guy.’ But if you paint it, then what is it? It really is an exploration of the flexibility of what identity is.

How did you come up with the idea for your thesis?

Playing around, coming up with a couple of ideas, bouncing ideas off my advisor – many, many things. I can’t really spend such huge amounts of time [on a project] unless I have a personal connection to it. So it was experimenting – finding something that interested me that I know other people wanted to see, too.

What have the reactions been like?

They’ve been so great. I felt like a rock star at my own show. There were so many people. I even sold some of [my paintings]. You know how great that feels? If you become an English major, it’s like writing a thesis and having a publisher going, ‘I want to sell your book.’ I still can’t believe it.

It must be cool to walk upstairs at Usdan and see your paintings on the walls.

It’s just so weird. If anything is filmed at Usdan, my paintings will be in the background. That’s my claim to fame.

In your description of your thesis series, you said that you ‘select images to paint based on their emotional impact and on how exciting they will be to paint.’ Do you think your paintings have had an emotional impact?

Yes, I would say they have emotional impact. At first, people will see it and think, ‘Oh my God, this looks great,’ and they won’t really think why until long afterwards. Then the intellect will kick in and go, ‘Well, how did you come up with this idea?’ As much as I like high art, I don’t want to be the person where you need to have taken nine Art History courses to even begin to grasp what these things mean. They’re very loud. They’re kind of like pop music – a lot of people like it, but there are still some hipsters who are like, ‘This is too mainstream for me.’ At the show, people were like, ‘Well, I don’t really like it, but it took a lot of work, so congratulations.’ It’s all right – I don’t want everyone to like it, anyway.

How did you publicize your own work?

The school helps you. The school prints out the flyers and whatnot, and the senior thesis exhibition has happened every year since painting has been offered here, so it’s out there. Also, I had a Facebook event. All the painters in my week had a Facebook event, so their friends were coming. I told a few people, and these few people told some more people – so it was word of mouth, Facebook, and people who I met randomly at dinners.

Each of your paintings is unique, but they all have some common characteristics. How did you go about creating these pieces? Did you work on them all at once?

At first, I did them serially. The real learning curve happened during my Christmas break and spring break, when I had nothing to do except paint – so I’d just get up and paint. I started working on each of them at the same time. It was, I would say, far more fun than doing any other thesis. It wasn’t difficult at all. It took work, but once you stopped complaining about that – I mean, you’re painting. You’re not digging a hole sixty feet below the Earth’s surface, searching for shiny rocks. You’re painting.

How long did each piece take you to paint?

The first one took forever. The very first one took from September to the beginning of November, I believe. The second one took three weeks. The third one took all of Christmas break. I took from January till spring break to do another one, and then during spring break I finished three. And then I was done early, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

I guess you never got tired of painting?

Hell, no. I know some people are burnt out by it. But, you know, if you’ve already decided to disappoint your parents, you might as well do it on a grand, impressive scale. Even if I was tired of it, I would never mention it or bring it up. So no, I never got tired of it. And right now I have a lot of ideas for my next paintings.

That must be exciting.

Oh, extremely exciting. I’m moving to New York City, and seeing how that plays out. I’m going to move somewhere and paint in my apartment, wherever I am.

I know that in order to create a thesis, Art Studio majors have to raise funds themselves. What was that like?

I begged like I have never begged before. I worked like I have never worked before. Because I’m international, I can’t work off campus, and I’m only allowed twenty hours a week to work. So at the end of my sophomore year, I realized, I’m going to have to start painting and selling now. Otherwise – no thesis. No money, no thesis.

My thesis in total cost between three and five thousand dollars – I was talking to a few people, and they were shocked that the school didn’t provide the materials. It was harder to raise the money than it was to make the paintings.

Do you think the University should supply more funding for Studio Art thesis work?

Definitely. If I ever have large sums of money, I’ll do it myself. The formula is so simple: no money, no thesis. No one cares how much talent you have or what you’re trying to do. Because, I mean, you’re not the next Picasso, and even if you are, you won’t know, because you don’t have any money to try.

Have you always liked art?

Nope. [In Jamaica], I didn’t know about the concept of a museum or art as a means to sustain yourself, or art as a means of expression or making an emotional impact. I came here and took some art history courses and saw that there were textbooks written on it – just a whole field dedicated to it.

What about actually painting – doing it yourself?

Growing up nearsighted, poor hand-eye coordination, born broke, I just wasn’t exposed to it. But once I was, I liked it; loved it.

Was painting self-portraits a self-reflective process for you?

That’s putting it mildly. You want to know yourself? Paint yourself seven times. You really want to know yourself? Go outside in broad daylight with your face in full makeup, with two women holding up a mirror and a background behind you and another woman taking a picture, and having school children walk by. You will develop a level of confidence that you didn’t even know you had.

The Thesis Art Exhibition will continue in Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery until Saturday, May 26, 2012. There will be a reception on Saturday, May 26, 2012, from 2pm to 4pm.

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

May 15, 2012May 15, 2012 by Hannah Cressy

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.

Ritual, Health, and Healing: Reflecting in the Classroom with Shira Engel ‘14

May 15, 2012May 2, 2012 by sengel01

A personal account by Shira Engel ’14 of “Ritual, Health, and Healing”, a course which is part of the Creative Campus initiative of the Center for the Arts.

As anything comes to a close, reflection seems to be in order. Journals emerge, nostalgic conversations take place, and commemoration and commencement activities ensue. College courses are no exception to this rule. This is especially the case for Ritual, Health, and Healing, a class rooted in the creative self-reflection of both the students and the professors.

My friend, Hannah Cressy ’13, has covered wonderfully our trips to Brooklyn as a class to work with the St Nicks Arts @ Renaissance community center. Both Jill Sigman and Gillian Goslinga have emphasized for us the importance of deconstructing the invisible barrier between “process” and “product.” This course is all about process because that is what inspires authenticity and the ability for self- and group-reflection to take place.

To be perpetually engaged in process is not an easy task. As college students, we are, at times, taught to pump out ten-pagers and study, study, study, just for the end product of an exam. Process means to do, and then let go of results – to do for the sake of doing and let the results be what they are. This is, at least, my definition.

Two weeks ago, as we geared up for our final field trip to Brooklyn, we were a product-driven bunch. We were scrambling to find time to finish our offerings to the community. At the same time, we were unsettled with this shift in perspective – this constant doing. So, we used our Monday seminar to step back, take a deep breath, and see what it is we are actually doing in the process. We made a list on the board of the common themes of our offerings and of our experiences with the community. They included: reciprocity, interconnectedness of community, the power of listening, valuing lived experience, choosing engagement over disengagement, family, and teachers. Writing them up on the board to be seen was clarifying. It put the passion back into what we were doing and allowed us to see that the offerings we were making to the community were also offerings to ourselves, giving ourselves the gift of all that we had mentioned.

Sarah Wolfe ’12 interviews Lily Haje ’13 about “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” (April 26-28)

April 25, 2012 by swolfe

The Wesleyan Theater Department is presenting Gertrude Stein’s “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” this weekend. Ms. Stein’s play uses the traditional Faust story but departs to examine technology and industrialization as well as perceptions of the self. Earlier this week Sarah Wolfe ’12 sat down with cast member and Assistant Director Lily Haje ’13 to discuss the upcoming performance. The show opens this Thursday, April 26 and ends Saturday, April 28.

Cast members of "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights"

The Faust is a popular German legend that has been told most famously through Goethe’s “Faust” and Christopher Marlowe’s “Doctor Faustus.” Can you give me a brief description, in your own words, of both the original legend and what Gertrude Stein has done to it?

The traditional Faust story is about a human scholar who tries to make a pact with the devil to exchange his soul for either ultimate knowledge or ultimate power. The Stein story is rather different. Instead of beginning with the moment of the pact, as the Goethe and the Marlowe do, she begins at the moment of collection. We don’t actually see Faustus make the pact with the devil. Also, rather than exchanging his soul for knowledge or power, this Faustus exchanges his soul for the ability to create electric light. Ms. Stein had been living in the U.S. when electricity had first come into common usage. She then moved to Paris, back to a place where they did not have universal electricity, and re-experienced the introduction of electricity and wrote this play. There’s a lot in it about the process of industrialization and man’s relationship to nature and man’s relationship to himself and to religion.

There is another character in Ms. Stein’s play named Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel. She exists outside of Faust’s urban, industrial, technical world, and she is both four women and one woman. The way we have her in the play she’s sometimes one, sometimes four, sometimes two, and sometimes five women. This brings up this idea that the play grapples with: what is the self and how are identities both singular and multiple.

The play is less about characters in a traditional realist sense than it is about the language, which is beautiful. There are very few words in the play that have more than two syllables. It’s very simple, very much everyday language that then is constructed in completely bizarre and wonderful ways. For example:

I am I and my name is Marguerite Ida and Helena Annabel, and then oh then I could yes I could I could begin to cry by why why could I begin to cry.

And I am I and I am here and how do I know how wild the wild world is how wild the wild woods are…

How has Wesleyan adapted Gertrude Stein’s intentions for this play?

What Ms. Stein was writing about was the newest kind of technology. For her, electric light, which we take for granted now, was a completely innovative thing which opens up the world of what light is like. So we’ve been trying to take a similar approach to the show in terms of thinking about what is technology now. So we have lots and lots of lights, doing all kinds of crazy things. And we have a lot of projections, which is the most exciting new technology in theater that is still connected to light. It is all light, it is just a very different way of using light.

Furthermore, a lot of the production is not trying to hide what is not real. We have actors operating puppets, we have actors operating flashlights to operate the puppets. All of the masking goes away and you can see actors sitting on the side of the stage. All of the lighting instruments are visible. It’s very much about creating a theatrical event that is consciously a theatrical event. We have many people playing many different characters. With the exception of Mephisto [the devil], who is played by the same two people for the duration of the piece, pretty much every character gets played by multiple people, often at the same time. So it isn’t just Marguerite who is one and four and two and five, but Faust is also played by almost all of the men in the cast at one point or another. There are often two Fausts on stage at the same time.

The Theater Department has branched out in terms of design for this project. Designing sound is Demetrio Castellucci, of Dewey Dell. Designing lights is Ji-Youn Chang, a graduate of Yale School of Drama who previously collaborated with the Theater Department on The Tragedy of Richard III. Can you describe the experience and challenges of working with designers who were spread across the globe?

One of the things that’s both been cool and challenging about the process is that it is such a tech-heavy show. Demetrio only got in a week ago and Jiji was here a little before then. Everything that we’ve created has been videotaped and put on Dropbox so that Demetrio could be in London, seeing what we were doing and creating scores for it and same thing with Jiji and the lighting. It’s been fascinating to see how you can put a show together over huge distances. It has been a challenge given how much we interact with the lights and sound and projections, to not get those elements until very late, but now that we have them we’re working very intensely with them.

What should the audience expect to take away from the show when they see it this weekend?

I think that it’s a show that benefits from watching it at face value first. Because it isn’t character driven in the traditional sense and because it isn’t plot driven in the traditional sense, I think the best way to watch it is without trying to make sense of it until it is over. There’s so much to look at and to hear and to engage with in it on its own terms before trying to analyze it. It does have a logic. It does make sense. But you kind of have to let it make sense instead of trying to make sense out of it.

Come see “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” at the CFA Theater, from Thursday, April 26 to Saturday, April 28. The show starts at 8pm.

Theater Professor Ron Jenkins discusses his new work “To See the Stars”

April 12, 2012 by ahunt

Wesleyan Theater Professor Ron Jenkins was invited to present a new work at a Harvard University conference on race, class, and education called Disrupting the Discourse: Discussing the “Undiscussable’’, sponsored by the Graduate School of Education’s Alumni of Color, March 2-3, 2012. The work by Jenkins, which was commissioned by the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan as part of Feet to the Fire: Fueling the Future and was presented as a reading at Wesleyan on September 28, 2011 under the working title Recylcing Pain, has been revised and retitled To See the Stars.

The play is based on interviews conducted with participants of Jenkins’ prison education program inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy and the Department of Justice Report on the Federal Prison Industry’s electronic recycling program. The play serves as a reminder that the importance of conserving and recycling the human resources in our jails is no less important than the challenge of conserving and recycling the natural resources of the planet.

“The play is an outgrowth of my prison outreach class,” Jenkins described. “I was happy to present it for a conference at Harvard that focused on the issue of race in education, because the prison system is one of the most blatant examples of racial injustice in American society, and the course gives students a chance to learn about that system from the inside and do something to help change it. The title of the conference was “Discussing the Undiscussable”, and I think it was important for the students of color in my prison outreach class to be part of a national discussion about race that included formerly incarcerated women of color, whose voices are rarely heard in public discourse. In addition to performing and participating in the post-performance discussion, my students had a chance to listen to Harvard Professor Sara Lawrence Lightfoot’s eloquent keynote address on the challenges that higher education faces in regards to social justice.”

Amber Smith ’13, who took the prison outreach class last year, expressed her experience at the conference. “It’s hard to come from an affluent college and go into prison, but these are people who are just like us. We are all related to them, because we are all affected by the prison system and we have to do something to help.”

Amber Smith ‘14, Esi Quagrainie ‘14, and Alma Sanchez-Eppler ‘14 sang during the performance. The performers with them were Saundra Duncan, Lynda Gardner and Deborah Ranger, who also performed at Wesleyan for Recycling Pain.

To See the Stars was also invited to perform at Brown University on March 1 as part of Arts in the One World: A Life’s Work conference. The conference focused on best practices for art in the prison system.