Fall Photos: Riffat Sultana and Party

The New England debut of Riffat Sultana and Party took place on November 7, 2014, at Crowell Concert Hall. Images by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on flickr.

Fall Photos: Tell Your Story – A Conversation with Riffat Sultana and Party

Sufi singer Riffat Sultana talked about her experiences as a Muslim woman artist in both America and abroad in Pakistan and India during a conversation on November 6, 2014, at CFA Hall. Images by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on flickr.

Theater Major Sivan Battat ’15 on her Senior Capstone Project “The Serpent” (Dec. 4-6)

CFA Arts Administration Intern Chloe Jones ’15 talks to Theater major Sivan Battat ’15 about her Senior Capstone Project, “The Serpent,” created in collaboration with her seven person ensemble, design team, and faculty advisor, Professor of Theater Yuri Kordonsky.  

Can you talk a little about the history of “The Serpent” and the play itself?

This play emerged from the Open Theater and was created through a long process of exploring themes of the Bible. Playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie did extensive interviews with each of his actors, and all their text ended up in the script. It’s like a mash-up of biblical narrative and contemporary experience. The play was traditionally done as a kind of a Eucharist, a communion between actors and audience. It’s labeled The Serpent: A Ceremony. Mr. van Itallie wanted it to be a ceremony that reflected the lives and the minds and the experiences of the people performing it. That was the intention of The Serpent from day one. So our production does that. A lot of the text is the actors’ and was generated through a series of devising exercises throughout the first half of the semester. It’s a combination of Mr. van Itallie’s text, text from the Bible that he put in the script, and then our own words to replace some of the experiences in it that were maybe outdated for us or not as accessible.

Why did you choose “The Serpent” for your Senior Capstone Project?

I chose this for my capstone because I was interested in devised theater processes. Devised theater is ensemble-generated material that you then use to create a piece. A playwright or director doesn’t come in with the material, and often it will happen without a director. I was interested in the role of director in devised theater, and I was interested in the elements that make a strong ensemble. What are the things that I, as a director, have to do to make this feel like a safe space, to make this feel like an ensemble, to make this group of people function as one unit that can create? So I was curious about those things, but most devised processes are so long-term. You have to explore for so long and generate for so long, and I was worried that, realistically, with college actors and everyone doing a million other things, to do a legitimate devising process in one semester wouldn’t be possible. So I decided to find a text that I could begin with, as the foundation, and then riff and devise off of the text, and The Serpent was the perfect tool for that. It’s a very flexible text that allowed us to riff in different directions and explore and really dive into the themes of it and generate and then plug back into the text.

How did you cast the ensemble?

I cast it saying I was looking for writers, dancers, actors, musicians, anyone. More than anything I wanted people who I really wanted to work with, people who I wanted in the room every day and who would bring themselves to the process and fearlessly try.

What was your process like?

The whole process was very collaborative. The first half of the semester was really about playing, and while we maybe didn’t have as much time to put the thing together as we would have loved, having the first half of the semester to just play was awesome—to be able to say, for example, let’s all bring in ten images of what comes to mind when you hear “The Garden of Eden,” and then pick one image and make a movement score that represents that image to you in some way, and then someone else make sound for that movement score. It was a process of picking apart our stereotypes of God and challenging our stereotypes of what Eve looked like or what she felt. I remember one of my favorite rehearsals—I brought in an apple and told the actors to respond as Eve might have responded and that we were going to go until they couldn’t think of any other ways to respond. So one by one they took the apple—like a Whose Line Is It Anyway? type of improv game—and they each took a bite and responded a different way. We went for an hour and a half doing this.

What have you learned from the process?

I’m a little concerned that this piece is not very accessible, and I think one of the big things that I’m taking away from this is that I want to make work that is accessible. It bothers me if things are inaccessible, and that’s an important thing to have learned about my own work. I’ve also learned a lot about ensemble building and the tools that are most helpful in making an ensemble. Something I’m always working on is how to negotiate the relationship between actor and director. I’m always learning more about that. With every rehearsal I learn something new. And I’ve learned so much from them—each of the actors and designers has brought so much of themselves to the process.

At the end of the day, what is this play about for you?

I think it’s about being in the middle. I think it’s about transitional moments in our lives—the moment when we bite, the moment when we kill, the moment when we grow up. It’s about being between the beginning and the end, and always this experience of middle-ness because that’s what life is—there are transitional moments, but there are never stops.

The Serpent: Senior Capstone Project by Sivan Battat
Thursday, December 4 through Saturday, December 6, 2014 at 8pm
Patricelli ’92 Theater

FREE! Tickets required. Tickets will be made available on the day of each performance at the Wesleyan University Box Office. Off-campus guests may call the box office at 860-685-3355 after 10am to reserve tickets to be held in their names until fifteen minutes prior to curtain. On-campus guests must pick up their tickets at the box office. There is a two-ticket limit per person for free ticketed events.

“Creative Stages” to Premiere on CPTV on Fri. Nov. 28 at 8pm

creativestages_eventConnecticut Public Television (CPTV) premieres the original documentary Creative Stages, hosted by Ed Wierzbicki, on Friday, November 28, 2014 at 8pm. This half-hour special is devoted to the arts, as Mr. Wierzbicki takes viewers “inside the creative process” while interviewing Connecticut artists and exploring local arts organizations, including Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts.

Hear from Pamela Tatge, Director of the Center for the Arts, as well as from visiting artists including Margaret Jenkins (Artistic Director of San Francisco’s Margaret Jenkins Dance Company), Anna Snow, Kerry Andrew, and Sarah Dacey of London’s Juice Vocal Ensemble, and Juliana Romano ’04 (featured in the exhibition The Alumni Show II in the Ezra and Cecila Zilkha Gallery), about the importance of this creative space to Wesleyan University and its students, as well as to the art world at large. The segment also includes footage of Liz Lerman Dance Exchange’s Ferocious Beauty: Genome, the Wesleyan Theater Department production of The Seagull, and a co-taught course by Professor of History and East Asian Studies William Johnston and Visiting Artist in Dance and the College of East Asian Studies Eiko Otake.

The program will also feature Javier Colon, the Yale University Art Gallery and artist Red Grooms, Waterbury’s Palace Theater and the Waterbury Arts Magnet School, and the Haven String Quartet at New Haven’s Lyric Hall.

‘Tis the Season! Wesleyan University Orchestra Spreads Holiday Cheer (Nov. 22)

CFA Arts Administration Intern Chloe Jones ’15 talks to Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Nadya Potemkina, Isabel Csete ’18, David Lopez-Wade ’18, and Rachel Rosenman ’17 about the free Wesleyan University Orchestra concert taking place on Saturday, November 22, 2014 at 8pm in Crowell Concert Hall. 

orchestra_eventWinter is in the air, and the Wesleyan University Orchestra is here to usher in the holiday season. This Saturday, November 22, 2014 at 8pm in Crowell Concert Hall the Orchestra will perform an evening of popular holiday classics.

Free and family friendly, the concert will feature music from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, Leroy Anderson’s A Christmas Festival, Mykola Leontovych’s Carol of the Bells, and an orchestral suite from Disney’s Frozen.

Directed by Adjunct Assistant Professor of Music Nadya Potemkina, the Wesleyan University Orchestra is comprised of students, faculty, and members of the Middletown community. Together they are a group of roughly 50 musicians.

“It’s a really friendly atmosphere,” said violinist Isabel Csete ’18. “Everyone is here to have fun and to do what they love.”

This is the Orchestra’s second concert of the semester, and markedly different from their first, which featured a selection of movements from several large-scale symphonic works of a more serious tone than the holiday tunes of this Saturday’s concert.

“I want my students to be able to learn all styles and genres of music,” said Professor Potemkina. “You have to play The Christmas Festival at least once in your life as a performer in a symphony orchestra. It’s a staple of the popular repertoire.”

“It’s songs we know,” said clarinetist Rachel Rosenman ’17. “And it’s fun to sing along.”

Ms. Potemkina will invite the audience to sing along during The Christmas Festival, a collection of famous carols.

Alongside these holiday oldies is a suit from Disney’s recent film Frozen, released in 2013.

“There are a lot of different characters in Frozen, and you hear them in the different songs we play,” said Ms. Rosenman. “All of their voices come out in the music.”

Frozen is really fun because it’s so new,” said clarinetist David Lopez-Wade ’18. “Everyone knows it.”

“It’s a cheerful concert,” said Professor Potemkina.

What better way to kick off the holiday season?

Fall Photos: Hkeelee (Talk to Me)

Hkeelee (Talk to Me), a solo performance by Lebanese American writer, actress, and teaching artist Leila Buck ’99, exploring family, memory, and politics, took place on Wednesday, October 29, 2014, at CFA Hall. Images by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on flickr.

 

Fall Photos: Fall Faculty Dance Concert: To Not Forget Crimea – Uncertain Quiet of Indigenous Crimean Tatars

The premiere of To Not Forget Crimea: Uncertain Quiet of Indigenous Crimean Tatars, by Associate Professor of Dance Katja Kolcio in response to recent political changes in Crimea, was performed on Friday, October 24, 2014, at Memorial Chapel. Images from the warmup by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on flickr.

Fall Photos: Panel Discussion – To Not Forget Crimea: Uncertain Quiet of Indigenous Crimean Tatars

A panel discussion exploring indigenous Ukrainian perspectives of Crimea post Russian-invasion took place on Friday, October 24, 2014, at Fayerweather Beckham Hall. Images by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography.  Click here to view the full album on flickr.

Fall Photos: This Is It! The Complete Piano Works of Neely Bruce – Part IV

John Spencer Camp Professor of Music Neely Bruce presented the fourth of twelve CD-length recitals of his piano music on Sunday, October 12, 2014, at Crowell Concert Hall. Images by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on flickr.

 

Fall Photos: Closing Reception – Animal Dignity and an Ethics of Sight: Photography by Isa Leshko and Frank Noelker

Isha Leshko and Frank Noelker’s evocative “Animal Dignity and an Ethics of Sight” exhibition ran from September 23 through October 10, 2014, in the South Gallery of the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. The exhibition was curated by Lori Gruen, Professor of Philosophy, Environmental Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Photos from the October 9, 2014, closing reception. Images by Sandy Aldieri of Perceptions Photography. Click here to view the full album on flickr.