Outside The Box Theater Series

Theater’s Rashida Z. Shaw ’99 discusses spoken word artist Javon Johnson (Feb. 23)

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Javon Johnson

As a member of the Outside the Box Theater Series planning committee, Assistant Professor of Theater Rashida Z. Shaw ’99 said this campus needs to see Javon Johnson.  She and Dr. Johnson were Ph.D. students together at Northwestern University, he in Performance Studies and she in Theater and Drama. Because these are sister programs, they had a number of classes together and became friends.

Javon, a spoken word artist and scholar, is now based in Los Angeles, where he has a huge following.  He has performed at major venues around the country and has been featured on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, among other television programs. Next week, he’ll be in residence visiting classes and meeting with members of WeSLAM and other poets and theater students on campus.  And on Thursday evening, February 23, he performs in Crowell Concert Hall , as a part of this year’s Theater Department/Center for the Arts “Outside the Box Theater Series”.

“I used to have Javon come and perform in all of my political theater courses and in classes that dealt with solo performance.  He has the ability to integrate popular culture with scholarship and political critique – all in a humorous package. Spoken word artists straddle the line between poetry and theater. What I remember most about Javon is his captivating energy – he has a vocal dexterity and a physical range that make his performances interesting not only on a textual level, but you also get caught up in how he is delivering his poems, and that makes you want to know more about who he is,” said Dr. Shaw. “Not all spoken word artists can hit all of these levels.”  Dr. Shaw and Dr. Johnson were reunited at Northwestern when they both graduated last June, and Dr. Shaw looks forward to welcoming him to Wesleyan and to Middletown next week.

An Evening of Spoken Word with Javon Johnson
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8pm
Crowell Concert Hall
$15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Stories Being Told at the CFA (Feb. 10, 25 & 26)

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RISK!

Center for the Arts Director Pamela Tatge discusses “RISK!” (Feb. 10) and “SPILL” (Feb. 25 & 26).

Carolyn Cohen ’12 came to the CFA with an idea.  She and members or her comedy improv troupe said they wanted to bring Kevin Allison (of MTV’s The State) to Wesleyan to do a story slam with a twist.  Mr. Allison has created RISK! – a program that he has taken to college campuses around the country where he pairs luminaries in the comedy scene with students and other members of the community (check out what they did at Brown University here).  They all tell stories that show sides of themselves that they never thought they’d dare to share in public (that’s where the “risk” comes in).  Tonight, Wesleyan will welcome Mr. Allison and San Francisco-based comic W. Kamau Bell to tell stories alongside Wesleyan students.  The 7pm performance will include stories told by Jana Heaton ’14 and graduate student Jakob Schaeffer. The 10pm performance will include stories told by Carolyn Cohen ’12 and Virgil Taylor ’15. Both performances will feature music by Samuel Friedman ’13.

RISK!
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 7pm & 10pm

Crowell Concert Hall
$12 general public; $10 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $5 Wesleyan students*
*Wesleyan Students may purchase advance tickets to both performances for $8. Students that have already purchased tickets to one of the performances, may add the other performance at the discounted rate. This discounted rate is available through the Wesleyan University Box Office in the Usdan University Center.

SPILL

I also want to encourage all of our CFA friends to save the date to see the first-ever public showing of a play commissioned by the CFA through the Creative Campus Initiative.  SPILL is a stunning new work co-created by Leigh Fondakowski (Head Writer, The Laramie Project), and visual artist Reeva Wortel, and is based in part on interviews with people from the Gulf Coast of southern Louisiana in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill of April 2010, the largest environmental disaster in the history of the United States. The performances at Wesleyan are the first public showing of the performance/installation and will feature life-sized painted portraits of the interviewees, along with a choral reading of the play.

We met Leigh for the first time in 2008 when the Theater Department and CFA brought her to campus to lead a workshop on the Tectonic Theater’s “moment work” in conjunction with a residency by Moises Kaufman (founder of Tectonic).  In 2010, the CFA invited her to co-teach an environmental studies course with Wesleyan scientist Barry Chernoff.  Together the pair developed the Deepwater Horizon Tragedy: A Scientific and Artistic Inquiry course. By exploring the oil spill from both an artistic and scientific standpoint, students learned the science of the Gulf Coast region and the ecological impact of the oil spill as well as artistic tools and methods that enabled them to understand the science at a deeper level, and make the research and the meaning of that research visible to an audience through their art.

Leigh was so taken by what she saw and heard, she decided to create her own piece in a first-time collaboration with visual artist Reeva Wortel.  The text for the work is created from transcripts of interviews with people across the political spectrum – from Tea Party Republicans to life-long environmental conservationists, families who lost loved ones in the explosion on the oil rig, as well as oil-rig workers, clean-up workers, scientists, politicians, priests, and members of the diverse fishing communities along the coast.  What emerges is a story as complex as this region’s historic relationship to oil and the oil industry.

There are only fifty seats for each performance so we encourage you to reserve your tickets early.  Every performance will be followed by a talk-back with the creators.  They are anxious for your feedback as they prepare to take the work to New Orleans for the second anniversary of the spill in April, as well as an anticipated national tour in 2013.  We hope you will be a part of the birthing of this new work, and will be able to join us on February 25 or 26.

SPILL
Saturday, February 25, 2012 at 7pm & 10pm

Sunday, February 26, 2012 at 2pm & 7pm

Fayerweather Beckham Hall
, Wyllys Avenue
$12 general public; $10 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students, $5 Wesleyan students

JoAnna Bourain ’12 Interviews Mark Sussman ’85, Co-Founder of Great Small Works (Feb. 3 & 4)

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Great Small Works

Tonight and Saturday night, the Theater Department and the Center for the Arts present Great Small Works, a New York-based theater collective that creates work about contemporary issues. CFA Intern in Arts Administration JoAnna Bourain ’12  interviewed co-founder Mark Sussman ’85 about his time at Wesleyan and about the production you’ll see this weekend.

JoAnna Bourain ’12:  Great Small Works’ website lists the company’s major influences, many of whom I’ve encountered in my coursework at Wesleyan, namely Walter Benjamin, Bertold Brecht and Erik Satie. Tell me about some of your Wesleyan classes that influenced your creative process.

Mark Sussman ’85:  At Wesleyan I was a double major in Theater and Religion. The theater side of my education was mostly in directing and design and I knew that after Wesleyan I didn’t want to join the workforce of the American Theater. After working in a collaborative setting at Wesleyan with groups like Second Stage I knew I wanted to have a company and to work collectively in a series.

I bring from my own years at Wesleyan an interest in working in a more collective situation- this comes from the late Fritz DeBoer (Theater Department) who really inspired me. Certain experiences that I had in the Music Department along with the atmosphere within that department were really important to my creative development – both experimental music and world music. Susan Foster and Alvin Lucier co-taught a class that was essentially about site specific performance art, as well as a class by Jon Barlow who taught the work of John Cage and Erik Satie that brought together a really interdisciplinary vision of art. These classes helped me to make connections to my experience in theater. All of those experiences have stuck with me and help me to inform my every day creative processes.

JB:  Your website cites that Benjamin’s theory of the ‘state of emergency’ was an early catalyst for the first miniature theater piece. Considering the group’s beginnings in Bread and Puppet (a Vermont-based political theater company directed by Peter Schumann, who is speaking in CFA Hall on April 9) how do politics figure in Great Small Works?

MS:  I think we imagine everything that we do as having a political aspect. I think the reason that we are really drawn to Benjamin (who I first read in a tutorial in the Religion Department) was due to the fact that he looked at both aesthetics and politics and their inseparable relationship. If you look at something like the Republican Primary, we see that images play such an important role in how people are politically perceived. In Benjamin’s essay, The Thesis on the Philosophy of History, he talks about the notion of a Marxist view of history in which a state of emergency is used to encourage and create the rhetoric of a crisis where, actually, that state of emergency is a constant in capitalism. It’s a falsification to even think of it as a momentary state of emergency rather than a constant. That idea was we eventually applied to the toy theater.

Jenny Romaine, during the first Gulf War in the late 90s, remembers how the war was portrayed as a catastrophe day after day, and was filtered through us in the everyday banal act of opening The New York Times. The idea was to communicate this sense of every day terror as it is read in banal everyday actions.

The toy theater is an outmoded form that is low tech, handmade and has associations with folk theater.  It was a form we rediscovered from 19th century Europe that was a popular amateur form you would perform in the home.  It was something kids and adults would do together. Very often the scripts were melodramas from London’s West End. The popularity of the form coincided with colored lithography and with mass communication and mass culture; it’s a form that existed between printing, book making and puppetry.

JB:  Can you talk a little bit more about translating this particular process, a form that has more associations with the home than with the high-theater, into an actual show? I have read that you use a camera to project the miniature theater onto a screen in order to show the piece larger. This process creates an interesting tension between what the form stands for historically and what it becomes on the stage.

MS:  We started these [miniature theater] shows before we were even a company. We found that using the toy theater was a quick and easy way to talk about big ideas- there is a weird inverse relationship between the scale of the show and the ideas. In [Toy Theater of] Terror as Usual, one of the shows we will be performing, we see the performers operating the puppets. In a lot of puppet shows you never get to see the puppeteers. You see us operating the puppets, singing and talking and making sounds. That Brechtian act of revealing the performers is a big part of the show. I think that still works when we use the video camera and the projection when we are creating it before you. The image is taken apart and constructed in front of you. For an audience, this shows how history is created and constructed.

JB:  Why do you think that it is important that people see Great Small works?

MS:  It’s interesting and fun and unexpected. It is interesting how you see an idea and stories. Much of traditional theater expresses characters differently than we do – we present a story within a larger set of ideas with an analysis. We provide a visually appealing message and a way to comprehend and digest complicated ideas in an accessible form.

Great Small Works
Friday, February 3 and 
Saturday, February 4, 2012 at 8pm
CFA Hall, 287 Washington Terrace
Tickets: $15 general public; $12 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Each performance will be followed by a post-show discussion.

Cassandra Burrows, John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Jenny Romaine and Xavier will perform the works “Short, Entertaining History of Toy Theater”; “Toy Theater of Terror As Usual, Episode 12: Desert and Ocean”, a surreal serial drama using excerpted texts and images quickly cut from The New York Times, Hans Christian Anderson, Grace Lee Boggs, and Democracy Now!; and “Three Graces”, a “cantastoria” (picture-based storytelling work) in which three mythical graces – Harmony, Strategy and Splendor – float down to earth for an op-art romp inspired by Grace Paley, Grace Kelly, Grace Jones and Grace Lee Boggs.

Tell Us About It!

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From now through January 17, share your thoughts about the spring events at the Center for the Arts in one (or both!) of the following ways:

1) Like us on Facebook and write something about our spring events on our Wall.
2) Follow us on Twitter and compose a tweet about our spring events (be sure to mention @WesCFA).

Everyone who writes about our spring events on Facebook or Twitter will be entered to win some excellent prizes, including the following:

—three tickets to see UConn Women’s Basketball play St. John’s (Saturday, February 18, 7pm, Gampel Pavilion, Storrs) courtesy of WNPR
—gift cards to Javapalooza Cafe courtesy of the Hartford and New Haven Advocates
—movie vouchers courtesy of Destinta Theatres
—arts books courtesy of Wesleyan University Press
—earbud headphones courtesy of Wesleyan Information Technology Services
—vintage posters courtesy of the Davison Art Center
—picture frame Center for the Arts magnets

Spring Events include World, U.S., & Connecticut Premieres

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We hope that you will take advantage of all that the Center for the Arts has to offer in the coming months:

In keeping with our tradition of welcoming the world to Wesleyan at the CFA, you will have the opportunity to discover one of Australia’s most adventurous contemporary dance companies (Chunky Move); a sizzling jazz guitarist/vocalist from Benin (Lionel Loueke); and an Argentine quartet that celebrates the tango music of Buenos Aires (Fernando Otero).

And in keeping with our interest in the intersection of art and science, the CFA has commissioned two works that will have their first performances at Wesleyan in conjunction with Feet to the Fire: Fueling the Future. SPILL, by Leigh Fondakowski and Reeva Wortel, is a visual art/performance installation that explores the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The work will debut at Beckham Hall in February. Composer Paula Matthusen, new to Wesleyan’s music faculty, will premiere work divided by time at the Van Vleck Observatory. The sound installation is a reflection of how the scientific definition of energy resonates and clashes with cultural and historical concepts.

Other highlights include the world premiere of a new multi-part suite by jazz vibraphonist and music faculty member Jay Hoggard; the U.S. premiere of Quicksand, a provocative new work by inDANCE, the highly acclaimed Toronto-based contemporary dance company directed by Wesleyan Artist in Residence Hari Krishnan; and a 21st-century examination of Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, directed by Theater Department Chair Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento.

We invite you to stretch your imagination, contemplate new ideas and celebrate all that the CFA’s faculty, students, and visiting artists and companies have to offer.

Best wishes,

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

P.S. If you are looking for arts interaction over the holidays, please attend Middnight on Main, New Year’s Eve on Main Street in Middletown.

Students Interview Dewey Dell Company Members

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Students in Professor Ellen Nerenberg’s Advanced Italian class (ITAL221) interviewed the company members of Dewey Dell soon after they arrived on campus.  The students then translated the interviews into English, so that members of our campus and community can get to know them better.  Enjoy!

Eugenio Resta

Interview by Chelsea Reutcke, Class of 2012, Advanced Italian I

This weekend I sat down to talk with Eugenio Resta, of the avant-garde Italian theatre group Dewey Dell. The quartet consisting of Eugenio and Agata, Teodora and Demetrio Castellucci was first formed at a rhythmic movement and philosophy school in Cesena in 2007. Teodora gathered the group together to put on a small performance. Now they have five shows in their repertory and tour Europe. The group’s visit to Wesleyan is also its premiere in the United States. Eugenio commented on the excitement of performing to an audience made up largely of students, saying how rare an occurrence that would be in Europe. Each member plays a specific role in the group and Eugenio’s task is to design and oversee the lighting and scenery. Although he studied set design in Urbino, Italy, he has had no formal training in lighting and has learned as he goes along. The type of sets and lighting required vary from one show to another, ranging from simple to complex designs, depending on the mood he tries to invoke. If a problem concerning the set or lights arises during a show, Eugenio says he tries to stay level-headed and calm as he works through the issue, and the show continues on. The individual performances always vary though, so company members don’t get bored, he joked. He also explained that Dewey Dell members strive to always be astonished by their work. As far as any specific lessons he wants imparted on the audience, he said “Niente,” nothing. He wants the public to see something they had never seen before, a new world far from their own, and to take away an emotion that they felt while watching the performance.

Interview by Alana Rodriguez, Class of 2013, Advanced Italian I

Following study at the Stoa in the city of Cesena, Italy, the avant-garde theater group named Dewey Dell has been performing since 2007. They have performed in different European countries and now, for the first time, in the United States here at Wesleyan. Within Dewey Dell, Eugenio Resta is responsible for the shows’ set and lighting design. He has various sources of inspiration including movement, and when designing a set attempts to create the environment. He also utilizes special effects, such as smoke and lasers, to visually enhance the scene for the audience. The other group members-Agata, Demetrio, and Teodora Castelluci-are siblings and he enjoys working with them and helping them with other tasks involved in creating a show for performance. For the audiences here at Wesleyan, who are mostly university students, he wants to create a world that doesn’t exist and that evokes many emotions. He likes classical genres in theater and design that is very imaginative since, according to him, there are ample sources of inspiration for one idea in theater. In addition to Dewey Dell, Eugenio studies and works other kinds of jobs. Yet for him, Dewey Dell is not just a job, but a passion.

Agata Castellucci

Interview by Grace Asleson, Class of 2013, Advanced Italian I

Last Saturday (September 10), I had the opportunity to meet with Agata Castellucci, a twenty-year-old actress, choreographer dancer, and member of the experimental theater group, Dewey Dell, which she helped to found with her sister, brother, and another friend. When I met Agata, I didn’t know what to expect—she is my age and has already traveled the world. She has not only established a career in the performing arts, but has also co-created her own group. Oh and did I mention that this is all while she continues to study at the University of Milan? Needless to say, I was intimidated.

But, as I found out, she is not only down to earth, but she was also great fun and happily attended a local concert with my friends and I on Friday night. When I asked Agata about Dewey Dell, she told me that the name was inspired by a character in William Faulkner’s novel As I Lay Dying. From this name, and support from her artist parents, Agata and the rest of Dewey Dell have created something potent, eerie, and totally unexpected. Friday night’s performance was an explosion of energy and talent with elaborate costumes and sharp staccato movements.

Soon into our interview, it became apparent that Agata is an old soul—she began to travel with Dewey Dell while still in high school, learning about different cultures, which in turn fuel her ideas. But Agata, in many ways, felt like she could be a peer and a friend. She admitted that the siblings do not always agree on choreography, but sometimes the disagreements spark greater creativity. I look forward to seeing more of Agata’s style and grace at Dewey Dell’s final performance this weekend, Cinquanta Urlanti 
Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti, to be performed in the CFA Theater on Friday, September 16 at 8pm.

Interview by Isabella Cucchi, Class of 2013, Advanced Italian I

It was incredibly enlightening to speak with Agata Castellucci about her past in theater, her roles within Dewey Dell, and her impressions of both Italian and American culture. Agata explained that her passion for choreography and theater began at a young age.  Because their parents own a well-established, internationally renowned theater company in Italy, Agata and her siblings were constantly exposed to the arts, and cultivated an appreciation for theater from an early age. This ultimately led to the Castelluccis’ desire for and decision to create a niche for themselves, separate from their parents’ sphere of influence. (According to Agata, the group decided on the name Dewey Dell for the simple reason that the four members happened coincidentally to be reading Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying at the same time.) While sibling rivalry can sometimes hinder their artistic process, Agata reported that the group generally gets along well, and that each member contributes something unique and important. As the youngest member of Dewey Dell, Agata is inspired by her older siblings. At one point in the interview, she fondly described her household growing up as “never silent,” with music booming constantly  from her brothers’ rooms. This, she explained, offered yet another source of appreciation for the arts, and specifically for artistic diversity. Agata explained that she now listens to everything from classical music to electronic dance music to rock and roll, and all of these genres affect the group’s work. Dewey Dell did not achieve immediate success, however. Agata noted that her professors at school did not initially approve of the movement, and group members were forced to make excuses for occasionally missing class or turning in a late assignment. Since overcoming these scholastic obstacles, Dewey Dell has traveled the world, exploring different universities, groups, and cultures. Agata remarked that she loves America, noting its differences from Italy, and especially from her small town of Cesena. She, like all the Dewey Dell members, is very happy to explore Wesleyan and all it has to offer. She is particularly excited to have the experience of working with her own age group in pursuit of something she loves.

Teodora Castellucci

Interview by Sydney Lowe, Class of 2013, Advanced Italian I

The first time I met Teodora, she wasn’t wearing much makeup—just a t-shirt and jeans along with a bright smile. I was slightly embarrassed by my newly-remembered Italian (tenses and vocabulary which I lost over the long summer), but was excited at the opportunity to get to know this rising international star. Born in the small town of Cesena, Italy, at 23, Teodora is already an incredibly accomplished dancer, choreographer, costume designer and founding member of the avant-garde performance group Dewey Dell. With her co-company members, she has performed around the world (Barcelona, London, Berlin, and Italy, to name a few venues). Even though she never formally studied dance, she says that to be a dancer has been her dream since she was a young girl.. In 2007, her dream became a “family-affair” reality when she started working with her equally talented siblings Agata and Demetrio, and their close friend Eugenio Resta.  à elle vide is an avant-garde performance piece that revolves around the curious void between a rooster (Teodora) and a scorpion (Agata). The second piece that will be performed at Wesleyan on September 16, Cinquanta Urlanti Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti, is about the blurred borders between sailors, the ship, the wind and the sea. Teodora says that although their performances have no specific objective, they want the audience to try to understand their movements without using words—to have their eyes talk for them the way Dewey Dell Bundren in Faulkner’s book As I Lay Dying does. (The group’s name, Dewey Dell, is a tribute to one of Teodora’s favorite authors, the strange yet captivating Faulkner.) When I attended their performance later that night that was exactly what I saw. The Teodora on stage seemed to be a completely different person from the young woman I’d talked to in the middle of Usdan only hours earlier. It is clear that Teodora speaks with her precise movements, her bold red makeup, the music and more; more than just her eyes. “People always tell you, ‘Yes, go follow your dream!’ It seems very cliché. But now, I am actually following my dream and, honestly, it couldn’t be better.”

Interview by Edgar Pliaskis, Class of 2014, Advanced Italian I

The contrasting colors of the posters of Dewey Dell around Wesleyan campus attract the attention of many. And although everyone has a chance to see the fantastic performances of this experimental theater group Dewey Dell, I got a chance to meet and chat with one of the performers, Teodora Castellucci.

As we slowly assembled a conversation, I learned that generally, two different animals such as a cat and a scorpion influence each performance. This influence is usually gets reflected through the costumes that Teodora designs herself (seen on the posters.) Theodora noted that Dewey Dell does not have a real mission. Rather, it wishes the audience to perceive the movements of the choreography and build their own interpretation.

This group has performed multiple times throughout the members’ native Italy as well as in London, Paris, Barcelona and just recently the United States. I urge everyone to show up to at least one of the performances that Dewey Dell has put together for us to enjoy.

Demetrio Castellucci

Interview by Rosie Keogh, Class of 2013, Advanced Italian I

The Wesleyan community is thrilled to have the avant-garde Italian theatre group Dewey Dell on campus.  Demetrio Castelucci, co-founder of the group, and its musical engineer, is enthusiastic to see Wesleyan students’ response. The music for the two productions– à elle vide, and Cinquantana Urlanti Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta—is largely electronic.  The experimental, non-verbal sound reflects the company’s muse:  Dewey Dell Bundren in William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Dewey Dell, one of the novel’s stream of consciousness narrators, is nearly mute. The Dewey Dell production, correspondingly, uses expressive non-verbal music and visual onomatopoeia to relate to its audience.  The music employs both computer technology and an electronic orchestra. The internationally traveled group hopes to return to Wesleyan with a student workshop on campus sometime before this December.

Dewey Dell: Cinquanta Urlanti 
Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti
United States Premiere
Friday, September 16, 2011 at 8pm
CFA Theater
$18 general public; $15 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Dewey Dell is an event in Outside the Box, a series of groundbreaking performances and discussions in theater, co-sponsored by the Theater Department and Center for the Arts.

Dewey Dell at Wesleyan: A U.S. Debut (September 9, 10 & 16)

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Dewey Dell
Dewey Dell (left to right): Teodora Castellucci, Demetrio Castellucci, Agata Castellucci, and Eugenio Resta. Cesena, Italy. April 2009.

In the summer of 2009, Associate Professor and Chair of the Theater Department, Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento, attended a festival of contemporary European performance at Centrale Fies, a venue that invests in the creation of new performance work located just outside of Trento, in Northern Italy.  There, she discovered Dewey Dell and was so taken by their work, their process and sheer talent, that she wanted to find a way to bring them to Wesleyan for an extended residency.

Formed in 2007 by Teodora, Demetrio, Agata Castellucci and Eugenio Resta, Dewey Dell’s founders grew up as artistic collaborators, sharing the important formative experience of the Stoa, a rhythmic movement and philosophy school of the Sociètas Raffaello Sanzio based in Cesena, Italy. The name Dewey Dell is a tribute to the young girl in William Faulkner’s 1930 novel, As I Lay Dying.

Nascimento wrote to me upon her return from Italy:

“Dewey Dell is the strongest representative of what is most innovative and sophisticated in the new generation of European stage artists. They perfectly integrate the actor’s bodies, visual elements, and soundscape to create performances that may at first resemble pure dance, but ultimately possess a dramaturgical treatment that brings them closest to theater. Through the exploration of themes ranging from an Eastern perspective on raw animal energy to an abstract interpretation of Western political history in the figure of Richard the Lionheart, their performances are at the same time nostalgic and deeply marked by post-modern art. Visually stunning and musically powerful, above all their pieces create a truly arresting experience for the audience.”

The Theater Department and Center for the Arts joined forces with Ellen Nerenberg, Professor of Italian and Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literature, to create a two-week residency for the company that includes the presentation of à elle vide, the earliest work in their repertoire, and Cinquanta Urlanti Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti, their most recent work.  In between the two performances, the company members will be visiting with five different Italian classes and conducting a seven-day workshop on their generative process with theater and dance students.  At the same time, the members of Dewey Dell, who are close in age to Wesleyan students, will be experiencing life on an American campus.

Nascimento says, “my objective for their residency is to allow for a true exchange between Dewey Dell and Wesleyan students; the company is not only teaching a workshop, but also attending classes, eating at USDAN, socializing with students, meeting as many members of the Wesleyan community as possible; in short: establishing relationships and experiencing the university as maybe exchange/international students would.”

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

Dewey Dell: à elle vide
United States Premiere
Friday, September 9 and Saturday, September 10, 2011 at 8pm
Patricelli ’92 Theater
$10 general public; $8 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $5 Wesleyan students

Dewey Dell: Cinquanta Urlanti 
Quaranta Ruggenti Sessanta Stridenti
United States Premiere
Friday, September 16, 2011 at 8pm
CFA Theater
$18 general public; $15 senior citizens, Wesleyan faculty/staff, non-Wesleyan students; $6 Wesleyan students

Fall events include U.S. & New England Premieres, Navaratri Festival, Lucier Celebration

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Center for the Arts Fall 2011At a time when so many of us are turning to YouTube to see performances by our favorite artists, we can lose sight of what it’s like to experience live performance. This fall, the Center for the Arts offers you a wide range of performances and exhibitions that will connect you with some of the brightest minds in contemporary art-making, transport you to foreign lands, and inspire you to think about the world in new ways—and the performers will never be more than 69 feet away!

We recognize that it has become increasingly difficult to classify a work as strictly music, dance, theater, visual art, or film as more artists are blurring the boundaries among disciplines. So we have merged our visiting artist performances into a single Performing Arts Series. We hope this will lead you to cross the boundaries of your own comfort zone and discover new artists and art forms.

Highlights of the fall season include the American premiere of the ground-breaking Italian movement theater collective Dewey Dell and the return of Philadelphia’s Rennie Harris Puremovement, that has been a trailblazer in taking hip hop forms from the street to the concert stage for nearly twenty years. We’ll also host two New England premieres: the astoundingly brilliant throat-singers and musicians from Inner Mongolia, AnDa Union and, continuing our collaboration with the College of the Environment, we’ll welcome Water is Rising, a breathtaking performance by a group of 35 dancers and musicians from the Pacific Island atolls, the first islands predicted to be submerged due to climate change. In November, the Music Department and CFA join forces to celebrate Alvin Lucier, internationally renowned composer who has just retired after serving on our faculty for four decades. Alvin Lucier: A Celebration features a major symposium, concert series, film screenings and an exhibition curated by Andrea Miller-Keller.

With performances and exhibitions by visiting artists, students and faculty, there is an extraordinary amount of good work to see at Wesleyan this fall, with 60% offered free to the public or at ticket prices that make us one of the most affordable venues in the state. Tickets are on sale now online. Starting at 10am on Tuesday, August 16, you can call or visit the Wesleyan University Box Office at 860-685-3355 to receive a 10% discount on your purchase of four or more Performing Arts Series events (and if you buy six or more “Performing Arts Series” events, you’ll save 15%!) Starting August 16, you will also be able to buy subscription packages for both the 35th annual Navaratri Festival (a 15% savings) as well as the Alvin Lucier Celebration (a 25% savings!)

Please join us. We appreciate that you believe, as we do, in the power of the arts to add meaning to our lives and to remind us of the capacity of the human spirit. Thanks for making Wesleyan’s CFA your center for the arts.

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts

Sarah Ruhl: The Interplay Between the Actual and the Magical

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This Thursday, playwright Sarah Ruhl will pay her first visit to campus for this year’s Outside the Box playwright’s residency. (Past playwrights have included Tony Kushner, Charles Mee, Moises Kaufman and David Henry Hwang.)  As a part of her residency, Ruhl will give a lecture on Thursday evening, visit classes and meet with the cast of the Theater Department’s upcoming performance of her Melancholy Play.

Ruhl, who grew up in Illinois, started her career as a poet and published her first book by the age of 20. Now she writes imaginative and unusual plays that often feature unlikely, dreamlike occurrences. In a 2008 article in The New Yorker, Ruhl said that her characters exist in both “…the real world and also a suspended state.”

Routine activities continue amidst strange developments—in Melancholy Play, for example, one character turns into an almond!—and highlight “the interplay between the actual and the magical.” Amidst its elements of fantasy, Ruhl’s work raises serious questions about human experience and psychology. Melancholy Play presents moments of genuine sorrow. But Ruhl creates these moments while maintaining a witty humor that keeps the tone of the play lighthearted; she explains: “Lightness isn’t stupidity. It’s actually a philosophical and aesthetic viewpoint, deeply serious, and has a kind of wisdom—stepping back to be able to laugh at horrible things even as you’re experiencing them.”

Ken Prestininzi, the director of a 2007 production of Melancholy Play at Brown University (where Ruhl received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in 1997 and 2001) suggests that Ruhl’s upbringing could be responsible for the distinctive tone of her work, pointing out that Ruhl “grew up in the Midwest, where there’s this assumption that you’re supposed to smile, mow your lawn and get on with things. You’re not supposed to stare out the window and think of a line from a poem for a week.”

Pamela Tatge
Director, Center for the Arts