David LowThomas Kail ’99 will direct Magic/Bird, an upcoming Broadway play based on the relationship between basketball superstars Larry Bird and Earvin “Magic” Johnson, due to open on March 21. The work is produced by Fran Kirmser and Tony Ponturo who also produced Lombardi, the Broadway play about Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi, which Kail also directed. The new production has a cast of six actors and contains 20 scenes lasting 90 minutes. The play will try to capture the energetic pace of a basketball game while covering a number of events in the lives of the two legendary players.…
In The Dance Claimed Me (Yale University Press), Peggy MALS ’77 and Murray Schwartz provide an intimate perspective on the life of Pearl Primus (1919–1994) who made her mark on the dance scene in 1943 with impressive works incorporating social and racial protest into their dance aesthetic. Friends and colleagues of the dancer, the authors explore her influences on American culture, dance, and education. The Schwartzes trace Primus’s journey from her childhood in Port of Spain, Trinidad, through her rise as an influential international dancer, an early member of the New Dance Group (whose motto was “Dance is a weapon"),…
The Hartford Courant reports that Joshua Borenstein ’97 has been the named the Long Wharf Theatre’s managing director after a national search. He will oversee a $5 million budget and a staff of 64 full-time employees. Borenstein held the job of interim managing director for the past six months and previously worked at the theater from 2003 to 2007 in several positions, most recently as associate managing director. For the last two years, he was project manager with the arts research firm, AMS in Fairfield. Before joining Long Wharf, he worked at Boston’s Huntington Theatre Company through Theatre Communications Group’s’…
Black teenage girls are often negatively represented in national and global popular studies, either as being “at risk” for teenage pregnancy, obesity, or sexually transmitted diseases, or as helpless victims of inner city poverty and violence. These pervasive popular representations often portray Black adolescents’ consumer and leisure culture as corrupt, uncivilized, and pathological. In her insightful new study She’s Mad Real (New York University Press), Oneka LaBennett '94 draws on more than a decade of researching teenage West Indian girls in the Flatbush and Crown Heights sections of Brooklyn to argue that Black youth are, in fact, strategic consumers of…
In her first novel, Among the Wonderful (Steerforth Press), Stacy Carlson ’96 brings to life 1840s New York City, a time when Phineas T. Barnum is a young man, freshly arrived to the area and still unknown to the world. Barnum transforms a dusty natural history museum into a place of human wonders and an extraordinary live animal menagerie, which will become not only the nation's most popular attraction, but also a catalyst that ushers America out of a culture of glassed-in exhibits and into the modern age of entertainment. In this kaleidoscopic setting, Carlson focuses on two compelling characters.…
Mike White ’92 has created (with actress Laura Dern) a new comedy-drama for HBO, Enlightened, which premiered on HBO in early October. White also wrote all 10 episodes for the first season, and directed two of them. Other directors include co-executive producer Miguel Arteta ’89, Jonathan Demme, Phil Morrison, and Nicole Holofcener. Enlightened tells the story of Amy Jellicoe, played by Dern, a self-destructive executive at a large company who has a hugely dramatic meltdown in her office and is sent to a New Age treatment center in Hawaii, where she swims with sea turtles and heals. She returns to…
Jim Drummond ’69 has written a new collection of quirky, funny, and sometimes disturbing short stories, The Coyotes Forgive You (Mongrel Empire Press). His sardonic tales take place in a world where the unexpected is a sure deal, strangers and acquaintances are often more reliable than family, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Themes, settings, and characters from the author’s past and present adventures appear throughout the stories, which contain elements of science fiction, surrealism, and dystopian writing. Drummond says, “Earlier days as a tank driver, drover in a cattle sale barn, murderer of mesquite trees with chainsaws…
The Jewish Museum (Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, 212-423-3200, www.thejewishmuseum.org) in New York City will present Jem Cohen: NYC Weights and Measures, a video installation, from Nov. 4 to March 25, 2012 in the museum’s Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center. In his 2006 video (6 minutes, 15 seconds long), Jem Cohen ’84 captures the noise and bustle as well as the beauty and tranquility of city life. His work incorporates an intricate soundscape and juxtaposes such moments as a ticker-tape parade, subway riders’ daily commute, and a man pausing for a cigarette. Cohen says, “Sometimes I just wander…
Photographer Stephen Gorman ’82 (www.stephengorman.com) has published Arctic Visions: Encounters at the Top of the World, a lavish and memorable tribute to the land, sea, wildlife, and people of Canada’s North. Gorman traveled throughout the Canadian Arctic and the Northwest Passage aboard the expedition ship Lyubov Orlova for four seasons, giving him an unprecedented opportunity to take pictures of some of our planet’s most spectacular landscapes and wildlife populations. The book’s stunning images and lively text offer a true sense of the spirit and being of this vast, awesome, and historic region. The publication received the 2011 Benjamin Franklin Award…
This fall, Wesleyan University’s Center for Film Studies will sponsor a special film and speaker series titled WOMEN AND FILM. This series is dedicated to work made by women. Each installment of the series will feature a movie helmed by a female filmmaker, to be followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker herself. Made possible by special support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, WOMEN AND FILM will comprise a wide variety of cinematic experiences, including short films, documentaries and a romantic feature film. “I am thrilled that the Academy is sponsoring WOMEN AND FILM because I’ve…
Visiting instructor in film studies Sam Wasson ’03 conducted a fascinating Q&A about Blake Edwards’ classic American film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which was shown on Sept. 28 at the Goldsmith Family Cinema as part of the ongoing Adaptation Series, a collaboration between the Friends of the Wesleyan Library and the Center for Film Studies which examines the translation of literary works to the screen. Wasson is the author of The New York Times best seller Fifth Avenue, 5 A.M.: Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Dawn of the American Woman, the first complete account of the making of the beloved movie…
Justin Kurian ’94 has published his first novel, The Sunlight Lies Beyond (Regent Press), whose protagonist John Arden, a disillusioned American from a Wall Street background, lives in Romania in 1992, a country in transition three years after the collapse of the Communist regime. His life becomes entangled with various people caught in a tumultuous world, among them actors at the National Opera and a talented, ambitious businesswoman who is repressed by society. Arden finds that if he can successfully confront the tribulations ahead, he may possibly vanquish his inner demons. Kurian recently shared some thoughts about working on the…