Olivia DrakeRon Jenkins, professor of theater, is the author of an article titled, "African-American Step Dancing meets Balinese "kecak'" published in the March 6 edition of The Jakarta Post. The article highlights a cross-cultural theater collaboration that brought together African-American step-dancers and Balinese "kecak" performers who create interlocking rhythms with choral chants. Jenkins wrote the article while in Pengosekan Village, Indonesia doing sabbatical research. Read the article here. Jenkins also wrote a book review titled, "Illuminating: The Enigma of Time," which appeared in the Feb. 24 edition of The Jakarta Post. The book, Time, Rites and Festivals in Bali, is written by Gusti Nyoman Darta, Jean…
David LowThe ever-busy Jeffrey Richards ’69 is the co-producer of a new musical The Bridges of Madison County, based on the hugely popular novel by Robert James Waller, which opened at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre on Broadway on February 20. The musical stars acclaimed actors Kelli O’Hara (Nice Work If You Can Get It, South Pacific) and Steven Pasquale (Rescue Me) with a score by Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown (The Last Five Years, Parade), a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Marsha Norman (The Secret Garden, ‘Night, Mother), and direction by Tony Award winner Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, The Light…
Charles Newell ’81 was recently awarded the prestigious Zelda Fichandler Award, which recognizes an outstanding director who is transforming the regional arts landscape through singular creativity and artistry in theater. He received the prize, an unrestricted grant of $5,000, from the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation (SDCF). Over the years, Newell has become one of the nation’s foremost theater directors. He is currently in his 19th year as artistic director of the Court Theatre, the renowned professional theater in residence at University of Chicago, where he had directed more than 40 productions. Newell comments: “To receive The Zelda Fichandler Award…
Best-selling author Sam Wasson ’03 has published Fosse (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), an authoritative and fascinating biography of the renowned dancer, choreographer, screenwriter, and director Bob Fosse. The only person ever to win Oscar, Emmy, and Tony awards in the same year, Fosse was a masterful artist in every entertainment medium he touched, and forever marked Broadway and Hollywood with his iconic style that would influence generations of performing artists. Wasson reveals the man behind the swaggering sex appeal by exploring Fosse’s reinventions of himself over a career that would result in his work on The Pajama Game, Pippin, Sweet…
Natalie Robichaud ’14In January 2014, the Dance Department will move from its space in the Center for the Arts to a new studio and office space on Cross Street. This will allow Dance Department faculty and students to be closer to the Bessie Schönberg dance studio on Pine Street. Construction at 160 Cross Street commenced July 9 with asbestos abatement and demolition of the interior finishes and walls. Interior framing begins Aug. 5. According to Alan Rubacha, director of Physical Plant, construction will be completed this fall. Dance Department faculty and students are currently using two studios and other shared spaces. Some dance faculty are…
Ron Jenkins '64, professor of theater, recently wrote an op-ed for The Jakarta Post about Run, a small Indonesian island. Run was “involved in a war between maritime empires” due to the presence of nutmeg on the island. While “the historic memory of Run’s inhabitants is vague, their pride… in the importance of their island’s past is vivid.” The residents of the small island no longer make a living with the spice trade and must have other jobs to provide for their families, but nutmeg is still a large part of the culture. “The small pale yellow nutmeg fruit still…
Gabe Rosenberg '16Jonathan Kalb ’81 is the recipient of two national awards for his recent book, Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater, published by The University of Michigan Press. Kalb, professor of theater at Hunter College and doctoral faculty member at The City University of New York, won the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism and the Theatre Library Association’s George Freedley Memorial Award. Great Lengths takes a close look at large-scale theater productions, often running more than five hours in length, which present special challenges to the artists and audiences. Recreating the experience of seeing the works, which include Tony Kushner’s…
Lauren RubensteinIn an op-ed published Oct. 18 in The Jakarta Post, Ronald Jenkins, professor of theater, writes about a disturbing new documentary in which “gangsters” responsible for mass murders in Indonesia from 1965-66 reenact their crimes as they remember them. "This enables audiences to witness the deaths, not as they happened, but as they are remembered by the killers," he writes. The documentary, "The Act of Killing" by Joshua Oppenheimer, “reveals the links between the human capacity for self-delusion and cinema’s ability to reedit the past into comforting fantasy," writes Jenkins.
The Magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education featured a story this month on Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins' Dante Project, "a program he created that attempts to use theater as a catalyst for positive change in prisons throughout the world." According to the article, the program, which has been facilitated in places as far flung as Italy and Indonesia, encourages incarcerated men and women to "write about points of connection between their own life stories and the experiences of the characters" in classics like Dante's Inferno. These writings are then used to create a script that is performed…
Ari Brand ’06 has received acclaim for playing the title role in My Name Is Asher Lev, a play produced by the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn. which completed its run on May 27. The play has been adapted by Aaron Posner from the Chaim Potok novel about a troubled, successful painter whose creative work clashes with the world of his parents. In a positive review of the production in The New York Times, Anita Gates writes: “If you are unfamiliar with the actors in the excellent new Long Wharf production of ‘My Name Is Asher Lev,’ just…
A play written by Quiara Alegria Hudes, visiting writer in theater, has won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The play, Water by the Spoonful, is about the search for meaning by a returning Iraq War veteran working in a sandwich shop in his hometown of Philadelphia. The soldier struggles to put aside the demons that haunt him while his mother, a recovering addict, battles her own demons. The drama premiered at the Hartford State Company in 2011. Hudes, 34, wrote the book for the Broadway musical In the Heights, which was created by and stars Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, is directed by…
Ron Jenkins, professor of theater, is featured in the Feb. 24 issue of The Boston Globe for teaching a class at York Correctional Facility. Jenkins and his Wesleyan students teach the "Activism and Outreach Through Theater" course to inmates. While behind bars at York, students take workshops with Jenkins, learning plays by Shakespeare and Dante. According to the article, Jenkins has focused his career on theater as a catalyst for social change. That has meant working in Italy with Nobel laureate Dario Fo (whose play “Johan Padan and the Discovery of the Americas’’ Jenkins directed at the American Repertory Theater in 2001)…