LORENZEN | Any Person, Any Study… Except for the Performing Arts

But, when a high school applicant researches Cornell’s Performing and Media Arts Department, they first find Cornell’s history of gutting their funding. The major itself — encompassing film, theater and dance — was created after the Cornell administration slashed the department’s budget by a million dollars. Cornell took the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance and cut its budget so severely that it could not survive anymore. When I researched Cornell in high school, that is what I found. And that is why I initially didn’t see myself applying.

Questioning Power: An Interview with Gloria Oladipo ’21

Gloria Oladipo ’21: “I think people should care about The Good Victim because I would hope that people are interested in diving into these questions of sexual assault and sexual violence, especially on a campus like our own. I think that people should show up to support a majority Black cast, and an all-Black creative team. I think that people should want to engage in art that’s challenging.”

Love in Free Fall: A Review of Bright Half Life

“Falling in love” is a fascinating expression. In my native language, Chinese, the two most-used equivalents of the phrase compare love to things one could physically fall into, such as a river or a net, but English expression might just be superior because of its ambiguity. Do we fall into love, or are we falling when we’re in love? The Kitchen Theater’s Bright Half Life seems to say it’s both. Written by Tanya Barfield and directed by Sara Lampert Hoover, Bright Half Life is a two-women play that follows the story of Vicky (Shannon Tyo) and Erica (Jennifer Bareilles) through the decades.

Romance, Blood, Calamity: Murder Ballad at Risley

Murder Ballad (directed by Cameron Krane ’17) is just what you want out of a Friday night as Risley Theater. It’s fun and exciting, a little bit messed up, well executed and small-scale. The musical has four main characters — a woman, her two love interests and a narrator. It’s a fairly typical New York City love triangle. Sara (Ana Carpenter ’19) is stuck between the respectable NYU poet and the sketchy downtown bartender.

CHAZAN | Creon’s America

“What report do you come bringing us from god?”

“A good one! For I say, things hard to bear might chance to mean good luck — if, by some chance they turn out straight.”

Thus, Creon reintroduces himself to Oedipus after a long journey, bearing significant news. His report is of course not good. This I the first thing I said as I walked onstage for three nights, in the recent Classics department production of Sophocles’ Oedipus. This circular, beguiling phrase, swollen with hope and deceit, has come to haunt me.

Charismatic Commitment: Company at Ithaca College

Company (written by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth; director, Catherine Weidner; musical director, Christopher Zemliauskas) as a play itself doesn’t have a particularly dramatic plot the way a Greek tragedy or a Shakespearian comedy might — set up as a series of vignettes, the play focuses on exploring the topic of marriage through the eyes of Robert (Liam Snead), or “Bob/Bobby” as his friends affectionately call him, a 35-year-old man who just can’t seem to get married. Despite that Robert is well-liked, attractive and well-established, Robert’s friends are disheartened that is he still isn’t married by the time of his 35th birthday; on the other hand, he mostly works hard to deny that he is completely terrified of committing. In looking at the very different personalities and marriages of Robert’s friends, Company seeks to explore how marriage changes and affects people. In the eyes of ever-unmarried Robert, the premise leads to a fun look at the dynamics of a group which Robert is always third-wheeling his married friends. While the vignette set-up of the play itself might make some find the story stale or less dynamic, Ithaca College Theatre Arts’ Company does an excellent job in creating a colorful and engaging story through an incredibly distinctive cast.

Contemporary Sensibilities and Progression: Blood Wedding at Ithaca College

Article updated. 

Even before the show begins, the set at the Clark Theatre in Dillingham Center of Ithaca College is striking — clean lines, neat delineations of space with blues and whites, and solid colors immediately give a modern tone to Blood Wedding, the famous tragedy of Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. Set in twentieth century rural Spain, Blood Wedding tells the story of an on-going curse of a family feud and deception as it explores the story and aftermath of a young woman who abandons her own wedding for her former lover. Though such a story could easily slip into the realm of cliché, the clean aesthetic and direction of Ithaca College’s “Blood Wedding” keeps the narrative fresh and enthralling. Director Norm Johnson’s Blood Wedding remains contemporary in great part due to the set and costumes. The creative team (Scenic design: Emily Weisbecker; Costume design: Victoria Pizappi; Lighting and projection design: Steve TenEyck, assisted by Teddy Kosciuszek; Sound design: Don Tindall) does an incredible job with a nod to Lorca’s surrealist links — the look is simple but timeless.

The Candid Man’s Guide to Humor, Evil and Theatre

“Il avait le jugement assez droit, avec l’esprit le plus simple ; c’est, je crois, pour cette raison qu’on le nommait Candide.”

Theodicy is the central problem for any incarnation or lyricized reworking of Voltaire’s novella Candide. The eponymous character runs the Weltanschauung-gamut in his pained, hopelessly naïve globe-trekking, alternatively stumbling into phenomenal luck and misfortune, being swindled out of everything he owns or plucking golden pebbles off the streets of Eldorado. It is equal parts absurd travelogue and philosophical disenchantment, what the tale of the Buddha would have been if written by a splenetic Frenchman. It is an irreverent parable with a moral, a Bildungsroman and, on a 21st century stage, a pastiche suprême. It lends itself, if one may be so bold, to musical theatre.