The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/rrw28cornell-edu/)
Two weeks into my semester in Dakar, I began to appreciate my new urban landscape. I began to notice little (or big) details that epitomized how I would come to describe the city. I established landmarks for myself, while shortcuts and familiar faces at fruit stands emerged in my neighborhood. These two anecdotes, very early in my stay, are some of my favorite (and archetypal) images of my trip.
Amusing Anecdote #1: Finding my way home
Love, sex, and not-quite-rock and roll come together in Cornell’s newest play to go up this season, Alan Aykbourn’s Bedroom Farce, which opened October 17 at the Schwartz Center. This hilarious comedy about four intertwining couples and their own separate (and intertwining) problems is a romp, almost literally.
Sunday September 2, theatre lovers got a special treat. The Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts hosted the annual Resident Professional Teaching Associate (RPTA) Showcase. The showcase introduces the year’s professional actors, who come to Cornell from all over the country to teach at the Schwartz, and gives them free reign to show their stuff. This year, the six actors teaching and performing at the Schwartz are returning actors Dennis Fox and Carolyn Goelzer and first-time Ithacans Jeffrey Guyton, Paul Hebron, J.G. Hertzler (returning after performing as a guest artist in last season’s Inherit the Wind) and Sonja Lanzener. The showcase varies from year to year, and is completely put together by the RPTAs.
I spent the past semester in Senegal. Senegal is in Africa. This is the part I love. When I explain that I have been living in Africa, I get a look of awe and admiration at having spent four and a half months in such an unusual place. It sounds so foreign, as images of sand and heat and mud huts pop into people’s heads. Most people associate Africa, (not specific countries with in Africa, or even regions of Africa, but simply Africa as if rather than being a continent it represents one big nation) with poverty, war, and its unsuccessful struggle to catch up with the rest of the world. All of these things do exist on the continent of Africa, but what many people overlook are the nations, the cities, and the individual people that live there.
This week and next week, the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance presents a night of laughter with the witty comedy Picasso at the Lapin Agile by Steve Martin. The second show of the season, Picasso lightens things up after the kickoff performance, All My Sons. The play takes place in the bar The Lapin Agile in 1904, frequented by “artist types” such as Picasso and in this case, Einstein. Directed by Stephen Cole and staring both students and Equity Actors (RPTAs), the show is a belligerent night of intelligent humor, if you can imagine such a thing.
Pizza seems like an easy dinner to make. That’s why I chose it. But I was wrong. In my apartment, we do family dinners twice a week. Other people are adventurous and make things like chili, baked ziti, chicken and even steak. I, on the other hand, embrace my inability to cook, and make things like stir fry (throw the veggies in with a sauce bought at Wegmans and you’ve got a meal!) and spaghetti with sauce. My big meal this year was lasagna. Although lasagna appears to have a lot of ingredients, it is really just like playing with Lincoln logs only culinary-style. You just stack everything up, stick it in the oven and it’s ready in an hour.
The Schwartz Center may seem like an innocent part of the Collegetown landscape, a building that you either walk by every day or have never seen before in your life. But unbeknownst to a majority of Cornell students is the theatre inside, which puts on a whole season of plays and performances. This year, the season is starting off with a monumental play written by the great American playwright, Arthur Miller. All My Sons, directed by Artistic Director and Inauguration speaker David Feldshuh, is entering its second week of performance this Thursday, and promises another weekend of stellar performances and standing ovations.