Arts & Entertainment
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YANG | This One’s for the Theater Kids

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When the trailer for NBC’s new series, Rise, popped up on my news feed a few weeks ago, I cursed Facebook’s advertising algorithm and made a mental note about the pilot airing date simultaneously. I mean, a show about a high school theater troupe putting on Spring Awakening, starring Josh Radnor (How I Met Your Mother) and Auli’i Cravalho (Moana) and produced by Jeffrey Seller (Hamilton)? It practically has my name written all over it. So naturally I had high expectations going in, but I also worried that Rise might fall into the dangerous trap of clichés. And I believe I was right to a certain degree.

Arts & Entertainment
Max Buettner '21 acts in last week's Odysseus Wounded.

Odysseus Wounded: A Modern Take on a Greek Epic

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At the end of The Odyssey, Odysseus finally journeys back from the fallen city of Troy to Ithaca, where he once reigned as king. Disguised, Odysseus finds his kingdom infested with once-loyal suitors competing for Odysseus’ wife’s, Penelope, hand in marriage. After skillfully shooting an arrow through twelve axes to prove his identity in a now iconic scene, Odysseus, along with his son Telemachus, in rage, proceeds to slay every single one of the suitors in barbarous fashion. The epic poem, attributed to Homer, was composed in oral tradition by a rhapsode, a classical Greek performer of epic poetry. Appropriately, the play Odysseus Wounded, by Nathan Chazan ’19, former Sun arts columnist, and Alexander Lugo ’19 was performed as a live reading.

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Love in Free Fall: A Review of Bright Half Life

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“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.

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Night Light: Beauty in Methodologies

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Taught by Professor Jean Locey in the fall of 2017, ART 3604: Alternative Processes offers a stunning collection of works in Night Light, an exhibition held in Tjaden Hall. The class was an exploration of non-lens based photographic processes, centering around the creation of imagery through the painting of  photosensitive emulsion on paper followed by a subsequent exposure to light. Kylie Corwin ’18, one of the five featured artists,  remarks that, “this class challenges our contemporary perception of photography as a medium by teaching analog techniques that are not only historic but also labor intensive, thus enriching our appreciation for the physicality and vastness of the photographic medium.”

Originally used for the reproduction of diagrams and notes, the cyanotype is a photographic printing process that results in products with varying intensities of the titular cyan shade — hence the term, blueprint. However, the technique has since been extensively utilized by artists for a multitude of intentions. Jérai Wilson ’20 features this method in Recycled.

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Doug Hall’s In Silence — A Wondrous Architecture

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The acclaimed artist Doug Hall has worked in a variety of media and his work is currently being exhibited through his photography. Located in the Bibliowicz Family Gallery in Milstein Hall, In Silence brings together some of Hall’s most celebrated photographs which feature stunning scenes of archives and examinations of the human relationship with knowledge. In “Remembrance of Things Past” (Marcel Proust), the title of the photo alludes to the central figure dominating the entirety of the piece, the Proustian work of the same name. The luscious prose which sprawls across the page is hypnotic and is one of the initial pulls of the work. The book in the photograph radiates the appearance of being effortlessly unplanned yet at the same time astonishing.

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Courtesy of Cornell University

Escaping the Exclusive Preserve — A discussion of William Lim: The Architect and his collection

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Once an architecture student at Cornell, William Lim has since had a transformative effect on the artistic landscape. His style is concise yet evocative, and his works represent a compelling intersection between art and architecture — a sublime pursuit of elegance removed from the exclusive preserve of the museum. In addition to his role as a prolific creator he has maintained an impressive art collection, exercising a particular emphasis on representing the artists of his native Hong Kong. Located in the John Hartell Gallery in the Sibley Dome until March 15, William Lim: The Architect and His Collection exhibits a stunning selection from the artist’s collection and from his own works. One of the particularly moving pieces of the exhibition is Pastoral Music by Samson Young.

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Festival 24: The Epitome of Creativity

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What did you do in the 24 hours starting from Friday at 6:30 p.m.? A group of students were creating something incredible from scratch. Festival 24, which started in 2008 with only theatre productions, recently added film and dance performances to showcase the work of other students in the Performing and Media Arts department. Festival 24 challenges students to produce a story from a  one-word theme in 24 hours. Playwrights stayed up all night to write a 10-minute play.

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Beauty in the Unfinished: Drawing the Line

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Drawing the Line, open until June 10 at the Johnson, displays over a century of drawing history from European artists. In particular, the exhibit celebrates both the drawing as a sovereign entity as well as an often-ignored component of the artistic process in its entirety. In this way, Drawing the Line forces the audience to closely reevaluate pre-existing notions of where and how beauty is to be found. A drawing technique with a history of over six centuries, gouache differs from watercolor in that it produces a distinctly more opaque finish. In an untitled composition from 1915, Pablo Picasso intermingles both gouache and watercolors.

Arts & Entertainment
The cast of Hamlet Wakes Up Late rehearses at the Schwartz Center before opening night.

Hamlet Wakes Up Late, Now at Schwartz

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You’re probably used to seeing Shakespeare plays with a twist: whether that means adapted into a musical, parodied upon or set in a different era or political context. In fact, these days it might actually be harder to encounter a Shakespeare play done in the strictly “classic” manner than one that takes on some sort of revisionist elements. But you probably haven’t seen an adaptation as bold as Hamlet Wakes Up Late. Written by renowned Syrian poet and playwright Mamduh Adwan, translated by Prof. Margaret Litvin, Arabic and comparative literature, Boston University, and directed by Prof. Rebekah Maggor, performing and media arts, Hamlet Wakes Up Late is a Syrian political satire set which had its English-language premiere at the Schwartz this weekend. Inspired by The Bard’s iconic tragedy, the play unfolds under a drastically different and intriguing premise: one in which Prince Hamlet is an narcissistic alcoholic, so absorbed in his own world that he remains unaware of the truth behind his father’s death and oblivious to the people’s suffering under his uncle’s dictatorship until it is too late.