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(05/02/14 2:12am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As hundreds of college students caravanned down to Florida, one group of Ivy Tech-Bloomington students boarded a plane to Guatemala this past spring break. It was there they learned about fair trade and worked to build new facilities for Guatemalan coffee farmers. Their journey was documented by Ivy Tech-Bloomington faculty member Chelsea Rood-Emmick, who took photographs of the students throughout the trip.These photos make up one of the four new exhibits opening Friday at the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center, with an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. The exhibit shows 21 different photographs accompanied with quotes written by the students in journals while they were in Guatemala. The photos depict the international experiences of the students, the students’ construction of the buildings on the farms and the process of growing and selling coffee. The students also constructed a coffee storage building and repaired a farmer’s house, where about 25 people and 200 chickens were living, Crood-Emmick said. The photos in the exhibit offer the students and faculty a way to show off a great program from Ivy Tech, Crood-Emmick said. “Ours is a unique program because it’s scholarship-based,” she said. “This is a learning opportunity these students wouldn’t have otherwise. Most of them have never traveled or done service trips.” The second exhibit opening Friday is a showcase of 22 different artists who are part of Bloomington potter’s guild Local Clay. Guild member Susan Snyder is showing two different pieces.One piece is a tile-frame mirror, which is a project Snyder said she has never completed before. Creating the piece involved hand-painting 16 tiles to place around a two-foot mirror. Snyder uses a process called Maiolica, which she learned in Italy. The third exhibit also features international experiences through the work of two sisters, Deborah and Abby Gitlitz. The show is a dual exhibit focusing on food. Deborah is exhibiting her photographs of food from Mexico, India and the United States. “Those are cultures that have these outdoor markets where food is on display,” Abby said. “It’s a feast for the eyes and just something we don’t do here.” Abby is a glass blower who focused her work on food-related cake stands, fake food and other random objects. The glass is created with bright, vibrant colors that offer a sense of whimsy, Abby said. The sisters’ use of bright colors comes from the time they spent in Central America as young girls. “In Central America, more colors is a good thing,” Abby said. “That has definitely influenced my color pallet.” The food theme came from the enticing quality of food that has always attracted the artist, Abby said. “There’s something about food that is exciting,” Abby said. “It’s unlimited. It can be beautiful, it can be crazy, it can be disgusting, it can be everything in between.” The eight pieces of blown glass and the 15 photographs serve as the sisters’ first joint show together. “I hope that it brings people joy,” Abby said. “I want people to think about it and let their own imaginations run wild.” The fourth exhibit shows the recent works of artist Nakima Ollin. Each exhibit will remain open until May 31.
(05/01/14 3:49am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>At the end of the premiere of her newest play, “Trigger Warning,” Iris Dauterman wasn’t sure how the crowd was going to react.The play featured an all-female cast and portrayed a narrative about ending rape and sexual violence on the Bloomington campus — something Dauterman thought few people would want to see. Dauterman wondered whether the men in the audience would be able to connect, what they would think and whether they would be bored. A man approached Dauterman a few days after the premiere and told her, “You know, I didn’t really know what to think about it. I sort of felt that I wasn’t really allowed to think anything about it, but then I went home and my girlfriend and I talked about these issues for like an hour and a half. So I think your play was successful.” Dauterman wrote the play as part of an effort to provide more opportunities to women in the theater department. Despite making up 60 percent of the department, females are only given 46 percent of the roles in the main stage season.Fewer roles for a greater number of students means increased competition for female drama students in the department.The department has very little racial diversity, with fewer than 10 African American or Latino students in each degree program. These problems are a part of nearly every campus and theater department in the country, theater department director Jonathan Michaelsen said. The problems lie not only with the play selection committee at the department but the lack of diversity in the theater world as a whole, Dauterman said. Dauterman is an example of this lack of diversity, being the only female playwright student in the MFA program. “The playwriting field right now is not a very hospitable place for female playwrights,” Dauterman said. “They just aren’t getting produced. I didn’t know that when I came into this program.”After graduating from IU, Dauterman worries about the fate of her plays. Unlike at IU, which is committed to producing students’ plays, her success after college is not guaranteed. “I’ll have to just put my stuff out there and watch it go through the ringer and watch it not get picked up by theaters and wonder why,” she said. The reason many people give her for the problem is that works written by females or works featuring strong female leads are not as likely to sell at the box office. “I think if you tell a good story, people will come,” she said. “What you care about is the story in front of you, not the person behind it. I don’t think people care that I’m a woman when they see my work. I hope that is how it is in the real world, but I fear that it is not.” When “Trigger Warning” was showing at the department’s studio theater the first week of April, it sold out every performance, and both men and women were in the audience. Dauterman received feedback from males in the audience telling her that it was nice to be included in a conversation they wouldn’t have been part of otherwise. “Trigger Warning” tells the story of five female college students who come together to build an anti-rape device. Two years ago, Dauterman began writing the play with a new mission in mind. Her previous two plays had failed the Bechdel Test, a short test used to analyze whether a work of fiction is gender-biased. The Bechdel Test requires that the work feature two named women who talk to each other about something other than a man. “That’s not the be-all and end-all for feminism in theater, but it is a pretty low bar to set, and I wasn’t reaching that bar,” she said. “It sort of made me pause and really made me think what stories I am telling.”Dauterman made sure her play passed the Bechdel Test the third time around, but it didn’t come without hardship. Dauterman constantly worried about the reactions from the audience and whether the men in the audience would like it. For advice, she sought the help of drama professor Amy Cook. Cook passionately told her that her story wasn’t about women and women’s issues as much as it was a story about human beings and encouraged her to go through with the production. “She really gave me the confidence I needed to push through the writing process and whenever I got scared to just say to myself, ‘I don’t fucking care if they like it. I’m going to tell my story or die trying,’” Dauterman said. “It’s hard, but it’s important, and it’s worth doing in the way you want to tell it.” “Trigger Warning” was part of that reach for comprehension while also creating a dialogue about the role women play in the theater world, Cook said. She said students and faculty are getting better at understanding the meaning behind the shows the department puts on and how they represent women. This holds true in the same way for race and other minority representations, Cook said.“We feel a pretty important mission of ours is to pay attention to diversity,” Michaelsen said. “Are we always able to do it well? Not as well as I’d like to.” Theatre and drama major Ian Martin said diversity is about creating a culturally diverse community in the department by bringing in students and faculty of different races and backgrounds. “I want it to be more representational as opposed to presentational,” Martin said. “There’s a difference between just doing ‘black’ shows and just being diverse.” Martin began attending IU two years ago after coming from a diverse performing arts high school in Cincinnati. His high school practiced color-blind casting.Color-blind casting means the director casts characters without considering race, regardless of how the character has traditionally been performed. “I experienced that all through high school, so coming here I expected it to be a lot different,” Martin said. “And it was.”Martin said that, being an educational institution, the theater department has a unique opportunity to cast students regardless of race. But because they haven’t, Martin has begun questioning the opportunities he’s been given with the main stage productions. So far, Martin has performed three times during the main stage season, but each role has been an African-American character. “It makes you think, ‘Is it because I’m talented? Or just the best of a small pool?’” Martin said. However, this summer he’s been offered the lead role in the Indiana Festival Theatre’s show “Twelfth Night.” Martin will portray Duke Orsino, a powerful 16th-century nobleman traditionally played by a white actor. However, Michaelsen, who is directing the production, decided to take Martin on as the lead role. “He’ll be fantastic,” Michaelsen said. “We are after giving those opportunities to our students.” That opportunity has changed Martin’s view of his own acting experience, working to increase his confidence that he is talented enough for his parts, both present and past. Although the department is making strides, Martin said there is still a long way to go. “I want the conversation to not be as black and white,” he said. “It’s not just about doing a ‘black’ show. That’s the easy way out. It’s about doing shows that foster diversity.” The theater department also hired two new African-American faculty members that will join the staff in the fall of 2014.“In dealing with diversity, to have faculty that are diverse makes a difference to students, without a doubt,” Michaelsen said. “This is a major step for us to have this faculty. It’s an outstanding way to start things.” The Department of Theatre and Drama is not only taking strides to help create more racial diversity but is also working with gender bias and diversity in their shows as well. Michaelsen and the other theatre department directors from Big 10 schools have partnered to commission a new play every year for five years. It is required that the play be written by a female playwright and include a set number of male and female roles. Next year’s play will be the first production from this partnership. It was written by playwright Naomi Iizuka. The play is titled “Good Kids” and features eight female roles and four male roles. The play will be included as part of the main stage season and will be made available to other college campuses across the country after next year, Michaelsen said. “It’s a tricky issue because we have to balance the needs of our students to be represented on stage and our need to present different kinds of plays to give them varied experience,” Cook said. “I think our department has really done that to a varying degree of success.” Choosing a season comes with many considerations, but it still comes down to whether the department can sell the season to their audience. “The department financially lives off the box office and has to carefully select a balance of shows they know are going to sell,” Michaelsen said. “I can’t ignore the economic sense in things.” Although students are finding other opportunities to gain experience, the department continues to work on fixing the problem. “I don’t want actors to come here and be told from the beginning that ‘There’s not a place for you on stage,’” Dauterman said. “That’s not something you want an actor to learn. Theater is where everybody goes to feel like they’re a part of something.”
(04/29/14 3:17pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Grunwald Gallery of Art will present its sixth Bachelor of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibit today with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. The exhibit is free and open to the public, featuring different mediums including printmaking, photography, painting and textiles. The exhibit will be on display until May 3. It runs in conjunction with the MFA thesis exhibit that was displayed April 22. Here are three of the students who will have work displayed in the exhibit:Matt Lawler, painting Lawler is displaying seven oil paintings depicting Western, post-apocalyptic scenes, relating to metal music. Lawler drew his inspiration from Stephen King novels and his own interest in metal music. Through these paintings, he is trying to give back to the metal genre, he said. “I’m hoping people will become more open to the ideas portrayed through metal in general,” he said. “They always think, ‘Oh it’s just metal with screaming and incoherent instrumentals.’ But there’s a lot more behind it.” Each painting took around a month to create, but to catch up at the end of the semester, Lawler worked for eight hours a day to finish three in one month. His biggest challenge was trying to paint his figures in a realistic way. He said his influence from video games would come through in his painting work. “I don’t want to have that come across too much,” he said. “I’m afraid people will quickly disregard them because they might not understand video games.” Lawler focused on artists like Francisco Goya and Hieronymus Bosch to make his figures seem more realistic and life-like. Celina Wu, photographyGrowing up in America, Wu not only encountered Western culture, but was exposed to Taiwanese culture by her parents, who were born and raised on the other side of the world. Wu used her photographs as a way to show the duality and opposition she has within herself because of the two cultures she has grown up with, and the emotions that come with that experience. But Wu did not immediately come to that idea. Originally, she thought she would show alternate realities, but didn’t think that was deep enough for her thesis exhibit. Eventually she realized that the source of her interest in alternate realities was from the same duality in herself. This led her to the concept of her show. Thirteen photos and a book of photographs make up Wu’s section of the exhibit. She used family photos that she reconstructed by mixing two-dimensional and three-dimensional aspects and recreating them into a photograph. “I hope people enjoy the personal aspect of it,” Wu said. “I’ve never been this personal with any work of mine. It gives a better understanding of who I am.” Izzy Jarvis, printmaking Jarvis only ever wanted to be good at drawing. “That was my goal as a kid and I always loved drawing people,” she said. “Whenever you’re drawing the human form, it’s a self-portrait.”Portraits make up three of the five relief prints making up Jarvis’ thesis exhibit. Relief prints involve the artist carving into the wood in order to make the print, but in this process, the artist is doing the opposite of drawing. The carving is creating the negative space, or the part of the depiction that will not be printed or seen. The artist is taking away parts of the print instead of adding them like in drawing. Jarvis said it was a physical process, but because the wood pieces were around four feet by four feet, there were more chances for expression. “I want people to see the care I put into it,” she said. “If they just see the beauty and care, then that’s enough.” The other two prints show natural objects that Jarvis added her own symbolism to, all of which show her own identity as an artist and person. Creating the prints was a way for Jarvis to explore her own identity. “I think artists find ways to figure out who they are through the work they make,” she said. “I think this show is very much about an experience of who I am.”
(04/22/14 2:15am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Cereal boxes, recliners and ceramic sculptures are three of the works to be featured at the master of fine arts and bachelor of fine arts thesis exhibits opening today at the Grunwald Gallery of Art. An opening reception will be held from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. MFA student Catherine Chi is contributing her work, “Part of a Complete Breakfast,” which is an interactive video installation. It includes projectors, a distance sensor, a shopping cart and about 200 cereal boxes. Chi said she finds cereal boxes to be some of the most interesting parts of a grocery store. The cereal boxes are designed to make people believe the cereal will bring them happiness, health and success. The boxes are meant to draw consumers into that fantasy, Chi said. “Usually when we interact with the cereal box in the grocery aisle, just the image of a familiar character or even the color of a package is all it takes to trigger our memory of advertisements and the sweet taste of the food,” Chi said.Her video installation explores the point in which people actually connect with the cereal on a deeper level. It begins with the boxes being painted white, making them invisible to any recognition. To bring back the identity of the boxes, Chi adds in the color, then ingredients and nutritional information and finally the advertisement elements. Another part of the exhibit is BFA student Samantha Sondgerath’s weaving work. Sondgerath said there is a basic structure of weaving she tries to stray away from in her work. To accomplish this, she weaves in and out of the loom at random places and includes material that is not typical in traditional weaving. Sondgerath bought a recliner and weaved the upholstery with wire, nails and glitter. She followed the same process to create a lamp, floor and wall pieces. “I hope that people think of textiles and weaving in a different way,” Sondgerath said. “A lot of people think I make rugs and scarves when I weave, but that’s not what I aspire to do at all.” MFA student Kelly Novak said she also hopes to allow for multiple interpretations of her work. Novak is exhibiting 16 pieces of jewelry made from resin, silver, copper and other materials. Novak’s exhibit is called “Fragments of Utopia,” and explores the concept of utopia through her own travel experiences, which she has incorporated into her jewelry. Preparation began in Florence, Italy, this past summer, where Novak took a resin workshop, creating her first pieces and sharpening her skills.The artists have been working on their pieces for at least a semester, culminating in the opening of their thesis show before graduation. “Student support is integral to the arts,” Novak said. “Opening events are a great opportunity to interact with artists and a wide range of interesting and engaged people within the community.”
(04/21/14 12:13am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU Opera and Ballet Theater has announced its 66th season “Go Boldly,” which will feature six operas and three ballets. Subscriptions go on sale April 28. Single tickets go on sale Sept. 2, except for “The Nutcracker,” which will go on sale Nov. 4. OPERA“The Italian Girl in Algiers” When 8 p.m. Sept. 19-20, 26-27This Italian opera is a comedy about a young Italian girl named Isabella. She is captured in a shipwreck by pirates and taken to the leader of Algiers to be considered for marriage. The leader, Mustafà, already has a wife and has enslaved Isabella’s fiancé. Isabella tries to outwit Mustafà in order to escape Algiers and return home. Sung in Italian with English supertitles “La Bohème”When 8 p.m. Oct. 17-18, 24-25 and 2 p.m. Oct 19“La Bohème” follows the romance of poet Rodolfo and seamstress Mimi. In Act III, the two independently decide to separate. Mimi thinks Rodolfo has become too jealous, and Rodolfo fears for Mimi’s health — which he believes poverty has made worse. Sung in Italian with English supertitles “The Last Savage” When 8 p.m. Nov. 14-15, 21 and 7 p.m. Nov. 20 This production makes its IU Opera debut this season. Anthropology student Kitty is searching for a primitive man who has not experienced modern society to use for her project. Kitty’s parents want her to give up her studies and marry a wealthy leader. To avoid this, Kitty hires a local peasant to act as her project study, until she actually falls in love with him. Sung in English with English supertitles “Alcina”When 8 p.m. Feb. 6-7, 13-14“Alcina” is set on a magical island ruled by two sister-sorceresses, Morgana and Alcina. Each knight that ventures to the island is seduced by Alcina, who transforms them into stones, animals or plants after growing tired of them. Eventually a knight comes that Alcina falls madly in love with, but he rejects her — much to her shock. Sung in Italian with English supertitles “South Pacific” When 8 p.m. Feb. 27-28, March 6-7 and 2 p.m. March 1“South Pacific” is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1947 book, “Tales of the South Pacific.” ‘The opera follows an American nurse as she falls in love with a Frenchman and struggles to accept and love his mixed-race children. At the same time, a U.S. Lieutenant and Tonkinese woman face the difficult consequences of their marriage.The opera explores themes of racial prejudice and acceptance on a South Pacific island during World War II. Sung in English with English supertitles “The Magic Flute”When 8 p.m. April 10-11, 17-18“The Magic Flute” returns to IU this season, telling a tale of good and evil. Newlyweds Pamina and Tamino work to gain enlightenment. Along the way, they are influenced by the evil Queen of the Night and bird catcher Papageno. The opera also features a dragon and colorful puppets. Sung in German with English dialogue and supertitles BALLETFall BalletWhen 8 p.m. Oct. 3-4, additional performance at 2 p.m. Oct. 4 This three-part ballet features work from three famous ballet choreographers. The first part of next season’s fall ballet is, “Emeralds,” the first act of George Balanchine’s ballet, “Jewels.” The second section, “Dark Elegies,” explores the emotion of losing children. The third and final part, called “The Envelope,” is a comedic dance to the tune of light and melodic music. The NutcrackerWhen 7 p.m. Dec. 4, 8 p.m. Dec. 5, 2 and 8 p.m. Dec. 6,2 p.m. Dec. 7One of the most popular ballets of all time and a regular season show for Jacobs, “The Nutcracker” is a classic Christmas story. Clara receives a nutcracker for Christmas. Falling asleep with it in her arms, she awakes to a new world where her Nutcracker has grown to a full-size prince. She follows him to his kingdom where she meets sugar plum fairies and evil mice. Spring BalletWhen 8 p.m. March 27-28, additional performance at 2 p.m. March 28Like the Fall Ballet, the Spring Ballet is sectioned into three different ballets. The first part is the second act of Swan Lake, choreographed by George Balanchine, which tells the tale of a princess who was turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer. The second ballet is “Duets,” which features a set of dances for six couples. The final part is jazz ballet “Rubies,” which is the second act of Balanchine’s production “Jewels,” continuing from the spring ballet. Allison Graham
(04/18/14 2:45am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Girls, gangsters and gambling will come to the IU Theatre this weekend in its newest production, “Guys and Dolls.” Performances will take place at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday in the Ruth N. Halls Theatre, with additional shows at 7:30 p.m. April 22-26 and at 2 p.m. April 26. Tickets start at $15 for students and $25 for general admission. “Guys and Dolls” follows four main characters through their complicated romantic relationships. Sophomore Joey Birchler plays gambler Sky Masterson, a suave character who never gave time to serious relationships with women. His friend, Nathan Detroit, is played by junior Markus McClain. Nathan bets Sky that he won’t be able to convince missionary Sarah Brown to go out with him. Sky takes the bet and pursues Sarah. The two eventually fall in love, and their differences change each other for the better. At the same time, Nathan has been engaged to Miss Adelaide for 14 years, and she is trying to convince him to get married. However, Nathan repeatedly refuses because he’s not ready. “It’s about two different styles of relationships,” McClain said. “All Adelaide wants is to get married, but Nathan isn’t ready. This contrasts with the growth and budding relationship of Sky and Sarah.”The musical’s themes contribute to the popularity of the production. “I think it’s one of the best musicals ever written,” Director Lee Cromwell said. “I think there’s something universal about this story, about these larger-than-life figures being who they are and going after what they want, not apologizing for living.” Despite the musical being set in the 1950s, McClain said the audience will be surprised by how much they can relate to the characters. For the actors, portraying and connecting to those characters was one of the hardest parts of preparation. Birchler struggled gaining the confidence Sky has in the musical. He said embodying the persona of someone who always feels like he’s the smartest guy in the room was a huge challenge. “It’s a mental thing as well as a physical thing,” Birchler said. “It’s about being smooth in your actions.” Junior Meghan Goodman, who plays Sarah, found understanding the character’s transformation her biggest challenge. “She’s exposed to so much at once that she never imagined would happen to her,” Goodman said. “I had to find that progression throughout the show.” McClain also had to learn the dynamics of his character, specifically with the relationship Nathan has with Adelaide. “It’s a huge contrast of being in love and having a soulmate and the rough waters you go through in a relationship,” McClain said. Overcoming the challenges and putting the show together culminate in the performance. “I’m really looking forward to the actors’ experience of sharing this with an audience,” Cromwell said. “I think they’re really hungry for it.” McClain said this type of show deserves an audience because of the energy and humor that requires an audience’s responses. “Because the actors that are doing this production are singing, dancing, acting, throwing themselves literally around the stage with such passion and dedication, it is just a joy to see,” Cromwell said. “I think there’s something really exciting about being in the same room when people are diving off of a cliff, metaphorically.”
(04/17/14 3:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Attendees murmured with excitement as they waited to catch a glimpse of acclaimed actress Meryl Streep. The crowd was hushed by the sound of four trumpet players. The platform party filed onto the stage of the IU Auditorium, and the crowd erupted into applause and cheers the moment Streep appeared on stage. Audience members rose to their feet. Streep smiled and sat down, placing her hand over her heart and nodding to the audience. IU President Michael McRobbie stepped up to the podium. “Today, we honor Meryl Streep.” The audience cheered again. IU Auditorium was host to Meryl Streep and the conferral of her honorary doctoral degree from IU. Nearly 3,200 seats to the event sold out within three hours of ticket sales opening. Almost all of the seats in the auditorium were filled to witness Streep’s ceremony and a conversation between her and Barbara Klinger, professor of film and media studies. McRobbie presided over the ceremony and introduced Streep and her many accolades. Streep has been honored with three Academy Awards and eight Golden Globes, McRobbie said.McRobbie said the way she delves deep into her roles allows us to not just be movie-goers, but witnesses. “By disappearing into her roles, Meryl Streep has made the world visible to us, and all of us are truly grateful,” he said. After the ceremony, Streep and Klinger sat on two cushioned chairs in the center of the stage. Klinger’s first question was about how Streep came to the acting profession. “I think I was probably like every other girl who puts on a princess dress and expects everyone to pay full and total attention,” Streep said. “And most of us grow out of that.”The audience erupted into laughter until Streep continued to say she had always been interested in people and wanted to work as an interpreter for the United Nations after her mother drove her to the headquarters in New York. “I thought it was vain to want to be an actress,” Streep said. ”Plus, I thought I was too ugly to be an actress. Glasses weren’t fabulous then.” Streep received her undergraduate degree from Vassar College and decided to apply to drama school at Yale. She signed up for law boards in her third year because she still didn’t believe she had the right to be an actress, Streep said. “Many of my friends woke up at 3 years of age and said, ‘I have to be on stage.’ I never had that,” Streep said. “I’ve always been an omnivore, and I actually fell into the profession that fed all my appetites.” Streep said she slept through the law boards because she had a performance the night before, and the rest was history. She graduated and quickly got work. She said the day she paid off her student loans was the happiest day of her life. After graduation, Streep appeared in several theater productions and later made the transition to film. She said every role is different and requires something new. “The whole movie happens in a moment between you and who you’re working with,” she said. “You have no idea what they’re going to bring, so the preparation only goes so far. You have to throw away all your preconceived ideas.” One way she connects with her characters is by being empathetic for the person she is playing.“It is possible for people of very diverse backgrounds to feel the feelings of someone not remotely like them,” Streep said. “Even crossing the gender line and the age line, even all the things that divide us. You can still feel what that person feels. That’s such an interesting, underused quality human beings have.” That gender line has been clouded in more recent times, Streep said. Now, women lead big corporations like Sony and Universal. “The business is changing,” Streep said. “That’s a really big difference from when I started. There was almost an impenetrable line of suits.” Her advice for women acting today is to not worry too much about their weight. “Girls spend way too much time thinking about that,” she said. For all actors, Streep advised finding the thing that’s weird about them and using it to their advantage. Directors pick up the people who are different, Streep said.This coming year, Streep will appear in three different films — “The Giver,” “Into the Woods” and “The Homesman.” Despite all of the fame and awards, Streep said she feels lucky for her opportunities. “I feel very, very guilty when the litany of my awards is trotted out because I feel like there are many women my age, in our industry, who are plenty capable of the work I’ve been doing,” Streep said. “The only reason I have a career at 64 is because I had hits late in life.” The event ended with a discussion of Streep’s role in the 2015 movie, “Suffragette,” about the heavy violence that occurred during Britain’s women’s suffrage movement.Streep watched the only video available of her character, Emmeline Pankhurst.Because she had never seen herself on camera or video, Pankhurst’s movements were not self-aware.“She has a demeanor you will never be able to achieve,” Streep said. “You’ve all been photographed and know what you seem like. You’re used to your outer performance.”Streep found the video interesting because nothing was designed about Pankhurst’s movements. “You could see the difference between people now who are so used to seeing themselves as objects and the people who are so in the gestalt of their bodies,” Streep said. “It taught me something about how to strive for unselfconsciousness.”
(04/17/14 2:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The IU Art Museum will present the Lilly Lecture Competition from 1 to 5 p.m. Friday in the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts. Four students will discuss specific pieces from the museum’s collection for 20-30 minutes each. Participants were instructed to choose whichever piece they wanted to research and compose a paper and lecture to present their findings. IU student Sam Tavlin found out about the competition when she was studying abroad in Barcelona, Spain, last summer. She saw information for the competition on the museum’s website and created a one-page proposal last fall to conduct year-long research about the etching “Male Nude” by German artist Oskar Schlemmer. Her research consisted of viewing the artwork through two different theories from German philosophers. One theory explores the idea of the separation between objects and the human body. However, when humans use certain objects, they become almost a part of the body itself, Tavlin said. The second theory is called the alienation effect.It states that when an audience does not get the chance to empathize with a character onstage at a theater production, they are forced to look at the production with a critical eye instead of getting lost in the story. Tavlin applies these two theories to the piece she selected for the lecture competition. “I found that it’s one of those pieces that you look at,” she said. “Although it’s very simple, at the same time you can’t look away.” Tavlin also said she liked the challenge of this particular artwork because very little research exists on it. The same uncertainty appealed to IU student Eric Beckman, who will also give a lecture Friday. Beckman selected a fragment from a Roman sculpture that was part of a Roman religion called Mithraism. The fragment depicts a bull with a dog jumping up against it and would have served as the main focus for a place of worship in Roman culture.Through his research, Beckman has traced the origins of the piece back to the 19th century, when it was found at the bottom of a riverbed in France. Beckman followed the piece’s whereabouts until it finally reached the museum in 1985. His research led him to discover that the symbols on the piece itself correspond to different constellations and astronomical bodies. The piece depicts a certain time of the year and provides a road map for the Mithraic belief in the ascension of the soul after death. “These types of scenes are extremely rare,” Beckman said. “There’s only 700 of them. To have as much information as possible just seemed like the right thing to do.” In addition to Beckman and Tavlin, Anne Kneller will present a lecture on the museum’s “Seated Hermaphrodite,” and Rachel Schend will provide an interpretation of the Bilingual Eye Cup.
(04/16/14 2:50am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Ben Nichols turns on his camera.It’s the first rehearsal for his feature-length film. Now that the red recording button is on, Kaleb Rich-Harris transforms into his character. He plays Victor, a high school senior trying to get into college. Victor asks his retired teacher Dr. Jack Conners, played by Ken Farrell, to write him a recommendation letter. Victor isn’t the best student. He isn’t in many clubs, he doesn’t get good grades, and he never speaks a word in class. Doc has written recommendation letters before, but not for students like Victor. Doc only writes for the top students — the ones who show initiative and promise. “They all have something that makes them remarkable,” Doc said. “They are people who really have something to offer the world.” Victor stares at Doc. “I feel there’s more to me than you know,” he said. Nichols, a freshman at IU, wanted his independent film project, “Just Call Me Jack,” to be about the future of young people. In high school, after he received good grades and had teachers write letters for him, he wondered what it would have been like if he wasn’t the same kid. “I thought that there were a lot of kids I know that didn’t have the grades I had but have still done really cool and incredible things, but no one really knows about it,” Nichols said. “Not everything has to be academic. This is revealing a kid that maybe you ignored in high school or didn’t really know about.” Nichols is the producer, writer, director and composer of the feature-length film. “Just Call Me Jack” is about Victor, who needs a letter of recommendation for his college applications. Although he doesn’t know where he wants to apply, he thinks a great letter of recommendation will guarantee his acceptance. The movie is set in Doc’s house as Victor tries to convince his teacher that he is worth his recommendation. “The entire film is this conversation, interview-style, where the kid basically fights back and says, ‘No, this is why you should believe in my future and the future of young people as a whole,’” Nichols said. Nichols first started writing the script in 2012. “In the first draft of the script, Victor is a lot more sarcastic and drops the f-bomb a lot,” Nichols said. After reading it again and thinking about how he wanted to actually portray his character, Nichols created Victor to be more mild-mannered and shy. “It’s better for his character development because at the end he becomes more overt and open,” Nichols said. “So you get to see his character change more, unlike in the previous drafts where I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.” The final draft of the script was finished during spring break, and shooting for the movie is scheduled for late May. IU sophomore Kaleb Rich-Harris will perform the role of Victor, which he was offered after auditioning at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater in February. “Kaleb came in and did a monologue from ‘Death of a Salesman’ and a song from ‘Godspell,’” Nichols said. “He took two really professional pieces and just blew us away, and that’s when we knew we had our guy.” Rich-Harris said he first saw advertisements for auditions in the theater building and emails from theater professors about the opportunity. “I’m very interested in film and saw it as a great challenge,” Rich-Harris said. “I was staying in Bloomington this summer, and I just really wanted to do it.” Bloomington resident Ken Farrell didn’t audition for the film, but was offered the role of Doc after the first actor dropped out of the movie.Nichols sent Farrell a message on Facebook after seeing videos of his performances for the Cardinal Stage Company. Farrell met with Nichols and signed the contract on the spot. “I was immediately interested in the concept about what the script has to say about relationships in the time you’re struggling in adolescence,” said Farrell, who has been acting for 48 years. Shooting for “Just Call Me Jack” will last for two weeks. Nichols plans to stay in Bloomington to edit the film in order to finish before September, when he can start sending it to film festivals. Each film festival submission requires an application fee, so Nichols said he wants to wait until he has finished the movie before deciding which ones to send it to. “I want it to be good,” Nichols said. “And since it’s my first movie, I’m open to the idea of making a movie that’s good, but maybe not perfect because it’s a learning experience.” Part of that learning experience for Nichols was allowing himself to take every opportunity he could with the movie, he said. Nichols wrote the entire script, developing each character and revising it until he was satisfied. He also wrote the lyrics and composed the score for the song in the movie, “Rest Yourself Tonight.” “I think a lot of people that want to get into film limit themselves a little bit,” Nichols said. “As in, ‘I want to be a director, but someone else has to write the script, and someone else has to act.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Well, if you do everything, even if you’re not the best at everything, at least you have that experience.’” Taking on so many roles in the movie opens doors for Nichols to explore, he said. Nichols said he first thought about film while watching Disney movies as a kid. After watching “Bambi,” the end of the VHS tape had a short documentary about how the animation for the film was created. It was then that Nichols realized people created the movies he loved, and it was an option for him to pursue in the future. Nichols started making short YouTube videos and then films for high school film festivals and the Indianapolis High School Playwriting Competition. Music came when he started taking guitar lessons six years ago. Nichols said he dreamed of learning the electric guitar but was forced to begin lessons on an acoustic guitar.“For me, acoustic was like, ‘Well that’s not going to impress any girls. I don’t even like country music,’ and the day I started, I just fell in love with it,” Nichols said. Nichols also performed in supporting roles in his high school theater productions. All of these aspirations culminated in the production of “Just Call Me Jack,” he said, where he was able to fuse them. The combination was Nichols’ way of showing the power of the younger generations and the potential they can create for themselves, he said. “Older generations have a responsibility to pass the torch to their descendants,” Nichols said. “The film will inspire students to not limit themselves and think outside the box.” Through “Just Call Me Jack,” Nichols said he is also trying to prove to the University that even without a film school, students are doing great things.“Even though this movie is an independent project, I want it to inspire people to keep making things, keep pushing the envelope,” Nichols said. “The bigger our content becomes, the better our school and our education will be and the more we can convince people here at IU that we are talented.” Creating things doesn’t just apply to film students, but all students on campus, Nichols said. “There is no excuse not to create things,” he said. “The world is at our fingertips.”
(04/11/14 4:14am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>WIUX will present Culture Shock, an outdoor festival and concert, at noon Saturday in Dunn Meadow. Culture Shock has been a WIUX event since the 1970s, Events Director Jen Samson said. The events were smaller in scale, but WIUX has upheld the old tradition and expanded the event. “We are all huge supporters of local music, and that is a key element of Culture Shock every year,” Samson said. The committee plans to have a bounce house, art wall, food trucks and other local vendors set up. An event DJ will play music to keep the crowd entertained until 4 p.m., when a lineup of bands and musicians will begin playing.The first band featured until 4:30 p.m. is Little Timmy McFarland of Flight 19. IU student Daniel Talton started the band and originally performed by himself. The band expanded in 2013 to include five musicians who play guitar, drums, bass and accordion.Experimental musician Drekka will perform from 4:45 to 5:15 p.m. Drekka’s Facebook page describes his music as “hushed, cinematic, ambient, ethereal and industrial.” Three-member pop band Sleeping Bag will take the stage from 5:45 to 6:15 p.m. The Bloomington-based group is made up of Dave Segedy, Tyler Smith and Glenn Meyers. Sleeping Bag is scheduled to perform in Indianapolis, Bloomington and Muncie later this month. Rapper Tunde Olaniran will perform from 6:45 to 7:15 p.m. at Saturday’s festival. Olaniran is a Michigan native who has released a handful of EPs, including his newest, “Yung Archetype.” From 7:45 to 8:30 p.m., the Culture Shock crowd will hear indie rock group Royal Bangs. The Tennessee-native band has produced seven albums and released its single, “Better Run,” earlier this year. Mac DeMarco will headline the evening with his closing performance from 9 to 10 p.m. DeMarco is a Canadian indie rock solo artist who released his sophomore album, “Salad Days,” April 1. Choosing DeMarco came naturally to the Culture Shock committee, Samson said. The committee met to brainstorm bands that are becoming more popular and recently released albums. “He was always up there on the list,” Samson said. “People who hadn’t heard him before would go listen and research and come back the next week loving him.” Running such a long event does present challenges for the WIUX committee, but none have been too hard to deal with, Samson said. “I’m so thankful to be working with the people at WIUX,” Samson said. “We really work as a team, and I don’t feel like it’s been a super difficult process.”
(04/11/14 2:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Designer Dawn Hancock wants to do work that matters.For several years, she said, she worked at a large web-consulting company that focused on creating logos, brands and websites for big corporations. But it wasn’t inspiring for her.“I ended up volunteering at a bunch of nonprofits,” Hancock said. “Even though I wasn’t getting paid for it, I saw the impact that I was making in other people’s lives.” It wasn’t until her dad died unexpectedly that she reconsidered what she was doing with her career. “It made me think, ‘Why am I not working on things that really matter?” she said. “‘Life is short.’”Hancock quit her job at the consulting company and in 1999 started Firebelly Design, which focuses on designing for projects that matter, she said.The Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts welcomes Hancock as its final speaker of the semester Friday. Hancock will present lectures at 1:30 p.m. and 5.In her lecture, she plans to deliver her “Top-10 List of Shit I’ve Done to Create A Life I Love.” Her list is composed of the principles she used to build Firebelly Design and the lessons she’s learned along the way, such as being flexible and investing in your community.“I started the idea that I wanted to do work that mattered,” she said. “Thankfully, I was young and didn’t realize that I was doing something risky.” The company began when she designed a website for a friend of a co-worker. The man made his own handmade guitars, which sold for about $10,000 each. Hancock was initially drawn to him because of his passion and interesting art. “Firebelly truly only works on stuff that they care about,” Firebelly designer Nick Adam said. “You’ll never have to do any big, evil corporate work.” Adam followed a path similar to Hancock’s in finding Firebelly. He had previously worked for six years at a publishing company. “During the six years doing the publishing gig, it was a very easy job,” Adam said. “You got in at 9 and left at 5 and never thought about it.” Adam took on freelance work and art projects he found more interesting when he wasn’t working at the publishing company. Adam met Hancock at an exhibit where some of his work was being shown, and she was impressed. She gave Adam a freelance opportunity and eventually created a position for him at Firebelly based on his skills. Adam now works at Firebelly as a strategist, which means his main role is to meet with an organization or group to devise a plan for its brand. He talks to clients to figure out what they need in terms of design work. Firebelly design now has about six designers, and it has won awards and taken on larger projects. One of the most recent is a project called Divvy, a bike share system implemented in Chicago which allows users to rent a bike for half an hour and return it to any station across the city. The city project was intended to be an alternative to public transportation and cars in order to get citizens more active in the community, Hancock said. Firebelly was contracted to name and design the project for the entire city. This meant designing everything from the actual bikes to be rented to the signs and maps people would see at the stations. “Every time I see someone riding one of the bikes, there’s this sense of pride that we were a part of that,” Hancock said. The design firm also took on a project called Rebuilding Exchange in 2008. When the market crashed, many people were out of work, which affected their ability to buy things and the job market itself. Many buildings were being neglected in Chicago as they fell apart, Adams said. Usually these buildings would be torn down and the materials thrown away but, the Rebuilding Exchange salvaged these materials and sold them at cheap prices. To do this, they employed people who would normally never be hired, such as ex-cons, Adam said. Firebelly taught the workers how to disassemble the buildings without damaging the materials, which included wood, sinks, chairs and appliances. The program put people to work, created an inventory of high-quality materials and put them on the market for a fraction of the price. Failing businesses that needed cheap materials were able to access them for less than market price.When the project contacted Firebelly, it didn’t have a brand or identity. Firebelly built the Rebuilding Exchange project a brand that would stand out from other companies in the building material market and a Tumblr page within the company’s small budget. Helping projects like the Rebuilding Exchange was the main goal of Firebelly, but in 2006 the company expanded to also house a nonprofit called Firebelly Foundation. The Firebelly University program is an incubator for people who want to start design businesses in a socially responsible way, according to their website.Firebelly Camp is a 10-day training program to help college students learn design skills and collaboration to give them more experience in the design world, according to the website. IU alumna Alysha Balog participated in the camp in 2011. She said she saw the camp as a great networking opportunity and a way to explore her passion for doing good. While at the camp, Balog worked on the Center for New Community in Chicago, which helps with immigration reform. The organization is focused on creating diverse communities in the United States, and Balog worked on developing a website for the project with the other campers. While working at Firebelly, Balog said she saw Hancock’s passion for her company and designing for good causes. “I love when she mentioned to us that she wanted to hire people around her that were better designers than she was,” Balog said. “She doesn’t design as much as she used to, and that’s because she’s running a company of people who she thinks are more talented than she is.” Adam said she sees the same passion and humility in Hancock. “She’s a massive inspiration to each one of us here,” Adam said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone have the ability to dream so big and actually make it happen.”
(04/10/14 2:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Blue-tinted water projected on the front and back windshields of a gray Honda Civic parked in the Grunwald Gallery of Art. It’s two back doors remained open for visitors to sit inside and experience a car wash. The Grunwald presented its master of fine arts group show Tuesday and will present an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday. Artists will give talks about their pieces at noon Friday to discuss the inspirations and methods involved in making their pieces. Master of fine arts student Donny Gettinger used his thesis piece to explore the transition between boyhood and adulthood and how it relates to Midwestern consciousness. To accomplish this, Gettinger chose to use the classic icon of a teenager’s first car. “Your first car is your first ability to go out and drive through these flat spaces, corn fields and country roads,” Gettinger said.Gettinger tried to focus his piece on the Midwestern experience by choosing a 1990s Honda Civic because it’s a standard first car, he said. Finding the car was the hardest part for Gettinger because of how particular he was about the type of car he wanted for the right price. Gettinger searched Craigslist for a Honda Civic made sometime in the ’90s. The next step was to remove the engine and other parts to make the car lighter and more transportable. “I don’t know much about cars,” Gettinger said. “I had to learn how to become a mechanic.”Becoming a mechanic was a way for Gettinger to involve himself further in his piece. He said there is a big push in the Midwest for boys to work on cars and be mechanics. “I wanted to dive into that culture and see what the appeal was,” Gettinger said. After working on the car, Gettinger filmed a carwash from the inside of a car with two cameras so he could project the video onto the front and back windshields of the Honda Civic. After the show, Gettinger hopes he can keep the vehicle to show in other galleries, but the reality of storing it could lead Gettinger to scrap it. MFA printmaking student Kristy Hughes is also displaying her work in the exhibit, but her pieces focus on her own experiences making them. Each print was made using the same stencils and four inks. For Hughes, seeing the transformation of her material layer by layer is what she wants viewers to see as well. “Each time they look at it, I think they will see something different,” she said. “It will give the viewer the opportunity to search like I did.”Hughes has been working on the pieces for about a year and faced a few challenges during the printmaking process. When making the prints, Hughes would lay a stencil on the paper and run it through the print machine. However, what she laid down was not usually what ended up on the page. “I don’t ever really know what they’re going to look like,” she said. “It’s exciting, but sometimes I would lay down another layer, and it would totally mess it up, and I’d have to fix it.” Other artists showing in the exhibit include Nakima Ollin, Mike Reeves, Hyejin Kang and Rachel Baxter. The exhibit will remain on display until April 19.
(04/09/14 3:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Violetta, a young escort, sits in a lavender gown atop a cushioned stand. She is surrounded by other women in royal blue, joined by a large group of men. They begin to laugh, flirt, dance and drink with one another until Alfredo Germont, a nobleman, comes in with friends. He sees Violetta and his friends tell her that he is in love with her.The group celebrates further, until Violetta abruptly sits on the stand, coughing. A doctor comes in to give her medicine as the crowd exits. She stands up and returns to the party.IU Opera and Ballet Theater will present La Traviata, its last season opera, at 8 p.m. Friday in the Musical Arts Center. Tickets start at $12 for students and $25 for general admission. The performances will also be streamed live Friday and Saturday through IUMusicLive! Live performances in the MAC will continue April 18 and 19.La Traviata is an opera written by 18th century composer Giuseppe Verdi based on the novel “The Lady of the Camellias.” To prepare for this opera, actor Derrek Stark, an IU graduate student, read the original novel to better understand his character, Alfredo. Although the opera is not entirely true to the original novel, reading the work helped Stark develop his character’s persona. “You have to work to flush that character out as fully as you can,” he said. “That happens throughout the entire process. You spend time learning who that character truly is.” The first step in preparing for the opera was learning the music, Stark said. Stark went though the text with a diction coach to ensure that he was pronouncing each name and word correctly in his singing. His coach had previously performed the female lead, Violetta Valery, and was able to offer a lot of advice about the part, Stark said. After practicing diction and learning the music, Stark worked on blocking, or learning where he needs to be on stage, and creating natural movement for his character. His character, Alfredo, falls in love with Violetta, a 19th century French escort who has moved up the ranks in her work. Violetta has never allowed herself to fall in love because of her various relationships with men. But when she meets Alfredo, she decides to follow her feelings and falls in love, stage director Jeffrey Buchman said. “I’m the only man who truly cares about her beyond what she can offer me,” Stark said. However, Alfredo has a sister back home with a wealthy suitor who refuses to marry her because of her brother’s relationship with an escort. Because of this, Alfredo’s father Giorgio comes to speak with Violetta about her relationship with Alfredo, asking her to end it in order to help his daughter and stop tainting the family name. “She does that, which infuriates Alfredo,” Buchman said. “And in the end, she is just hoping that Alfredo and the world understand the sacrifices she made, all while she is dying.” Violetta suffers from tuberculosis, also known as consumption. The disease typically attacks the lungs and causes victims to experience chronic cough, which can often draw blood. Tuberculosis was usually fatal, especially in the 19th century, when the disease was more common and there were few known cures.“In the opera, people really see the demands society places on women,” Buchman said. “It’s a woman who society never gave a chance in this world, and all she’s looking for is to be a noble creature.”One particular scene that Stark struggled with was near the end. At one point, a large Plexiglas wall comes down between Violetta and Alfredo onstage to symbolize their separation. Alfredo sings through this wall to Violetta, but because he couldn’t hear the actress on the other side, it caused some difficulties. “It’s all about finding that inner connection and personal point of reference that you can use to fuel the acting,” Stark said. “I’m still working toward it, but it’s a little more self-reliant because you can’t immediately interact with someone.” He was forced to work even harder in order to make his character believable in this scene.Stark participated in musicals his senior year of high school and worked as a pianist for a few other musicals. It wasn’t until his undergraduate work at Mansfield University that he became interested in opera from his vocal teacher.“I always thought opera was just a bunch of fat ladies gurgling,” Stark said. “Through learning to sing and really careful guidance, I became really interested in it. Now, it’s a very large part of my life.” From his experience with musical theater, Stark can see a few differences with opera. “One of the most immediate differences is that the singers don’t use microphones,” he said. “It’s the singer against the orchestra.” “La Traviata” is different from other operas. “It’s one of those pieces that’s so immediate for the audience,” Buchman said. “It touches you very deeply. It has its own unique quality in the way it does that.” New stage elements occur during the first few minutes of the opera. Traditionally, the set opens with a 19th century Parisian parlor with rich fabrics, a fireplace and other period décor. “We let that go and created a world that was influenced by symbols,” Buchman said. “We created an atmosphere instead of literal structure and detail.” The production is new because of the poetic approach the director and designers took with the original play. “It stays true to the text, but allows us to create a world that the audience will get a new experience out of even if they’ve seen it 10 times,” Buchman said. With a new production, it’s all about seeing the day-to-day changes and eventually seeing it all come together, Buchman said. “Live theater is something we don’t get a lot of anymore,” Stark said. “In an opera that you’re watching live, anything can happen. I think you would get an entirely more moving experience coming to a live show than you would doing anything else.”
(04/08/14 4:09am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For 144 hours, student filmmakers shoot and edit their videos, ones they have been preparing for months, writing scripts and working with actors and musicians.Students are given six days to complete a five-minute video for the IU Campus MovieFest competition every spring. These 144 hours are the only time the students can work on filming or editing for the competition.IU student filmmaker Chandler Swan and his partner Brendan Elmore took turns sleeping on a makeshift bed of three chairs in Wells Library while the two edited their video for last year’s competition. Their movie, “Under Euclid’s Watch,” is a drama about a young prodigy who is on the verge of a mathematical discovery. In the same library where the drama was being edited, IU student Ben Tamir Rothenberg was creating a very different production — an infomercial for toilet paper called “SheetWOW.” Little did these filmmakers know, the two movies would both be selected for a screening at the Cannes Film Festival in France this summer. At the film showing for Campus MovieFest a few days after the videographers finished editing, “Under Euclid’s Watch” won Best Picture and Best Cinematography. “SheetWOW” won Best Comedy. Four films from each campus are selected to be shown in Hollywood after every competition.Because of their awards, Rothenberg, Swan and Elmore traveled to California for the screening. It was here that Swan and Elmore met Rothenberg. The three were recently informed that their films will screen at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. This film festival is one of the most prestigious in the world and shows films from Meryl Streep, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg, Swan said. Only one film created by 21- and 22 year-olds has been shown at the Cannes Film Festival before, Swan said, so this screening is a huge accomplishment for the student filmmakers. Swan and Elmore first met through their fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, when Swan had been selected to receive an award for cinematography work he completed with his father. Elmore interviewed him about the award and the two started working together soon after that. Both filmmakers began creating videos from a young age. Swan began making films when he was given a Digital Blue camera at the age of eight. His father works for a news channel, he said, and his mother works for Paramount Pictures, so the interest was always there. Elmore remembers shooting videos with his uncle’s camera before shooting a horror movie with his brother in second grade. His freshman year at IU, Elmore met a senior in his fraternity that was participating in Campus MovieFest. “I had no idea what I was getting into,” he said. “But it was a great learning experience.” These experiences helped lead up to the success of “Under Euclid’s Watch.” The two met many challenges reserving spaces and lighting their scenes when making the movie, but Elmore said it was all worth it when they finally saw it screen at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater and eventually in Hollywood. Rothenberg said he watched hundreds of infomercials every day in order to prepare for the six days of shooting. “The film gives the viewer this weird feeling because it looks really professional, but it’s about poop,” Rothenberg said. Most of the movies he makes are graphic, he said, and showing them to his family always makes for interesting responses. “I showed it to my grandma and she said, ‘Ben, I love you, but you’re not winning anything there,’” Rothenberg said. All of the work Rothenberg put in made for an award-winning film, but it didn’t come without dedication.“If you want to make a good film, you just have to stop going to school,” Rothenberg said. “I just stopped going to classes eventually. It was more important to me.” Rothenberg was a telecommunications major, where he said he learned all of his video-shooting skills. Although IU doesn’t have a film school, Rothenberg is now pursuing his passion through a general studies major. “One thing that’s really cool about these films’ success is that it shows what IU is doing without even having a film school,” he said. “We’ve won the past four years.” Now that the campus festival and Hollywood screening are over, Rothenberg, Swan and Elmore are looking toward their preparation for Cannes. Attending the festival and paying for expenses in France will cost each student upwards of $5,000. The three are trying to propose to have some of these costs subsidized by the University as well as starting their own Kickstarter campaign. The group is also working to get a variety of actors and production companies to come to the screening of their films, so they can get more publicity while they are in France. Although the costs can be high, the group feels it is worthwhile. “We didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity to represent IU,” Rothenberg said. “We are proud Hoosiers.” Despite the festival plans hovering over the filmmakers, all three have continued to work on other projects. Elmore said he just finished a short film script that he hopes to begin shooting in the next few weeks and send on to other film festivals. Swan said he has begun a script about a newscaster and the psychological effects that reporting stories about events like school shootings can have on the character and his family. Rothenberg said he recently completed his film for this year’s Campus MovieFest called “The Rebound,” which won Best Comedy and Best Soundtrack at this year’s awards ceremony. The musical is about a young woman who breaks up with her cheating boyfriend and hits the town with her friends. Rothenberg is also working on a documentary called “Art Heals,” he said, which follows his mother, an artist working in St. Vincent’s Hospital. She works with cancer patients and helps them use art to communicate with people about their sickness and disabilities. “To make a good film, you have to have good actors, good production and a good story,” Rothenberg said. “A lot of films will be missing one of them, but the good ones have all three.”To get all three assets, the students said they look to their fellow Hoosiers. “Because we’re students, the community really wants to help us make films,” Rothenberg said. “We want to be representing Hoosiers.”An earlier version of this story identified Ben Tamir Rothenberg as Ben Tamir Rothenberger, and called the production "SheetWOW" an infomercial for musical toilet paper.
(04/04/14 2:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center will open its newest exhibit, “Save As: A Computer-Aided Exhibition,” today with a reception from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.The exhibit is opening as part of today’s Gallery Walk, which features new exhibits from about 10 different venues in downtown Bloomington. “Save As” focuses on work created using 3-D printing and computer design by IU faculty from various art and science departments on campus.Some pieces were made entirely with a 3-D printer while others include certain components of computer-aided design. Using a 3-D printer can be a confusing process, exhibit curator Payson McNett said. The exhibit will feature a 3-D printer and laser cutter during today’s reception to show gallery viewers the process involved for many of the showcased works.The audience will be able to see how a 3-D printer works and how pieces in the exhibit were created by the advanced technology. One piece that was created entirely with computer processes in the exhibit is an 8-foot-long and 1-foot-tall skateboard by McNett.McNett said he was always interested in skateboarding and building ramps and half pipes as a teenager, which served as the inspiration for this particular piece. McNett created a rendition of each part of the skateboard on a computer and then enlarged each piece so it would be to scale with the rest of the piece. With these pieces designed on the computer, McNett could print and cut them with a laser cutter and then assemble the skateboard. Another piece shown in the exhibit is titled MiRAE, which stands for Minimalist Robot for Affective Expression. The robot was created using a 3-D color printer and microcontrollers, which allows the robot facial-recognition capabilities. Gallery viewers will be able to interact with the robot as it reacts to them and recognizes them. The piece was a collaboration between Casey Bennett, Christopher Myles, Selma Sabanovic, Marlena Fraune and Katherine Shaw. Many pieces in the exhibit were created with aid from a 3-D printer, and every piece incorporated advanced manufacturing technology. “The exhibit is an opportunity to show the importance of these technologies in the future of the art world and the University,” McNett said. “These tools are not only part of the art world, but it’s part of the greater world in general.” Nicole Jacquard, who runs the 3-D printers in the School of Fine Arts, compared the potential of 3-D printers to the same potential computers had when they came on the market in the 1970s. These printers and technology are becoming easier to use and are typically less expensive, Jacquard said. Jacquard said IU has not taken the lead on this up-and-coming technology because the majority of campuses with these machines have strong engineering programs. “It’s the next industrial revolution,” she said. “We really need to start investing in these at IU.” The “Save As” exhibit provides the art and sciences departments the opportunity to share this type of technology with a wider audience and show the versatility of the machines. “Very few people know what’s being done on campus with these machines,” Jacquard said. “To actually bring this out and have people realize that people are using it and using it in new ways is a great opportunity.”
(04/02/14 4:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>There was a knock on the front door. Bloomington resident Trevor Doud answered. On the other side stood a man, wearing handmade crocheted clothes, asking to bum a cigarette. Doud didn’t have a cigarette for the stranger, so he watched the man return to the house across the street and come back with two crocheted koozies in hand, one for Doud and another for his roommate.The three started talking, and Doud told the man, Rafael “Stitch” Diggs, he liked his vibe. Diggs, he found out, sells his crocheted pieces to customers in Bloomington through his business, “New Diggs.” “He carried a musical tune and he was wearing his crochet stuff,” Doud said. “I genuinely connected with him and we talked a lot.”Not long after, Diggs moved in with Doud and his three other roommates. He didn’t pay $200 a month for rent, though. Rather, Diggs offered his crochet work in exchange for a place to live. Diggs said although most people are not entirely appreciative of his art, the four guys living in the house believe he works hard to accomplish everything he has done. “They realized how cool it was and how passionate I was about doing it and so it was an easy sell,” he said. His new roommates suggested the idea to trade crochet work when he was moving in. “I always saw it as a fair trade,” Doud said. “It was a rare experience for someone to really care about what they’re doing. I always thought he was bringing in as much as he was getting.” Diggs made each roommate a jacket, valued at about $500 because of the time he spent on each piece. He said he is still overworking while getting underpaid for the exchange, but that the money is not important to him.Money takes away from the main point of his crocheting, which is the art and self-expression that accompanies each piece, Diggs said.“That’s kind of lost when you appraise it or assign it a value in green pieces of paper that were invented,” he said. Diggs employs this philosophy when he runs his crochet operation.“My customers design what they buy, and the point of it isn’t money,” he said. The main point of crocheting is to promote intuition about art in others. “Even if they don’t realize it, the fact that they can appreciate what I’ve done for myself is valuable,” he said. “If you appreciate good art, you’re an artist.” Diggs doesn’t add his logo to each item of clothing to allow his customers to put themselves into his pieces, so it shows their own personality. Despite the desire to avoid money, Diggs can’t evade it entirely. To combat this, he tries to promote awareness by asking questions about the validity of money. “I have to pretend that money means as much as my art, or it’s equivalent,” Diggs said. “I have to make up a number.” He first learned to crochet from his mom when he was 12 years old.“One Christmas we were too poor to buy presents, so she taught us to crochet to make each other things instead,” he said. Diggs has now been crocheting for about 20 years, and has learned to create jackets, overalls, hats, koozies and bags without using a single pattern. “The potential of things I can create is pretty much limitless,” he said. Diggs is also a DJ. He said that he found the dancing and music cool and had a really personal experience with it. Both DJ-ing and crocheting remind Diggs of his mom and the hard work she always put into her children’s lives. Diggs remembers his mom staying up late at night braiding his and his siblings’ hair, working on projects and crocheting. His mom started college two separate times after having five children. “Growing up she gave us everything and nothing,” Diggs said. “We were poor so she gave us the skills of crocheting. We were not rich after my dad got fired from his rich job, and we moved to the ghetto. But we were still rich in our heads. We were poor, but we hid it well.” Currently, Diggs sells his crochet work and DJs smaller events around Bloomington. “It’d always be fun making a living off of what I love, but it’s easy to forget that if it’s not one thing it’s another,” he said. “Rich people have their problems, too. I’d rather be a happy poor guy than an angry millionaire.”
(04/01/14 2:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Menopause, The Musical,” showing at the IU Auditorium at 7 p.m. today, tells the story of four women who are brought together by a lingerie sale at Bloomingdale’s. Three women fight over a lacy black bra until they realize they all have something in common — aging.The women move to different areas of the department store through the rest of the production and talk about the symptoms of both menopause and aging.“It’s funny the title is ‘Menopause, The Musical’ because it’s more about just growing older,” actress Valerie Mackay said. “A lot of people enjoy it even if they’re not a woman or going through menopause.” Mackay plays the Earth Mother, who is one of the four women in the internationally-performed musical, each depicting a different stereotype of woman.“I love the Earth Mother because she’s most like me,” Mackay said. “She’s very spiritual and is always looking to be peaceful and happy.” The second actress is called the Iowa Housewife, who is an innocent character who seldom leaves her hometown. She takes propriety very seriously and is concerned with being appropriate and dignified. This character is the one most of the audience can probably identify with, Mackay said. “It’s her first time going to New York, but then she has a big opening-up and she kind of finds her wings,” she said. The third character is called the Soap Star. “Soap Star is our hot mess,” Mackay said. “She’s this beautiful woman who is a star on the soap operas, but now she’s being replaced by someone younger.” Losing her beauty is the main concern of this character, until she has an important realization at the end of the play.The final character is called the Power Woman, who has climbed to a high position in the business world. At every turn, this character tries to constantly be in charge, Mackay said. However, the Power Woman is experiencing symptoms of memory loss, where she constantly forgets what she was planning to say, which is a weakness in the business world. The four women are meant to represent different spectrums of women all around the world, and connect with the audience through the story and their parody renditions of 1960s, ’70s and ’80s hits. Power Woman performs a gospel reprise about hot flashes, and there is one disco melody to the tune of “Stayin’ Alive,” but the lyrics are changed to “Stayin’ Awake.” “It’s a funny script, but the magic happens in front of the audience,” Mackay said. “The audience becomes the other member of the cast. There are some moments that I’ve never heard an audience so loud.” Mackay said her favorite part of the show was being on stage and connecting with the audience. After one performance, Mackay said, a 23-year-old woman came up crying to the cast members. She told them that she had a hysterectomy, which is surgery that removes a woman’s uterus, and this had caused early menopause. She thanked them for their great performance and said that she had been going through everything they had shown on stage and it made her feel more comfortable with what was happening to her. “The audience can always recognize themselves in it or someone they know,” Mackay said. “A lot of men even say they think they’re going through menopause, too.”
(03/26/14 3:38am)
The stage darkened. A ballerina in a pearly-white tutu slowly danced down a six-foot ramp.She lifted her leg more than 90-degrees from her body, balancing on nothing but her toes.As she moved down, another dancer followed. Each ballerina was followed by another until about 20 women danced in unison onstage Tuesday at the Musical Arts Center for a dress rehearsal of the upcoming spring ballet. IU Opera and Ballet Theater will perform their spring ballet “East by Northeast” at 8 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday at the Musical Arts Center. Tickets start at $8 for students and $12 for the general public. Laura Whitby, lead soloist of “La Bayadère”, has been preparing all year. Last fall, Whitby fractured a bone in her foot after a partnered jump she had performed many times in practice and rehearsals for the fall ballet “Classical Europe.” “I was tired, it was the end of the day and for some reason I landed on the side of my foot,” she said. “I heard a big crack.” After fracturing the bone in two different places, Whitby was out for a couple of months and placed on crutches.After her injury, she said, she did her best to remain positive and work with the athletic trainer and ballet instructors to get back on her feet.She used a trampoline to get her jump back, completed conditioning exercises and did Pilates and yoga. Moving from bar work in sneakers to completing entire jumps took about two months of patience and dedication. “I had to create a timeline,” she said. “When you first start back, you can’t just jump back into it, because you’re going to be weak.” Although the injury was traumatic, Whitby doesn’t see the experience as a complete loss. “When I was forced to take a step back and reevaluate my techniques, it was actually a blessing,” she said. “It’s kind of a good thing to break down the basics again.” “East by Northeast” is Whitby’s first major production since her injury. “It’s definitely trying,” she said. “I’m just excited to be able to be on stage again.” Getting there required a lot of practice. Learning the choreography took only a few days, Whitby said, and the rest of the time was dedicated to perfecting the technique and movement. “Classical ballet is so precise and so difficult,” Whitby said. “You’re in this white tutu with pink tights and you can’t hide anything.” The ballet is split into three different parts, titled “La Bayadère Act II”, “Airs” and “Donizetti Variations.”Each part is a separate ballet performed by a different set of dancers. Preparation began two weeks after the beginning of January, and since then, the ballet dancers have been working on technique and stamina exercises, coaching and rehearsals. Whitby is part of the first act, which is actually the second act of the production “La Bayadère”. IU Opera and Ballet Theater opted to only perform the second act, which is about a warrior from India who smokes opium and has a hypnotic dream about reuniting with a dancer from The Kingdom of Shades. Junior Matthew Rusk portrays the warrior, which he said he found to be the hardest part of the production. “In a ballet like this there is so much in terms of detail and you have to be portraying a character on top of that,” he said. “It’s an uncomfortable process, but it’s also very rewarding and fun.” “East by Northeast” is Rusk’s ninth major production at IU. He said he has been a part of every ballet since his freshman year. “I started ballet when I was about 6 years old,” he said. “I saw the Nutcracker and started lessons a month later and never stopped.” Rusk said that he was most attracted to the athleticism of ballet dancing. “Ballet is a very hard physical activity,” said principal coach Violette Verdy. “We are most definitely athletes.”Verdy is the main coach for the ballet dancers, meaning that she helps the dancers refine their technique and work with the style of this particular Russian ballet. Verdy teaches a class throughout the week and coaches the dancers for each ballet. She’s been working at IU since the end of 1996. “It’s like working with Shakespeare, you really have to know your text,” she said. “Because it’s classical dancing, you are showing discipline over the body and yourself.” That discipline is hard to achieve and has taken a lot of patience and work to get the show ready for the premiere. “It’s absolutely about control and purity,” Verdy said. “You have to be something other than yourself. That is what we try to teach the dancers.” The second part of the production is called “Airs” and was choreographed by Paul Taylor. “Airs” is a more contemporary ballet with classical music. The ballet is characterized as being high-energy with big movements and will include dancers Justin Barbour, Bella Calafiura and Rachel Duvall. The third and final piece of the ballet is “Donizetti Variations,” which was choreographed by 20th century Russian choreographer George Balanchine. Balanchine actually worked with Verdy on this ballet when she performed for him and she coached the dancers for the performance, including Aaron Anker and Carly Hammond. A live orchestra will accompany each part of the ballet, providing music with a beautiful, ethereal quality, Whitby said. “It’s like opening a very good bottle of champagne and all of the little bubbles go right into your nose,” Verdy said. “Ballet is never a negative experience, it’s always an elevating one.”
(03/25/14 4:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The fantasy of marriage, home improvement techniques and a response to Internet culture will all come together in the Grunwald Gallery of Art’s bachelor’s and master’s of fine arts thesis exhibits opening today. BFA student Bryn Taubensee plans to exhibit her installation exploring the ideas of marriage and the fantasies and plans that surround the tradition. Her idea came from seeing the wedding Pinterest boards of her friends and other women.Pinterest is a website that allows users to accumulate links and pictures that they can organize into different boards. Many users share ideas for their future weddings on the site. Taubensee said she thought it was strange her friends created these fantasy weddings so early in their lives without even having marriage plans in the near or distant future. With this inspiration, Taubensee created a sculpture with spray foam, cardboard, paint and a few statues. “I used spray foam because it molds in a really gross way,” she said. “I think dreams are really oozy and I thought that correlated.”Taubensee also incorporated various pastel colors into the piece to contrast the disgusting appearance of the spray foam, she said. “The idea is you can never achieve this look because it’s so vibrant and intense,” Taubensee said. The fantasy dreams of a Pinterest-perfect wedding are hard to achieve, and Taubensee wanted to communicate to her audience that people desire marriage without really considering its importance and effect on their lives. “I just think art is one way to express your cultural opinions,” she said. “This is my way of vocalizing mine.” Another sculptor exhibiting in the show is MFA student Devin Balara, who also decided to criticize an aspect of society. Balara’s installation utilizes the tools of home improvement and applies them to cast-off objects. For example, the sculptor took old mattresses she had found and painted them to turn them into decorative objects. Balara’s idea came from growing up in the suburbs of Tampa, Fla., where everything seems perfect on the surface, she said. “People try to decorate their homes according to their individual tastes, but they are shopping at the same stores for the same crap that ends up in everyone’s homes,” she said. “If everyone has the same blinds from Target, that doesn’t make your home any different from anyone else’s.” Poking fun at this idea, Balara created her installation to appear like a mix of a furniture showroom and the way furniture actually gets set up in a home. Her installation includes six mattresses, a rug, a separate wall and various other household objects that have been comically decorated to appear unique, she said. A second MFA artist in the exhibit is painter Zach Koch, who is displaying a series of 16 paintings he has been working on over the past year. Koch described himself as an appropriation artist. He takes things from other existing artwork or items in pop culture and adds his own creative spin to them. “Basically I would take screenshots of things and arrange them in a new order,” he said. “I would mash them up together or layer them on top of each other.” The process begins when Koch creates a digital collage of screenshots he has collected. Working off the collage, he paints the images onto wood panels with oils. “It would be easy to keep them as digital images, but I like translating it to some kind of archaic form,” he said. Each painting takes one to two weeks, and almost every one ends up differently than he expected from the digital image. “Since you’re working from something that’s artificial, it’s hard to emulate the same kind of look that a digital file has,” he said. “A lot changes along the way, but I think they look even better with the oil paint. Some expectations fall flat sometimes, and that can be hard.” Despite the time and challenges involved in creating the pieces, Koch was able to install his pieces in time for today’s show. “I think it’s an opportunity to see different perspectives,” he said. “I hate imposing things on people, especially when it comes to art. There’s that thing that if you don’t look at art, you’re uncultured, but I don’t necessarily believe that. Anybody that does anything creative, if they can make people amazed by their work, that’s a success.”
(03/24/14 3:06am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>As the red curtain rose at IU Cinema, the screen showed a crowd at the National Theatre in London preparing to watch a live performance of “War Horse” starring a marionette horse. Sunday evening, the IU Cinema presented National Theatre Live’s production of “War Horse,” a performance art piece that is played from the theater in London to cinemas across the country. The show was performed with actors and a horse that was created by the Handstring Puppet Company in England, controlled by three puppeteers who move the horse in realistic ways. IU Cinema director Jon Vickers said the puppet’s movements are very convincing and the object has a distinct personality given to it by the puppeteers. Sunday’s performance of “War Horse” is a Broadway production based on a book by Michael Morpurgo and follows the life of a young horse from Ireland as he is sold to various owners and serves in World War I. The play won the Tony award for “Best Play” in 2011, along with six other awards. The story was also adapted into a 2011 film directed by Steven Spielberg.National Theater Live is a popular theater group in London that has expanded to bring performing arts to a cinema audience, making it cheaper and more accessible, Vickers said.To do this, they allow their performances to be played in cinemas, sometimes streamed live. When the IU Cinema began showing these performances a year and a half ago, it became the second venue in the state of Indiana to host them. The only other venue was the cinema at Notre Dame, where Vickers worked before coming to IU. “There has been a desire to bring this to IU and the IU Cinema,” Vickers said. “We resisted for a while because we wanted to be mainly focused on film, but there was a need in the community to do this.”Vickers said the cinema had been getting a lot of emails from students and faculty from the theater department who wanted to include tzhese programs and offer them on campus. Coming from Notre Dame, where the films have been wildly successful, Vickers decided to add them to the cinema’s programming.The program has been met with a lot of success, Vickers said.People traveled from neighboring states including Ohio, Illinois and Kentucky to see the performance. The programs haven’t been widely adopted around the country. English professors De Witt Kilgore and Ranu Samantrai brought their two children to see the performance because of their love of IU Cinema and the National Theatre in London, where they have attended performances many times, Kilgore said. “Bloomington used to be a place that didn’t have a venue to see independent cinema,” he said. “The big chains have been spotty at best. IU Cinema has put Bloomington on the map.” Kilgore has lived in Bloomington since 1996 and said he sees these performances as a great addition to the community. Since the Cinema began its live performances, Indianapolis has begun to show performance pieces at the Keystone Art Cinema, becoming the third venue in Indiana. Previous live performances have included the Shakespeare plays “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “Coriolanus” and other genres such as comedy, drama and tragedy. The Cinema is still waiting to hear from National Theatre Live about next semester’s performances, but it tries to include at least one a semester. “This has been a successful program for us and we intend to continue it,” Vickers said.