The Monthly – April 2017

The Daily Northwestern April 2017

Marie Watt, Witness, 2015, 71 × 180.5 in. Reclaimed wool blanket, embroidery floss, thread. Image courtesy of the artist.

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Staff of The Monthly

Issue 1

Letter from the Editors Dear readers, This past March, President Trump proposed eliminating the National Endowment for the Arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio stations in the first budget plan of his presidency. While the president may disagree, we would emphatically argue that both entertainment and the arts are an important part of shaping our culture.

In light of this, we are introducing a brand new publication: The Monthly, where we will be publishing features on arts and entertainment relevant to the readers of The

Emily Chin A&E Editor

Daily. We believe this is a necessary area to highlight, and we hope you will enjoy learning about the students, alumni, faculty and any other groups we feature.

Madeleine Fernando Assistant A&E Editor

Our aim is to take our journalism and apply it to a field at risk in the current political climate. Having a dedicated space for this will allow us to further explore this area. This is a work in progress, but we hope that through this medium we can expand our coverage of arts and entertainment.

Jerry Lee Creative Director KT Son Designer Katie Pach Allie Goulding Photographers

Sincerely, Emily Chin, A&E Editor Jerry Lee, Creative Director

Cover photo: Daily file photo by Daniel Tian

Captured: Spring Break Over spring break, The Daily’s photographers took trips around the world; here are some of the best photos from their travels. ◊ 1 2 3 4 5

Noah Frick-Alofs/The Daily Northwestern Daniel Tian/Daily Senior Staffer Jeffrey Wang/Daily Senior Staffer Allie Goulding/The Daily Northwestern Jeremy Yu/The Daily Northwestern

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DYNAMIC duo Couple shares their experiences in Chicago film scene after attending Northwestern — by Emily Chin

1 Joe Chappelle (Katie Pach/Daily Senior Staffer) 2 Colleen Griffen (Allie Goulding/The Daily Northwestern)

Neither Joe Chappelle (Communication ’86) nor Colleen Griffen (Communication ’88) knew they wanted to enter the film industry after leaving Northwestern. But now, both are at the heart of Chicago’s growing film industry as Griffen works as a producer and Chappelle busies himself on the explosive set of “Chicago Fire.”

The married Evanston couple are both well-known screenwriters and producers in Chicago. Chappelle produced “The Wire,” “CSI: Miami” and is currently producing “Chicago Fire,” an action-based TV series that follows firefighters in Chicago. Griffen produced “Boyband” and “The Cold and the Quiet.”

They were married in 1987. Together, they are a dynamic duo, said Jonah Zeiger, associate director of external programs, internships and career services. Zeiger helped organize a panel that Griffen moderated on campus last Tuesday.

Griffen’s panel aimed to demystify the film industry, and focused particularly on the opportunities for students in Chicago. The panelists illuminated just how unsaturated the industry in Chicago is, Zeiger said. For Northwestern students, most of the post-production work in Chicago is in commercials, rather than film, he added.

“I see in Chicago three of the best film schools in the country,” Griffen said. “I go on the sets and a lot of the people working full time are from DePaul or Columbia, and not so many from Northwestern. I want Northwestern people to see that there’s another path to employment.”

Chappelle taught a master class for 10 acting and directing students the day after Griffen’s panel. He wanted to share with students the basic practices for narrative cinema with students, something that he saw as a necessity when he was a film student at Northwestern, he said.

Assistant director of EPICS Funmilayo Ojikutu helped organize the class.

“I thought it was really interesting,” she said. “It was good for them to hear from a director’s point of view what they’re looking for in a scene.”

Film school

Griffen and Chappelle met at Northwestern, where they got to know each other by working on each other’s projects, spending hours working on finished film and video.

After working on several projects together, they knew they wanted to be together, Griffen said.

“You’re in this program for a while and

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you figure out what you’re good at,” Chappelle said. “I was good at directing and she was good at producing. We had a very good rapport — not the same aesthetic, but a very similar aesthetic. We would challenge one another and push each other forward.”

Coming to NU, Chappelle didn’t know a lot about the film industry. He decided to go to film school as an experiment to see if he would enjoy it without any prior film background. He loved it, he said.

Film school allowed Chappelle to work on projects, and fail, in a low-pressure environment. He learned to be self-reliant, as many of the projects required students to set their own goals and their own deadlines.

“What was great about film school is it allowed you to fail,” he said. “You could learn how to shoot something on the technical level. We were learning the grammar of the art. Film school allowed me to do a project, mess up, learn from it and then move on.”

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Working together

After leaving film school, both Chappelle and Griffen worked in the advertising industry, before realizing their passions were in film.

They then decided to collaborate on an independent feature film called “Thieves Quartet.”

“Thieves Quartet” is a thriller film about four thieves who try to kidnap someone, but whose plans quickly go awry. Playing off each

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other’s strengths, Chappelle wrote the script while Griffen produced the final film.

“It’s a really collaborative art form,” Griffen said. “Everyone brings something different and you can create this amazing energy with people who want to take this completely blank page and write a story.”

“Thieves Quartet” ultimately propelled Chappelle into the film industry, he said.

After “Thieves Quartet,” he started doing work for Dimension Films, a film production company.

Griffen said though some couples can find working together difficult, Chappelle and Griffen enjoyed it so much that they recently decided to make another film together.

“Our personalities match, our work styles match, we have a shared aesthetic,” Griffen said. “I’m good at getting the ball rolling. He takes it to the finish line.”

The two have been fundraising for the past year and are working on a political thriller with two strong female leads. Chappelle wrote the script to take place in a location similar to Evanston, and is interested in filming on campus this summer, he said.

The Chicago climate

While Griffen has been focusing on the new film full time, Chappelle is still working on the set of “Chicago Fire,” and his work on set ends next week. He said he enjoys the fact

that the set is based in Chicago, as in the past he had to fly out for work each week.

Chappelle and Griffen both emphasized the fact that the Chicago film industry is growing. They created their own Chicago-based production company, Corrado Mooncoin, last year to house talent in the area.

“The shows that come in from New York and LA are great but we need to build our business up where we have more projects generated from Chicago writers and directors,” Griffen said.

In the past few years, the Chicago film industry has been expanding because of a new tax incentive that provides a 30 percent tax credit on expenses, Chappelle said. In just the past five years, he has seen increased infrastructure and an exponential growth in production, he said.

“As long as the tax incentive stays in place, (the growth) will continue,” he said. “It’s a great city to shoot in. It’s not like New York where it’s so crowded. We’re dense here but it’s not that crowded in terms of production.”

The tax credit is good until 2021.

With their production company, Chappelle and Griffen are working to cultivate talent in the Chicago area.

“I like to think on my best day that what I’m doing is creating a safe space for artists to do their work,” Griffen said. “It’s a completely collaborative experience.” ◊

a PLEA for inclusion More than 200 Bienen students sign petition to diversify music curriculum — by Madeleine Fernando Steven Banks, a second-year graduate student in the Bienen School of Music, recalls playing just two pieces by black composers in his life. One of the pieces was written by his best friend and member of his chamber ensemble, and the other composition was written by himself.

Over two months ago, Banks started a petition to diversify Bienen’s core curriculum in music theory, music history and aural skills.

The online petition currently has more than 200 signatures.

Banks, who is black, said he started the petition after doing some “soul searching” while trying to write a personal statement to apply for a doctoral degree program. Banks realized there were not many people that looked like him in classical music. However, after doing some research, he discovered a ton of music from composers of all backgrounds dating all the way back to the 1700s, he said.

“I just thought it was ridiculous that we don’t learn about this in school, particularly when people are constantly trying to find relevance for classical music,” he said. “They’re always like, ‘Why is it dying, why aren’t people coming to concerts?’ and this is precisely why … (classical music) seems like something of another people.”

Joon Park, a Weinberg and Bienen fourthyear student, said he didn’t hesitate to sign the petition when he saw it on Facebook. Park, who is Asian, said finding role models he relates to on both a racial and compositional level can be difficult.

“The music curriculum more than anything else is focused specifically on the Western

tradition, and that’s important to study just because of how much the current repertoire of classical music is based on, but also that kind of in turn stigmatizes music from other origins as ‘otherness,’” he said.

Banks said any changes that may come from the petition should be “inclusive and not reversely exclusive,” meaning that diversity should be incorporated for everyone in the core curriculum, and not just reserved to specialized classes and ensembles. In theory and aural skills classes, he said, the first step would be using examples and sample materials of minority composers.

“Instead of like 10 examples by Beethoven and Bach, you can do some by Bach, Joseph Bologne, Alvin Singleton, Florence Price, and all these different people that are using the same techniques and would be great to help your students learn all the techniques of music, and would also make them aware of all these other composers that are out there,” Banks said.

Banks said he thought creating the petition would be the best step to prompt administrative change and show student support.

He first posted a link to the petition on the Bienen Facebook page, where the petition was then shared and well-received among students, Banks said. He plans to set up tables with representatives from all areas of Bienen to encourage passersby to consider signing the petition.

Bienen junior Megan Rohrer said the petition immediately caught her attention because she has recently been concerned with the issue of underrepresentation in music.

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“If Northwestern openly and outwardly makes this a priority, it has enough weight in the music world to start something really big.”

— Steven Banks, Graduate student

2 As a violin performance major, she struggled finding female composer role models in the traditional canon, but said she makes an effort to perform works of women composers.

“There’s hardly any women composers that are taught in the standard works that everyone learns in music history class,” she said.

“I’d always accepted this to just be the norm but like, why is it that way?”

Once the petition reaches more than 300 signatures — about half of Bienen students — Banks hopes to bring the petition to Bienen Dean Toni-Marie Montgomery to have a conversation about the importance of diversity in music curriculum, he said.

“Once the school and faculty know that it’s a big concern, I think it won’t be hard honestly to do something about it,” he said. “If Northwestern openly and outwardly makes this a priority, it has enough weight in the music world to start something really big.”

Banks will speak at Northwestern’s upcoming TEDx conference, “The Power of Intention,” in a talk titled “Into the Canon: Racism in Classical Music” on April 15. He said he

hopes the talk will be shared within the music world and spark conversation and change within music curriculum.

Banks said he believes the lack of diversity in classical music is an issue that is deeply rooted in its history, saying he doesn’t believe any one person should take the blame for the issue. The petition itself is an effort to work together to integrate more diversity and make classical music more inclusive and approachable for everyone, he said.

“I know there are people my age today who are still feeling like they can’t feel at home in classical music so this is just what I thought would be a natural thing to do to show there’s an interest among students,” he said. “It’s the responsibility of the school to be giving us a comprehensive education that is accurate and worldly and shows the contributions of all people.” ◊ 1 (Katie Pach/Daily Senior Staffer) 2 (Allie Goulding/The Daily Northwestern) 3 (Katie Pach/Daily Senior Staffer)

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