The Monthly - December 2017

December 2017

Built for Broadway

Northwestern theater education leads Wildcats to Broadway success p.4

Leveling Up

NU lecturer shows artistic merit of video games through exhibit p.8

United Nations of Bells Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra performs alumna’s bell piece p.12

THE MONTHLY Contents

Built for Broadway

Northwestern theater education leads Wildcats to Broadway success

Leveling Up

NU lecturer shows artistic merit of video games through exhibit

Worlds Apart

Communication professor, alumna make film on science and religion

United Nations of Bells

Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra performs alumna’s piece

04 08 10 12

Staff of The Monthly Issue 6

Stavros Agorakis A&E Editor

Ruiqi Chen Design Editor

Jane Recker Assistant A&E Editor

Maddie Burakoff Madeleine Fernando Writers

Cover photo and page 3 photo: courtesy of Michael Borowski and Tom D’Ambrosio

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Northwestern theater education leads Wildcats to Broadway success — by Maddie Burakoff

O

pen any Broadway playbill right now and there’s a decent chance you’ll find a Wildcat’s name somewhere inside.

For the second year in a row, Northwestern ranked seventh in Playbill’s list of the most represented colleges on Broadway. Playbill listed 16 NU alumni who are gracing the stage in the 2017-18 season, performing in shows all along the Great White Way –– “Anastasia,” “School of Rock,” “Hello, Dolly!” and more. New York University topped the ranking and Boston Conservatory tied with NU for the seventh-place spot.

Communication Dean Barbara O’Keefe said two factors make NU’s theater program stand out.

“Number one, (we have) superbly talented students,” O’Keefe said. “Number

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two, we have a very distinctive way of teaching acting. … They come out with well-furnished brains, so that they’re ready to bring lots of different knowledge and insights to bear on the work they’re doing as an actor.”

A changing education NU has been a “powerhouse” in the theater world since the 1920s, O’Keefe said, and has continued to adapt to changing patterns in the industry.

Early on, the program focused largely on acting without much music and dance training, she said. Over time, music, dance and other skills like circus arts have become important factors to be competitive in the theater business.

When emeritus Communication Prof.

Dominic Missimi began teaching at NU

in 1980, he said he began to see growing demand for expanded education in aspects like voice and dance training.

In response to the trend, he created a Music Theatre Certificate program in the School of Communication.

“People said, ‘We need to legitimize this and say it’s not just throwaway,’” Missimi said. “All over the country, music theater became a very popular course of study, and we were kind of right in the middle of that craze.”

Today, about one quarter of the students in the theater program are pursuing the music theater certificate, said Communication Prof. Harvey Young, chair of the theater department. Musicals — as opposed to other plays — tend to create more opportunities for younger artists, making music theater a

promising pathway for students right after graduation, Young said.

In recent years, NU’s theater department has focused on encouraging diversity and inclusion, Young said. He said the theater world at large is engaging with a “more diverse palate” of works, citing the success of “Hamilton” as an example of Broadway striving to be more inclusive.

As theater alumni move into this multicultural industry, Young said he believes it is important that students study and produce works by artists with different backgrounds, like female playwrights and artists of color.

“I make a great effort to help students realize that audiences at large are diverse, and they want to see themselves onstage,” he said. “If we only create the same stories that feature the same people, then you’re ultimately creating a marginalized experience for theater-making.”

A breadth of study Over the years, though, the “backbone” of NU theater has been consistent, said Communication lecturer Mary Poole, who has been at NU since she began attending graduate school in 1974.

The program maintains high standards for its student actors and a curriculum designed to educate rather than just train “cookie cutter” actors, she said.

Many of the schools ranked on Playbill’s list — including Carnegie Mellon University and The Juilliard School — have conservatory programs that focus almost exclusively on theater.

The theater program at NU, however, offers a liberal arts education with a wider scope.

To complete a theater major at NU, students must complete 18 units of distribution requirements in addition to their core theater courses, according to the School of Communication website.

Missimi said he sometimes feels NU’s lack of a music theater major means the school loses potential students who really want to “eat, sleep and drink music theater.”

Still, he believes the liberal arts education Photos: Source: Michael Borowski, Tom D’Ambrosio

produces well-rounded performers.

The theater department has no plans in the near future to turn the music theater certificate into a full major or minor, O’Keefe said.

“Phantom of the Opera” performer S cott Mikita (Communication ’88) said his liberal arts background helps him “find the blood ” in a scene or a role — in o t h e r w o rd s , uncover the

humanity behind a part.

“If all you ever study is theater and acting, then you’ve had no sense of what the possibility of being human is out there in the big wide world,” Mikita said, “which is why studying history, art history, psychology, science and all that is so incredibly important.”

Antonette Cohen (Communication ’06), currently a dance captain and swing in Broadway’s “Wicked,” said NU ensures that alumni of the theater program are “fully-formed” individuals with more than just pure talent.

Cohen said she picked up a second major in psychology while studying dance at NU, and her non-theater classes gave her “nuggets of wisdom” to apply toward her career onstage.

“In a lot of ways, what we do in the theater is a reflection of the human condition,” Cohen said.

“I felt like, as a psychology

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major, it really went hand in hand. I was studying the science of the human condition and then the art of the human condition.”

Purple pride beyond graduation The alumni network is another factor that can help support former students in the theater business, Communication Prof.

Cindy Gold said. Any theater is likely to have a “sea of purple” onstage and behind the scenes, she said, and among these successful alumni there is a strong ethic

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of “paying it forward” by helping fellow Wildcats.

Jim Weitzer (Communication ’96), currently in “Phantom of the Opera,” said his career has benefited from NU connections.

For example, he said Missimi — one of his former NU professors — cast him in a Chicago production that in turn helped land his “Phantom” audition.

“Northwestern doesn’t guarantee anything, but it does, I think, get your foot in the door,” Weitzer said. “If you can show them the goods, then Northwestern is a

nice name to have on a resume, especially when you’re starting out.”

NU excels at building “bridges” to carry its alumni quickly from graduation to Broadway and other major professional houses, Young said. By bringing in successful alumni to engage with students, the school makes it so the world of professional theater doesn’t seem “big and overwhelming” to students, he said.

This year, both “Hello, Dolly!” star Kate Baldwin (Communication ’97) and Actors’ Equity Association president Kate Shindle

(Communication ’99) have offered workshops at NU. “Book of Mormon” actor Ben Estus (Communication ’13) said he found it comforting to have the “purple mafia” of alumni to support him in a new city, even if everyone was on separate journeys in different areas of the theater industry.

“We like to help each other out, whether that’s actually securing employment or just being there as a moral support network,” Estus said. “That’s what made the move to New York so easy for me, was how many of my classmates were here and kind of all going through it together.”

A ‘beautiful bubble’ Mikita said he found NU pushed him to take on roles outside his normal range.

One particular challenge for him as an undergraduate was playing the role of Macbeth despite not being a “military type,” he said. Though he “never did it very well,” Mikita said he was determined to work hard at the role because it was one he would likely never play on a professional stage.

To understand the character and the way a soldier would move, Mikita said he checked out a broadsword from the prop shop and then went to the beach. He waded knee-deep into Lake Michigan to get the feeling of being weighed down by

armor, he said, and proceeded to swing the sword around, stabbing it into the sand to feign being in battle.

“I was lost in my world, and then I hear this loudspeaker go, ‘Drop the broadsword,’” he said. “I looked around and it was the campus police. … They thought I was a public menace.”

That incident aside, Mikita said it was roles like Macbeth that challenged him to become a versatile actor rather than sticking to a specific type of role throughout his career.

The theater community at NU provides a “beautiful bubble” that allows students to experiment and step out of their comfort zones, Weitzer said. In classwork and student productions, he said he was able to challenge himself by directing and experimenting with roles that were different from what he was used to, like trying to get into the mind of John Wilkes Booth in a production of the musical “Assassins.”

Amber Owens (Communication ’02), who currently performs in “Aladdin,” said she wasn’t actually part of the theater program at NU — she majored in radio, television and film — but still found the theater community to be a welcoming place and a “healthy outlet” for her. After spending much of her childhood performing with older actors and feeling like “one of the kids,” she said it was beneficial to

spend time alongside her peers.

“Just getting to spend that much time around people in my age group that were working and being creative at that level was really useful,” Owens said. “At school I was able to really just be at the same place emotionally and developmentally as everybody else I was working with.”

O’Keefe said a main goal of the theater curriculum is to give students tools to become experts in their fields. In addition to that, though, she said she hopes students who graduate from NU theater walk away with essential tools for their entire lives. “ We want (students) to learn how to live well,” O’Keefe said. “As a school that makes creativity its central concept, we want to nurture everyone’s creativity and help them … chart a course for their lives that lets them keep growing and prospering creatively.” ◊

“As a school that makes creativity its central concept, we want to nurture everyone’s creativity and help them … chart a course for their lives that lets them keep growing and prospering creatively.”

— Communication Dean Barbara O’Keefe

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NU lecturer brings artistic merit of video games to public view through gallery exhibits

M

ost people grow up thinking of video games as a purely recreational activity — but for Communication lecturer Chaz Evans, video games aren’t just ways to pass the time; they’re an art form.

While Evans did grow up playing video games — mostly through demos in shopping malls and big box retailers like Best Buy — he realized early on they held a greater value than what met the eye.

“I was always most interested in … games that were still big enough to be distributed nationwide or internationally but just didn’t quite conform to the most standard conventions of video games,” Evans said. “(It was) stuff that had something to say stylistically or a mechanic that just didn’t make sense to people at first.”

Evans went on to study art history in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he met Jonathan Kinkley, another

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— by Madeleine Fernando

student who shared his passion for video game art. The two kept in contact over the years in hopes of garnering more attention for this form of art in Chicago.

Together, they founded the Video Game Art Gallery in 2013 as a pop-up organization dedicated to raising awareness and increasing cultural appreciation of video games and new media through exhibitions, events and educational programming.

This August, the nonprofit found its physical home in a roughly 800-square-

Photos: Katie Pach/Daily Senior Staffer

foot venue downtown — the first of its kind in the Chicago area.

Kinkley said the gallery provides a space to study, critique and discuss games from an “art historical” point of view.

“The broader public tends to usually think about games in predetermined mindsets,” he said. “They might read about games and think that they don’t have any redeeming social or cultural value. (We hope) that they think about games as a distinctive and important medium.”

Evans said the space mainly draws two types of audiences: people who are very interested in video games and those with a passion for making or writing about art.

“There’s a lot that both groups can learn from each other … a contemporary art gallery that shows video games is the place to (bring together) those two groups,” he said.

Brice Puls, VGA’s exhibitions and gallery manager, said the space showcases video games that are more experimental and outside the traditional realm of popular action and puzzle-based titles. Exhibitions are rotated on a quarterly basis and are selected by VGA staff, he said.

The gallery’s upcoming exhibition, “The Ears Have Walls: A Survey of Sound Games,” opens Dec. 1 and will run until Feb. 25.

The exhibit, curated by Evans and Communication lecturer Stephan Moore, features games that “invert the ratio of attention” between the audio and visual components of a game, Evans

said.

“Usually we assume … the primary output is the screen and the sound is the support structure,” Evans said. “This is a show of all games that are the opposite of that, where the audio is the main feedback that you get from the system and then the visual is the support.”

With this show, Evans and Moore plan to house a diverse and expansive collection of these titles under one roof so the games can be recognized as their own category.

The selected artwork needs to satisfy two criteria to be part of the gallery, Evans said. In addition to emphasizing an audio component, the game must require “active listening” from the player. If a game can still be played after turning the sound off, that’s a sign it isn’t a good fit, Evans said.

In contrast with previous exhibits, every piece in “The Ears Have Walls” will be interactive so visitors can directly play them using computers, tablets and VR headsets among other devices, Evans said.

People can experience this focus on “active listening” in more than one way at the exhibit, he said. Instead of using traditional wall labels to present the works, visitors can download a mobile app to get an audio tour of each piece before interacting with it.

Kinkley, Evans’ friend who became the executive director and co-founder of the gallery, said he is excited to see the work of local and international artists come together in one space.

He

added that Evans is quickly emerging as one of the field’s “leading academic and curatorial voices” in video games and new media.

“It’s an exciting time for him and for VGA at large,” Kinkley said. “This exhibition is going to be the latest in a string of fascinating, interesting and diverse exhibition topics that we’ve organized as a gallery.” ◊

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Communication professor, alumna make film on conflict between science, religion — by Madeleine Fernando

W

hen the flood came, Noah loaded his animals into the ark, the biblical tale goes. There were cattle and lions, birds and fish and, according to creationists, dinosaurs.

“We Believe in Dinosaurs” follows the creation of Ark Encounter — a life-size construction of Noah’s Ark — by the Creation Museum in Kentucky over the course of three years, from initial concepts to opening day. The film is told through the eyes of three different people: an artist working on animal sculptures for the exhibit, a geologist who opposes creationism and a former creationist.

Communication lecturer Clayton Brown, co-director of the film, said the documentary

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explores the complex conflict between science and religion in America.

The project is the latest by 137 Films, a documentary production company started by Brown and Monica Ross (Communication ’03) in 2004. The Chicago-based nonprofit aims to create science films rooted in storytelling, breaking from the traditional archetype of a “science documentary.”

“You would normally think of a science documentary like an educational documentary where scientists point at and explain things,” Brown said. “We wanted to make documentaries about stories in the world of science and what the scientists are doing so they become characters in a story rather than just sources of information.”

Ross said she and Brown came up with the idea for “We Believe in Dinosaurs” while working on a previous documentary that dealt with “an alternate facts universe.”

While working on that film, the two heard about Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a court case in which a group of parents and teachers sued the Pennsylvania district after teachers were required to discuss intelligent design as an alternative explanation to evolution.

“Clayton and I noted to each other that (creationism) was another world of alternative facts and another world of culture and science clashing,” said Ross, the other co-director of the film.

“It really became one of the major divides in this country, of science versus belief.”

Photos: Source: Clayton Brown

Ross and Brown, alongside producer Amy Ellison, set out to create the film in 2013 — the start of a more than four-year process involving extensive research on creationism and its roots, comprehensive interviews with various subjects and a couple dozen six-hour road trips to Kentucky to shoot footage and track the progress of Ark Encounter, Brown said.

Brown said raising money for the film has been “constantly a struggle,” and that the documentary is mostly a result of unpaid work.

While the team raised over $120,000 — mostly through an Indiegogo campaign — the “real professional budget” is estimated to be about $350,000, Brown said.

Ross said the team entered the project wanting to listen to the creationist perspective rather

than framing a certain narrative as right or wrong.

The film, she said, will hopefully shine a light on a group of individuals who are often misunderstood or not taken completely seriously.

“We went on a journey into that world to find out, not mocking, not making fun of anyone, really looking seriously and telling them, ‘Please tell us what do you believe, what is creation science and why do you believe this?’”

Ross said.

The documentary is unlike any of 137 Films’ past productions, Brown said, because it explores an “extremely personal” way of understanding the world.

Brown added that he was surprised to learn how widespread creationism beliefs are, citing a 2014 Gallup poll that found over 42 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago.

Brown said he didn’t know what to expect when meeting creationists, but he was surprised with how easily he connected with them.

“When there’s someone who believes something so different than you, it’s easy to assume that you’ll have nothing in common,” Brown said.

“That’s going to be a surprise to a lot of people who see the film… (that) creationists are, for the most part, just normal people who happen to believe something very strange.”

David MacMillan, one of the subjects of the film, said he grew up as a “strident and committed” creationist before reconsidering these beliefs after studying science in college.

Now a writer who frequently discusses his experiences as a former creationist and blogs about his views, MacMillan said he hopes the film gives people a better understanding of the

belief and helps them better respond to creationists and their claims.

“This is just an absolutely unprecedented time in terms of the number of areas in which science and reason are being challenged and replaced with ideology and fear,” MacMillan said. “It’s definitely a really, really good opportunity to explore these kinds of issues.”

Currently, the film is in its final stages of editing, Brown said, and will be finalized between now and January.

After the film is completed, he said the team hopes to enter festivals and show the film to as many audiences as possible. Specifically, he said, he hopes to do a tour in southern states — specifically Kentucky — to raise discussions about creationism in schools and churches where the subject matter resonates most.

“In some ways we hope to open this door so that people can see into this other bubble, (but) we’d also like to … hold up a mirror maybe or show them that their world view isn’t the only world view,” he said. “We’d like to open up both of those types of dialogues.”

While the documentary centers on the conflict between science and religion, Brown said the film is also about how the U.S. has grown more and more divided.

In the current political climate, it is more important now than ever to listen and learn from one another, he said.

“We watch our own news stories, we listen to our own facts, we listen to people that are like us,” Brown said. “What we wanted to do with this film was open a door into another bubble and start some dialogue … about why different ideology works, why do people believe this.” ◊

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Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra performs Northwestern alumna’s ‘Sonorous Earth’ featuring 300 bells — by Jane Recker

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T

he Harris Theater stage is 2,025 square feet. On Sunday afternoon, half of that space was taken up by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra. The remaining 1,012 square feet were claimed by the four members of Third Coast Percussion for their 300 assorted bells.

The quartet — a Grammy Award-winning, Chicago-based group of Northwestern alumni — was there to perform the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ (Bienen ’87) “Sonorous Earth.” The composition was one of three pieces played by the Philharmonic on Sunday, including Mozart’s “Jupiter” symphony and Joan Tower’s “Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman.”

Philharmonic artistic director and conductor Scott Speck said Tower’s piece was particularly salient for this occasion, acting as an homage to a “particularly uncommon woman” whose work was featured in the concert. He was referring to Thomas, whom he described as “one of the greatest composers of our generation.”

Thomas has had a prolific compositional career — with more than 40 orchestral pieces under her belt — and has worked with Third Coast before on pieces of hers like “Resounding Earth,” which Speck credits as the impetus for her latest composition.

“Sonorous Earth” is a percussion quartet concerto in four movements. The opening three movements feature different families Photos: Source: David Skidmore

of bells ranging in size from 3-foot gongs to bells the size of a thumbnail. The first movement is energetic and fanfare-like; the second is an intimate prayer; and the third is playful and capricious, Thomas said. The composition ends with a “resonant and clangorous” climax in which musicians strike every single one of the 300 bells.

David Skidmore (Bienen ’05), a member of Third Coast, said the final movement is very demanding due to the athleticism and precision needed to hit the right instrument at the right time.

“I might be running across the stage to get to a Japanese prayer bowl and I have to hit it at just the right time to coordinate with a flute player that’s 50 feet away,” he said.

Thomas described the piece as unique, as “there’s literally no other piece on the planet that incorporates 300 bells.”

Thomas said she’s always been fascinated with bells because

they generate two sounds: one that comes from actually striking the bell, and another from the ringing that lingers long after.

“It’s all about letting these beautiful instruments, many used in spiritual contexts, to beautifully ring back in the silence on top of and underneath each other,” Thomas said.

Speck said he loved working with Thomas — whom he affectionately calls “Gusty” — on this world premiere, and that the piece has challenged him as an artist.

“It ’s a ver y c om p l e x piece with many different colors, so there are times when I give a cue where, simultaneously, the trumpet is playing pianissimo and the strings are playing fortissimo,” he said.

Luckily,

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Thomas has been at every rehearsal to help address some of those challenges, Speck said. He added that it has been invaluable to have close access to the composer, as it allowed him to ensure he’s crafting the piece in Thomas’ vision.

This attention to precision is also demonstrated by the Third Coast members, Thomas said. She said she is consistently impressed by their prowess for nuanced performance, deftly navigating the fine gradations of loudness and softness, and accurately interpreting each note.

The quartet needed a high level of precision as the featured soloists of the percussion quartet concerto — a genre not commonly found in the Western canon. Skidmore said

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Thomas’ decision to celebrate this genre was a great way to showcase the leading power of percussion and put the piece in a global setting.

“In the classical music tradition, percussion has taken a backseat,” Skidmore said.

“But in so many other traditions all over the world, percussion is at the forefront. You can find percussion in every single culture around the world.”

That sentiment is reflected in the diverse assortment of bells used in the piece, as Thomas said she attempted to represent many different cultures and regions.

Some of the piece’s bells came from India, Thailand and Japan. Thomas said she hopes she highlighted the interdependence of

humanity across all cultures in the show.

She added that the cultural significance of bells was an important aspect of the piece, serving as an inspiration for her compositional decisions.

“To me, this piece is a beautiful metaphor about the interdependence of all of us around the world and the commonalities,” Thomas said. “We’re all human; we shouldn’t be killing each other. This piece is a celebration of that humanity we should all share.”

It’s this global engagement that inspired the piece’s poetic name, too.

“That’s why I called it ‘Sonorous Earth,’” she said. “Let’s celebrate all of the sonorousness of this earth and all of the sounds from these bells that mankind has made.” ◊