The Adventures of Harry W and Sam G Across the 8th Dimension

WEST SIDE STORY IOWA CITY WEST HIGH SCHOOL

2901 MELROSE AVE.

IOWA CITY, IA 52246

WSSPAPER.COM

BEHIND THE SCENES AT THEATRE WEST pg. 7-8

ISSUE 1 MAY 23 2016

Table of Contents Miles Ahead Review (Harry Westergaard) pages 3-4 The Repeating of a Dark Past in the Present (Sam Gienapp) pages 5-6 Behind the Scenes at Theatre West (Harry Westergaard)-pages 7-8 2016 Governor’s Conference (Harry W) - pages 9-10

Stories Written by Sam Gienapp and Harry Westergaard Designs by Sam Gienapp and Harry Westergaard

Cover and Table of Contents photos by Harry Westergaard

Don Cheadle Delivers Overdue Miles Davis Film By: Harry Westergaard

Miles Davis was one of the great jazz innovators of the twentieth century, with a career spanning almost five decades. He was always looking ahead and never back. However, in the late ‘70’s Davis ceased producing records and retreated to seclusion. Davis spent this time dealing with many personal problems. This is the story that Miles Ahead tells. This is an effective stance to take. A biopic should not try to chronicle too much of the figure being profiled, as it then becomes a history lesson. What you need to do is take a segment of the person’s life and make a good story out of it. Miles Ahead could have fallen into the former category(there is plenty to work with) but instead we get something different. Something very different, in a good way.

Don Cheadle (who also directed the film) stars in the leading role as Miles Davis,

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and he just steals the show. Cheadle showcases Miles’s attitude perfectly with a good dose of energy and unpredictability. However, he’s not playing a caricature. Cheadle gets the more quiet and refined scenes down as well. Although he may come across as careless, he really does know and understand his music. This is showcased in the scenes that flashback to the Sketches of Spain sessions, when he is discussing the sound with Gil Evans and the orchestra. Overall, Cheadle is engaging and really cements himself in this role.

Ewan McGregor is here because they needed a white supporting actor. No, really, that’s the reason he’s here, they couldn’t get the okay from the studio unless they had a white sidekick.

That being said, this is Ewan McGregor, so he delivers solid work. He plays off Cheadle well in a couple scenes and provides a few chuckles. He did a fine job and did not come across as too intrusive.

biopic. It has a strong cast, is well directed, and chronicles a time of Miles’s life you would not expect them to. They could have just as well gone with the Gil Evans sessions, but they chose to do it different, and all the better for them. The film is a success and highly recommended to fans of both music and film. 8/10 As a side note- I would also like to touch upon the fact that I saw the film in Film Scene’s new Screening Room. This place has a bit more of a laid back, informal feeling compared to the main theatre, but it was still a fun experience. A nice touch is the tables in the back. A nice way for Film Scene to use up some dead space and offer a nice alternative theater.

Cheadle also directs as well as being the main character. The film has a sort of raw feel. We get lots of sharp cuts that can sometimes catch you off guard. For example as Miles picks up his trumpet you expect to hear a trumpet noise but instead you’re treated to loud gunshots. These are especially prevalent during the transitions between periods. Speaking of, the flashback scenes use a slightly downgraded filter to make them look older and grainy. I always love this effect (also used in Ben Affleck’s Argo). It gives the scenes a unique and old timey feel. Overall, Cheadle does a unique job directing and gives the film an edgy feeling that reflects its subject.

By flashing back to the story with Miles’s somewhat difficult relationship with his first wife, Frances Taylor, we see Miles coming to terms with his past and moving on. Miles is a man who doesn’t look back (or at least tries his best to) but we find out that even innovators can be troubled by hard times in the past. After it all has effectively been played through, Miles sits down, has a smoke, and moves on.

Overall, Miles Ahead is a very effective

MILES STYLES 1945: During his early sessions (collected on the album First Miles) he uses a style that would mirror the later “hard bop” style.

1949-50: Davis’ work from this period (nicknamed “The Birth of Cool”) has a more smooth sounding instrumentation, known as cool jazz.

It made way his famed work with Gil Evans.

1955-59: His work from this period with The Miles Davis Quintet is thought by some to be the first ever hard bop recording. It has a relaxed rhythm and style to it.

1967: By this time his group had changed from the Quintet and were now expressing a more free and loose style.

1970: Davis was starting to experiment with a fusion between Jazz and Rock. This is best represented by his famed double album Bitches Brew with it’s surreal and electric style.

1980s: By this period, Davis was making use of synths and drum machines, blending the style of the time with classic jazz yet again.

From the beginning of his career to his death Davis was frequently experimenting with going beyond the confines of what jazz was at different points in his career.

Source: NPR WSSPAPER.COM MAY 2016 PAGE 4

The repeating of a dark past in the present

CREDIT TO WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

By Sam Gienapp

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong murdered no less than 100 million people. That's 1,000 Super Bowls full of individual people. So what do these three have in common? Well, they're all three romantics who considered themselves the artistic types and who never really had a real job a day in their lives. And of course, like Bernie Sanders, and many West High students, they're all three socialists.

Now, some people want to say that Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, you know, the Nazis, wasn't actually a socialist. Well, it's true, he wasn't a communist, but he did believe in government control of the economy, vast public works programs, disdain for elected representatives when they conflicted with his personal will, 100% gun control, cradle to the grave benefits, his own cool logo, and above all, a massive all-powerful central government where the state was everything and the individual, nothing.

We modern conservatives are trying to conserve the liberal institution, the Constitution, which prevents these kind of murderers from amassing that kind of power. It makes it harder when people continue to vote for those people and policies determined to destroy those constraints on centralized state power.

Now, the National Socialists did not come to their people promising extermination camps and world war. They came promising state works, jobs, and free healthcare, and all three of those mass murderers got where they were by demonizing those who had succeeded in life, you know, the one percent, or the peasant farmer kulaks in the case of Stalin or the educated city dwellers in the case of Mao and of course in Germany, those rich fat cat one percenters who controlled the economy and took all of the money that should have gone to the poor and the working class. In other words, the Jews.

These people-these corpses, are the result of very few key conditions, and they are: a vilified domestic enemy, an all-powerful state, a compliant news media, a disarmed population, and time, a decade or two of centralized, concentrated state power. And it didn't have to happen in a small city like Auschwitz where at least 1.3 million Jews, homosexuals and gypsies were murdered. It could happen in a place like Treblinka, where 800 thousand people were

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murdered in little over one year in an area about as big as two gas stations and a McDonald's.

So, a rich domestic enemy to hate, an all-powerful state that is above the law, a maliciously slanted and partisan media that consistently lies to vilify the opposition and then lies to protect themselves. All that's missing now is the disarmed population and a little time. So if you want to know why people like me run around with our hair on fire when they start messing with gun control laws, now you know.

Now, just to be crystal clear on this, do I think that these people have plans to murder their political opponents? Of course not. To compare them to those mass murderers would be to spit on the graves of those who actually died. But every action people like this take-concentration of power and above all, a sense of entitlement that makes them think that they are above the law puts just another bolt into that murder machine. And it’s my responsibility to point that out.

Because here's the thing, this is the real thing. If you really look closely at the history of how these mass murders happened, you'll find that in all three cases, these people did not start out as these people. They started out as romantic, socialist dreamers, professional students and talkers who never really worked a day in their lives. Their careers were driven in common by the only thing that's truly remarkable about them, and that is their narcissism and their lifelong fantasy of power and control over the world that had ignored them. Stalin, the romantic dreamer, became Stalin the executioner. Hitler, the romantic dreamer, became Hitler the executioner. And Mao, the romantic dreamer, became Mao the executioner, because first they built the machine and then the machine built them.

So listen, and listen very carefully. Right now, today, people are out there with your support building that same machine. And then that machine will build them or whoever comes after. Today, right now, people are being executed and armies of murder are growing every single day.

And people protest speakers like Condoleezza Rice and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh because it “disturbs them�. It makes them uncomfortable to be reminded that weakness and conciliation in the face of that kind of murder does not protect you from murder but rather guarantees it. When the class of 2016 demands to be protected from ideas they do not want to hear, they are simply book burners who are afraid of matches.

To say that someone who disagrees with you has no right to speak is the definition, it's the living definition of fascism. The real fascists, are not Condi Rice or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or me. They're these people. Because we conservatives are in favor of completely free speech because we have the hard facts of history, as well as logic and reason rather than basing our stances on feelings. And the final, ultimate tragedy here is that the people, that people like this protest against are the ones who are actually trying to protect the lives those people and their right to live in a society comfortable enough to allow them to be so spectacularly stupid.

Do you want some irony? Here’s your irony. Your peace-loving socialist professors are laying the foundation for the all-powerful state that annihilates individuals like twigs in a bonfire. Just look at the NSA

spying on every single email or the IRS punishing political enemies, and filmmakers being thrown in jail to protect the political careers of presidents and secretaries of state. Look, if I were imagining all this, I wouldn't be worried about all this. By siding with Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah and Students for Justice in Palestine, you are guaranteeing that these murdering savages are one day going to be here, trying to murder you and me both. They want women in shrouds for the rest of their lives, and homosexuals hanging from construction cranes right now. They're not going to be impressed that you were on their side. No. They will do to you what they do every day to people who are as real as you are, and the only people trying to stop this catastrophe are people like those you boycott and protest against and especially, the primarily white, primarily Christian, primarily male, and primarily conservative volunteers who are going to have to continue to go out there and die to protect your right to be this intentionally, catastrophically stupid.

You want some irony? There's your irony. Your insistence on being weak, and isolated, and protected and safe is a guarantee that what we are going to be needing large numbers of in the near future are not graphic designers, or app developers or medieval poetry majors. We're going to need warriors, just like the last time our entire nation had to go all the way to war to make up for the unwillingness of the people to see that collectivist ideology is really is not as how some of you want it to be.

WSSPAPER.COM MAY 2016 PAGE 6

Behind the scenes at Theatre West

The crew is bring breifed before the show

By: Harry Westergaard Photos by: Jeff Smith Last month, Theatre West finished Mary Poppins which may be their most extravagant show yet. Full with elaborate special effects, (including flying), the orchestra, and a host of dancers in the chorus. All of these need many different people to make the show come togetheractors, musicians, dancers, flying operators, and last but not least, the tech crew.

The tech crew is made up of many different subgroups who all contribute to working on the technical aspects of the show. There are many tech crews Each tech crew has a crew chief. Marina Paul (props chief) explained the appeal of working on props “ I like making things that end up on stage, and moving things in the darkness is also fun.”

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There are different stages of tech work on the show. A couple months before, the separate crews start doing work before hand. Some groups (props, set,costumes) meet multiple times weekly during this time. Whereas others (lights, sound) only meet a couple times.

It depends on how much needs to be done in advance. Props, set, and costumes all have to make stuff beforehand, which take longer increments of time (much of the time things are still being tweaked right before the show).

After a couple months of separate meetings of each group, everyone gets together for tech week. But, before tech week, there are usually a couple Build Saturdays.

Build Saturdays are somewhat of a precursor to Tech Week. They are held in the mornings from around 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. These days are almost exclusively for prop/set building.

Actors and others aren’t required to come, but are advised to.

Tech week starts about a week or two before show week, and entails the final things being put together. This is when props, and sets are finalized and around where the first full runthrough of the play is done. These nights are late and typically end around 9:30. Tech week usually starts on a Thursday and Friday of one week, and then end on the Monday-Wednesday of the next. Sometimes there is a Build Saturday in between, but it depends on how much work needs to be done. The last couple days of the week are spent touching things up, both on stage and back.

Show week is the final phase. The three days of the week are spent doing rehearsals.

Things get heated. Notes get long. Thursday is sometimes the opening night, or sometimes another rehearsal. It depends on the show (it was opening for Mary Poppins). All of the hard work of the past months finally pays off in the extravaganza that is the show.

To see everything work is immensely satisfying. Though work is not entirely over on show week. Lights people need to light the show. Sound need to make sure the show sounds great. Costumes and makeup need

to make sure the actors look right. Props and Set need to move props and set pieces around backstage for the show between scene changes.

But the show is not the final end. There is also Strike. Strike is typically held on the Sunday after the last two shows. It’s basically just taking everything apart and cleaning everything up after the show. Depending on the show a strike can either be wrapped up in a few hours, or it can take so long that it overlaps to after school the next day.

In the end, Mary Poppins definitely paid off. The show was an immense success both onstage and off. It was not easy to pull off.

There were problems with many effects (mostly down to the fact that there is so much magic). But it ended up pleasing audiences, even selling out, and touching many viewers of all ages. The show was practically perfect in every way.

A short break on set

WSSPAPER.COM MAY 2016 PAGE 9

The 2016 Governor’s Conference By: Harry Westergaard

Photos by: Meghann Foster

The 11th annual Iowa Safe Schools Governor’s Conference was held on April 25, 2016 at the Embassy Suites in Des Moines.

The conference provides students, teachers and parents with the opportunity to learn about issues facing LGBT youth in the school and beyond. This year, the West High COLORS club presented a workshop which provided tips for starting and revitalizing General Services Administration’s (GSA) in schools.

Founded in 2005, the Conference’s main goal is to provide a safe space for LGBT youth and Allies to discuss issues impacting them in everyday life. Activities consist of an opening and closing keynote speaker, vendors representing many LGBT and other human rights organizations and 45

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COLORS prepare for their workshop.

minute workshop sessions which inform attendees about different topics in the community. Although the conference provides helpful information, it has come under fire by conservative lawmakers and special interest groups who question the conference’s intent.

This year’s opening keynote speaker was actor, musician and comedian Lea Delaria. Delaria was the first openly gay comic on American television and has also received widespread acclaim as Big Boo on the Netflix series Orange Is The New Black. Other speakers included Omar Sharif Jr. and Candis Cayne. Workshops were lead by Dr. Andy Maguire (Chair of Iowa Democratic Party), State Legislators, State Senator Matt McCoy and State

Rep Liz Bennett, as well as many others.

The West High COLORS Club was founded fifteen years ago and has attended ten out of the eleven conferences. The club’s longevity caught the attention of conference organizers, and the group was asked to create a presentation for this year’s event. The session, titled “Make Your GSA Great Again,” provided useful information on how to help your GSA rise up from intolerance. Additional topics included suggestions for activity planning, advertising your club and how to deal with bullying.

The West High students presented their workshop to a standing-room-only crowd.

The audience sparked much discussion and the West Students led the conversation with an energetic, yet easy to talk to approach. As the discussion continued, it became clear that students from other parts of the state face many challenges when starting a GSA. Although it was almost shut down this

Iowa Safe Schools logo year, the conference proved to be one of the most well attended. It had record breaking attendance and attracted many people from rural areas who were not even aware of its existence until now.

Attendees watch a session on exemption laws.

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