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Volume 51, Issue 78 | thursday, february 2, 2017 | ndsmcobserver.com
Company performs ‘Romeo and Juliet’ Actors From the London Stage brings Shakespeare’s work to life on stage, in classroms at Notre Dame By COURTNEY BECKER News Writer
The Actors From the London Stage (AFTLS) company debuted their production of “Romeo and Juliet” in Washington Hall on Wednesday night. The company, made up of just five actors, visits Notre Dame every semester thanks to the University’s status as the “American home” for the organization, Aaron Nichols, Shakespeare at Notre Dame’s audience development manager, said. “In the year 2000 the opportunity came for us to take a more active role in the organization,” he said. “ … It’s kind of exciting that every semester now we get to have this worldclass Shakespeare group come to the University.” Nichols said the University
has played an active role in “determining the trajectory of the organization,” including introducing gender-fluid casting to recent productions. “We’re not trying to flip it completely, but we’re saying any actor can play any role because we’re acting,” he said. “ … So as long as the audience goes with you on that journey and accepts that suspension of disbelief, there are some amazing actresses in the world who now have the opportunity to play some wonderful male roles.” This gender-fluid casting becomes a necessity with such a small cast, Nichols said. “Everyone is playing at least three roles,” he said. “Because Romeo and Juliet are such prominent roles those two characters don’t play as many other roles, but for instance, see ACTORS PAGE 3
Photo courtesy of Aaron Nichols
The Actors From the London Stage perform during their production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Each actor in the company plays at least three roles, distinguishing each character through costumes and mannerisms.
Award-winning ACE program benefits author reads low-income communities excerpt from work By ANDREW CAMERON News Writer
By MARIE FAZIO News Writer
Kyle Muntz is the 2016 recipient of the Sparks Prize, an award given to a distinguished graduate of the Creative Writing graduate program. Students send sections of writing to an anonymous judge, chosen by the director of the program each year, who decides the winner. Nicholas Sparks, renowned author and Notre Dame graduate class of 1988, created the Sparks Prize in 2001. Muntz is the 15th recipient of the award. “Kyle is a lover of genre and writes in a swathe of them, including genres like the dystopic or the western romance. In this regard, I think he is a lovely fulfillment of the vision of Nicholas Sparks,” Joyelle McSweeney, current
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director of the Creative Writing Program, said of Muntz. The Sparks Prize awards $20,000 to the winner to allow them to spend a year simply writing, with one stipulation of a requirement of one public reading. Muntz performed his reading at Hammes Bookstore. Muntz read the first chapter of one of his new novels “The Effigies,” a novel which took inspiration from the anime “Evangelion,” as well as a section of his thesis novel, “The Holy Ghost.” Carmen Maria Machado, author of “Her Body and Other Parties” among other novels, was the judge of the 2016 contest. Machado described Muntz’s work as “snapping and humming with a weirdness, queerness and eeriness see READING PAGE 3
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In 1993, Fr. Sean McGraw, C.S.C. and Fr. Tim Scully, C.S.C. received $5,000 from the President of the University to found the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) with the goal of preserving and spreading access to quality Catholic education throughout the country. “The core mission of the program is to provide a ray of hope through educational excellence to underserved children,” Scully said in an interview. Scully, who now serves as chair of the ACE Advisory Board, said the program initially began by training 40 recent college graduates — nearly all from Notre Dame — in education and sending them to teach in Catholic schools across the country, typically in low-income
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communities, as ACE Teaching Fellows. Since it’s inception, the highly-selective ACE Teaching Fellows program now receives over 400 applications a year and selects approximately 90 graduates — roughly half of which graduated from Notre Dame — to participate in the program. “We live in intentional communities of four to seven people,” Scully said. “We’re in 35 cities across the United States. These teaching fellows go out into their communities and teach in underserved Catholic schools for a period of two years, and they return to campus during the summers to receive a master’s degree and accreditation and licensing as a teacher. I would describe it as an awesome leadership experience where you’re giving your heart and soul away to
needy kids.” There are roughly 180 ACE Teaching Fellows currently operating in schools around the country. “We started this effort in a sense because it was so difficult for some underresourced dioceses and schools to find great teaching talent, and so we’re looking for very talented people — not necessarily the highest GPAs and the highest GREs — but we’re really looking for people who, in addition to native talent, just kind of bring a passion and a zeal for our mission,” Scully said. He said the program has expanded considerably since its founding, now managing several independent schools, as well as other programs. “Since we didn’t have a department of education we had no ability to impart see ACE PAGE 3
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