The Dartmouth 03/02/15

VOL. CLXXII NO. 41

CLOUDY HIGH 31 LOW 1

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE

“3 Day Startup”promotes creativity Organizers prep

for Dartmouth’s first hackathon

By EMILIA BALDWIN The Dartmouth Staff

University of Texas in 2008 to “make entrepreneurship ubiquitous at the university level,” according to the national program’s website.

“3 Day Startup” functions as “a lab for entrepreneurship,” student organizer Ryan

Seventy college students, including students from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and California Institute of Technology, have signed up for HackDartmouth — Dartmouth’s first annual hackathon — since registration opened last week, student organizer Colby Ye ’16 said. The College-sponsored, student-run event, which will be held this coming April, is financially sponsored by Facebook, Google, Ionic Security, the Neukom Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation Lab, Palantir, Namecheap and Major League Hacking.

Ye said that a hackathon is an event in which a group of people work together for a period, usually 24 hours, to develop a piece of software or hardware.

“We’re trying to think of cool, original solutions to problems,” he said. He added that though technology corporations have been holding hackathons for years, university-supported hackathons have only started in the past few years.

In light of College President Phil Hanlon’s initiative to “move Dartmouth forward” in all aspects of life at the College, Ye said that he believes that this is an optimal time for Dartmouth to host its first hackathon.

“I think the vision for this event was to build on

SEE DEN PAGE 3

SEE HACKATHON PAGE 2

SPORTS

MEN’S HOCKEY SWEEPS WEEKEND PAGE SW 3

OPINION

SMITH: PUSHING FOR PERFORMERS PAGE 4

ARTS

STORYTELLING IN ROMEO AND JULIET PAGE 8

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Students attended the “3 Day Startup” to generate ideas and learn about entrepreneurship.

B y PARKER RICHARDS The Dartmouth Staff

A group of young entrepreneurs from the Dartmouth community gathered at the Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network on Friday evening with a purpose: to share, innovate and explore

their own ideas and, in 72 hours, put those concepts into a distributable form before a panel of judges with experience in entrepreneurship.

The event was organized through a DEN-sponsored program called “3 Day Startup,” a program originally formed by students at the

Professor designs board game for social change B y SARA MCGAHAN The Dartmouth Staff

Monarch — a soon-to-beproduced board game created by film and media studies professor Mary Flanagan — transports its players into a pan-cultural fantasy world where sisters, all heirs to the throne, vie to become queen.

A strategy game for both gamers and families, Monarch features strong female characters, a feature typically uncharacteristic of board games.

“It shouldn’t be a shock, in this day in age, to play as a female character, but in fact, I have had some

pushback on that — from board game publishers, for example,” Flanagan said.

This project has been in progress for at least four years, Flanagan said. According to the Kickstarter page, the game is set to come out in August, although Flanagan said that she is currently focused on simply getting the game manufactured and seeing how people like playing it.

Funding for this project will come in part from a Kickstarter campaign, a popular crowdfunding website for independent creative projects. One of the reasons FlaSEE GAME PAGE 5

BUST A MOVE

CHERRY HUANG/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

A member of Street Soul performs at the Pan-Asian Council’s nightfall cafe on Friday.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

PAGE 2

DAily debriefing This weekend, eight community members debated a possible tax rate increase of 4.3 percent to help cover increasing education costs, the Valley News reported. In support of the increase, school officials noted special education costs, increasing enrollment and a need to pay debt for renovations to the Bernice A. Ray School. If approved, the tax means Hanover residents will pay an additional 53 cents for every $1,000 in asset value. The Hanover School District has stated that they will need an extra $1.5 million for a 12.3 percent rise in expenses. Special education costs, the largest increase in the budget, will cost around $807, 603. Enrollment increased in elementary grades by 31 students this year with more expected next year, in part due to the new full-day kindergarten and increased jobs at the College and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. All school board races are uncontested. District residents will vote on Tuesday in the Hanover High School gymnasium from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The Vermont House of Representatives unanimously approved a proposed increase on penalties for landowners who decide to develop land under the state’s current use program, the Valley News reported. It its current use, the program gives tax breaks to those who use their land for agricultural or forestry purposes, and reimburses municipal companies for lost tax revenue. The newly approved change will toughen penalties for those who withdraw their land from the program. This change is expected to raise $1.4 million next year, with $900,000 for the education fund and $500,000 for municipal property taxes. Currently, when owners remove their land from the program he or she pays 10 percent of the market value of the land. The proposal includes a three-month window for current landowners to opt out of the program without facing the stricter penalties. The change would go into effect on July 1, but still needs final approval in the House and approval from the Vermont Senate.

The Vermont House Education Committee passed an education reform bill last week that has been met with varied reactions from top official and lawmakers, the VTDigger reported.

The proposed changes include decreasing the number of school districts from the current 277 to form larger school systems with a minimum of 1,100 enrolled students. Gov. Peter Shumlin, D-VT, said the “big bill” would lay the groundwork for all further legislative work on education this session. House Minority Leader Don Turner, R-Milton, said that there is still more work to do in order to balance “what’s affordable and what’s best for our kids.” The Agency of Education is working to give school districts access to legal and fiscal support for such a transition. The bill will push for districts to join the larger systems by July 1, 2019.

—COMPILED BY REBECCA ASOULIN

CORRECTIONS We welcome corrections. If you believe there is a factual error in a story, please email editor@thedartmouth.com.

In the Feb. 27 article “GLC policy will remove Greek students found guilty of sexual misconduct” incorrectly stated that Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity alumni and volunteer corporation president Herb Philpott ’85 said Sig Ep has terminated members for sexual misconduct-related violations before, following both internal and external adjudication. Philpott was referring to other Standards violations, not allegations of sexual misconduct. Philpott wrote in an email that during his time with the organization he has not heard of any sexual misconduct allegations against a member of the house. The Dartmouth regrets this error.

In the Feb. 27 article “An F word but not a curse” misattributed an email about the definition of feminism and the differences among students who have studied the movement to history professor Annelise Orleck. It was Spanish and women’s and gender studies professor and director of Gender Research Institute at Dartmuth Annabel Martin who wrote this.

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

DartmouthHack will occur in spring FROM HACKATHON PAGE 1

President Hanlon and the whole dartmouth community’s dedication to ‘Moving Dartmouth Forward,’” he said. He added that another goal of the event is to tap into the creativity of Dartmouth students.

Ye said that he hopes the hackathon will allow students to learn outside of the classroom.

“We want people to apply their ideas — things they’ve learned in the classroom — to build something real and tangible,” he said, adding that he hopes the event will bring together students with similar interests and expose them to various career paths in technology.

Kaya Thomas ’17 is another member of HackDartmouth’s organization board. She said that the board has been working together on the event since last summer. She hopes that the hackathon might improve Dartmouth’s reputation amongst the Ivy League.

“Dartmouth is kind of late to the game,” Thomas said. “We’re one of the last Ivies to hold a hackathon, so in the interest of Hanlon’s initiative to move Dartmouth forward, and since the College has

all these new resources like DEN and [the Neukom Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation Lab], we thought it was important to hold one.”

All other Ivy League schools have already hosted hackathons.

Thomas’s experience with computer science at the College has been very positive. She hopes HackDartmouth will appeal to beginners in computer science who might not be sure whether or not they wish to pursue computer science as a major or a career.

“I think this event will help weaken the stigma associated with computer science,” Thomas said.

“People have this idea that it’s really hard and that programming is something people do by themselves in their basements. The hackathon just shows that’s not true.”

Thomas said that she believes that the College is in a moment of innovation and creativity, which makes it the perfect time for Dartmouth to host this event.

“We want to capitalize on the recent dedication to experimental learning,” she said.

According to the event’s website, students can either sign up alone or as a team to create a website, mobile app or a pro-

gram that will then be judged by a panel. The winning hacks will receive thousands of dollars and perks from the company sponsors, though the exact prizes are yet to be determined. The organization board encourages anybody to sign up, regardless of experience.

Jonathan Huang ’17, who will participate in HackDartmouth, said that though he has not declared a major right now, he plans on majoring in computer science.

This will be his first hackathon and he heard about the event through his friends’ posts on Facebook.

“I’ve heard a lot about hackathons, so I’m really excited to participate in one,” he said. “It’ll be really cool to just work with other people on a special project and to combine all of our ideas into one.”

Any college-aged student, regardless of where they attend college, can register for the event online. High school students can apply and will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Students can sign up as participants or apply to be mentors, who help guide lessexperienced participants through the hackathon process. The event is scheduled to take place on April 11 and 12.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

PAGE 3

Previous DEN startup workshop participants see success FROM DEN PAGE 1

Buckvar ’17 said.

The program takes 26 people — mostly students, although it is open to the public — and asks each to pitch an idea for a project.

The best ideas are then selected and teams of about six people are formulated, Rob Thelen Tu’16, who participated in the October iteration of the program, said.

After groups form on Friday evening, teams to go into the community on Saturday and work with business leaders and the public to gauge interest in a product and gather ideas, Buckvar said.

Thelen added that in some cases, developers will work on coding for the projects.

By the end of the day on Saturday, groups are meant to have a “minimum viable product” — that is, a design that is presentable if not marketable, Buckvar said.

Finally, on Sunday, the groups present their ideas to a panel of judges, usually drawn from a group of mentors who assisted teams throughout the day on Saturday, Thelen said.

“These types of events provide a runway,” Buckvar said. “At the worst you get to meet cool people and dive into specifics and realities

UNA NOTTE DI MUSICA

of entrepreneurship. But at best, your idea progresses to formal pitch.”

This winter’s gathering was the third “3 Day Startup” event at Dartmouth, following an event in fall 2013 and a workshop in October 2014.

One of the major success stories of the College’s “3 Day Startup” program has been Thelen’s startup, FliQ , a mobile app that allows users to share contact information wirelessly between smartphones at close quarters using Bluetooth low energy signals, Thelen said.

After achieving second place amongst a group of teams that pitched ideas at the 2014 “3 Day Startup” event, FliQ won a Founders Grant through DEN and seed money through Thayer School of Engineering, Jeremy Mittleman ’17, the co-lead organizer of “3 Day Startup” with Buckvar, said.

Next, FliQ will compete in “The Pitch,” a startup competition hosted by the DALI Lab. FliQ seeks to “tear down [the] wall” that exists between various social media platforms, Thelen said. Ideally, it will allow people to meet each other and instantly share contact information, saving time and eliminating problems caused

by forgetfulness or confusion with names, Thelen said.

FliQ instantly scans a room, establishes contact with other FliQ users and allows the user to choose information — from a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account, for instance — to share with someone nearby, who can then choose which information to keep in a contact. FliQ users can also share to cell phone numbers, according to the company’s website.

Since its founding in October, FliQ’s founders – Thelen and Orestis Lykouropoulos ’17 – have invested time and energy into creating a basic platform for the mobile app, which is now functional but rudimentary, Thelen said. While they are not yet at beta testing, they are hoping to be at that stage by the end of the year, Thelen said.

While the app has not been laid out in a presentable way, users can already “FliQ” between each other at close quarters.

Thelen said that the “3 Day Startup” workshop would have been useful even had FliQ not come out as a viable idea.

“At the end of the weekend, you know if it’s a good idea, an okay idea or a bad idea,” he said. “And

Spring Term 2015 Religion 81.03 (2A) Dist: TMV Open to all students Professor Reinhart TREVY WING/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

The Italian Club hosted a music night in Occom Commons to promote

Women’s and Gender Studies Spring 2015

WGST 48.07/FRIT 34 Sex and Gender in the Italian Renaissance 10A Hour • Professor Quaintance DIST: LIT; WCult: W

WGST 65.07 Queer Popular Culture (NEW) 2A Hour • Professor Lim

WGST 67.03 Sex, Violence, and the Internet (NEW) 3B Hour • Professor Brison DIST: TMV; WCult: CI (Pending Faculty Approval)

WGST 96 Just Words: Free Speech and Social Change (The Gender Research Institute Course) Mondays 3‐6 PM • Professor Gallagher Advanced classroom seminar with additional discussions with GRID Fellows and GRID speakers.

Prerequisite: WGST Major/Minors in class of 2015 and 2016, or Instructor Permission. Email wgstp@dartmouth.edu for more information.

all that information is good. Even if you’re told it’s a bad idea, that’s good information to have.”

Thelen said that a major advantage of DEN lies in its ability to bring different types of people together. For example, if he had not decided to work at DEN, Thelen might have only had access to other Tuck School of Business students, while Lykouropoulos might only have worked with other computer science majors. Within DEN they can collaborate with a large variety of people to further each others’ projects.

While judges initially had doubts about F liQ’s viability, Thelen said that the company has managed to “pull it off ” in the past few months based upon the advice of experts at “3 Day Startup.”

Thelen said that he hopes FliQ can be launched in time for the Class of 2019 to use it to become acquainted with their new classmates.

Thelen said one of the successes of “3 Day Startup” is that it allows students to experiment.

“As they say, all these entrepreneurs need one failure under their belt before they can do great things, so this really lets you get out there and try things,” he said.

Cognition, Evolution,

& the (un)Making of Terrorists Spring term course change period February 27 - March 10

This seminar will study the work of Scott Atran, and be of interest to students of Religion, Cognitive Science, Cultural Evolution, Anthropology, Psychology, International Studies, and Political Science. Scott Atran has contributed significantly to debates in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, political science, and on the origins of religion—particularly the questions of how terrorists are “made,” and how they can be “unmade.” His ethnographic work spans from Palestine, to Spain, to Indonesia. His work on the culture of terrorists has been particularly important in the past 15 years, and is aimed at moving beyond the typical “because they hate our freedom” analysis of terrorism.

Uniquely, he finds ideology (and even religion) has less to do with the making of terrorists than other sociological factors.

Students will read from the bibliography of Atran and write a paper in conversation with his work. Professor Atran will visit the class for two days in May to listen, discuss, and comment on the papers. religion@dartmouth.edu

THE DARTMOUTH OPINION

PAGE 4

Staff Columnist ANDRES SMITH ’17

GUEST Columnist DOUGLAS GOODMAN

Pushing for Performers

Moving Intellectualism Forward

The College should do more to support non-Greek performance spaces.

When talking about the College’s social scene with friends back home, I often find it difficult to explain the role that performance groups play here on campus. While “basically just like Pitch Perfect” is the best I can do to describe the atmosphere that surrounds a cappella groups, this still comes up short in capturing the nuances that make up the full extent of the Dartmouth performance culture.

Most non-Darmouth students likely expect that these groups — not only the a cappella ones, but also dance, comedy, freestyle rap and slam poetry, among others — are performing in spaces like theaters or auditoriums for diverse crowds of students and faculty, as is often common at other universities. In reality, performance groups at the College almost always perform on Wednesday nights in Greek houses. While there is nothing wrong with these performances — and they are often very enjoyable — performance groups and the students who appreciate them would greatly benefit from more direct support from the College, such as financial support for more shows at venues like the Hopkins Center for the Arts. Doing so would likely boost attendance by making them far more public and accessible for all students, allow performers to experience more professional settings and help to create a sense of cooperation between the College and its student performers.

As a performance member group myself, my parents are always flabbergasted when I say that my show that night starts at 11:15 p.m, but realistically, we rarely begin before 11:30. The organizations that usually book performance groups on campus are Greek houses, and the paradigm is that shows are held after meetings on Wednesday nights. Since Friday and Saturday nights are usually occupied with a host of major social events, post-meetings on Wednesdays are generally the only time that will work for hosting an improv show or a cappella concert in the meetings room. I am in no way knocking these shows — they are a lot of fun, and as a performer I really appreciate when houses invite us to go perform there.

Because of the time frame, though, these shows pose problems for performers and audience

members alike. More often than not, the show includes two groups, and each one is allotted at least half an hour of stage time. At best, then, a Wednesday show will end at 12:30 a.m. On many occasions, members of my group have missed their opportunity to perform in a show because they simply could not afford to be out that late.

In much the same way, audience members who might have otherwise supported their classmates may be turned off by the late performance time, especially on a weeknight.

If the College were to book performances in the many venues it controls at say, 8:00 p.m. on a Friday or Saturday, these barriers would not exist. Without the threat of the next day of classes looming over them, both performers and audience members would not have to miss out on enjoying the show.

Moreover, these houses can often be unintentionally intimidating spaces — especially for younger students. A first-year student who would be willing to go to Spaulding Auditorium or One Wheelock to watch a show may not be as eager to go to one in a Greek house. It is difficult for someone to feel comfortable in a space where they may not know anyone. Shows in more public, College-operated venues would allow for students to watch their friends perform in a space in which they feel completely at ease — not to mention a likely much cleaner and more comfortable seating area. These school-sponsored shows would also open up on campus performances to non-students who are involved in the College.

Most faculty, staff or visiting parents may avoid a show in a Greek house, because of both the timing and the setting. By booking groups for additional shows in different spaces, Dartmouth can help them expand their audiences and allow for other members of the community to be more involved.

As a performer, I cannot adequately express how thankful I am to all the Greek houses that have opened their doors for all performing groups.

Increased support from the College in the form of more school-sponsored shows, however, would allow for performances to be better attended and more inclusive.

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SUBMISSIONS: We welcome letters and guest columns. All submissions must include the author’s name and affiliation with Dartmouth College, and should not exceed 250 words for letters or 700 words for columns. The Dartmouth reserves the right to edit all material before publication. All material submitted becomes property of The Dartmouth. Please email submissions to editor@thedartmouth.com.

“Moving Dartmouth Forward” takes the wrong attitude toward education.

Amidst the many proposals from the The greater the pressure to conform, the “Moving Dartmouth Forward” presidential more they need the chemical release and steering committee on housing arrange- even the oblivion of an alcoholic stupor. ments, choice of alcohol and fraternity College was not meant to be a boot camp parties, I was happy to finally see a heading for workaholics. It was founded upon the — albeit far down the list — dealing with idea that the most powerful and significant the College’s central mission of education. transformations emerge from contemplaThe report suggested increased rigor, de- tion, freedom from pressing demands and flated grades and early morning classes. the serendipity of unscheduled encounters.

M a ny s t u d e n t s This kind of intellectuhave reacted with “Many students have alism doesn’t respond disgust to the implito power, proscripreacted with disgust to the well cation that they are tion and punishment. implication that they are not working hard Might we try education enough and the pos- not working hard enough instead? sibility that this is why and the possibility that this Professors extreme behaviors is why extreme behaviors begged the committee occur. The proposals occur. The proposals to support classes that reflect a one-sided reflect a one-sided view of address the issues of view of intellectual intellectual engagement extreme behavior. These engagement and a and a misunderstanding of classes can be more misunderstanding than a countervailing how much students at the of how much sturequirement against the College already work.” dents at the College temptations of intemalready work. The perance. They can be the report’s view of inincubators of solutions. tellectualism was described in Richard In the class that I teach, for example, we Hofstadter’s Pulitzer prize-winning book, analyze the social construction of a “play “Anti-intellectualism in American Life,” as hard” culture. We look at hard drinking as one of the most powerful strains of anti- a “central activity” that shapes our lives intellectualism. Hofstadter described this and fits well or ill with the central activities anti-intellectualism as unfailingly practical, to which we once aspired. We study the oriented toward doing and concerned with “pharmacological fallacy” that attempts schedules, measurement and evaluation. to prevent abuse by the prohibition of a Rather than anti-intellectualism, we can class of chemicals.

My students use these concepts to anacall this the intellectual as workaholic.

Opposed to this workaholic orientation lyze Dartmouth’s policy to predict probis an alternative view that sees intellectual lems, suggest improvements and generate engagement emerging from the unrestricted innovations. In their papers, they offer play of curiosity, fed by late-night bull ses- novel ideas for transforming intellectual sions. They produce a mind that ponders life, limiting the centrality of alcohol and and imagines, does not shy from complexity disconnecting alcohol and sex. What is and, most importantly, values time that is missing is an institutionally sanctioned way reserved for thinking and free from the to put these ideas into action. demands of doing. This is the intellectual- At the heart of our efforts should be ism that is the key to solving the problem a place where students are introduced to the history of these of extreme behaviors. problems, where they Which view of intel- “If we believe that are provided with lectualism dominates our the College can be concepts to give them professors’ lives, I leave the wellspring for new ways of underto the reader. Simply ask a professor when was entrepreneurial solutions to standing and where discussion and writtheir last free-ranging the world’s problems, then ing can produce inintellectual discussion — let us start here by putting novations — in other and if it was over hard education at the center of words, a classroom. alcohol. For our students, our current endeavors.”

And this classroom I have no doubt about must be connected the type of “intellectual” engagement that we are encouraging. These to student-driven experiments addressstudents entered kindergarten as standard- ing these problems. If we believe that the ized testing became the national mania. College can be the wellspring for entrepreTheir youth was dominated by a schedule of neurial solutions to the world’s problems, tutoring, practices, homework, “volunteer” then let us start here by putting education occupations and whatever might help the at the center of our current endeavors. child get into an Ivy League school. Never I call on College President Phil Hanlon learning how to play or relax, they come to put education at the center of “Moving to Dartmouth ready for the manufactured, Dartmouth Forward,” to provide funding alcohol-driven “play” of the college party. for classes that address these extreme be“Work hard, play hard,” is the motto — not haviors and to establish institutional ways the play of the child or the intellectual play for student-driven proposals to be evaluated of ideas, but the play of the workaholic. and implemented.

THE DARTMOUTH NEWS

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

PAGE 5

Board game features leading female characters FROM GAME PAGE 1

nagan created a Kickstarter was to “prove big board game publishers wrong” and demonstrate that there is a market for a board game with strong female characters. As of press time, over 65 percent of the $15,000 goal has been pledged from 188 backers, with 11 days left until the deadline.

While Flanagan has been creating board games for the last five years, this is the first experience employing Kickstarter to generate funding.

Monarch is set in a fantasy world that spans cultures and time

periods. For example, the game’s characters and architecture appear to be influenced by Western and Eastern traditions, Flanagan said. Although competitors only play as female characters, male characters are represented in the game in other ways.

Flanagan is also the director of Tiltfactor, a Dartmouth-based game design laboratory that makes games for social change that address real world problems.

Monarch is a project independent from Tiltfactor, though Flanagan and her team conducted a similar research-based approach when formulating and fine-tuning this

YOU THE BOMB(AY)

new board game.

One aspect of the game that Flanagan and her team have researched and considered was the question of when to reveal that competitors’ play as sisters in the game. While the fact that competitors play as females is highlighted on Monarch’s Kickstarter page, Flanagan and her team decided not to print this feature this on the game’s box. The longer they wait to reveal this fact, the more both female and male competitors get into their characters, Flanagan said.

Flanagan and her team garnered feedback in a variety of ways. She took Monarch to gaming conventions, such as Gen Con, Meaningful Play and the Boston Festival of Indie Games, but also collected feedback from comments posted on online. Reviews from players, whether “hardcore” gamers or those who have never played a strategy game before, are very helpful, Flanagan said.

Max Seidman ’12, a Tiltfactor game designer responsible for Monarch’s mechanics, user testing and production, said that they also took the game to an all boys school, and found that the game combats perceptions of gender roles in boys.

After working on a game for a while, Seidman said he tends to lose perspective and reach a point where he asks himself, “Is this actually still fun?” Taking Monarch to the public and seeing how players loved playing the game reignited

“It shouldn’t be a shock, in this day and age, to play as a female character, but in fact, I have had some pushback on that — from board game publishers, for example.”

- MARY FLANAGAN, FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES PROFESSOR

his interest, he said.

Kate Adams, a 2012 graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, illustrated the board game using scratchboard art. Adams scratched lines into a board,

initially covered by black material, to form black and white images.

Color is added later to the images in Photoshop.

Monarch’s five biggest supporters — who each pledged $399 or more on Kickstarter — get to choose someone to become part of the board game as an “unwanted guests,” which are character cards that, when drawn, hurt a player’s chance of winning the game.

Economics professor Jonathan Skinner, who contributed to the game financially, said that he did so because he likes to support the tremendous amount of creativity at the College.

Although he has never played Monarch, he expressed confidence in the game because of Flanagan’s track record, Skinner said.

Flanagan’s other work includes creating games such as Awkward Moments, a card game where players are forced to react to awkward situations, and Buffalo the Name Dropping Game, a 20-minute party game where players show off knowledge of pop culture, literature and everyday life.

Skinner later added that Monarch is going to be under his nieces’ and nephews’ Christmas trees at the end of the year.

Center for Leadership Tuck School of Business WEIJIA TANG/THE DARTMOUTH STAFF

The International Students’ Association hosted “A Night in Bombay” on Saturday.

Apply Now… Paganucci Fellows Program Make a difference in the world.

Generating positive change through social entrepreneurship.

Paid summer internships at Tuck Global experiential learning program

Application deadline, end of day, Sunday, March 22nd For more information visit:

http://leadership.tuck.dartmouth.edu/about/paganucci-fellows-program

PAGE 6

THE DARTMOUTH EVENTS

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

DARTMOUTH EVENTS TODAY 12:00 p.m.

Talk with Financial Times journalist Geoff Dyer, Byrne Hall, General Motors Classroom

7:00 p.m.

“Koyaanisqatsi” (1982), film screening, Black Family Visual Arts Center, Screening Room 001

7:00 p.m.

“Tango Workshop with Guillermo Merlo,”internationally renowned tango performer, Sarner Underground

TOMORROW 12:30 p.m.

“Poseidon the Earth-Shaker, Feasting and the Sea: An Archaeologist’s Perspective,” Hood Museum, second-floor galleries

4:15 p.m.

Computer science colloquium with Anshumali Shrivastava of Cornell University, Carson L01

7:00 p.m.

“Voices,” V-February performance, Hopkins Center for the Arts, Moore Theater

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THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

PAGE 7

Play explores nontraditional staging FROM ROMEO AND JULIET PAGE 8

multimedia video and live acting may seem radically innovative to some audiences, Hackett and much of the theater department have had experience in working with productions that combine live video and on stage acting.

In November 2010, Hackett directed the Shakespeare play “Two Gentlemen of Verona” at the College and included scenes of film shot in advance.

“There was no live broadcast,” Hackett said. “In Romeo and Juliet, all the film used was shot in advance or was broadcasted live during the performances.”

Theater professor and the play’s lighting designer Dan Kotlowitz said that the current production is the first time the theater department has been so committed to using live video.

“There is a student who films the perspective from above the stage, and she is very much still a part of the play,” Kotlowitz said.

This inclusion of live broadcast, Kotlowitz said, created a sense of intimacy, especially in the play’s iconic balcony scene where a closeup of Juliet’s face is projected on to the main screen while Romeo watches her from below and on a small monitor in front of him.

“Audiences could step back and see the scenes from different sides,” Kotlowitz said. “I can see this approach being used more in our future productions.”

To challenge any possible preconceived notions of “Romeo and Juliet” and to get audiences to question why Shakespearemight have included certain scenes or dialogue in the play, the production also took an unconventional approach in its set design. Rather than setting the play in Verona or

“The lighting for the video and onstage are very different.

We needed to find a balance for the different views of the live-broadcast video.”

-dan kolowitz, theater professor and set designer for “Romeo and Juliet”

NATALIE CANTAVE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

“Romeo and Juliet” was the theater department’s first use of live filming during a stage performance.

randomly placing characters in a high school or college setting, this adaptation takes place in a rehearsal studio.

Visiting theater professor and the production’s set designer Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili said that while the set designs are never the same for any shows, this particular set was very different than any of the other sets he has designed at

Dartmouth. Alexi-Meskhiskvili and Hackett worked closely together to create the set design, which features video cameras and monitors for the film aspect of the production as well as scattered tables and costumes for the onstage acting portion, AlexiMeskhiskvili said.

The stage managers, Kotlowitz said, also purposefully left “junk” on the stage to give the audience an indepth look at the performance from the crew’s point of view, because the managers gave directions to the actors while onstage during the

NATALIE CANTAVE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

The sets for “Romeo and Juliet” were meant to reflect a rehearsal space and included multimedia aspects.

performance.

Despite the difficulty in creating an atmosphere that reflected the background of “Romeo and Juliet” with multimedia aspects, designing the set around the inclusion of video, Alexi-Meskhishvili said, was not a problem.

The use of live video, Kotlowitz said, presented a challenge in figuring out the balance for lighting during the production.

“The lighting for the video and onstage are very different,” Kotlowitz said. “We needed to find

a balance for the different views of the live-broadcast video.”

Though the curtain for the winter MainStage’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” has just closed, the theater department is already preparing for its next series of productions.

In the spring, the department will be presenting the musical “Merrily We Roll Along” as a part of an honors project with Dartmouth undergraduates spearheading the performance along with other student productions.

THE DARTMOUTH ARTS

PAGE 8

ARTS

MONDAY, MARCH 2, 2015

“Romeo and Juliet” explores a range of storytelling styles

“Birdman” is worthy of Best Picture

The Dartmouth Staff

The Dartmouth Staff

B y kourtney kawano

With their final performance yesterday afternoon, the cast and production crew of Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” bid a fond farewell and parted with “sweet sorrow” after several months of preparation and presenting their visually-stirring modern adaptation over the past two weekends.

While many versions of the play have been performed in the past — both on the stage and on the screen — theater professor and director Peter Hackett’s adaptation featured a new twist with a combination of recorded video footage, projected text and live onstage acting. To help bridge the gap between the modernity of this production and its traditional elements, the performance also utilized modern social media apps such as Instagram and Yik Yak to give another twist to the famous play.

The result of this mixture of cinema and theater was a

presentation that gave the audiences the freedom to choose what they wanted to watch, whether it was the live acting by Reed Latrowski ’15 and Tess McGuinness ’18, who played Romeo and Juliet, respectively, their simultaneous

“There is no usual way a play is performed. This is especially true with Shakespeare, where directors often update the play, at the very least.”

-peter hackett, theater professor and director of “Romeo and juliet” behind-the-scenes interpretations and interviews regarding the historical and social contexts of the

play that were projected above the stage or Shakespeare’s poetic lines of “Romeo and Juliet” itself.

The goal and challenge, Hackett said, was telling a familiar story in a way that will make an audience look at it with fresh eyes.

“There is no usual way a play is performed,” Hackett said. “This is especially true with Shakespeare, where directors often update the play, at the very least.”

Though Hackett has used this specific production’s script — which was originally commissioned for the San Diego California-Pacific International Exposition in 1936 — in his theater classes, he said he never directed this version of the production before.

Because of that, some of the challenges associated with the production, he said, were designing and incorporating the film sequences in the show and instructing the actors in stage combat, which he said is a very special skill.

Al thoug h the mixture of SEE ROMEO AND JULIET PAGE 7

NATALIE CANTAVE/THE DARTMOUTH SENIOR STAFF

Reed Latrowski ’15, as Romeo, ponders the meaning of love in the Theater Department’s “Romeo and Juliet.”

B y andrew kingsley

How can you say “break a leg” to an actor who already has a broken heart, a shattered psyche and a fractured family life without it being a cruel joke? Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton), the lead in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s four-time Academy-Award-winning, including Best Picture “Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” (2014), is that actor, the washed-up movie star salivating for a shot back in the limelight. Himself a former superhero star — Keaton played Batman in Tim Burton’s “Batman” (1989) and “Batman Returns” (1992) — the role is fittingly mimetic.

With crow’s feet the size of talons and referring to himself as a “turkey with leukemia,” Thomson is like Birdman without feathers; vulnerable to the cold of an icy, unsympathetic populous, his goose seems nearly cooked.

The film begins with Thomson levitating in his underwear, achieving some sort of Zen-like state before his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) shatters his only peace, screaming through Skype about a flower market smelling like kimchi. This jolt begins the domino chain that is the movie, as it moves nonstop in seemingly one take — which won it the 2015 Oscar for best cinematography — through two hours of preparing and staging Thompson’s first Broadway play, an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s story, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Aggressive, frenetic and shark-like, the movie, like Thompson himself, must keep moving to survive.

Schizophrenic in pace, this relentless visual idiom is the obvious analog to Thompson’s unstable mind. Because the cuts between shots are so seamless, we get the sense that Thomson never blinks and is wired and hyper-vigilant to a world so close to collapse. The film could easily be renamed to “Birdman: Death of a Salesman 2” or “Birdman: Portrait of the Deranged Artist as a Decaying Middle-Aged Man.” As if the battle between ego, superego and id raging in his mind wasn’t enough, Thompson is surrounded and suffocated by a band of hysterical, petulant actors who stoke the flames of his crashing, burning spirit. After Thompson’s main actor gets knocked out by a stage light, the epigrammatically pithy, Hallmark Card-esque wiseass Mike

Shiner (Edward Norton) of Broadway lore shows up at his doorstep, promising fame and fortune, but brings disaster as only a diva can. Breathing down Thompson’s neck is the caricaturized critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), a raisiny, aquiline, morose shrew with her chin tilting in judgment, who promises to kill Thompson’s play in The New York Times. Thompson retaliates in true Birdman style, obliterating her with a verbal fireball and ensuring that no critic will give the film a bad review.

Keaton himself delivers the goods, wavering between whimpering simp and monomaniacal superman. Literally haunted by his Birdman alter ego, which demands he make a comeback in “Birdman 4: The Phoenix Rises,” leaving all the theatre snobs behind to reclaim his movie star status. A film about the state of filmmaking, “Birdman” curtly captures the increasing contrivance in cinema today, as Thomson puts it — “They love this s---. They love blood. They love action. Not this talky, depressing philosophical bulls---.”

In an age when fame and talent is measured in likes, upvotes and tweets, Thomson still wants to be a classical Olivier, but ends up being an absurd, Kafkaesque nihilist. Luckily, Thomson is original and entertaining enough to please both the Tabitha Dickinsons like myself and the pimple faced gamers of the world.

So how did “Birdman” win best picture? Historically, mimetic films that reflect upon the filmmaking process or cinematic culture do very well with critics, such as “Sunset Boulevard” (1950), “Vertigo”(1958), “8½” (1963), “Day for Night” (1973) or “Adaptation”(2002). “Birdman” dissects fame, stardom, ego, the nosy press, agents, cutthroat lawyers, art direction and divas under the rare genre of superhero dark comedy drama. For its novelty, reflexivity, cinematography and brilliant performances, “Birdman” is a worthy best picture winner in my mind. Then again, I’m just a snobbish Tabitha Dickinson. I mean, just look at the list of films I just rattled off. So go see for yourself why “Birdman” got cinema’s most coveted golden idol.

Rating: 10/10 “Birdman” is now playing at The Nugget every day at 4:50 p.m. and 6:50 p.m., with additional 9:10 showings on Friday and Saturday and 1:40 showings on Saturday and Sunday.