A r t s & C u ltu r e
December 17, 2021
ARTS & CULTURE Established 1874
Volume 151, Number 9
Solarity Celebrates 10th Anniversary with Bloom
Musical artist Tommy Genesis will headline Solarity. Lilyanna D’Amato Arts & Culture Editor This Saturday, Solarity will host rappers Tommy Genesis and Duckwrth — alongside a plethora of student performers — in its 10th-anniversary rendition, Bloom. Solarity, which is a student-run group, holds a large concert event each semester in an effort to unite the campus and curate a welcoming safe space for collec-
Photo by Andi Elloway tive artistic expression. This will be the first Solarity for most first- and second-years, who were not on campus for Solstice, Solarity’s summer festival, due to the College’s three-semester plan. Kate Steifman, College third-year and one of Solarity’s co-chairs, said this is the biggest event the College has seen since the onset of the pandemic. While the original headliner, St. Louis rapper Smino, had to drop out of the event earlier in the week, the concert will
still be the largest Solarity to date. “We’re going to have the most acts that we’ve ever had this semester,” Steifman said. “It’s definitely the biggest budget we’ve ever had. It’s the big 10th anniversary, and we’re all so excited. We’re gonna make it pretty big. We’re putting on eight acts during the show, which is a really big undertaking.” College third-year and Solarity’s other co-chair Erzsi Misangyi is excited to introduce the new students to the event. While they’re excited about bringing artists to campus, Misangyi is most looking forward to showing them all of the student performance groups. “We wanted to put on a big show so that everyone could just kind of like have a night to enjoy,” Misangyi said. “There’s a lot of people on campus that just have never experienced Solarity and we wanted to make the 10th anniversary a big deal. … I’m excited for OCTaiko and [College third-year] Reggie [Goudeau] to perform. We have AndWhat!? performing, and OCircus is going to be doing some stuff. Kopano is performing and Tali is our closing DJ. A bunch of really amazing student acts.” Ahead of the commemorative anniversary, Assistant Director of Student Activities and Solarity’s faculty advisor Sean Lehlbach reminisces on the event’s origin. Prior to the advent of Solarity, Oberlin didn’t really have any school-wide events of the same scale. “In the spring of 2011, the event originated to highlight student art and performance,” Lehlbach said. “They used to have huge art installations. But through the years, it has evolved into having that student art in performance in varying ways in addition to larger acts. See Saturday’s, page 12
Next to Normal Student Production Opens at Kander Theater Sydney Rosensaft Senior Staff Writer The Oberlin Theater department will stage Brian Yorkey’s 2008 musical Next to Normal from Dec. 16 through Dec. 19 at Kander Theater. Directed by College fourth-year Emily Newmark, the play revolves around a family coping with the struggles of mental illness and opens as the mother of the family, Diana, is diagnosed with bipolar disorder. After going off her medication, she exhibits symptoms of mania and experiences delusions. Over the course of the show, Diana sees multiple doctors and tries various kinds of treatment while each family member grapples with learning to live with Diana’s mental illness. This show dovetails Newmark’s two academic interests: psychology and theater. Newmark knew early on that she wanted to direct this production for her Theater capstone. “I’m an avid theatergoer,” Newmark said. “I think activism through theater is really powerful. The mental health topics discussed were along my path here at Oberlin as a culminating project between my two majors.” The Kander Theater, which typically hosts capstone performances, is a simple black box theater with a small, elevated platform for a stage that makes for an especially engaging venue for this production. For the majority of the show, actors perform on the floor, pulling audience members directly into the family dynamics throughout the story arc. Kiva Wise, College fourth-year and stage manager, discussed the advantages of staging performances in the space. “The Kander is where all student directing capstones go up,” Wise said. “The space itself is quite flexible physically, as the risers for the seating can be config-
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ured a lot of different ways. … The particular setup we’re using is called thrust, which means we have an audience on three sides.” The cast have gotten very close after two months of six rehearsals per week, three hours a day — the timeline was compressed due to the Kander Theater’s show schedule. The size of the cast and tight space result in an intimate staging of the show. Anna Cohen, College second-year, plays Natalie, a high school senior dealing with a sick mother while trying to find her footing in the world. Cohen explained how the close nature of the show added to her experience. “It is like having a second family,” Cohen said. “Performing in a show as demanding as this, both emotionally and time-wise, it has been really important for the six of us to bond.” Aside from a little input from Newmark’s advisor, Next to Normal is entirely student-run. College third-year Ethan Smith-Cohen took on the role of musical director, deliberating crucial musical elements of the performance. Smith-Cohen noted how this production is a conglomerate of everyone’s vision; each student involved had a hand in creating the musical on stage this weekend. “Emily is the director and has her own vision, and I’m the music director and have my own music ideas to put in,” Smith-Cohen said. “But the thing that I really love about theater is that it’s more than just any one person’s vision.” Especially in a story that raises sensitive topics surrounding mental health, a conversational aspect between the director and actors is important. Next to Normal is an emotionally taxing story that easily affects people. Newmark did not want actors to get bogged down by drawing too deeply from their own men-
tal health struggles. “We had a lot of conversations about how we were going to go about talking about mental health within the rehearsal room,” Newmark said. “Making sure that the actors were not pulling from pieces of their own life was really important to me.” Emily picked Next to Normal for her capstone because the entire cast and crew knows that mental health, although difficult at times, is a worthwhile subject to portray theatrically. However, the conversation about mental health has shifted since the show was written, now offering a more inclusive, accepting space for people dealing with mental illness. “The show is meaningful,” Smith-Cohen said. “But in that same vein, the show was written in 2008. The ways in which we discuss mental health and the ways that the show discusses mental health have diverged.” For example, some of the characters in the performance serve as caricatures of specific mental disorders, depicting
them falsely and harmfully. Newmark aims to address these inconsistencies in a talk-back after each show. “We’re going to talk with the audience about the changes that have been made since this was written, in the mental health sphere, and say, ‘Here’s why it’s important to talk about the media representation of mental health versus the reality of it,’” Newmark said. Newmark wants the show to be a powerful experience for the audience and hopes that they can use it as a jumpingoff point for broader discussions surrounding mental health. “My hope is to start a conversation about mental health activism,” Newmark said. “[At Oberlin], we’re really lucky to talk about mental health all the time, but it’s also really important to make sure we’re aware that those conversations are cultivated from a place of research and activism.” Next to Normal runs through this Sunday, Dec. 19. Tickets can be purchased online at the Arts at Oberlin website.
College fourth-year Emily Newmark is directing Brian Yorkey’s 2008 musical Next to Normal, which will run through Dec. 19 in the Kander Theater. Photo by Clarissa Heart
