WEEKEND

WEEKEND // FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

ART IS HERE

BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN //PAGE 3

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THE MONEYMAKERS

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Emily Xiao cuts through the controversy and tells us what it’s actually like to work in finance or consulting.

Marissa Medansky explains how to leverage social capital and satisfy midnight munchies.

Is Russia arming the Ukrainian separatists? Are we on the brink of a second Cold ar?

Ambassador Kislyak tells WKND his secrets.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

O ENI RS S N A O : O

// ZISHI LI

As a writer of the issues in all the days of our times, I have touched my pen on the issues of the day at least a hundred or a thousand times in these pages.

Of society, of Game, of Lizards as Pets, and of Life — each time, in a humble word, I have said what I believe my opinion to be and when and why. But I have left it up to you to decide? But THIS one, on THIS one I cannot say silent! So, here I am, again, to write of it, and you all to read of it once more.

What I am to speak of is one I’m sure you all see in the air as Yale is soon to end. It’s celebra-

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WEEKEND VIEWS

tion. It’s of the way we show to be happy. It’s of what exactly the little boys and girls of Yale do to have the good times. This leads me to ask us: what is this fun? And where is it to be found?

And why? Is it at the dance parby with the musics turned all the way up? Is it moving and shaking your parts at the dance clud, all packed in tight like jibbies? NO. It is in us, it is inside of we. Let me explain to it.

At the other day, deep in the night time, I was standing in the corner of the biggest ball room I had ever known to see, the Senior Masterade, when it struck

into my head. Though I, Jame, go it out into the hustling streets every day to know every little girl and boy of Yale, I felt as if, here, I could truly know no one.

Though you dance around and jiggle whatever it is on your body that is to be jiggled, how can you have fun if you don’t know your self or the selves of everyone around you? After all, as they always have said, “He who truly knows not one, knows no one.”

And he who knows no one will lie sad in his bed all night long.

And then, in this moment, I was struck by another, that all of the times we had before were

just the same in this regard as this one now. I’m thinking right now, of course, of Tobe’s Place, of Freshling Screw, of the parby that we have on Spring Fling Day. It is all of just to jump and noise and touch back and forth on each other … outside where everyone’s eyes can see it happen! Need I remind you of Safely Dance, which, I may remind you, did not go quite so “safely” as everyone thought? In the Masterade, we all wore our masts. But maybe in the pastimes, we wore still another mast: the mast of parby, the mast of our face.

Now, my mind swings itself

// BY JAME CUNNINGHAM into the present. It is the month of Feduary, which is time for only just one thing for seniors — the Fed Clubs. In the Fed Clubs, if you are to become a member of them, go to it, by all and every means, but when you get to it, don’t just bang and jang around like those sweaty scratchy parbies of the past. Take off your mast! Dance like I do — flowing around in the meadow of the winds, each little arm and leg twirling and whirling away. See the world as I do — of a friend, of you and me and all of us together holding of their fingers and hands running everywhere

together!

And I was struck again with another and my mind swings again further on to the beautiful month of May — Murble Beach, the Senior Weeks, where we have the proverbial chance to do things right. Leave home your smelly bottles, and turn your face into the sun. There you will see me, splashing in the sand, and know that we did it. Because after all, when these weeks are over, Yale is gone.

And which will you remember?

Do not contact Jame Cunningham.

Happiness Studies // BY KELSI CAYWOOD

// ASHLYN OAKES

Most of my friends were taken aback when asked to recall moments when they felt happy at Yale — whatever that meant, if anything. The answers varied from winning IM pingpong to tailgates with their residential college.

Most were community-centered: having someone to ride exercise bikes with at gym, group applause for a revealing tale at a storytelling event, bumping into friends at parties. There was another common denominator among my friends’ answers: They were most often non-academic and unstructured, occurring neither in the classroom nor in extracurricular settings.

Personal meanings of happiness, my peers revealed, are a survey in scope. For some, insignificant moments were paradoxically rendered significant in retrospect.

For others, happiness involves a deliberate vision about how the seemingly disparate components

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of their lives correspond with one another. This second conception, which looks at the big picture rather than the little things, is centered on finding meaningful order in one’s life.

But if happiness can mean such different things to different people, perhaps Yale is off-target in marketing itself as the “happy Ivy” and pitching happiness as the ultimate goal for a Yale experience.

Some of my friends felt pressure to provide scripted answers to university inquiries about well-being, from freshman fireside chats to university-wide surveys. Even if well-intentioned, such efforts seem wooden, incapable of engaging with the actual issue. Informal discussions among close friends, expectedly, provide a more honest snapshot of how people feel. But it’s still a weird question to ask or answer: “Are you happy?”

And maybe it’s not always the

right question. A healthier and more productive goal might be to learn how both happiness and sadness are integral to the human condition. My friends and I couldn’t resolve the relationship between happiness and mental health; one friend suggested that happiness here often becomes a substitute for mental health, when it might be more honest to say “There are things that worry me, but I am still OK.” As confused as my friends and I might be about happiness, we could agree on wanting more of an emotional and personal education from Yale. Peter Salovey may have championed emotional intelligence years ago, but it is still lacking in many of our professors’ teaching methods. One of my friends thought that classrooms would benefit from the professor checking in for a minute: “This is a rough week, how is every-

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one doing?” Classrooms should be part of our lives, not insulated from them.

“We were talking about ‘King Lear,’” a friend of mine recalled of a recent class. “I like it as a work of art but, why I really like ‘King Lear’ has nothing to do with that. It’s the same way I appreciate music theory or the physics of a building. But the Eiffel Tower isn’t just something that is physically astonishing. It’s the magnificence I feel when I look up at it … Professors need to be able to articulate that mysterious awe, that magic about literature, science, music…” He trailed off.

Even if we aren’t sure exactly what happiness means, we need professors, to the best of their ability, to really teach us about ‘King Lear,’ the Eiffel Tower and ourselves. Yale classrooms have too long demanded a separation of students’ emotional and intel-

lectual lives, but the “mysterious awe” my friend described doesn’t fall neatly into either of those categories. We want answers from our professors, so we can learn to feel that awe ourselves, but too often we just get more questions. Students have deans and masters to approach with questions about how to guide their lives, at the cost of professors not understanding what it means to be a Yale student.

As a result, it’s hard to connect.

Everyone agreed that Yale has offered them a place of newfound acceptance. A home. But this comfort does not undermine the sincerity of concerns about what happiness here means. It’s a difficult, if not impossible, question to answer. Which is perhaps why “mysterious awe” is a good place to start.

Contact KELSI CAYWOOD at kelsi.caywood@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The Theater of the Cruel.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND COVER

PUBLIC OR PRIVATE // BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN

n the corner of Chapel Street and High Street, the familiar vacancy that was the entrance to the Yale Center for British Art has been boarded up.

The gray plywood anticipates the 14-month renovation, which began last week, and, more importantly, indicates the temporary loss of one of Yale’s most unique artistic spaces.

Students and administrators alike will miss the YCBA, which houses works by canonical British artists, such as Thomas Gainsborough and John Constable. “I’m probably just going to cry a little,” said Daniel Leibovic ’17, who works at the YCBA as a student tour guide.

He explained that the YCBA provided an important space to think and study and fostered a strong sense of community among the student workers.

Leibovic will miss his fellow tour guides, as well as his favorite exhibition, “Sculpture Victorious: Art in an Age of Invention,” a collection of Victorian statues.

However, despite this cultural vacancy, there are other spaces in New Haven that serve similar artistic purposes. The museum belongs to a long tradition of public art that has strong ties to Yale and a strong presence in the New Haven community. The YUAG, the Peabody Museum of Natural History, the Lipstick statue in Morse — all are historic components of the New Haven arts scene.

In many ways, the YCBA’s renovation is an opportunity: Students who have yet to visit museums on campus and in New Haven may choose to finally visit the YCBA upon its reopening. And, alternatively, those in search of another art space will have an incentive to explore during the coming year.

O

*** Since 1974, the YCBA has been one of New Haven’s most popular artistic institutions. Paul Mellon ’29, the noted philanthropist and a British art enthusiast, purchased and installed around 95 percent of the pieces displayed today. The vast and impressive collection attracts an equally vast and impressive audience: graduates students, undergraduate students, professors, young artists and many locals.

While the museum is home to the largest collection of British art outside of the United Kingdom, the building itself is also a work of art — it was given the Twenty-five Year award by the American Institute of Architects in 2005.

The principal goal of the renovation is to preserve this work of art: the historic Louis Kahn building that houses the collection. After 10 years of researching the history, design and construction of the building, the project is finally underway. The renovation will include updated fire safety code compliance as well as restorations that better serve the public. The lecture hall, for example, will now adhere to American Disability Act standards, and a new seminar room will be built upstairs.

Mark Aronson, chief conservator for the YCBA, is enthusiastic about improvements to the building’s physical accessibility.

As an art restorer, however, he is more interested in the accessibility of the artwork itself — he looks forward to working on some of the better known paintings during the renovation. In many ways, his work with individual pieces parallels the restoration process the museum will undergo for the next 14 months.

“We can almost never get our hands on ‘The Allegory of the Tudors’ Succession’” he said,

alluding to a Lucas de Heere canvas. “Every third grader knows what it is, so whenever a school group comes, they park in front of Henry VIII.” With the restoration, Aronson and his team will finally get to look at it.

Before the YCBA closed, he was reluctant to deprive students of such historical pieces, which present unique learning opportunities. He sees education as one of the YCBA’s most important services to the community and said that museum staff are very conscious of how viewers will benefit from their displays.

Cassandra Albinson, chief curator of the YCBA’s collection, also emphasized its role as an educational institution.

“I really like portraiture of women, so when I’m working on something I’m always hoping it will be of interest to, say, feminist groups on campus,” she said.

She hopes that the new seminar room will bring undergraduate art courses into the building, particularly those courses that involve the collection.

Despite her interest in engaging campus groups, Albinson said she wants the YCBA to be a space where both Yale students and younger schoolchildren can learn about British art. She drew attention to the museum’s location — just off Old Campus — which puts it literally and figuratively on the border between the Yale and New Haven communities. The majority of patrons are not associated with Yale, and, as one of nine public museums in New Haven, the YCBA plays a central role in the city art scene, for students and non-students alike.

While the manifold services provided by the Center would be difficult to replicate, other Yale institutions exercise equal influence over the city’s artistic community. For instance, the YUAG’s presence and influence

most closely approximate those of the YCBA, its neighbor.

The YUAG, unlike the YCBA, has pieces from all over the world and all ages of art history.

But despite these differing collections, the two institutions occupy similar spaces in the arts scene: Both are free and both place special emphasis on their accessibility to the larger community. Pamela Franks, curator at the YUAG, speaks of many programs that resemble those of the YCBA: lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions and programs for school kids.

Franks believes that the YUAG helps young students learn to think differently. She, too, emphasizes the interactive nature of art education — she believes that students learn “visual literacy” and the ability to think of history in pictures.

However, most importantly, the Gallery broadens schoolchildren’s sense of belonging to the Yale community. Franks encourages high school students to familiarize themselves the YUAG’s resources and hopes that they come to see it as their museum.

“The fact that we’re free and open to the public is the main part of our identity,” she said.

“We’re part of Yale, but we’re here for the University as well as for the public.”

In this way, though private donations constitute the majority of the YCBA’s and the YUAG’s collections, both are cornerstones of New Haven’s art scene. *** Mauricio Cortes-Ortega ART ’16, thinks that before he shows his own art, he has to perfect his technique — in private. No matter how grand a student’s ambitions, school is the place to develop as an artist, cut off from the surrounding community.

Cortes-Ortega is trying to learn what he wants to say, and how he wants to say it, before engaging with art in public.

In other words, though Yale’s two major galleries connect the University to the greater New Haven area, Yale students have a

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different experience of this relationship. New Haven is rich with artistic opportunities — public studios, galleries, murals and classes — and yet, students don’t always participate in this artistic world.

Téa Beer ’17, an Art major, said time prevented her personally from exploring the local arts scene, but she added that her department didn’t encourage a relationship between art students and New Haven.

“I don’t think [the Yale Art major tries] to incorporate interaction with the town community in the art major curriculum,” she said. “Art is inherently pretty elitist, to be honest.” She didn’t condone this elitism, however, and she hopes to learn more about the art New Haven has to offer this semester.

In fact, most undergraduates interviewed expressed some interest in the local arts scene.

They seemed almost apologetic when explaining that they weren’t familiar with many artists, and, like Beer, cited intentions to get to know the community in the coming semester.

Some even would like to work on their own public art installations in New Haven.

When asked whether she’s done any public art here, Sam Vernon ART ’15 said she had not, though she has been commissioned to do public installations in the past: Before coming to graduate school, she worked on the Transform Neighborhoods Initiative in Prince George’s County, Maryland. Alongside participants from all parts of the neighborhood —the youngest was only three — Vernon painted a mural at a local library.

“It was truly incredible how many kinds of people came together,” she remembered. “I think local governments can and should work to create such dynamic, polyrhythmic environments.” She expressed regret that she hadn’t been able to participate in such collaborative projects in New Haven.

To counter this lack of dialogue between New Haven and Yale artists, Emily Hays ’16 has started the student organiza-

tion Blue Haven. Hays hopes to create projects similar to the cross-generational cooperation Vernon experienced in Maryland. The group pairs Yale performance artists — slam poets, dancers, singers — with high schoolers who are interested in the same field. The pair then works together to create a new piece together.

“There’s definitely an egalitarian, social justice component — if we’re both creating art together, we’re erasing challenges that we both may have experienced,” she explained.

Though Blue Haven primarily focuses on performance art for the moment, it’s only in its first semester, and Hays intends to incorporate the visual arts in the future.

The collaborative nature of Hays’s project speaks to a new form of interactive public art.

While museums such as the YCBA and the YUAG may attract visitors with free admission and student programs, this is a more passive approach. Hays, on the other hand, promotes active involvement, the conscious creation of an even vaster body of New Haven art. *** Kwadwo Adae is a local painter with ideas like Hay’s and a studio on the corner of Orange and Chapel. (Orange Street is kind of a hub for art business — almost every other storefront near his apartment is a studio.)

Adae believes firmly that art should be accessible to everyone and appreciates the presence of Yale’s museums in the city.

“We are spoiled here because we have resources like the YUAG, which has an enormous collection of art and is free,” he said.

As a public artist, he feels that he has a duty to create equally accessible spaces. He is even upset by the stairwell leading up to his own studio, as it prevents disabled persons from experiencing his art.

This passion for sharing art inspired him to teach, and today,

WKND RECOMMENDS: The Theater of the Absurd.

SEE ART PAGE 8

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND RENOVATES

100 STARLIT YEARS, A BRIGHT TOMORROW // BY CAROLINE WRAY

// KAIFENG WU

I’ve memorized their faces without having to try. The cowboy with the under-bite, two guns pointed upwards; the curly-haired, pensive woman, frowning a toad-like frown and wringing her hands; the protruding, heavy brow of the man hovering above her; the pleading girl; the smoking clown; the tiny explorer. Though I’ve never given them much thought, these blackand-white cartoons have loomed on the wall of my playroom for what seems like forever. Under their grotesque gaze I learned to walk and read, to gather my stuffed animals and leaf through teeny bopper magazines.

Twenty-five years ago, my mother had one of her first adult jobs working in the development office of the Shubert Theater, the New Haven landmark that stands next to the Taft Apartments on College Street. When she moved away from New Haven, and from her temp position at the Shubert, she took with her a poster — a commemoration of the theater’s 1984 reopening — and has held onto it ever since. Now, the caricatured faces on that poster are permanently etched in my memory.

“I imagine, after 100 years, it might be pretty run-down by now,” my mom said about the Shubert when I called.

In some ways, her suspicion is right: in the lobby one sees exposed pipes and ancient concessions. Just last Sunday at the Shubert, a 500-600-pound box fell and crushed someone — who was subsequently hospitalized — an event that has generated no follow-up report.

Still, my mom’s nostalgia for the theater peeks through in her voice. “It was definitely the most fun job I had in New Haven,” she told me. *** “I have to hug you,” Anthony Lupinacci, the director of marketing and community relations for the Shubert, tells me when we first meet. “I still remember when your mom took us out to lunch at IHOP before she left. We saw the last name, but didn’t think it could ever actually be the same family.”

The two of us are standing in front of the Shubert’s new “gallery,” a timeline of some of the biggest stars and performances the Shubert’s seen over the last century. The lights go up on the framed posters, illuminating the young faces of national dramatic treasures: Audrey Hepburn, Katherine Hepburn, Mary Martin, Sidney Poitier and Robert Redford, to name a handful. We start at the beginning.

It’s December 1914, and the Shubert Theater, a new branch of the New Yorkbased Shubert brothers’ company, is preparing to open. A Dec. 3 article from the News boasts of the incoming attraction: “New Theatre Most Modern in United States — New Haven Assured of Best Theatrical Season it Has Ever Had — New Theatre Practically Fireproof.”

Over the next several decades, the Shubert would be christened “the birthplace of the nation’s greatest hits.”

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It functioned as a premier “tryout theatre,” or a venue for nascent shows to run trial performances before making their debut on Broadway. The stage has played host to the world premieres of quite a few now-canonical shows, like “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1947, which launched the career of a young, then-unknown Marlon Brando.

This “golden age” at the Shubert spanned the 35 years that it was owned by a certain Maurice Bailey. Bailey took it over in 1941, when the Shubert Foundation, which had become a national theater monopoly, was forced to transfer its ownership, and held onto the theater until it closed in 1976.

Rachel Alderman is a producer for A Broken Umbrella Theatre, a local company that is currently in rehearsals for “Seen Change,” an original musical about the Shubert Theater and New Haven that will premiere Feb. 18 at the Shubert. She noted the venue’s storied history.

“Frankly, you can’t talk about the history or the legacy of the American theater scene without talking about the Shubert in New Haven,” she said. “One birthed the other.”

A show’s try-out period at the Shubert was truly raw and led to notable changes: “Oklahoma!” was named “Away We Go” when it played at the Shubert in 1943, and the responses of New Haven audiences contributed in large part to the addition and subtraction of songs before the final Broadway debut.

In a video she recorded for the Shubert’s centennial in November, Julie Andrews recalled a crippling attack of stage fright by a then-inexperienced Rex Harrison on the opening night of “My Fair Lady.” The performance was called off, but due to a record-breaking blizzard, word did not reach audience members, who filled the seats anyway. The Shubert crew then scattered, gathered the cast members from around New Haven, and put on the show.

“Everything about it was high drama,” she says in the video, holding the original 1956 playbill. “And great fun.”

Andrews’s is one of 44 “shout-out” Youtube videos uploaded by former Shubert stars to commemorate its anniversary. A quick scroll through the playlist makes it clear: The stars remember the Shubert as fondly as the Shubert remembers them, and its legacy has stretched well beyond the local.

“The whole thing kind-of went viral,” Lupinacci said about the shoutout project, which began with staffers reaching out to just a handful of familiar faces. “We started getting emails and submissions from people we hadn’t even contacted.”

A selfie-angle video of Perez Hilton, lying in bed, saying one day he’d feel so honored to act in a play at the Shubert, stands out as a potentially unsolicited submission. Marie Osmond, Jane Fonda and Kristin Chenoweth have posted their own tributes. James Earl

Jones recalls spending his 26th birthday at the Shubert performing in the world premiere of “Sunrise at Campobello.”

Lupinacci nods his head in affirmation when Andrews praises what is perhaps the Shubert’s most noteworthy attribute. “Congratulations,” she says, “for surviving all the other theaters that come and go.” *** Survival has not been easy.

During an economic downturn in New Haven, the Shubert closed its doors in 1976, and remained shuttered for seven years. A 1983 project to revitalize downtown brought it back to life.

Funds were poured into renovations and the theater’s mission was reimagined. It would no longer exist as merely a tryout theater and a Broadway junction, though those ties were to remain strong. It would become a community resource and a more versatile venue.

“Since reopening, there’s been an increased diversity in the programming, and an increased functionality,” Lupinacci said. The last season, for example, has seen everything from local high school productions to standup comedians to a Gospel act to ballets to, of course, Broadway musicals.

Alderman says that this versatility is so much of what makes the Shubert, and New Haven as a whole, special. She recalled watching her young niece’s recital in the Shubert, where she also saw the Tony-award winning “Peter and the Starcatcher” last week.

“If a three-year-old tap dancing in a bumblebee costume in the same space as that Broadway production is not a beautiful symbol for what’s possible when a city is alive with the arts, I don’t know what is,” she said. “It’s like the whole birth-life cycle right there on stage.”

In 2001, the Connecticut Association for the Performing Arts took over management of the theater, though the city still owned the building. Around this time, a new movement emerged that sought to re-create — and update — the tryout theater golden age. The Shubert’s executive directors and board undertook an effort to debut the national tours of Broadway plays. Now, before travelling across the nation, Broadway productions hunker down in New Haven for several weeks to build their sets and — just as in the old days — to test out their performances.

“We have this wonderful past that we love to celebrate, but we’re constantly looking to the future,” said Lupinacci.

“We like to remind people that this is not a museum.”

The initiative has landed some huge names: in the past three years, “Jersey Boys” and “Peter and the Starcatcher” made their national tour debuts at the Shubert, and “Matilda” will do the same this May. These big fish not only inflate the Shubert’s credibility, but also pump money into the city. For six weeks at a time, Lupinacci pointed out, cre-

FAMILIAR

Yale Rep // 8 p.m.

“In a snowy Midwestern suburb, Marvelous and Donald are preparing for the marriage of their eldest daughter.”

Sounds just mahhhvelous.

ative teams are staying in local hotels, ordering supplies for their shows and patronizing local shops and restaurants. Every year, the Shubert brings in $5 million in revenue and, according to a Quinnipiac University study, generates $20 million of economic impact for the city.

As the centennial approached, the Shubert underwent further changes.

Although being owned by the city had its benefits for many years (protection from demolition, for example), converting to a not-for-profit model would allow the Shubert to apply for grants and save the city hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

In a unanimous vote in November 2013, the city elected to transfer building ownership to CAPA, a move that, entirely by coincidence, was finalized on the 99th anniversary of the Shubert’s opening night in 1914.

Lupinacci waves his hands and smiles. He says he can only attribute such a happenstance to the spirit of all the old stars who at one point have called the Shubert home. *** “If you look closely enough, you can see the gerbils running through!”

So says a woman cleaning the newly expanded Shubert lobby, referring to the large and exposed mechanical pipes on the ceiling. By the end of the $14.8 million renovation period in October 2016, Lupinacci says, they’ll be covered, but the renovation is being executed in phases.

More dire woes than gerbils — the falling box comes to mind — have befallen the Shubert during the renovation. These oversights are symptomatic of a general state of disrepair in the theater, which hasn’t undergone any substantial renovation since reopening in the 1980s.

In 2013, the board of directors, the staff and the city all agreed: It was time.

The first phase, completed from May to October of 2014, addressed the antiquated heating and cooling systems, dressing rooms, lobby and hospitality suite, as well as general maintenance problems.

Lisa Sanborn, who has been artistic director of the New Haven Ballet for the last 14 years (and has consequently worked on 14 productions of the Nutcracker at the Shubert), said that the “single greatest change” has been the implementation of more bathrooms throughout the building. Previously, there were only bathrooms in the basement, which proved challenging for casts as well as audience members.

“It’s a lot easier to implement plumbing now than it was decades ago,” Lupinacci said, adding wryly, “We’re committed to ‘seats where there’s seating.’”

In spite of millions of dollars’ worth of changes, CAPA and the board of directors will preserve the theater proper — which is essentially the same

as it was on its opening night in 1914.

Indeed, the 1914 News’ description of the theater rings true 100 years later: “The interior design is in New England Colonial style, the entire effect being of old ivory, with golden brown velvet hangings, seat upholstery and carpets.

The Curtain will also be of the same rich tone of brown velvet.

Lupinacci says he’s proud of the theater’s “classic elegance,” and its avoidance of the “overly extravagant, gingerbread style” that many other 20th-century theaters adopted.

He does concede they might like to expand the space, in order to accommodate some larger and more complicated musicals, like “The Phantom of the Opera” or “The Lion King.” But it can’t happen, he explained, because the theater is sandwiched right in between the Crown Street parking garage and the Taft Apartments.

Still according to Sanborn, the theater’s design could not make for a more optimal audience experience. She argued that it has the same, or even better, acoustics as the most technologically advanced theater, and that no matter which of the 1,600 seats you get, there’s a clear and intimate view of the actors.

Not only does the theater create intimacy between performers and the audience, it also fosters intimacy between the audience members themselves. When crafting the conceit for a centennial painting for the theater, New Haven-based artist Tony Falcone asked Shubert staff members what they most wanted to capture about their beloved theater. According to Lupinacci, “It was that feeling of anticipation as the curtain goes up and the audience — who come from all different racial, socioeconomic and personal backgrounds — are all united in their excitement about what’s to come.”

That feeling is precisely what Falcone captures in the painting, now hanging at the end of the gallery timeline at the Shubert. The picture is pink and exuberant, reminiscent of Chagall. In it, beams of light emanate from beneath the curtain, which has just started to rise, and shine onto a full house.

When I look at it, I remember the old Shubert poster in my playroom, the histrionic black-and-white expressions of the figures. I can’t help thinking that these two images are indicative of the Shubert’s shift in focus: from the drama of its star-studded past to the joy of giving back to its own community.

For Shubert patrons and performers, these images are complements.

Describing the experience of setting foot into the theater and onto the stage, Sanborn says, “You stand there and think to yourself about all the incredible, world-famous performers that have been backstage, and have performed there, and it really does give you goosebumps.”

Contact CAROLINE WRAY at caroline.wray@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Fear of the unFamiliar.

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

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WEEKEND ARTS

// ANNELISA LEINBACH

MURDER WITH AN EXCLAMATION POINT // BY HAN-AH SUMNER

“Murder and Women in the 19th Century,” at the Sterling Memorial Law Library, confronts viewers with death, rape and assault — all consolidated into two neat glass cases.

The exhibit features illustrated pamphlets that depict some of the 19th century’s most famous murder cases involving women, whether as victims or perpetrators. And although many of the pamphlets contained attractive typography and eye-catching drawings, the brutality they depicted made for an unsavory contrast.

My eye shifted from one gruesome scene to another and finally

focused on a black and white drawing neatly placed in the corner of one of the two displays. The drawing depicted the “beautiful” Miss Alice A. Bowlsby, victim of the Trunk Tragedy. Occupying the upper half of the image was a group of men in top hats crowded around a trunk, peering into its horrifying contents. The looks on their faces were worried, but also overwhelmingly curious.

Although billed as a legal history, the exhibit also chronicles a history of voyeurism. As I examined each piece, I felt transported — like a rubbernecker on an extremely lethal highway. And despite my horror, I

Mixed Bag // BY LEAF ARBUTHNOT

was enthralled. As I looked from image to image, from one cheaply produced pamphlet to another, I felt like one of those unapologetically curious men in top hats.

At the top of most pamphlets was a price, ranging from ten cents to about 25. Just below, most featured bold lettering exclaiming some of the case’s most scandalous details: “The Unfortunate Wife is now Dying in Prison!” The pamphlets’ aesthetic reminded me of cereal-boxes boasting prizes inside — prizes that never quite lived up to the hype. Similarly, the facts of each murder were never quite as colorful as the headline suggested.

Each headline promised to provide the “ultimate,” tantalizing details about the grotesque event. Yet each pamphlet was starkly unoriginal. In most, the woman was “beautiful,” “pretty” or “unfortunate.” “Pretty Rose Ambler, the Connecticut Beauty” reads one. All we glean about Ambler’s life is a one-liner that communicates her general physical attractiveness. “Pretty” tells us nothing about Ms. Ambler’s personality, presence or relationships. Anybody interested in 19th century gender-roles would have field day.

It makes me wonder, did these people get funerals with their

loved ones? Or was this it?

For the purposes of the pamphlet, that one-liner sufficed, coloring her in just enough to win the viewer’s affection. This, in turn, made her death worth 10 cents. The accumulation of so many murder stories in the exhibit seemed like a huge mass grave in which the personalities of the victims (or criminals, in some cases) was lost in a sea of indistinct faces.

Murders weren’t the only 19th century occurrences to merit pamphlets, which were also used to spread information about topics like religion, politics and even sex. The universality of the

medium further homogenized the lives and deaths of these individual women.

But sensationalist pamphlets provided people with a desperately needed sense of involvement in another world. “Be the Judge, Be the Jury,” read the cover of one publication. This sounds like the title of a children’s game. Was this the 19th century version of The Sims? Unlike computer-generated automatons, though, these were real people dying, something these mass-produced pamphlets make it easy to forget.

Student poetry gets a notoriously bad rap. Much of that is deserved — teenagers going through adolescence do tend to write about trite things: breakups, emotion, botched sex, emotion. But on Wednesday, the Connecticut Poetry Reading Circuit proved that some student poetry is worth paying attention to. The event, in Morse Common Room, featured poets from the state who had been selected by their colleges to participate in a series of readings around Connecticut. Four writers took to the podium and were joined by four undergraduate Yalies.

Standards varied. The first reader settled the audience in nicely, inflating expectations perhaps a little cruelly. Justin Greene, a junior in Anthropology at Wesleyan University, gave a lively reading of his very anecdotal and sharply-observed poems. He performed as much as he read, pausing between poems to throw optimis-

tic questions at a stolid audience that seemed reluctant to laugh.

The next two poets — Nikki Byrne from the University of Saint Joseph and Lisa Gaudio from the University of Connecticut — were less flamboyant in their presentation. Byrne’s poetry was strewn with clichés — a lover’s freckles formed “constellations,” his back was a “landscape,” his spine a “valley.”

If Emily Dickinson had indeed been an influence, as Byrne intimated, the older poet was keeping a characteristically low profile, as Byrne didn’t seem to pursue Dickinson’s subtlety and restraint.

Gaudio followed Byrne and delivered a change in tempo. In one powerful poem, the speaker articulated the tension between her wish to remain a greaseelbowed tomboy, and the desire of her “momma” to have a recognizably feminine daughter.

But standards slipped once more in Gaudio’s last poem, a cumb e r -

some ode to endangered elephants. Sounding like a Greenpeace tirade, it was bookended with maddening archaisms (“I bid you not that way,” etc.) that clashed with the tone elsewhere, as well as the youth of the reader herself.

Katherine Rose Monica, of the University of Connecticut, blew the rather limp competition out of the water when she finally took to the stage, having arrived late after getting stuck in traffic. Vivid and fluid, her poems were remarkably songlike, featuring anaphoric patterns that the writer wove and unpicked expertly. Like that of her peers, Monica’s poetry also tended towards the confessional, but it was still fresh and, at moments, unexpectedly moving.

The Yale poets were accorded less reading time than the others, with the exception of Jessica Yuan ’15. Her background in architecture came to the fore in her meticulously constructed poems, which were at their most effective when grappling with her family’s immigration narrative. One poem, for instance, took aim at the notion that a “mastery of speech” would offer a failsafe weapon against cultural and social alienation.

It would have been nice to hear more from the other Yale writers invited to the podium. Margaret

Shultz ’16 offered a brilliantly dry piece about sisterhood, entitled “Ghost Poem”. This teetered dangerously — and successfully — on the edge of banal anecdote,but was repeatedly brought back from the precipice by abrupt changes of rhythm, time frames and moods. The unusual poem of Austin Carder ’15 was accompanied by a photograph of the YUAG sculpture his verses were about. And although the poem relied a little too much on the picture, it was an elegant, well-written response to an object Carder sees regularly, as a member of the YUAG workforce. The singular offering of James Orbison ’16, “Beauty Supply,” was luminous: short and sweet enough to leave me wishing he had been accorded considerably more stage time.

This mismatch between stage time and ability was a theme throughout the evening. Although the poetry reading offered its share of delights, some writers walked off the stage with lots left to say, while others seemed to be gasping for air by the end of their set. After all, student poetry is nothing if not inconsistent. But even in a mixed bag, there are some things worth holding on to.

Contact HAN-AH SUMNER at han-ah.sumner@yale.edu .

Contact LEAF ARBUTHNOT at leafarbuthnot@googlemail.com .

// MICHELLE CHAN

FRI DY AY DA MFEBRUARY ONTH ##

6

FOUR GIRLS IN SEARCH OF A PART

WKND RECOMMENDS:

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An innovative pairing of post-9/11 therapy-office drama and southern belle banter gone sour.

Four Characters in Search of an Author.

PAGE B6

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND DATES

THE BLINDEST DATE

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et

ue e-

em

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Bachelorette #1

eeling lonely? Lovelorn? Dreading Valentine’s Day? Never fear — WKND has devised the perfect solution to Yalies’ amorous woes. We’ve selected a lucky ten bachelors and bachelorettes from a large and qualified pool of applicants for this week’s straight edition of the Blindest Date. (Queer edition to come!) Now you, dear reader,

Physics major, minor in watching television My superpower is that I’m always right, I’ll let you decide if that’s real or imaginary That Time I Cooked for The Backstreet Boys and Other Tales A cross between Andy Samburg, Adam Levine and Hoodie Allen, gets even more attractive when he puts on glasses, doesn’t use the Oxford comma

Bachelorette #2

get to vote for your favorite contestant to determine who gets paired up for a V-Day blind date, based on their major (and imaginary minor), superpower, future autobiography title and ideal mate. Simply visit the WKND section of the YDN’s website this weekend, click on the “Blindest Date” post, scroll down and vote in the polls for your favorite bachelor and

Bachelor #6 Philosophy and pre-med

Cognitive Science. Minor: Theory and Practice of Appalachian Folk Crafts.

An uncanny ability to spend many hours thinking about girls while steadily losing the ability to understand their actions

Ability to make quesadillas appear whenever I want them

Badassery Minor: Anthropology I have a sixth sense for knowing when the dining halls will be serving watermelon for breakfast (yes, without looking at the dining app, thank you very much) From Myspace to Facebook: The evolution of the social being that is me Someone who will cuddle with me in front of the misleading “fireplace” in my suite, someone who will fantasize about Sherlock marathons as much a I do while accepting that we don’t actually have 14 spare hours to make it happen, someone with an incense of humor (commonly found at East Asian trading markets), and preferably someone who is the straight version of Matt Bomer

My ideal mate is someone whom I can talk to without trying. Someone who’s socially adept, but doesn’t party too much. Someone who’s a genuinely good person — the kind of nice where you think so well of them that, physical attraction aside, you just can’t help but want to kiss them.

I Have Three Quesadillas in My Pocket My ideal mate would enjoy kayaking, comfortable silences, and saying hello to strangers on the sidewalk to freak them out, and also be trustworthy and funny and caring and stuff. And play the fiddle, or have a pet hedgehog. Or both.

Bachelorette #7

Bachelor #7 Math, Imaginary minor: Pun making

EP&E with a minor in mastering various urban public transit systems

I’ve always wanted a time-turner

BME. Minor: Yellow things with a concentration in ducklings and sunflowers monopolizing couches

Bachelorette #8

“No, seriously, can someone tell me?”

Someone who can beat my mozzarella stick eating record.

28.

Just Plane Wrong: One geometer’s fruitless search for truth and beauty in math.

Bachelor #8 Ethics, Politics, Economics and Art double major. Imaginary minor: Botany

Psychology neuroscience track & English

Making anyone smile

I’m actually a mermaid

A List of Ridiculous Things: 99 Truths and One Lie

wine lover, music lover, good lover

Film Studies (Minor: Michael Bay-bashing Studies) The ability to sustain a fiery, all-consuming hatred of “Frozen” almost a year and a half after its release! I guess you could say that I can’t “Let it Go” “I’m Not Mad (Yet), I Just Have Resting Bitchface Syndrome: An Autobiography” Someone who has a dry sense of humor, is focused, loves nature, and appreciates cinema. Has an eclectic taste in music.

Can discuss religious beliefs in a balanced way. An awareness of race relations is a plus.

A love of dogs and an intense dislike of cats is a plus plus!!

Too complicated? Just get me Idris Elba. Yale has that kind of money, right?

Bachelorette #5 Humanities Can summon a “grande chai tea latte, no water” anywhere on campus in 3 seconds flat “I’m Not Judging You That’s Just My Face: A Real-World Blair Waldorf” Female seeking male. Must meet at least 7 of the following 10 criteria: 1. Under 6 feet tall 2. Republican 3. Never wears vineyard vines 4. PDA enthusiast, loves hand-holding 5. Section, no, lecture asshole 6. Owns puka shell necklace 7. Blonde 8. Does lots of drugs and/or all the drugs 9. Men’s rights activist 10. Listens to Nickelback

so

k-

FRI D AY FEBRUARY

6

CABARET

Whitney Theater // 8 p.m.

Good luck getting in. Word on the block is the waiting list is 95 people long.

Bachelorette #9

Economics major — minor in gut class identification

Reading and controlling minds

I honestly don’t want a superpower, because I know it would corrupt me and I would use it for evil. Although I wouldn’t mind being able to charge an iPhone with my thoughts.

The Grey Goose Diaries

“The Life of Oprah Winfrey” (that would definitely increase sales)

Bachelorette #10

My dream girl is a sight to see, with long dark hair and a very tiny face. She has limitless compassion, loves sea turtles and either has or can fake an accent. She enjoys staying in sometimes to watch Netflix/ bake cookies, but when we go out you better believe we bring down the house together. Bonus points if she is a masseuse, plays golf or owns a pomsky.

Bachelor #10

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How I conquered life…

My ideal girl would have to embrace my controversial dance moves in box. She would have to be outgoing and fun and also appreciate my sexy british accent.

Honest, physically active, strong fucked-up sense of humor, tolerant of a high-density of film references in casual conversation, the ability to focus completely on another person.

SATURDAY

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Bachelor #3 Political Science (minor in exploring New Haven restaurants) Ordering the most delicious item on the menu, every time.

I want to meet someone who is spontaneous and can go from rolling her eyes at me in one moment to cuddling in the next.

Global Affairs; minoring in Bar Trivia The ability to mute people Short, Relatively Dark, and Decent Looking A girl who will lounge in her sweatpants on the couch with me on a Sunday morning watching three SportsCenters in a row

Bachelor #5 A Cypress in the Lost Coast

Editing Privileges on Space-Time Continuum Taming Oneself

FEBRUARY The (Yale) cabaret, old chum!

Ability to sink unlimited beverages

To be able to play all the instruments in an orchestra at once

Trans-species Communication

Ice cream radar .. and the ability to eat it all upon detection

Damon Salvatore.. except he has also seen all of the old Disney Channel Original movies and can do a standing back tuck (flip)

Global Affairs Minor: Vikings!

Mechanical Engineering (Minor: JewBu Studies)

Environmental Studies

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, minor in Bachata

Saw VIII: Back to the Beginning

Bachelor #2

Bachelor #4

Bachelor #9

English (maybe Poli Sci)

Funny and intelligent gets boring, so in addition to the aforementioned qualities, someone who is not afraid to get a little edgy and un-PC. He should have just the right combination of charm, arrogance, and mystique to keep me interested. At the same time, this person should be refined and cultured and ideally possess a strong appreciation for the finer things in life, i.e. caviar, Petrarchan sonnets, and Patron. Someone who will pregame a YSO show and then take me bar-hopping sounds like the ideal mate. Chuck Bass meets Kid Cudi, if you will.

I’d prefer human with two eyes and the works. And crazy.

Batshit crazy is a necessity.

Lox and “Bae”gels

Someone who inspires others and who can talk for hours on end about literally anything. Ideally she will love spontaneity just as much as I do! She also has to be up for trying new things (I’ve never been on a date, so this is new for me!) Finally, sweet, caring, carefree and honest: I will be all of these for her.

Tales of an endorphin addict

Bachelorette #4

Twilight: Waning Passion

I am a vanilla heterosexual male. I desire independence and intellectual passion in a partner. Someone who wants to while away hours drinking tea and discussing recently read books would be perfect.

Dodge the Basics, Delight in the Simple Someone who reserves judgment, is introspective, indulges in a wild and unselfconscious laugh, can appreciate 90s neosoul/classic hip-hop, and wants to go get swole with me in the mornings.

As cliché as it may be, stopping time is the ultimate superpower; if you disagree you are not worth my time. Until I control it. ;)

Eat, Play, Love

Imagined superpower: perfect timing. Arrive at the bar just as that big group leaves, hit every green light, be that 100,000th customer, make a chill new friend while I’m just about overwhelmed by life.

Bachelorette #3

I am majoring in MCDB with a minor in perversity…or computer science.

bachelorette by midnight Sunday. Results will be announced online Monday.

Bachelorette #6

Bachelor #1

YALE MEN’S HOCKEY

A flamenco dancer. Ideal traits: thoughtful, a good conversationalist, caring, affectionate, zesty, inquisitive, musical (preferably with a nice singing voice), likes going on hikes. A: maybe

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WKND’s inexplicable devotion to sports continues.

Unbelievable plays — athletic and theatric.

PAGE B8

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COVER

STATE OF THE ARTS // BY CORYNA OGUNSEITAN

ART FROM PAGE 3 he works in assisted living centers and retirement communities across the county. In other words, his artistic contributions to New Haven extend beyond his personal creations.

He recounted one of his most memorable teaching moments: “There was one woman who used to be an artist and had suffered a stroke. She lost use of her right hand, her painting hand. I was teaching her to draw again with her left hand. To do that, I used my left hand as well. So we struggled together.”

Adae spoke extensively about his students and clearly considers teaching one of the most meaningful aspects of his work. He and other non-student artists seemed sure of their niche in the community, expressing a commitment to active public service: teaching drawing technique, inspiring others to create and providing spaces for artistic appreciation.

His work is not public in the traditional sense; instead of just making art for people, he makes art with people. After all, public art is a changing field: Yale College Dean of the Arts Susan Cahan said, “Public art used to be just art, but outdoors. Now, it’s art that actively engages a broad community of people.”

Both types of artists thrive in New Haven, from those who teach in their studios to those who make outdoor installations.

Jonathan Waters, for instance, does not limit himself to the white walls of a gallery. Most of his creations are geometric abstract sculptures, gray and black stainless steel sheets welded into unique shapes and placed outside.

Everything he makes is enormous; no passerby could possibly miss it. That’s why he loves the scale of his work: His pieces aren’t just public, they’re aggressively public.

“I like doing work outside because theoretically, it has a wider audience,” he said. “The casual guy on the street who might not walk into a museum will be able to experience it.”

Adae is also committed to New Haven’s public art. He praises pieces that aren’t in museums or galleries and believes that beautiful objects contribute to a high quality of life. To him, simply seeing something bright on your way to work can make you do your job better.

He is especially proud of an interactive mural he worked on in a mental health clinic. The bus windows are painted with chalk paint, so children in the waiting room are invited to make their mark on the piece.

Still, some New Haven artists are less invested in active audience participation. They would prefer that viewers meditate on the meaning of a work.

Michael Feiner is a multimedia artist and bike shop owner who has participated in City-Wide Open Studios, an initiative to support the visual arts in New Haven. He said his installation was so popular that on the second day of its exhibition, over a thousand people came. There was only standing room in the gallery. Though popularity would

SUNDAY FEBRUARY

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indicate success in the art industry, he was not satisfied.

“People just passed right in front of it; they didn’t have time to even see it!” he said.

This is why some prefer to show pieces in private settings: They don’t just want people to see their art. They want people to look at it. *** Yet the private New Haven arts scene is not nearly as developed as its public counterpart. While locals and students have access to many free museums, they encounter far fewer private vendors and galleries.

Fred Giampietro, the owner of the new Giampietro Gallery on Chapel Street, considers himself a pioneer.

Since opening in early January, Giampietro has tried to develop lasting business relations with Yale and the community; he has exhibited the works of several art graduate students. He dedicates himself to finding up-and-comers, and his favorite thing about owning a gallery is discovering new talent.

His belief in these budding artists brought him into the private arts industry, and he thinks that collectors can build relationships with paintings on their walls.

“A lot of time people don’t think about how they can live with art and how that can enrich their lives,” he said.

The idea of living with a painting brings into question the spiritual value of art as well as the financial one. Before consumers can form intimate connections with a painting, they must spend.

Christian Ammon is a painter, graduate student and waiter from Trumbull, Connecticut. Though he is very busy, he prioritizes his art, and he is determined to make a career in the field. He expressed discontent that public art dissociates art from its monetary value.

He showed recently at New Haven CityWide Open Studios, an opportunity for which he was grateful, but he had reservations about the program.

“I want to be exposed to different social classes and races, but obviously, I want my art to sell, “ he said. “At Open Studios, there were a lot of lower class people kind of bumming around. I think my art would mainly target the middleto upper-class people.”

To this end, he said he would advertise for Open Studios in the area surrounding Yale, instead of the outskirts of New Haven. He also feels that, as a graduate student, he can identify most with other young people.

It seems particularly difficult for New Haven artists to navigate the industry, to balance artistic vision with financial need. Ammon is still struggling with this, and though he is young, many older artists also spoke about sacrificing accessibility to large audiences in order to profit from their artwork.

To address these issues, the city’s public art institutions sponsor local artists. The YUAG, as part of its community outreach services, employs artists-in-residence for four-week periods several times a year. The artists do research, work on their projects and

GATTACA

WHC // 7 p.m.

Jude Law, in happier days, stars in WKND’s favorite eugenically engineered dystopia film.

work with Yale School of Art students as well as undergraduates.

Right now, the artist in residence is Chris Ellis, who goes by “Daze.” Daze said he is enjoying his residency and feels lucky to have the opportunity to focus only on his artwork and his teaching.

When his residency began, he started a mural in the basement of the YUAG, accessible to museum visitors and students, in the same style as his earlier pieces. The mural has been and will be collaboration: Art students will help him with the design and creation.

And he doesn’t limit his students to marginal contributions. A large crowd scene in the middle of the wall, he explained, was an undergraduate’s idea. Daze considers art to be both an educational tool and a means of selfexpression, and he didn’t mention any of the monetary concerns that worried Ammon.

The YUAG artist-in-residence position combines the many aspects of a public arts career. Daze has the financial support of a gallery as he engages with the local community through classes and workshops. And, of course, he’s able to create his own art. While there is certainly an artistic separation between Yale and New Haven, this program is a step towards long term collaboration. *** Cahan, in speaking about public art in New Haven, cited “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks” — the Morse lipstick statue. In 1970, it was still at Beinecke Plaza, and the red centerpiece wasn’t metal. Instead, it was inflatable — every few days, the tube would deflate and become flaccid. When this happened, the artist, Claes Oldenburg, would send somebody, or come himself, to re-inflate it, and, voilà, the lipstick was again erect.

“The piece was made right after Yale became coeducational,” Cahan said.

“Obviously, these were gendered references; the blending of the symbol of femininity with the phallic symbol was a direct reference to coeducation.” She then mentioned the protests following the Black Panther Party trials, and the military tanks lining the streets of New Haven — hence the “caterpillar tracks”.

Several students said that all public art is, inherently, political. One even compared it to various news sources..

Another believed that the artist’s understanding of the political issue at hand is just as important as her technical skill.

By all of these definitions, “Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks” is an excellent example of “good” public art. It represents a whole host of intersections, intersections between Yale, New Haven and a wider political climate. Today, the Morse lipstick is divorced from much of its significance, but just outside the walls of the YUAG, the YCBA and the residential colleges, a vibrant arts world awaits exploration. In fact, it’s not an art scene; it’s an art web.

Contact CORYNA OGUNSEITAN at coryna.ogunseitan@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: Playing God with people’s genes. (Not really.)

PAGE B9

YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND CONSULTS

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT // BY EMILY XIAO

// ZISHI LI

The summer internship hunt is in full swing.

No doubt many of our classmates are hoping to dip their toe in the waters of consulting and finance at places like McKinsey & Company or Morgan Stanley. Unsurprisingly, however, the mere mention of such companies sparks heated discussion on campus.

We all know the stereotypes, which have only intensified since the 2008 economic downturn — the big, bad banker; the soulless consultant; Excel spreadsheets until three in the morning. Yet according to the Office of Career Strategy post-graduation survey of the class of 2014, Goldman Sachs was the second most common employer of graduates of the class of 2014, behind only Yale itself. Some find this worrying.

Scott Stern ’15, a columnist for the News well known for his stance on finance and consulting, is troubled by industries that he views as focused solely on making money, rather than making money and a difference. When Yale students enter such industries, he explains, something is “lost,” some potential goes unrealized.

Stern may object to these jobs on moral grounds, but others wonder whether the industries are even good for their recently graduated employees. In a review of Kevin Roose’s “Young Money,” a book about the experiences of eight fresh Wall Street recruits, The New York Times’ Chris Hayes compares a high-powered investment bank to “a boot camp that will reliably turn normal but ambitious people into broken sociopaths more or less willing to do anything.”

But say we take all this as read; all this has been discussed. The question remains: How do the actual experiences of graduates who have entered these stigmatized industries stack up next to the impressions we receive on campus?

“There are venture capital firms that help set up new businesses, and private equity firms that help finance non-profits,” noted Office of Career Strategy Director Jeanine Dames.

Moreover, she said, many consultants at smaller firms specialize in topics from health care to sustainability.

And even within a single job, a new employee’s work might not follow a set routine. According to Michal Benedykcinski ’09, who spent over three years in banking, life as a junior banker could involve anything from working on financial models late into the night to juggling multiple investment pitches. There was no “typical day,” he said, likening the intensity of the job at times to “drinking from a firehose.”

On the consulting side, Sarah Minkus ’08, who has worked at The Boston Consulting Group since graduation, sees a similar variety.

“I’ve gotten to taste-test for food manufacturers, tour plants with industrial-goods companies, visit stores in different countries and interview moms and babies living in Israel,” she said.

Brian Goldman ’05, a co-coordinator of Dwight Hall during his time on campus and a business analyst at McKinsey for two years afterwards, recalled that he typically spent four days a week at his client’s office, working with their senior team on the strategic questions that kept them up at night.

Sitting in a room with executives twice his age was intimidating at first, he said. He’d think to himself, “What am I doing here, offering advice to these people about their organization that they know so much better than I do?”

Yet Goldman came to believe a fresh perspective could be valuable, introducing a new way of thinking that, as he put it, “breaks open a problem.”

***

***

According to the OCS survey, 16.9 percent of the Class of 2014 went into finance, and another 11.0 percent chose consulting. In a follow-up survey conducted by the News last fall, 56 percent of respondents working in finance reported being “satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with their work — just barely lower than the 57 percent of those employed in education reporting the same. Seventy-nine percent of respondents working in consulting reported being at least satisfied with their jobs.

Whatever you might glean from these statistics, they provide little detail about the lives or career trajectories of students taking entry-level jobs in these industries.

There is, of course, the distinction between finance and consulting; within these industries, moreover, are a range of possible roles.

Although many Yalies go on to work in finance or consulting, they don’t all stay there. The 27.9 percent of the class of 2014 employed by those industries will almost surely diminish as the years go by.

Monaghan said it would upset her if the large portion of Yalies who work for Goldman Sachs, for example, stayed there for an extended period of time. “But,” she explained, “that’s not really the case.”

After three years as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley, Yoonie Hoh ’11 now works in private equity, a common career trajectory.

At the same time, she was optimistic about those who leave finance altogether.

“I know banks may feel differently, since they invest a ton of time into their analysts.” Hoh said. But she found it natural that young people

SATURDAY FEBRUARY

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should want to explore before settling into a dream job.

Drawing contrasts between their own generation and that of their parents and grandparents, both Sheila Rustgi ’07 and Shannon Monaghan ’08 believe that it’s less common now for people to stay in the same firm or industry for life.

According to Dames, the OCS director, many students enter consulting hoping to gain business experience across a variety of employers, which they can then apply to future pursuits. Likewise, many who enter finance seek strong analytical experience.

“In both these cases,” she added, “I think their expectations are met.”

After graduation, Rustgi spent a year at Archstone Consulting working on projects like helping a client’s human resources division develop a health insurance plan. She said that, among other things, she learned how to set goals and solicit feedback, skills that she has carried into medical school and her residency.

Career changes like Rustgi’s are far from uncommon among recent graduates who go on to work in consulting or finance. In fact, in information sessions and on its website, McKinsey is open about the fact that after two or three years, employees often pursue professional schooling or other work experiences — something Caitlin Storhaug, a recruiter with the firm, corroborates. Monaghan sees this cycle as a major factor in consulting firms’ heavy recruitment presence on campus.

As a history major who had realized after taking a course in constitutional law that law school wouldn’t be a good fit for her, Monaghan, like many of her classmates, was unsure what to do senior year. Then management consulting, which she hadn’t known even existed for much of college, emerged as a possibility.

Although Monaghan was excited about the prospects of her job at Oliver Wyman, she harbored no expectations of working there for the rest of her life.

If anything, a major draw was the flexibility that it would afford.

“It wasn’t like I was signing onto something forever in a way that I would have, for example, if I had gone into a Ph.D. program immediately, or if I’d gone to law school,” she said.

Ultimately, Monaghan believes that her work experience has better equipped her in pursuing a Ph.D. in history at Boston College. She plans to finish her Ph.D. after five years, a total of eight years after graduating from Yale, which she said is the average completion time for such a program.

Unlike other students who may enter graduate school too quickly and have difficulty formulating their dissertations, Monaghan said she was able to approach her scholarship from a more disciplined and experienced

YALE SCHOOL OF NURSING ANNIE GOODRICH BALL 2015

background — not to mention that she was more financially stable after working at Oliver Wyman.

Likewise, one of Monaghan’s best friends from Yale, after working in consulting for a year, is now completing a residency in surgery at Columbia University. Another friend who worked for Goldman Sachs for a year has since finished his Ph.D. in computer science and works at a tech firm in San Francisco.

But if a consulting or finance job is only a springboard to more “worthwhile” employment later, why not start doing something worthwhile now? What value could a stint in consulting or finance hold for those who end up moving on to something completely different?

For some alumni, consulting jobs afforded them the business acumen they needed to pursue their fields of interest. Shannon Stockdale ’06 had been interested in education throughout her time at Yale. Having worked for Teach for America, the Yale Early Childhood Development Fund and NYU’s Institute for Social Policy, however, she discovered that teachers weren’t necessarily the ones making important decisions.

“In a lot of ways,” said Stockdale, “it was the businesspeople.”

Stockdale wanted to become more fluent in the language of business and worked at the management consulting firm Katzenbach Partners, honing her skills in research and data analysis. Non-profit organizations don’t always have the resources to invest in employees’ development to the extent that consulting firms do, said Stockdale. She believes that her experience prepared her better for entering the education policy field, where opportunities for entry-level positions are limited. Stockdale now works for the KIPP Foundation, an educational non-profit that serves nearly 150 schools across the U.S. Similarly, Goldman, the former Dwight Hall co-coordinator and onetime McKinsey employee, said that his experience in the Dwight Hall Management Fellows group first exposed him to the management questions that occupy organizations of all kinds, from Dwight Hall to federal offices.

After McKinsey, Goldman went to Stanford Law School and now works in a legal practice in San Francisco.

“I went to law school with a much more realistic understanding of the way companies and individuals in government operate, and there’s a lot in law that’s very rooted in economics,” he said.

Such perspectives extend to finance as well as consulting. Lynn Wang ’11, the child of two doctors, was premed freshman year, but realized after a summer internship with International Bulldogs that business suited her better. After working a year as an investment banking analyst at Morgan

Stanley, however, Wang decided that she wasn’t passionate enough about finance to make a career of it, so she struck out on her own, founding a nail polish company.

Wang, who now works in an urgent care clinic, is currently exploring ways to apply her business knowledge to the health care industry, a far different set of challenges from what she would have encountered had she practiced medicine. She said that finance allowed her to build analytical skills at a time when she wasn’t completely sure what she wanted to do, and that those skills have continued to prove valuable.

Disputing the notion that bankers are “spreadsheet monkeys,” Wang recounted how she was able to completely redesign the clinical workflow at her clinic. *** Some Yale students lament that would-be engineers and creative types end up as suits. But some of those would-be engineers and artists don’t seem to mind.

For example, Minkus, the BCG employee, majored in theater studies and psychology at Yale but worried that the theater world would be too unpredictable.

“Consulting met this list of requirements I loved about theatre that I didn’t want to lose — working on scenes, having new projects all the time, traveling to different places, playing different roles — but it also offered stability and meritocracy,” she said.

All this isn’t to say that consulting and finance are for everyone, nor that opinion is anywhere close to unified on the matter. But Monaghan wondered why finance and consulting bear the brunt of criticism, pointing out, “We have no problems with people going to medical school or law school, which are both also professions with their own problems.”

And while this article can’t claim to be scientific, the stories of the alumni interviewed reveal a more varied picture of the industries in question than we might otherwise be exposed to on campus.

Many alumni have managed to turn their post-graduate employment in consulting or finance into something more their own. Given their hands-on experience, there’s room to add their two cents to the complicated discussion of money, ethics and plain confusion that we’re all a part of. Hopefully, it’s a valuable two cents.

“My experiences have led me down a path that I didn’t see coming when I was 22, but it’s been a good path,” said Minkus. “It’s opened a lot of doors for me now, moving forward.”

WKND RECOMMENDS:

The Omni // 9 p.m.

The social event of the season.

Contact EMILY XIAO at emily.xiao@yale.edu .

Life. It’s a ball. And a cabaret.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND COLUMNS

WHEN THE FLASH HITS YOUR EYE // BY MARISSA MEDANSKY topped with weavings of onions and ham. Others feature that titular wood-burning oven, often in video form.

What distinguishes Brick Oven’s Instagram from mere menu pictography is its portraiture component. From behind the counter, Catalbasoglu takes pictures of his customers at the register; often, they pose with pizzas or containers of other takeout food. The result of all of these photos in juxtaposition with one another recalls arty portrait blogs like Scott Shuman’s Sartorialist or Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York.

But because the account ultimately exists as a form of marketing (rather than a creative project), its aesthetic is decidedly unaesthetic — which is why, of course, it’s become such a delight.

On Halloween, Catalbasoglu photographed smiling angels and zombies as they waited for their pies. Last December, he photographed a menorah in the restaurant window. He sometimes captions the photographs but often does not (some recent examples, on a scale of most descriptive to most affectionate: “father and son,” “loyal customer from india [sic],” “old friend,” “favorite customer” and — not to be outdone — “my true favorite customer”). Sometimes, he shares pictures of his kids.

Jacob Riis became famous for his photographs of tenementdwellers a century ago. He latched onto the recent invention of magnesium flash powder, which allowed him to illuminate dark boarding house interiors with a sudden burst of light. The

20 likes Perched at the corner of Elm and Howe Streets, Brick Oven lacks the national renown of Elm City stalwarts like Pepe’s or Sally’s or Modern. No matter: Owner Kadir Catalbasoglu maintains he runs the best pizza place in town. Grease-skeined thin crust runs $2.50 a slice (large pies: $12.95). There are fridges full of beer and Coke and locally made Foxon Park soda.

The interior of the restaurant, with its assortment of landscape paintings and heavy use of decorative logs, resembles the basement of a ski lodge in 1970s Wisconsin. For this no-frills vibe, Brick Oven has emerged as a popular late-night food destination for Yalies, who increasingly have come to cite a unique reason for their preference other than pizza or service: Catalbaso-

45 likes glu’s Instagram account.

Catalbasoglu, typically known to customers as just Kadir, opened Brick Oven in “late 1999, 2000,” he said in an onsite interview. The Instagram came much later: He only started posting (from @newhavenbrickovenpizza, a mouthful of a handle) last year. The account’s popularity among students has skyrocketed in recent months.

As of publication, Catalbasoglu has 211 followers, and a typical post garners anywhere from two to 12 likes. “Everyone comes in and wants to be on it,” Catalbasoglu said.

Most of Catalbasoglu’s shots are simple. His posts frequently feature familiar food photography tropes: smooth mounds of dough, a fridge filled with beverages, aerial shots of oozy pies

// BRICKOVENPIZZA INSTAGRAM

subjects of his pictures are frozen in shock. Flash photography is new to them, and with mouths agape they are immortalized in the harsh white glow of magnesium.

Catalbasoglu has taken this unorthodox method and made it benevolent. Nobody expects a portrait project in a restaurant, but the absurdity of the ambush only adds to the fun. Consent is key. Nobody is photographed against his or her will. As time has passed, the Instagram’s rising notoriety means that fewer are taken by surprise. “I’ve got friends who say, ‘Put me on, put me on,’” Catalbasoglu said.

“That’s how we do it.” No magnesium flash powder needed.

All of these factors have given the Brick Oven Instagram account something of a cult fol-

lowing among students, particularly the nearby off-campus crowd, many of whom Catalbasoglu has featured. One friend even mentioned he belonged to a Facebook group of fellow Brick Oven devotees, who use it to plan occasional jaunts.

Catalbasoglu seemed surprised when I told him I planned to write about his Instagram, and indeed, the success of an Instagram dedicated to Brick Oven Pizza is itself unexpected. But in the end, the pairing of pizza and photography makes sense.

The perfect shot and perfect pie have much in common, Catalbasoglu said. “You got to look at it,” he said. “Artistic work.”

ondary to the movement now sweeping the nation, the cultural force signifying a total paradigm shift in the American consciousness. I am referring, of course, to Left Shark. In case you missed it: Katy Perry briefly danced in front of two people in full-body shark costumes, and Left Shark could not keep up with the aggressive tempo maintained by Right Shark. The Internet, seizing on the opportunity to laugh about something weird/a person’s failure in the most public moment of their life, has made Left Shark into something between a meme and a lifestyle. Nothing will ever be the same again, until Buzzfeed discovers the next thing That Will Give You Life.

Most years, the over-the-top theatrics of the Super Bowl are confined to the halftime show.

But this time, the game itself managed to out-drama Perry and her shooting star of musical wisdom. With two minutes to go, the Seahawks were down by four. A bobbled miracle catch led them almost all the way to the end zone. Seattle’s victory was imminent. Then, following what has been described as the worst play call in the history of the sport, the Seahawks threw an interception from the one-yard line. The players took a quick break from the constant threat of concussion to literally punch each other in the head.

After some light fisticuffs, play resumed. And in yet another glorious example of American might stomping on the majesty of Mother Nature, the Patriots defeated the Seahawks, 28–24.

Thus, another Super Bowl is

etched into the annals of Wikipedia history. This Super Bowl truly was the Superest Bowl yet. But who was the real winner of the game? The Patriots, who won the game? Katy Perry, whose magical performance elevated a nation?

No, the winner was someone considerably less glittery and talented: me. This Super Bowl had enough drama, snacks and camaraderie to last me until next year’s identical occasion. Plus, as a Midwesterner, it brings me great joy to see disappointment in the eyes of someone from either coast. Victory in the Super Bowl is only temporary, but Super Bowl party leftovers last slightly longer.

that all of the works are born out of accidents. Yellin reveals the innermost building blocks of any person — the psychological version of bone marrow that has been pried apart to reveal all of the memories stuck inside.

Yellin said in an interview about the NYCB installation, “My work is about the weather. These mundane things that repeat themselves every day yet affect the way that your bones feel, the way your blood flows, the way that you feel.”

But what he has done in the NYCB series takes this mission one step further. These new psychogeographies reflect the way our joints move and our limbs flow, the way the body twists and bends. His works recall the late-19th-century chronophotographs of Eadweard Muy-

bridge. Like Muybridge, Yellin breaks down the continuously moving body into its individual phases.

Yellin’s work transcends the limitations of Muybridge’s earlier two-dimensional medium.

Unlike the chronophotographer, in breaking down the different phases of a body in motion, Yellin does not lose the continuity of movement. We can, through Yellin’s works, imagine the sauté that could have come before and the pirouette that could follow if these suspended dancers were to break free from the glass block to which they are confined.

Perhaps it is in this total destruction of form that Yellin achieves the holistic sense of movement. His figures are very clearly not human — they shim-

mer pink, orange, yellow and blue. They have no distinguishable facial features or even easily identifiable genders. But they are so clearly alive. Yellin has captured the spirit (or spirits) that lie within us all — a depth of emotion echoed in the dances performed inside the NYCB’s walls.

Yellin has said that he had a visceral experience when he first saw the ballet. These 20-something dancers moved him; he could not fathom how they were on their toes for so many hours.

His psychogeographies belie their heavy materials, lending them the daintiness he so admired in the dancers of the ballet.

32 likes

Contact MARISSA MEDANSKY at marissa.medansky@yale.edu .

The Superest Bowl There’s nothing more American than football, except maybe giving an outsized trophy to a first-place football champion.

The Super Bowl combines both of these time-honored traditions into an extravaganza of patriotism, performance and spinachand-artichoke dip. The New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks met last Sunday for the 49th such extravaganza.

SPOILER ALERT: America won.

The best part of Super Bowl Sunday is usually the commercials. They are the reason for Betty White’s recent career comeback. They are the reason you think you need to drive through the desert in a Nissan Altima. But this year, most of the commercials were terrible and did not make you want to drive through the desert in a Nissan

MADELINE KAPLAN MAD TV Altima. Nationwide Insurance apparently thought that “Your Child Might Die!” would be a compelling message for consumers. The trailer for “Fifty Shades of Grey” was predictably icky and lame. Capitalism is typically the true winner of the Super Bowl, but this year’s commercial offerings only made me want to deposit my earnings into a savings account. And then hopefully save more money using new software by Turbo Tax. The halftime show, featuring

American musical legend Katy Perry, did not disappoint. Perry sang a medley of her greatest hits in a series of brightly colored outfits, even inviting a few guests to share the limelight.

Lenny Kravitz joined in for a few verses of “I Kissed A Girl” and then promptly disappeared back into the ether of minor roles in major action movie franchises.

The real star of the show was Missy Elliot, who captivated the stadium with a rendition of her classic “Get Ur Freak On.” But the real, real star of the show was the literal star that Katy Perry rode across the field. Was it a metaphor for the arc-shaped career of the modern pop star? A simile about the fleeting nature of human existence? One thing is for certain: It was shiny.

All of this, however, is sec-

Contact MADELINE KAPLAN at madeline.kaplan@yale.edu .

The E(motion) of Motion For the next month, there are fifteen 3,000-pound dancers in residency at the New York City Ballet. Through March 1, Dustin Yellin’s psychogeographies — massive sculptures taking on human form suspended in glass — have moved into the Lincoln Center’s cavernous lobby. The installation is part of the NYCB’s Art Series, which sponsors annual collaborations between contemporary visual artists and the ballet. Yellin is the third in the sequence, preceded by street artists FAILE and JR. As in these past collaborations, Yellin’s installation is also accompanied by three special ballet performances on Feb. 12, 19 and 27, in which audience members will receive a special Yellin-original, limited-edition giveaway.

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STEPHANIE TOMASSON PUSHING THE PALETTE KNIFE Yellin’s psychogeographies are meant, as their name suggests, to be maps of the psyche and the ones at the ballet are part of a larger six-year project aimed at creating one collective organism. Most of the psychogeographies are housed in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood at Pioneer Works, a large warehouse-like space founded

by Yellin to promote the “creation, synthesis and discussion of art, science and education.”

But unlike his previous, static

creations, Yellin’s NYCB dancers are in motion. In them, the body moves with a grace meant to capture that of the ballet dancers that Yellin so admires.

The sculptures are really three-dimensional collages that, when combined, create a sort of suspended animation of the human form. Yellin cuts up art history and fantasy books, magazines, encyclopedias and trash he finds on the streets to make collages on individual panes of glass. Sometimes, he also makes acrylic paintings on the glass sheets. He then fuses them together through a process he likens to gluing many windows together to make a “giant window sandwich” with someone trapped inside.

The materials used are randomly selected to give the sense

SOUND AND FURY WHC // 3 p.m.

Blurb reads: “If you could make your deaf child hear, would you?” (WKND presumes the parents in the film are also deaf.)

Contact STEPHANIE TOMASSON at stephanie.tomasson@yale.edu .

WKND RECOMMENDS: The Elizabethan Stage — full of sound and fury, signifying a lot.

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND THEATER

COMING TO THE CABARET FOR THE FIRST TIME // BY STEPHANIE ROGERS // STEPHANIE ADDENBROOKE

Sitting in the theater during last night’s performance of “Cabaret,” which runs this weekend and next, I heard a boy behind me declare proudly to his friends that he was a “Cabaret virgin.” I felt an instant connection with him because I was one too. Well, you know what people say about the first time — it can be painful, enlightening or even, for the lucky few, enjoyable. But rarely can people say they experience it all. “Cabaret” provided just that.

Unlike the classic interpretation of Cabaret, director Noam Shapiro’s ’15 version features a play within a play.

The characters are in fact performing the show in the German Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust. Nazis seated at tables in front of the stage watch the performers, and even the audience, as an authoritative and suffocating presence. Meanwhile, the “classic” play within depicts the tumultuous relationship between an American writer and a British cabaret performer in a Germany on the verge of Nazi control.

Shapiro’s version recaptures the solace and pain that has often been lost in other stagings of the musical. We cannot lose ourselves in the glitz and glam of the cabaret without remembering that all of the beauty is tainted by the presence of the Nazis. Shapiro will not allow the audience to escape from the truth or live in a fantasy world even from the beginning. The set,

the labored movements of the actors and the racial slurs disguised as jokes remind the audience of the impending genocide.

Some moments in the play are so jarringly overwhelming and yet so subtle that they leave the audience stunned.

In a well-choreographed dance number, “If You Could Only See Her,” the Emcee sings about his love, with whom he cannot appear in public because of political tensions and racial prejudices. His lover is dressed in a mouse mask, alluding to Hitler’s characterization of the Jews as vermin as well as the acclaimed graphic novel MAUS. Only in the final line does the Emcee reveal that his lover is a Jew. We’re so taken in by the bestial farce that the revelation of the metaphor’s meaning throws us entirely off, and leaves the audience breathless. For a moment no one knew whether to applaud or not at this song, which has put us in the position of potential collaborator.

Nathaniel Dolquist ’15 owned the daunting role of Emcee. He inhabited his character, a comfortable and natural storyteller who mesmerizes the audience. He injects the show with color, pizzazz and much-needed comic relief. He stands as an everyman, the lone figure who absorbs everyone’s grief and embodies the Zeitgeist. Dolquist’s speech is unstudied and his physical comedy Chaplinesque in its combination of crisp execution and raw emotion. (He also does

some pretty mind-boggling magic tricks.) At the culmination of the play, the Emcee is the last one to leave the stage, a shattered world where even the ultimate comedian has lost all sense of humor.

But Fräulein Schneider (Sarah Chapin ’17) and Herr Schultz (Dan Rubins ’16) steal the show. A spinster and a widower, they fall in love when they’ve come to think love is a young man’s game. They convey a subtle and endearing tenderness in a world full of promiscuity and flashiness. The two actors play roles four times their age effortlessly and develop a raw romance that the audience feels it’s intruding upon.

I left “Cabaret” feeling torn. I had just witnessed a hilarious and moving piece of theater. At the same time, the musical reminds me that every day we try to live our lives erasing what evils humanity has already perpetrated. It was like reopening a hidden wound of guilt and pain that I did not realize existed. Shapiro will not let us rest easy thinking we can forget and allow the Holocaust to be obscured by the glitz and glamour of Broadway. Part of me is scared no future “Cabaret” performance will live up to the ecstasy and the pain of this revelatory production.

As they say, you never forget your first time.

Contact STEPHANIE ROGERS at stephanie.rogers@yale.edu .

Five Actresses in Search of Knowledge // BY IVAN KIRWAN-TAYLOR

To pair a play about 9/11 and a work by one of American dysfunctionalia’s virtuosos, Alan Ball, is unfashionably ponderous. Director Chandler Gregoire ’17 orchestrates the affair delicately and lets the audience glimpse what an undergraduate theater community is capable of.

We begin with David Rimmer’s piece about 9/11, “New York,” which takes place within a therapist’s office. It doesn’t beat around the bush: “planes were hitting buildings”; “people we knew. Our friends.” Zoe HuberWeiss ’17 is a pilot in mourning, the first of four patients in treatment, struggling to regain normality. Her gesticulations are refined, she pauses well, but behind the line “somebody

SUND AY FEBRUARY

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sticks his head in my cockpit, I will split it open” lies too little conviction. We believe her marital strife more than we believe her love of aviation, her jingoism.

The first piece ends with Gregoire, who both acts and directs, playing a woman confused. The recipient of a final phone call from within one of the towers, she cannot reason why. Her “why did she call me?” comes heavy and painful. She has a naturalism onstage, displaying the seriousness of terror’s impact, a perpetually displaced anger, an intransitive anxiety.

As we move into Ball’s play, the actresses come alive. Unsurprisingly, dissipation of relationships and Lena Dunham–

esque pseudo-problems are more funny, believable, and easier than 9/11. The cues are furiously quick, the timing is sharp and the two southern accents are flawless. Gregoire gets the most out of Ball’s script; it oscillates between profundity and frivolity at a delightful pace. Southern accents, condoms, weed and wild swigs of wine yield to the portentousness of: “What goes through a man’s mind as he fucks his fiancée’s 12-year-old sister?” Gregoire is majestic in unveiling her character’s Secret From Her Past (“real soft, it was like a dream”). Her recounting of a nightmarish personal history calls to mind Blanche DuBois in its fragility.

In Ball’s play, we see the irre-

QUIZ SHOW

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Join us for a screening of the Robert Redford political thriller. Or don’t — your loss.

We’re gonna raise the roof at the Whitney Humanities Center this WKND.

pressible vitality of Stefani Kuo ’17, her natural buoyancy a perfect fit for the role of capricious drunkard. In Rimmer’s play, she takes the role of sensitive detective with superfluous Weltschmerz. She lacks the gravity (when one watches Kuo, one notices myriad smiles, microlaughs and bounces in her step) for a character so worldweary. However, Kuo’s Falstaffian electricity is put to perfect use when she plays a sexually potent but dissatisfied Southern belle. “What do you want to look like?” asks Lexi Butler ’17. “A truckstop whore,” replies Kuo, in the evening’s punchiest cue.

Initially, the second showcase might appear to be a comic

foil to the first, but this is not the case. The veneer of pleasant, inconsequential triviality subsides to reveal lingering tensions over religion and gender equality. “I’m a Christian” stops becoming a running gag and starts becoming a problem.

Enter Will Viederman ’17. The charisma of Viederman’s voice and his imposing physique disseminate throughout the stage, and his brief cameo is captivating. One longs to see him tackle a role in the earlier play.

The catharsis of a therapist’s office is beloved of modern American culture (cf. “Good Will Hunting,” “Ordinary People,” “The Sopranos,” Brooklyn’s most recent theatrical smash, “Borderline”). However, it takes

a performance of true magnitude to create the iconic breakdown-and-cry-in-self-knowledge scene we all crave. Gregoire comes the closest, but falls slightly short.

Yet one must take stock of what “Four Girls in Search of a Part” is: an ingeniously edited, sincerely directed, and wellacted showcase whose tail end delivers a glorious punch that initially is wanting. Gregoire, the work’s mastermind, is to be applauded for taking up and executing with grace neither Rocky Horror Spandex nor Sondheim nor song and dance, but serious theater.

Contact IVAN KIRWAN-TAYLOR at ivan.kirwan-taylor@yale.edu.

WKND RECOMMENDS: Soviet Political Theater — our favorite kind!

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YALE DAILY NEWS · FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2015 · yaledailynews.com

WEEKEND BACKSTAGE

S

ergey Kislyak has served as Russia’s ambassador to the United States since 2008. He got his start working on arms control issues at the Soviet embassy in Washington during the Reagan administration. Fol-

lowing the breakup of the Soviet Union, Kislyak has held the posts of Russia’s ambassador to Belgium and, simultaneously, Russia’s first permanent ambassador to NATO and deputy minister to foreign affairs. Although Kislyak prefers to work in intimate settings and avoid the limelight, Russia’s annexation of Crimea last year and the current crisis in eastern Ukraine have thrust Kislyak into the public eye. As the U.S. continues to levy far-reaching sanctions against Russia and considers arming the Ukrainian forces, Kislyak represents one of Russia’s few remaining links to the Obama administration. He sat down with WKND to discuss the current crisis in eastern Ukraine, the downfall of the Russian ruble, and Russian and American cultural misconceptions.

A Glimpse of the Russian Soul: Sergey Kislyak // BY ZOE RUBIN

A: Well, first and foremost I am a Russian citizen. Secondly, I am a Russian ambassador, so what is important to me are the views of my people and of my country on this issue, which I fully share. Being Ukrainian — ethnic Ukrainian — just makes it even more painful to watch what is happening [in the Crimea]. It doesn’t change my view as to what is happening. But certainly when I see kids marching with SS division insignia on their sleeves in the streets, I cannot watch it without emotions.

Q: We’re seeing this rising tide of anti-Semitism in Russia, and now you say you’re seeing SS insignia on kids. Do you think that these issues — the rise of neo-Fascism and anti-Semitism in Europe, and what you’re seeing in Ukraine — are connected?

A: I’m not the best specialist on these issues, but I would say it’s certainly a sentiment that is so unacceptable, whether it’s from nationalists or not. It’s unacceptable under any circumstances, and I hope that Ukraine will try to avoid that kind of spread. I have seen some concern expressed by the Israeli government about those things.

But my sincere hope is that [the Ukrainians] wouldn’t fall in the trap of being anti-Semitic.

Q: There’s been much talk, at least among the Western news sources, about a fear that this could turn into a frozen conflict.

A: I hope not! Our view is that there has to be a negotiated solution. People in Donetsk and Lugansk Republics [the selfproclaimed rebel republics in southeast Ukraine] seem to have said so many times that they want to start building common spaces with Ukraine. It’s a difficult dialogue that they were willing to undertake. Certainly when people start talking, they start with small things, but I think there are all the chances that if both Kiev and people in the east started working on how they could live together in this part of the world, they do have a chance to succeed. However, with each and every day, the Ukrainian government makes it more and more difficult to start that dialogue. They need to stop shelling and start talking, something I repeat in each and every conversation with Ukraine.

Q: Yet, there’s a belief in the U.S. that the Russian government is funding and giving heavy arms to these rebels, particularly through these so-called humanitarian convoys.

A: You know, our Ukrainian colleagues tend to explain their own failures on the military field

by referring to an alleged military campaign by Russia in the region. It’s nonsense. They are facing people who live there, protecting their lives and their families, and they call them “terrorists,” but these people do not go to Kiev and do not bomb Kiev. They live in the eastern part, and I know it. They want to have a right to speak the language they have spoken and their fathers and their grandfathers have spoken, to teach Russian kids in these schools tradition in the same way that generations of the people that were living there were doing, which is not contradictory to being a Ukrainian citizen, it is not. But one has to start working together as to how they would live, and with each and every day of additional war, it’s getting more and more difficult. We still believe its possible, however difficult it’s going to be.

Q: With regard to misconceptions, you spoke earlier about how you strongly disagree with the notion that Russia and the U.S. are now in some kind of “new Cold War” Is there the misconception, in your eyes, among ordinary Russians that we might be engaged in some kind of “new Cold War”?

A: No, I haven’t seen the use of the term “Cold War” in public debates in Russia. People are more discussing how unfriendly the policy the United States is today towards Russia, but I’m not sure that anybody of importance would suggest that we are back in the Cold War. Because the Cold War was a state of affairs that was based on a very deep ideological divide.

At that time it was considered to be almost existential. I don’t believe anything of this sort is happening. We have very difficult differences between us and the United States. They’re difficult, and they are deep. But I’m still hopeful that we will bit by bit find a solution to the crisis in the region, and that would be a building block for a return to what I would call normalcy in our relations.

Q: Is there a current fear that, with the ongoing downfall of the ruble, many migrants may not come to Russia anymore, because they want to seek opportunities elsewhere?

A: Well, most probably it’s going to be the case. However, still the purchasing power of the ruble in Russia is pretty high. [The declining value of remittances] is something they’re going to have to deal with, but still there are so many people who want to come to Russia because the standard of living in Russia is significantly higher. And though the dollar equivalent fell, what is important to us – those who live in Russia — is not how [the ruble] is rated against the dollar but whether we have inflation in Russia. You earn Russian rubles: you spend Russian rubles. There is some inflation, and for the government, for the banking system, for the national

bank of Russia, the main target of the efforts is not necessarily the exchange rate but to fight unlimited inflation.

because I think what is important for building relations is to fully understand the other partner.

Q: How might the recent decline of the ruble, particularly due to the global drop in oil prices, impact Russia’s ability to withstand the current sanctions regime?

Q: If youth are growing up with these misconceptions, how might that impact the U.S.-Russia relationship in the years to come?

A: Well first of all, we have certainly been victimized by the fall of the oil prices, because, as I told you, one of the handicaps of our economy is our richness in oil and gas. And we are overrelying on exports as a source of the income for the country. We understood it even before the crisis. We started a number of programs that we called diversification of the economy. I’m absolutely sure that all of these efforts to diversify the economy are going to be intensified, and we will not only survive it, but we will come out of it a little bit stronger.

Q: You’ve worked in the United States for quite some time. What do you think are the some of the most common misconceptions that Americans have about Russians?

A: It depends very much on which Americans you are talking about. There are many people who have been to Russia, who know us, and they have views, but the absolute majority doesn’t know much about Russia. In general, Americans are not concentrated on foreign relations with other countries. They are more focused on immediate events around their families, their income, and politics on the ground. I would say that not many know for a fact what Russia is, and I always underline what Russia is not.

They have to rely on the press reports, which, as I said during my presentation, [are] very disappointing.

Q: In contrast, do you notice that Russians have a specific view of the United States? And do you think that Russians think more about foreign policy on the whole than Americans do?

A: Yes, we do. You do not live in isolation, but you live [surrounded by] oceans, [separated] from Europe. We were a part of Europe, and we have lived through so many wars.

The political life [in Russia] is so intertwined with Europe, and we are part of Europe. [Foreign policy] more immediately affects our lives than here in the United States, so people tend to watch and monitor what is happening around our country a little bit more. And I would submit that if you took normal Russians — especially your generation — and asked questions about the United States, most probably, in the majority of cases, they [would] know about the United States a little bit more than people of your generation [would] know about Russia. And it’s sad,

A: I think one of the most important things for the future is how the youth in both countries see each other. As an ambassador here, I’m trying to work with the younger generation of Americans, trying to help them to understand what we are, and, once again, what we are not. We do run a number of programs, whereby we try to help [American students] form their own view about Russian culture, Russian history. It’s very helpful because they are very clever people. They’re young but willing to learn, to form their own views, and I think it’s exactly what we all need. We have a very smart young generation, very advanced, very well educated — the level of education in Russia is pretty outstanding, and especially in math, physics, chemistry. As far as I’m concerned, the more they get together, the more they exchange views, the better it would be for the future of our relations. I deeply believe in it, and as an ambassador, I’m trying to help this process.

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Bond-type books, but I think it is important that America is certainly a very rich country and culture. However, we [Russians] have a deeper history and most probably we have all the reasons to be proud of the level of Russian intellectual development.

And I’m so glad to see that many Americans know Russian literature pretty well. Though they sometimes do not know modern literature very well, they know Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, which is good, because it gives at least a glimpse of the Russian soul.

Q: Are there any Russian writers that you would recommend Americans read in order to learn more about Russia?

A: There are so many. We have a very strong musical culture, literature. We see a resurrection of the Russian cinema industry, which is pretty good. So that’s hopeful. But returning to the question about American arts, what I see happening is that we have the best of Russian culture represented here, but not the best of American culture represented in Russia. That’s disappointing. We can use more of that. The only good musical performance recently that I remember is the Chicago Symphony touring in Russia, and it’s the only one in so many years.

However, we have the Bol-

ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS FOR THE FUTURE IS HOW THE YOUTH IN BOTH COUNTRIES SEE EACH OTHER.

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Q: Earlier today, you mentioned that both your father and mother were born in Ukraine. How does your connection to Ukraine inform how you talk about this situation, and how you understand these foreign policy issues?

Q: Do you have any favorite American books or films?

A: Well, to be honest, I haven’t had the chance to read modern American literature. My time is so limited. I read mostly reports, articles, statements — that’s a drawback of my position — but I’m collecting things to read when I have a chance. I think of the young generation of writers, the best one, as far as I’m concerned, is Hemingway — I still love him. I went to places where he lived, trying to understand him better.

He was pretty unique. I’m not reading too much of the James

shoi performing in the U.S., the Mariinsky Theater currently [in America, too.]. Yesterday I went to the Metropolitan [Opera].

There was an absolutely amazing performance of Iolanta conducted by Mr. Gergiev, who is the artistic director of the Mariinsky, Anna Netrebko singing, Russian singers. It was [such a] beautiful Russian-American performance — and staged by a Pole. I love the idea of people collaborating together to create something fantastically interesting. That’s something that needs to be expanded.

Contact ZOE RUBIN at zoe.rubin@yale.edu .