Posts filed under ‘College of Arts and Architecture’
A Penn Stater on ‘The Office’
Season 8 of the NBC television comedy series The Office will include a Penn Stater: Lindsey Broad ’06 reportedly will turn up as a friend of Pam Halpert (the character played by Jenna Fischer). According to this story at TheExaminer.com, Broad’s role could turn into a semi-regular stint on the show.
Broad, who majored in theatre at Penn State, most recently was a regular on the Fox sitcom ’Til Death and on The Burg; she also had a minor role in the movie Get Him to the Greek.
Tina Hay, editor
We Love a Parade
The freshmen in Professor James Kalsbeek’s introductory architecture class probably didn’t expect to build anything during the first week of the semester—let alone the first 10 minutes.
The class of 13 first-year architecture majors, most of whom have little to no architectural experience, received their first assignment in ARCH 131 (Basic Design Studio) almost immediately: Work as a team to build a tower using only corrugated cardboard and twine. The tower must be as tall as possible, and sturdy enough to survive a lengthy parade around the Stuckeman Family Building, through the Palmer Museum plaza, and on to the Nittany Lion Shrine, all while hoisted on the students’ shoulders.
Inspired by the Giglio, or “dancing tower,” parades that Kalsbeek saw in Nola, Italy—where towers more than 80 feet high are carried by hundreds of men in elaborate street festivals—Professor Kalsbeek devised the project last year as a way to (more…)
‘Radio Golf’ to Open Friday
Just weeks before Pittsburgh-born playwright August Wilson died in 2005, he finished the last of his series of 10 plays called “The Pittsburgh Cycle.” That last play is called Radio Golf, and it’s the next offering in the Penn State Centre Stage season.
A relatively small cast—just five actors—will stage the story of Harmond Wilkes, who wants to redevelop Pittsburgh’s Hill District and who also is campaigning to become the city’s first black mayor. There are complications along the way, and those complications challenge Wilkes to rethink a few things, not the least of which is his ethics.
I checked out the dress rehearsal on Monday night and took some photos, including the one above of Penn State MFA acting candidates Bianca Washington (playing Wilkes’ wife, Mame) and Andy Lucien (playing Wilkes). I not only liked the play, but I also liked that it’s full of Pittsburgh references, making it enjoyable on a couple of different levels.
It also was my first chance to see Penn State theatre professor Charles Dumas on stage. Dumas has been on Law & Order and a bunch of other TV shows; (more…)
‘The Good Doctor’ is REALLY Good
I’ve always been a fan of Neil Simon, but The Good Doctor is one of his lesser-known plays, so I went to Monday night’s dress rehearsal not really having any idea what to expect. And, wow, what a delight it turned out to be.
The play, which opens tonight, is a series of sketches based on the short stories of Anton Chekov. (I know: Neil Simon? Anton Chekov? But it works.) The vignettes, set in 19th-century Russia, are all woven together by a narrator—Erik Raymond Johnson, an MFA acting candidate who spends the entire play on the stage. Sometimes he’s the focal point, describing what’s about to happen; other times he’s off to the side watching the action unfold.
In all, seven MFA acting students play something like 24 different roles in the course of the evening. In one scene, Lance Beilstein (whom I first saw last summer in Wait Until Dark) is a wild-haired, wild-eyed guy with an excruciating toothache; he stumbles into the dentist’s office only to discover that the “good doctor” is on vacation and he’s at the mercy of (more…)
Talking Design with Barbara deWilde ’85
As magazine geeks, our ears perked this week when we heard that graphic designer Barbara deWilde ’85 would be visiting campus. DeWilde is well-known in the design world; her book jacket designs have earned handfuls of awards, and she was design director for Martha Stewart Living in the early 2000s. She’s also a recipient of this year’s College of Arts and Architecture Alumni Award, the reason for her visit.
DeWilde spoke Friday afternoon to a nearly full house in the Palmer Museum auditorium. Although her talk was aimed at young art students, deWilde’s presentation was full of interesting tidbits (and some laughs. She’s funny!). Here are a few:
—DeWilde entered the NYC art world in the late ’80s—that is, pre-InDesign, pre-Photoshop, and for the most part, pre-computers. Some of her most famous designs were made with unexpected and ordinary things, like rulers, crayons, stickers, milk, and even blood (right). Her mantra: “The computer isn’t where the good stuff happens.”
—As a book jacket designer, deWilde claims it’s far easier to design for bad books. She explained how challenging it was to design for her favorite author, Lorrie Moore. “You know the design will always be less [than the quality of the writing],” she says. (more…)
A Sneak Preview of ‘Rent’ at Penn State
Junior musical theatre major Sarah Ellis as Maureen.
I had a chance last night to see the first half of a dress rehearsal for Rent, the final production of the Penn State Centre Stage season. Better yet, I got to shoot photos. And better than that, I had a partner shooting photos with me: my brother Chris, who is a professional photographer in our hometown of Somerset, Pa.
Chris’ work involves shooting a lot of weddings, portraits of high school seniors, family portraits, and the like. So shooting live theatre was kind of a change of pace for him. We split up—he sat on one side of the theatre and I sat on the other—so we could get the action from more than one angle. And Rent proved to have plenty of action.
It was unlike any other stage performance I’ve seen before. Action is taking place everywhere in the theatre—not just onstage but all above/around it and in the aisles as well. If you’ve seen shows at the Pavilion, you know just how (more…)
Fun with the Scoundrels
This past Saturday night, while the THON dancers, crew, and fans were packing the Jordan Center, another group of students was up late in the Playhouse Theatre across campus, getting ready for this week’s opening of the Penn State Centre Stage production of The Beaux’ Stratagem.
The play, written by George Farquhar in 1707 and directed at Penn State by guest director Di Trevis, tells of two British scoundrels with a scheme to defraud some very pretty heiresses. Because the heiresses are, well, very pretty, you can imagine the ways in which the scheme goes comically awry.
As promised earlier, I showed up at Saturday night’s dress rehearsal so I could shoot photos. I think I was especially drawn to this show because of the very cool 18th-century costumes, which were designed by Penn State faculty member William Schroder and put together from scratch by theatre students. The costumes were indeed a treat to see and photograph—but I also thoroughly enjoyed the set, the actors’ performances, the humor, the whole bit.
Below is a slide show of some photos from Saturday night, and you can see a bunch more at our Facebook page. If you’re interested in seeing the show, there’s a preview on Tuesday night, with opening night on Thursday, and performances continuing through March 2. More information is here.
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Tina Hay, editor
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Circa 1707
I had a chance yesterday to stop by the Playhouse Theatre on campus to meet some of the MFA acting students who will be appearing in The Beaux’ Stratagem later this month, and to hear the director, Di Trevis, talk a bit about the play. (And to shoot a few advance photos, as shown here.)
The Beaux’ Stratagem is kind of the 18th-century version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels—it’s a comedy focusing on two con men trying to swindle young heiresses in the British town of Lichfield. One of the two ends up falling in love with one of the women, which was not supposed to be part of the plan, and things get comically complicated from there.
MFA student Bianca Washington as Dorinda.
The actors and actresses are all Penn State undergrad and grad students, and I was surprised to hear that Penn State students in the costume design program created all of the costumes as well. William Schroder, who teaches both costume design and scenic design at Penn State, oversaw the costume design.
And director Di Trevis is a big deal—she’s an English theatre director with a pretty impressive pedigree. She’s been on campus since the beginning of the semester, working with the cast and crew to get the production ready.
The play is what’s called a “restoration comedy,” which as I understand it is a production from the late 1600s (the Restoration period in England) that has a little fun with the social mores of the time. So I get the sense that we’re in for a pretty bawdy, entertaining evening when the show opens on Feb. 24.
I’m looking forward to attending a dress rehearsal or two in the days leading up to opening night—I love shooting photos of theatre, especially with cool period costumes like these—so I’ll be posting some more images in a week or so.
Tina Hay, editor
So, I Was Talking to Steve McCurry Today…
Now there’s something I don’t get to say every day.
But we’re doing a photo essay on famed photographer Steve McCurry ’74 for our forthcoming March-April issue, and I was hoping I’d be able to talk to him in order to write the text that’ll accompany the piece.
You’ve probably seen some of our past photo essays with McCurry, such as the September-October 2006 cover story shown here. The occasion for our latest piece is that, when Kodak announced in 2009 that it was discontinuing production of its workhorse Kodachrome slide film, McCurry asked if he could have the honor of shooting the last roll.
McCurry used that roll to shoot images in New York City and in India, as well as a few in Parsons, Kansas, where he took that last roll to be developed. The project will be the subject of a National Geographic documentary to air in May, and we’re lucky to be able to publish a few of McCurry’s final Kodachrome images in the magazine.
McCurry is based in New York City, but good luck finding him there. He spends much of his time in Asia on various photography projects, and in fact, to interview him today I had to call him at a hotel in Myanmar, where he’s running a photography workshop. I got to talk to him for about 20 minutes, and in addition to what we’ll put in the magazine, I’ll post a condensed version of that Q&A here on the blog closer to the time the next issue comes out. Check back around the first of March.
(Which reminds me: If you’d like to get our blog in the form of a daily e-mail, just click on the “Subscribe / by e-mail” button on the upper right of this page.)
Oh, and one other thing. In the course of working with McCurry’s office in New York on this piece, I learned about a nonprofit organization he started called ImagineAsia, which aims to help schoolchildren in Afghanistan. Looks like they’re doing some very good work.
Tina Hay, editor
Lunchtime at the Palmer Museum of Art
"Squid Under Pier" by Minna Wright Citron, an artist who turned from social realism to surrealism as she worked at Atelier 17 in New York.
By the end of my lunch hour today, I was able to define and identify techniques of printmaking that I’d had no idea existed. So you could say that Patrick McGrady’s gallery talk about one of the Palmer Museum of Art’s special exhibitions, Atelier 17 in America, 1940-1955, exceeded my expectations.
Three students in my journalism class, who chose the talk as their final “event” story for the semester, felt the same way. (I try to expose students to as many corners of campus as possible. Because I didn’t do a good enough job of that for myself when I was an undergrad.) All of the students are interested in the arts, but they admitted afterward that they expected something a little dry and serious. And while McGrady, the Charles V. Hallman curator, was definitely scholarly as he told the story of printmaker Stanley William Hayter, the founder of the ground-breaking Atelier 17, and explained the significance of surrealism, his enthusiasm was infectious. (more…)
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