This is not a story about sex
It started out being about sex. But as Christina Liu ’13 was writing her play last summer, she found that it underwent what she called “a distinct shift.” This Is Not a Play About Sex, for which Liu received a University Studies grant to write and direct, became about much more than her intended topics of sex, the body, and sexuality. 


From This Is Not a Play About Sex, a scene titled “After Hours,” which addresses verbal harassment. (Photo by Duy Trinh ’14)

    A theater and women’s studies double major from Shanghai, Liu got her inspiration from three years of acting in (and, last year, directing) The Vagina Monologues — soliloquies about womanhood that have been performed internationally.  
    Like that play, Liu’s script is composed of monologues based on interviews with real people. Liu conducted her interviews last spring with 26 students — 13 men and 13 women.   

Christina Liu ’13
    “I wanted the play to encompass all gender identities, all sexualities … my goal was to capture as many different perspectives and behaviors and attitudes as possible, to have a more complete portrait of sexuality and sexual expression at Colgate,” Liu explained.
    When she began working on the script, Liu found that “something very unsettling was happening,” she said. “With everyone I interviewed, regardless of what they’re affiliated with, their gender, or their class year, there was this undertone of dissatisfaction across the board, and people feeling not fulfilled. I found that troubling.”
    That’s when the play became more complex: “I think sexuality was a door through which to talk about fulfillment. My takeaway message has to do with happiness and why we’re not obtaining the things that we need to feel fulfilled or sexually satisfied.”
    In rehearsals, the 21-member cast  treated the monologues as a jumping-off point to share their own experiences and talk about steps toward positive sexuality on campus.
    “I wanted this play to take on more of an activist role than just a performance piece for people to feel good about and think ‘that was nice’ and leave with it,” she said.  
    So, Liu developed a take-home packet as a way for people to further the discussion with their own groups and organizations. Liu is also working with university deans to get the conversation started earlier by introducing the play and packet into the first-year experience.
    The play originally debuted on campus in October over Family Weekend, but it became such a phenomenon that Liu brought it back for an encore performance in December. With more than 500 people total attending the shows, a follow-up brown bag discussion, and a film screening, Liu’s plan to spark a campuswide dialogue is working.
    “When I thought of the project before the show [debuted], I thought the performance would be the pinnacle,” Liu said. “But now something new is happening. I underestimated the need for people to talk; people are really grasping on to this as an opportunity to have conversations.”

Playing with time
Many artists have covered Dave Brubeck’s acclaimed jazz standard “Blue Rondo a la Turk” — from singer Al Jarreau to electric guitarist Paul Gilbert of Racer X and Mr. Big fame. Now you can add the Colgate University Orchestra (well, a subgroup of it) to that list, thanks to Dave Unland, teacher of low brass and tuba player in the orchestra for 33 years.
    The brass and percussion sections opened the orchestra’s October concert with the world premiere of Unland’s new arrangement, which was commissioned by conductor Marietta Cheng. With its lilting, punchy odd-time signature and staccato melody, the tune was an inspired addition to a program that also included selections from Copland, Gershwin, Liadov, and Borodin.
    “‘Blue Rondo’ has always been one of my favorite ‘cool’ jazz tunes — it is very catchy and stays with you after hearing or playing it,” said Unland, who had shared the stage with Brubeck and his sons in a concert of Brubeck’s music back in the 1970s. “I love combining jazz and classical music. All too often, players of one genre are unwilling, or unable, to cross the aisle and become involved with other types of music. I have a much more universal approach.”
    The brass-percussion arrangement wasn’t Unland’s first for “Blue Rondo” — years ago he arranged it for an eight-voice low brass ensemble plus drum set. “It worked really well, so when I decided to use the tune for Colgate, I resurrected the old arrangement, revoicing and streamlining it to fit an orchestral brass section.”
    The tune’s origin has an international flair. As Brubeck, who passed away in early December, told it, he had heard an unusual rhythm performed by street musicians while on tour in Turkey. Upon asking them where they got the rhythm, one replied, “This rhythm is to us what the blues is to you.”
    Unland, who has also taught at Ithaca College, has performed with the St. Louis Symphony, Joffrey Ballet orchestra, Ringling Brothers circus, Six Flags, and Disney on Parade, among other ensembles. He retired from both Colgate and Ithaca this fall.
    You can watch the Colgate performance at livestream.com/colgateuniversity, where both of the orchestra’s fall concerts are archived.

External Original
A video of a dying butterfly that has lost a wing. A three-dimensional gray backslash hung on the wall. Refigured images from the film Deep Throat. These artworks, displayed as part of the External Original exhibition in Colgate’s Clifford Gallery, may seem like dissimilar pieces, but curator Sarah Mattes ’06 sees a common thread.

Cave Skeleton by David Gilbert, part of the External Original exhibition curated by Sarah Mattes ’06. (photo by Mark Williams)

    With External Original, Mattes — a professional artist living and working in Brooklyn — premiered her first curatorial endeavor that featured art by some of her peers.
    All of the works make reference to poet Ezra Pound’s ideas of Imagism from the early 1900s, which were grounded in the notion that every person brings his or her own experiences to an object.
    The 11 artists Mattes chose — from videographers to artists working with paper — presented their own points of view on this broad category. And, Mattes selected them because “many of the artists here approach their work in the same way I do,” she said during a gallery talk and reception at the opening on October 31.  
    Through a convergence of mediums and forms, the artists in External Original “address process and the recording of a trace or history,” said Mattes. For example, Carmen Winant, a writer and artist, created a worn image using a still from the iconic movie Thelma and Louise. Winant visited the site in the movie where the car drove off the cliff and used materials that she collected there to distort the image.
    In addition to introducing the exhibition, which ran until November 20, Mattes fielded questions from students about the life of a professional artist and the art world outside of Colgate. As is evident in her exhibition, Mattes values the importance of collaboration in the art world, saying: “Art after Colgate is not so much focused on figuring out who you are as an artist, but rather on helping peers with their work.”
— Katie Rice ’13

Intertwining texts
What happens when you mix a globally recognized director, the dense and complex works of poet-playwright Heiner Müller, and a group of students? Herakles Block, a production that goes beyond any recognizable 19th- or 20th-century form.
    In the fall, students teamed up with Christian A. Johnson Artist-in-Residence Thomas Irmer to create a collage of two texts written by Müller, who is considered one of the most important playwrights of the 20th century. Because Irmer wanted to write a “learning play” that would allow for the exchange of ideas between his students and himself, the group collaborated to conceptualize the merging of the texts in order to construct the script.

A scene from Herakles Block (photo by Gabriela Bezerra ’13)
    “We were treated as equals in the creation process,” said Asia Lamar ’13, the show’s production assistant. “[Irmer] also gave the actors liberty with their gestures and line delivery.”
    The group began with Müller’s “Mommsen’s Block,” a text about German historian Theodore Momm-sen and his writer’s block. They then integrated “Herakles 2,” in which Müller writes about a moment when a man comes in contact with a beast, and asks his readers to determine whether the two become one or if the man was the beast the entire time, therefore acting as his own obstacle. This was a different way of thinking of the concept of “block,” and created a duplicity that acted as the base for the group’s exploration.
    The group wanted to create an entirely original production that would break the rules of traditional theater. To achieve this, they wrote the script without any real plot or characters, performing sections of choric theater — all of the players spoke in unison, acting simultaneously as one voice and without any distinguishable characters. They also imagined an environment where players and audience would share the same space. Rather than being seated in Brehmer Theater’s velvet seats, the audience sat in a cafe setting on stage.
    Herakles Block proved to be a testament to the global quality of Colgate students, and to their ability to comprehend exceptionally abstract concepts. Hailing from five different countries, the students spoke six languages between them and were able to offer international perspectives in developing the play. Some lines were repeated in different languages.
     “The contributions of the student players transcended the original concept because the show we saw in the end was possible only with these six individuals,” Irmer said.
    The five performances in mid-November were the final test of their great experiment and a chance to show their peers the production that they had not been able to neatly explain during months of preparation. Because Herakles Block was an original play, students had no context to answer typical questions. But, that was the point, explained Irmer. “They needed to have the courage to say ‘I don’t know,’” he said. “No Juliette, no Willy Loman.”
    “Working with Thomas is an experience of constant learning, engagement, and intellectual provocation,” said Lamar. “What makes this production worthwhile is its global voice and modern message delivered through a poetic timeline.”
— Emma Barge ’14




Preview



Twice-Cooked Pork by Wei Weng/Cong Yip: an audio-visual mixer and video installation that gives “a new experience of the ancient Chinese language.”

Revolutions per Minute: A Decade of Chinese Sound Art
March 26–April 29, 2013
Opening celebration: Reception on March 26, performances on March 27 (in the Hall of Presidents) and March 28 (in the Visualization Lab), and a colloquium on March 29

A retrospective of Chinese sound art by 30 artists will be installed throughout campus and in Hamilton. Six artists will present free sound art performances, including improvisation, electro acoustic composition, abstract audio-visual work, and circuit bending. These performances will highlight key events from the past decade of Chinese sound art — a movement that began in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Artists focus on sound as a medium to reflect their views on culture and art as well as express their emotions and document dramatic societal transformations.
    The interdisciplinary nature of the exhibition extends from the planning phase involving various faculty members — from physics to theater — to different academic opportunities.
    The visiting artists will conduct four do-it-yourself workshops/demonstrations on sound, and students will create their own sound art.
 

For more, visit http://www.RPM13.com.