Natalie Steers is pursuing a double major in English and Creative Writing as well as a Minor in Business. She's always had a passion for the arts and her favorite pastimes generally include practicing yoga, reading realistic fiction and fantasy novels, listening to NPR, drinking hot chocolate, and constantly reteaching herself how to knit.
Avoiding homework on a Sunday night? Come see the RC Drama students perform in the Keene Theater! The event is titled, wittily enough, “BEWARE the Ives of March: Five Farces by David Ives”. David Ives is best known for his comedic one-acts. The New York Times has even referred to him as the “maestro of the short form”! His collection of short one-acts, All in the Timing, won the 1993 Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award for Playwriting and many of his other works have been extremely well received.
The performance on Sunday, March 20th, starts at 7:30 pm, is 1 hour and 30 minutes for 5 of his one-act plays, and supposed to be hilarious! Also, it’s FREE to all students. It’ll be interesting to see so many of his works shown in collaboration this way and will make a nice end to the weekend.
Get ready for an evening of laughs, splitting sides, and rolling in the aisles! Friday, March 19th at 8 pm in Angell Hall is another ComCo show. ComCo is an on-campus student improv group. Their performances are always fun, energy filled, and witty.
ComCo Flyer
Not one to miss a chance to crack a joke, even the title of ComCo’s shows are funny. Friday night’s performance is called “Registered Orphan Donor”. In the detail section of the comedy group’s Facebook Event orphan donation is described as “the process of giving an orphan or a part of an orphan for the purpose of transplantation into another person”. Further it describes the donor registry and how professionals match donors to patients. Read the ridiculous pun and it’s full description here. After a long week, reward yourself with some laughs!
RECAP: ComCo Presents: Registered Orphan Donor on Friday, March 18th at 8 pm. Event is located in Angell Hall Auditorium A and tickets are $2 at the door.
Saturday the 3rd annual Voices of the Middle West Literary Festival brought together writers and independent presses from all around the region. Among a book fair and various panels, the Festival also hosted an Open Mic event! The MC was Rachel Hurwitz, a Midwestern Gothic intern and RC student, both organizations which made the Festival possible.
Festival Flyer Logo
It was a fun hour of sharing and listening to local, mostly student, artists read their own work. There were nine readers who signed up before the event and since there was extra time a handful of others also volunteered to read on the spot. This event showcased a variety of different styles, themes, and voices. We had everything from a structured ghazal poem to stream of consciousness spoken word poetry set to music. Themes and topics included rants about emojis, loss, fathers, brokenness, love (there were lots about love as one would expect), stars, and skunk ape- Which I learned is another name for bigfoot because in different regions he has different names. The Open Mic was informative, fun, humorous, thought provoking and created a sense of community and support that truly encapsulated the purpose behind the Festival.
Thursday evening, Ross Gay met with college writers in the Benzinger Lounge to share his stories and talk about their questions. He was charming, personable, and reflective. His poems are very voice based works of art and it was a wonderful experience to hear them spoken by him.
My copy of Ross Gay’s latest book
After being introduced by Laura Thomas, Ross Gay read 3 poems: “The Opening”, “Ode to Sleeping in My Clothes”, and “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt”. His most recent work, and also the book he read from, is titled catalog of unabashed gratitude. All of Gay’s poems link beauty and sadness in astonishing images that lead the reader to see not just the problems we face as a society, but also the beauty in the everydayness of our world. One of his elements for achieving this, in conjunction with his vivid imagery, is his titles. As can be seen by the poems he read and as he said himself, “Titles are important”. The can have a profound effect on the tone and perhaps surprisingly the conclusion/outcome of a poem. Just looking at the table of contents to his latest book, where there are titles like “Spoon”, “Armpit”, and “C’Mon!”, and readers know Gay has mastered the art of titling a poem.
In addition to speaking about his love of teaching and working collaboratively with other artists- a really “delightful” activity- Ross Gay spoke about the inspiration/process involved in his individual work. In some ways his poems ask questions more than they answer them. Or at least that’s how they start, often pertaining to the theme of justice or of a personal instance. He uses the image or metaphor of a garden or orchard often because they bring a sense of conversion or change to the poem and the narrator. In that way the poem will often begin to shift from questioning to pondering. These natural growing earthy images are reflective of the emotional state of the narrator as he guides us through the poem in what can sometimes seem as wandering poem but often is all the more powerful for the journey it takes us on. This is also why certain poems play so carefully on the use of end lines, often cut off in seemingly odd places that makes the lines unstable but where new meaning is found in that instability. It is in this instability or wondering association of images that readers and Ross Gay himself says find new meaning, or at the very least a shift in perspective. At the Tea Thursday evening, Gay said that he wrote a poem that through the writing process transformed his relationship with his father, which had been strained.
My favorite poem though in catalog of unabashed gratitude is “Spoon”. It is a beautiful, amazing piece that he wrote for a friend of his that was murdered. Both sad, joyful, political, and natural, I think it captures what a poem can be and the dexterity of Ross Gay’s talents. Listen to him read “Spoon” here.
Ross Gay, the renowned poet and essayist, is coming to U of M’s Residential College. Writers’ Teas are held a couple times a semester and are largely attended by RC students, often majoring in the RC’s Creative Writing and Literature Program. I myself recently declared a second major in creative writing and, even before declaring, have always enjoyed the Teas. It’s a chance for students to share their work with each other and, occasionally, even with professionals! Like Thursday, March 9th at 7pm in the Benzinger Library when Ross Gay visits.
An author of three books- Against Which,Bringing the Shovel Down, and most
Photo Credit: Natasha Komoda
recently Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude– Ross Gay grew up in Levittown, Pennsylvania. He currently teaches at Indiana University. In addition to many nominations and honors, Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award this year. He is one of the founding editors of Some Call it Ballin’ (on online sports magazine), as well as being an editor for several chapbook presses. Outside of the literary field, he is involved in a free-fruit-for-all food justice project, Bloomington Community Orchard, as a founding board member. Check out his website to learn more about his many accomplishments and his writing: Ross Gay
I look forward to hearing Ross Gay read his work and talk about his journey as a writer. And to hear what my peers have been writing this semester!
Wednesday night, a fair sized group braved the cold and slippery roads to see National Theater Live’s screening of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. A stunning play in it’s honesty, brutality, moral ambiguity, discussion of sex and pleasure, it creates just as complicating and deep feelings in its audience.
The set for this production, performed within the Donmar Warehouse, perfectly complimented the theater’s space. With an audience on three sides of the stage it created a sense of forced intimacy that reflected the idea of confinement some of the characters grapple with. The set pieces themselves were fairly minimalist with one chase, a harpsichord, a few chairs and a changing array of paintings. The walls of the space, which simply became a different room in a different house based on the arrangement of the limited furniture, looked as if they belonged in the paintings themselves, they were so artfully done. The colors were warm but not flashy and lit by candlelight they added to the intimate feel. Because, yes, this show was lit largely by candlelight. There were chandeliers with rings of candles on them, that lowered and rose as the amount of light was needed. Actors carried around large candlesticks in evening scenes, just as they would have in the pre-French revolution period that the show is set in. The dramatic lighting and sharp contrasts this provided really highlighted the betrayal and intrigue that is the at the heart of the production.
(I will not be talking about the show scene by scene but there may be some SPOILERS for those who have not seen the play)
Photo Credit (from UMS website): Johan Persson
This visual beauty was equally matched by the chemistry of the two leads. Janet McTeer and Dominic West, who play La Marquise de Merteuil and Le Vicomte de Valmont respectively, were both stunning. They were flirtatious, scornful, malicious, tender, brutally honest, humorous, and charming; usually all at the same time. At first their relationship was so much fun and it was the never-can-be-quite- platonic relationship of old lovers. Which just added a feeling of excitement to all their interactions. But it seemed for the most part, their cruel game of seduction and wits was more the reason for their friendship than their attraction for each other. That and the always lively banter.
Janet McTeer was especially striking. Dominic West left nothing to be desired; he played the charming bad boy with ruckus charm. No, it’s simply that I found the story and development of his character less intriguing. As a modern audience member, and I have no doubt in almost any period, I felt I’d seen it all before: the man who likes to sleep around but never really finds love in his string of lovers till one woman “changes” him and he gets in over his head. On the other hand, La Marquise de Merteuil in her time, and even now, was extremely fascinating. McTeer really made the character her own, capitalizing on opportunities to incorporate real humor, not even just malicious amusement, into La Marquise.
Photo Credit (from UMS website): Johan Persson
La Marquise used her knowledge of the patriarchal system to manipulate people, not just men, for her amusement and pleasure. She was able to find agency and, as she pointed out, it is necessary for women to be more skillful in this than men. While at first amazing and amusing, her ability and commitment to this manipulation slowly grew more and more disturbing. At one of my favorite lines of the show La Marquise said “I was born to dominate your sex, and avenge mine”, McTeer was particularly scary.
While I enjoyed that line, and still do frankly, I find its place within the show interesting to say the least. While for a time to a viewer this might appear true, as the play progresses and her obsession with revenge on an old lover and fear that Valmonte may no longer love her, slowly lead the audience members to question how she thought she was avenging anyone but herself. The same holds true for Valmont, though he proved less adept to the game. Perhaps the first very disturbing example of this was when, in Valmont’s seduction of the innocent
Photo Credit (from UMS website): Johan Persson
Cecile, he forced himself on her, telling her she couldn’t go to her mother because this could ruin her reputation. When Cecile confided in La Marquise about how upset she was and about her feeling of being violated, La Marquise told her basically to snap out of it. We got the sense that Cecile is supposed to be honored that she was being enlightened, and by such a master of the science of “pleasure”. Both of the main characters roles in this affair were extremely problematic: First, Valmont raping Cecile is very different from willing bedding a lot of women and showed a very different side of his character (even if this time period didn’t define rape as we do today). It’s the first time we saw some of the power he enjoyed exercising, so clearly. Secondly, by condoning and actually encouraging this interaction to both Valmont and Cecile, how was La Marquise avenging her sex by putting its fellow members at the mercy of men who could overpower them?
The next instance when audiences really realized La Marquise had lost it washer basically demanding that Valmont leave the women he loves. She has begun to realize Valmont actually loves his latest conquest and La Marquise’s jealousy is overpowering.Things advance and his latest conquest ends of being one of the many lives she ruins. Janet McTeer’s portrayal throughout this was natural and deceptively cunning, after her character; at moments her power of the stage and her character’s of the situation were daunting.
One thing I missed until the show basically threw it in my face, was the very numerous appearance of cards. They were used as prop pieces throughout the entire show, whenever someone needed to be busy in a corner. A card game actually opened the show. At the end, the last scene is done with the remaining women holding cards, “playing” a game, and that’s when I connected the dots. It’s really ingenious because the whole show was about people playing their cards and hoping they could outmaneuver the other’s cards. This final scene, with the women holding the cards, was also the moment when La Marquise was unable to deny her defeat. All her maneuvers had been for nothing. The vanity, savagery, and jealousy, with copious amounts of humor, blended into a delicious game whose story will keep audiences enthralled for many more years to come!
