Proof is a play by David Auburn, that won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. Featuring a daughter, Catherine, her recently deceased father, and his GSI, Hal, this play touches on grief, mental illness, math, and proof- mathematically and otherwise. The RC Players have tackled this mastery of family dynamics and mathematical intricacies in what promises to be a great production.
In talking with my housemate, Evan Stuber (the show’s Technical Director), he was able to tell me a bit more about how this set was constructed and it’s role within the play as a whole:
“The main piece of the set is a 22 foot movable backdrop that is constructed to change between the living room and the front door of the main character’s house. This changing environment works to immerse the audience more deeply in the narrative playing out on stage and let them travel with the main character as she develops throughout the course of the show. The set build took approximately 20 hours within the course of 4 days.” (Evan Stuber)
Proof will be performing this weekend in the Keene Theater of East Quad Friday (12/1) and Saturday (12/2) at 8pm! Come check it out, take a break from studying, and watch other people do math!
Here is the Facebook event for more updates, a Meet the Cast video, and glimpse of this weekend’s set!
Student galleries feel variegated, if there’s a single word for it. Like leaves that grow into different colours and shapes, it’s an exhibition that doesn’t know what it wants to be yet, a showcase that simply brings the best of undergraduate work into the spotlight.
With whatever two cents I have on institutional theories of art and the artworld – I like these spaces, maybe more than museums because of the modernity, the messiness, the fact that I could probably say ten years down the line “oh yeah, I know that guy – we went to school together. I saw his early work way before he became famous.”
The Creative Body
This was the thought, the primary impression that reverberated while visiting the Stamps gallery downtown, the glowing letters looking sunny off South Division Street through the rain of an Ann Arbor November: this is the future of art right here, in progress, developing, new.
With expansive media use, the content of the artworks are even more diverse, with much of the form and the subject focused with a modern-day lens and astute freshness. Here, the exhibition highlights a kind of innovation in art by Stamps students, ideas shaped by a digital revolution and the shifting notation that this digitalization is beautiful. The interdisciplinary quality, refined by technology, is seen in Audio Reflection by Maddi Lelli, a sound installation coded in TouchDesigner that forms a hypnotic circle that moves with the inflection of a voice, and The Creative Body by Camille Johnson, a paper maché puppet that uses projections and soundscapes to tell its stories, exhibited before in Detroit and Ypsilanti events.
Glacial Archi-Structure
Glacial Archi-Structure by Juan Marco uses collections of data of topographical structures on glacial recession to create beautiful, geometric representations of information. And Lazy Susan by Rachel Krasnick is a laser-cut and digitally fabricated sculpture, forming a delicate spiral of plywood that doubles up as a turntable.
Glacial Archi-Structure
Many of the pieces also reflect current social climates and the stresses of a particular generation, including artworks such as Tortured Housewife by Beth Reeck, which digitally collages 50s advertisement-esque pictures to explore the constrictiveness of societal gender norms, and Finding Peace by Gillian Yerington, a landscape constructed out of recycled wrappers, so that the viewer is quite literally looking at nature that has been shaped by our waste.
Finding Peace
Conversely, much of the art also finds itself in organic expressions, universal sentiments. Others expand the limits of form and material. From Broken Compass by Kara Calvert, which opens up feelings of alienation and emptiness across a cotton fabric canvas of batik dye, to Fold and sew by Grace Guevara, folding and sewing copper metal like fabric, expanding the definition of what fiber could be.
Fold and sew
In the end, there’s a lot of interesting work in the exhibition by some incredible students (and many more not mentioned in the review) – innovative, smart, socially-conscious, or even terribly funny – variegated remains the only word I can think of to describe it, a gallery poised on the precipice of change, of what’s new and contemporary, of students still growing and creating. So be sure to check out the Undergraduate Juried Exhibition before December 16th!
I listen to so much music that playlist attrition is a natural consequence. I get tired of songs eventually and clear them out to make room for other, newer, more exciting ones.
But there are a few songs that are exceptions, that are timeless enough to me that they stick on my playlists for years. Howie Day’s Collide is one of those songs. Five years after it originally landed on my iPod, back when I was 13 and my favorite genre of music was whatever was on the radio, the lyrics still speak to me.
“Even the best fall down sometimes, even the stars refuse to shine, out of the doubt that fills my mind, I somehow find you and I collide.”
Through middle school and high school and now college, those words have been with me. So when I saw Howie Day was coming to The Ark, I knew I had to go.
Day hasn’t released an album since 2015 because he spends so much time touring. I haven’t seen him in concert before, but he’s known for his innovative live arrangements and instrumentation, something that should play well at an intimate venue like The Ark.
Day isn’t the traditional folk artist usually associated with The Ark. Instead, his music is emotional acoustic guitar-based pop rock, similar to that of bands like The Fray. If folk isn’t really your thing but you want a fairly inexpensive local concert at a great venue, he’s worth checking out.
Howie Day comes to The Ark with opening act Shane Piasecki, another acoustic pop singer-songwriter, this Sunday, December 3, at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $20 at The Ark, at the Michigan Union Ticket Office, or online at theark.org.
Ballet is often viewed as separate from other forms of dance. Most performances that aren’t strictly ballet don’t involve any ballet. But in reality, ballet, often called the foundation of all dance, isn’t as different from other styles of dance as it is often perceived.
Salto Dance Company, a student-run dance company, is the only dance group at Michigan that performs ballet. But even for a pointe group, they’re unique because they don’t solely do ballet. Straight to the Pointe, Salto’s winter showcase, will feature a blend of classical ballet with contemporary and lyrical styles.
If you like dance, music, or punny titles, you should come see Straight to the Pointe presented by Salto Dance Company. The show is this Friday, December 1, at 7 PM at the Mendelssohn Theatre in the Michigan League. Tickets are $8 for students, $10 for adults, or free with Passport to the Arts.
When I’m procrastinating on homework, my go-to TV is reality dance competitions. I love the high energy. I love agonizing over who my favorites are. I love attempting my own choreography in my room later and embarrassing myself because I am decidedly not a dancer. Most of all, though, I’m fascinated by dance, by how the dancers and choreographers interpret the songs, by how it seamlessly weaves music, movement, and style. So when I saw that Michigan was hosting its own dance competition, Michigan’s Best Dance Crew, I knew I would be there.
No doubt based on the reality dance show America’s Best Dance Crew, Michigan’s Best Dance Crew is a competition that pits several student dance groups against one another to determine who wins the title. While its namesake show featured exclusively hip-hop groups, the campus version is open to any group who wished to audition, so it’s likely to have something for everyone. And if you’ve always wanted to be Nigel Lythgoe, Bruno Tonioli, or Lil Mama for a night, the People’s Choice Award lets students be the judge.
If you’re like me and love dance, reality competition shows, or dance reality competition shows, come and see Michigan’s Best Dance Crew on November 30 at 7 PM at the Mendelssohn Theatre in the Michigan League. Tickets are $3 in advance at the Michigan Union Ticket Office or $5 at the door.
From November 10, 2017 to December 16, 2017 is Stamps’ annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition, located at the new Stamps Gallery at 201 S. Division Street.
Featuring the exceptional work of Stamps students, jurors (Anne-Marie Kim, BFA 2004, Samara Pearlstein, BFA 2008, and Ron Watters, BFA 2001) have selected a showcase of the best works to be recognized. From sculpture honed with the eye of industrial design, to illustrations steeped in keen social commentary – the works present the possible beginnings of the next Picasso or Ansel Adams or Emily Carr (and so the list goes on). Go out there and support your fellow students; see the art of what’s happening now.
Free entry! Open from noon to 7pm, on Tuesdays to Saturdays.
