Category: Student Organization

REVIEW: BFA Design and Production Portfolios

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The Duderstadt Center presents a gallery showcasing the talent of select BFA Design and Production students. Within this immersive exhibition, visitors encounter an array of displays from students from many disciplines in the D&P major. This multifaceted degree program includes stage management, lighting design, set design, prop masters, and costume design, and while many specialize, some students take on multiple facets of theater production.

There are many essential assets to creating theater beyond actors and directors. The D&P students take on an immeasurable amount of creative liberty and manual labor work for theatrical productions and oftentimes will go unnoticed.

Each student brings their own flare to the gallery, creating individualized and quite elaborate portfolio presentations. They feature work from all sorts of productions around campus, including directing student’s senior thesis, University Productions, and work from student theater organizations. If you tend to frequent SMTD performances much of their work has been featured here in real life.

To the left, we have Esther Hwang‘s meticulously curated stage management portfolio. The collection is complete with binders of her stage management work (schedules, daily calls, cues.. and more!) her resume, business cards, and performance photos, all beautifully organized for your viewing convenience. It is clear Hwang’s attention to detail is extraordinary—the exhibit is brilliantly organized and thoughtful while revealing many aspects of stage management I was unaware of!

 

To the right are Ethan Hoffman’s lighting portfolio and Kayti Sanchez’s costume design and construction portfolios. Hoffman presents a comprehensive variety of the many positions he has held at Michigan. In addition to lighting design, he has experience in associate producing and electrician positions. His portfolio presents a keen eye for captivating lighting schemes. With a blend of precision and creativity, Sanchez shares her costuming work along with set designs and a thematic object presentation. Her portfolio was a testament to her original artistic vision and professionalism.

It was inspiring to see the innovative artistry and dedication of those ‘behind the stage’. Each portfolio is truly unique—you must see them for yourself! The gallery will be available to view until February 10th in the Duderstadt Center. More information here.

 

Image thanks to Univeristy of Michigan SMTD.

REVIEW: Cedar Bend, VUP & The Ruckus

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The Blind Pig was accompanied by a lively and excited audience yesterday, January 14th. The Pig hosted three University of Michigan bands on their stage: VUP, Cedarbend, and The Ruckus. These bands feature many students from U-M’s School of Music, Theater, and Dance, as well as LSA along with some distinguished alumni. The turnout was solid for a chilling January evening, with approximately 75-100 people in the venue.

The sound at The Blind Pig is very hot, a shockingly loud and overwhelming space. (I would recommend earplugs.) The lustrous lighting on stage makes for great band promos and an eclectic visual scene. Sharp greens, merciless reds, and chilling purples make for an almost nostalgic college atmosphere.  

 

Cedar Bend opened the show at 8:30. Their sound is unique, existing in an alt-folk area with an electric

guitar and violin/trumpet combo. I loved the selection of songs and the mediation of energy. Annabella Paolucci presented a beautiful violin sound throughout the set,

playing sensitively to the band’s style while staying true to the integrity of her sound. (She also makes solo music. Spoiler: it rocks). I could see this band performing in many different venues: some more intimate for their touching writing along with larger houses with support from their lead horns and violin.

 

 

VUP played second with memorable covers of catchy pop songs with groovy horn arrangements. Pianist Rowan Tucker-Meyer took pop songs beyond the limit of their confines and into a realm of creativity and complexity through improvisation. This band contains mostly jazz majors, and their feel together is unmatched. Ariana Kertsman captured the room with her powerful voice, and her interpretations of even the most difficult song selections (Stevie Wonder!!) were wholly agreeable to the audience.

The Ruckus (formerly Joe and The Ruckus—what happened to Joe???) sent the last set out with a bang. This ensemble is bright, energetic, and campy. Singer Kiran Mangrulkar is a joyful Ann Arbor spirit who joined the Ruckus for this concert. His killer voice seized the room, all along with his charming stage presence. Drummer Stephen Oduro was responsible for the infectious energy on this set—he wouldn’t let it cease for a second. The band’s ensemble was the most clear and exciting. They often play in NYC as well as Ann Arbor, so check them out on Instagram to see where they’ll be!

I highly recommend checking out these awesome local bands. Each group brings an unforgettable unique sound to the Ann Arbor music scene that will (hopefully) never be taken for granted by their close community.

 

Instagram handles for the bands:

@vup.band

@cedarbend.band (Also on Spotify as Cedar Bend)

@theruckuslive

 

 

Photos thanks to vup.band and cedarbend.band on Instagram. 

REVIEW: She Loves Me

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This past weekend, I watched the musical She Loves Me (1963), a romantic comedy with a classic enemies-to-lovers trope set in 1934 Budapest, Hungary. The male lead is Georg Nowack, the hardworking manager of Maraczek’s Parfumerie. He’s always at odds with the female lead, Amalia Balash, an employee who’s not the best at her job and believes Georg always has it out for her. There’s a unique array of workers at the parfumerie. There’s the playboy Steven Kodály, the innocent delivery boy Arpad Lazslo, the sexy lady Ilona Ritter, and the cheerful father Ladislav Sipos.

It’s a frustratingly slow-burn romance; most of the first act is unraveling the main character’s mysterious love interests, their “dear friends,” and getting to know the other employees. In the second half, though, the romantic development quickly speeds up and She Loves Me plays, my favorite musical number. I enjoyed watching the usually serious Georg dancing around the stage and singing his heart out, giddy with love.

The show was completely run by the Golden Theatre Company (GTC), a student organization that strives to spread the joy of musical theatre and create opportunities for all students to be part of the production and performance process. When reading the program notes, I was fascinated that quite a few members were freshman or not musical theatre students; one was even a Mathematics and Computer Science major! Furthermore, everything was done well. The stage props for the parfumerie were adorable and intricate, the outfits were gorgeous and elegant, fitting for the era, and the microphones and music were clear.

As suggested by their name, the GTC only performs musicals from the Golden Age of musical theatre (roughly mid-1940s to late 1950s) or musicals sung in the classical style. I look forward to their next semester’s performance because I’m sure they’ll choose a wonderful musical to perform with the highest quality.

REVIEW: Life on Planet Pops

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On December 6, 2023, at the Michigan Theater, the Michigan Pops Orchestra presented “Life on Planet Pops.” I’ve been to every Pops concert since my freshman year, and I was especially excited for this one after seeing this semester’s poster that teased The Lion King, Star Wars (which they somehow manage to play every year), Princess and the Frog, and more. As the theme and poster suggest, all of the music they chose was related to animals, though there surprisingly wasn’t much classical repertoire. However, it was my favorite program out of all of the Pops concerts I’ve seen.

They opened with a medley of Beauty and the Beast and they sounded exactly like the soundtrack of it on Spotify. I loved the concertmaster’s solo so much it gave me goosebumps, and once the melody of Tale as Old as Time played, the strings all together really shined. The song they chose from Princess and the Frog was “Almost There” with a guest student singer from SMTD, and she was very talented. I loved how she opened with dialogue that transitioned into song and that she maintained her character’s cheerful flare throughout the performance.

After a brief intermission, they returned with Hoe Down, a piece with a fun syncopated tune. I’ve heard other orchestras play it before, but I loved that Pops included a good “Yeehaw” in the middle. To end the night, they played the William Tell Overture. I feel like it’s a piece everyone knows. Though I didn’t recognize the title, I immediately recognized the tunes, especially the latter half. 

As always, Pops includes movies to play alongside their music. This semester, they chose to film Pokémon and Jaws, and the way the actors portrayed the animals was hilarious. Pikachu was taller than Ash, his trainer, and the shark in Jaws crawled out of the fountain by the Michigan League. 

I highly recommend going to the Michigan Pops Orchestra concerts. They’re always amazing and enjoyable for people who aren’t well-versed in classical music and I always have a lot of fun at their events!

REVIEW: Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812

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On Sunday Afternoon, I went to the matinee showing of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. The show was produced by In The Round, an inclusive student theater group on campus. It was in the Arthur Miller Theater, a relatively small venue, but the closeness of the space made all the wonderful performances of the night feel much more personal. Seats were right up against the stage, with some audience members sitting on the edge of the stage itself. Most of the big performances of the night happened in the middle of the room, including the opening number which involved every member of the cast singing and dancing in unison. The actors would sometimes sing directly out into the audience, which made it all the more captivating and engaging. I’ve never seen theater so up close!

The show itself is a self described long and complicated Russian novel, with a laundry list of characters. In The Round provided virtual programs, including a chart (with pictures) of every character in the show and how they’re related. Natasha and Pierre are the two main characters of the play. Natasha is young, in love, and devoted to her fiancé. Pierre, on the other hand, has resigned himself to devoting his life to his studies. A main theme of the play is love, and making the right choices when you’re in the thick of it. Even though the play is based on War and Peace, which was written almost 150 years ago, the things the characters struggle with are similar to a lot of the things young people struggle with today. Falling in love and preserving it, knowing when someone loves you in earnest, and reconciling with people you’ve wronged are all things universal to the human experience, but I found myself relating to the characters way more than I thought I would. Great Comet does a wonderful job of describing these feelings in a way that feels new.

Overall, I’m so glad I went to see Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. The performances of the cast is what stands out to me as one of the most compelling aspects of the show. But the performance by the pit orchestra, the songs sung by the actors, and the inclusion of electronic music in the score, made Great Comet a fun and worthwhile watch, and a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

 

Picture from Michigan Union Ticket Office website 

REVIEW: Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812

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In The Round is a student-run theater organization that produces two theatrical productions in an academic year. Last year, the organization produced Mart Crowley’s Boys in the Band and Stephen Stater’s Spring Awakening. This year, In The Round presents the ambitious and timely, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812. 

NP&TGC is a 2012 electro-opera musical that was adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. It was written by Dave Malloy and won the Tony Award for Best Musical, Book, Score, and Orchestrations in 2012. It features vibrant, eclectic music with sudden shifts reflecting the turbulent situation between the characters and the state of 19th-century Russia. The music was extremely unique, with powerful, sweeping vocal moments and striking EDM-like dance scenes. I adored the creativity and thoughtfulness behind the score.

The actors maneuvered through this piece well. There are some incredibly difficult moments in this show that I commend the actors for working through and creating their own. The sustainably sourced costuming was another lovely addition that is appreciated in a time of dire need for increased sustainable options.

This production was performed in the Arthur Miller Theater, a thrust space. Some pictures of the staging/tableaux that were created in scenes were lost to me because of my stage-left seating. From my seat, some events that were happening in the plot were lost because of the dancers or levels the actors were creating. I wondered if my experience would have been different sitting in the upper mezzanine center. Pierre’s ‘home’ in the left-hand corner of the stage was visible to me, and his intentional manic scribblings throughout the musical were a compelling acting choice. Select moments between Anatole and Natasha were visible, and what I could see was beautiful, the two portrayed electric chemistry.

In The Round states that it is an organization “dedicated to queer stories and queer storytellers…we produce performances, relating the themes of our shows to themes of queer culture.” I admire that a theatrical organization is taking the initiative to amplify queer voices, but I seem to have missed the intention behind this production of NP&TGC specifically representing and amplifying an LGBTQ+-based story. There is evident relevance that anything could be a queer story, but I found myself longing for a more direct interpretation of the queerness in the show. I note that this is certainly a point up to interpretation by each audience member.

NP&TGC is an ambitious choice for any theater with its intense level of technical production, difficult musical excerpts, and involved direction. This gripping score is a vocal and emotional challenge and I commend everyone involved for creating this challenging piece of theater. 

Congratulations to everyone involved in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. In the Round will be performing bare: A Pop Opera next semester March 7th-9th in the Arthur Miller Theater. Auditions will be early next semester. 

 

 

Image thanks to In The Round on Instagram.