Tag: SMTD

REVIEW: Michigan Pops Orchestra Concert “Tick Tock, It’s Pops O’Clock”

Sappy Leave a comment

*Photo of the conductor, Luca Antonucci, taken by @willzhang*

The Michigan Pops Orchestra concert “Tick Tock, It’s Pops O’Clock” had an impressive turnout despite being at the same time as the game, and there were many elderly people in the audience for an organization even students don’t know about. It was heartwarming to see the local community and the University come together.

The most memorable part of the concert for me is actually the opening piece: it began quietly and suspensefully before growing into a fascinating, powerful melody that really boasted how wonderful the acoustics in the Michigan Theater is. I normally attend orchestral performances in Hill Auditorium, which is renowned for its acoustics, but due to its sheer size, the music doesn’t reach the outer audience as well.

Another highlight was concertmaster Katie Sesi’s solo in Vivaldi’s Winter. I don’t know what to comment on her playing beside it being phenomenal. This will be the last semester Katie, who is also Executive Director, will be in Pops. Her speech was very bittersweet, and I’m glad she got to be featured in various ways like also being conductor.

How hard the students worked really showed in their performance: it was incredible how well-timed the OSTs and films were with each other, and I particularly enjoyed the scene in the Harry Potter film when Buckbeak, a dog, bites Malfoy by yawning. The audience’s offbeat clapping for the Victors was also hilarious.

Unfortunately, the singers’ voices didn’t project clearly, possibly because of the mics. The collaboration with the SMTD theater students was one of the pieces I was looking forward to the most, so that was rather disheartening.

Nevertheless, I still loved the event, and I look forward to what Pops will bring us in the future. 

Get it? Time theme? 😀

PREVIEW: MOSCOW MOSCOW MOSCOW MOSCOW MOSCOW MOSCOW

Himaja Leave a comment

That’s a lot of “MOSCOW”s in the title! Let’s abbreviate, shall we?

WHAT: A performance of the play “MOSCOW x 6” by UM’s own Department of Theatre & Drama!
WHERE: the Arthur Miller Theater inside the Walgreen Drama Center (that pretty light green building down the road when you get off the bus at Pierpont!)
WHEN: See all showtimes here! I’ll be catching tomorrow night’s 8pm show. This show is on the October 1-15 Passport to the Arts — you can redeem a passport for a FREE ticket at the League Ticket Office!

Besides being intrigued by this play’s unusual title (it sounds like it’s shouting at me!), I was curious about the blurb that states: “It’s Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” for the Fleabag generation. A deftly comedic (and undisputedly raunchy) exploration of unchecked privilege.”

Who is Chekhov? What exactly is the Fleabag generation? I wondered. If you’re wondering too, don’t worry I’ll share my research.

“Three Sisters” is a 1901 play by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov that follows the lives of, you guessed it, three sisters. They feel trapped in their rural Russian town and long to move back to the big city of Moscow where they grew up.

“Fleabagging” is a dating phenomenon named after the hit dark comedy television series “Fleabag” created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It’s repeatedly dating the “wrong” person, careening from bad relationship to bad relationship, gravitating toward those who you know will never be “the one.”

Into this mix comes Halley Feiffer, a playwright who decided to reimagine “Three Sisters” for a contemporary audience. Add a splash of black comedy, a sprinkle of feminism, a slab of social critique and class commentary, and you get “MOSCOW x 6” — a play that seems startlingly relevant to our world today.

I am incredibly intrigued to see how our theater students will interpret this nuanced piece, especially given that the ongoing war in Ukraine has colored public perspectives of Russia and its crown jewel: Moscow. There will definitely be no shortage of interesting discussions after the show.

Note the following content warnings for this performance. Take care of yourself!
Contains suicidal ideation/mental illness; physical violence; homophobic language; depicted sexual content; foul language; misogyny; alcohol abuse

REVIEW: Somebody’s Children

Joann Leave a comment

Somebody’s Children, a tale of children who lives just next door to the land of the fairy tale, Disney land, but whose life isn’t so fairy-tale-like, asks the audience whether it’s really ok that some people are actually living in sucn unstable homes and clearly provides the answer-it’s not Ok. The play is written by José Casas, assistant professor at the University of Michigan, and the actors were consisted of students in SMTD. The setting takes place in a run-down motel just outside Disneyland, and while their personal stories are told in beautifully and powerfully written vignettes, the sorrows in characeters’ lives expands into a problem of social structure by the contrast of their unsafe living place and children who laughs happily in Disneyland, which is so close to where they are living. The stage design made this interesting setting even more clear – there was a huge and gorgeous sign that spells out ‘Disneyland’ on the right side of the stage. Glowing white, the sign had an aura that made sure that the audience was not missing it, but the actual shape of Disneyland was not shown; as if symbolizing that the real Disneyland did not existed to children living in the motel. With this direct contrast, the deprived feeling and anger that the characters are feeling is strongly delivered while raising the point that they could have also been the careless children who have a great time in Disneyland, and highlighting the brutallity of reality in which the children were pushed into. They were somebody’s ‘Children’. Their sorrow is valid and raw, but they are children, who should be kept away from those things. Who are to protect them? the play asks.

I want to highlight the actor’s amazing performances – as mentioned before, the play mainly consited of vignettes, so the lines were symbolic and poetic, rather than straight to the point. The actors expressed out the emotion that the children is reciting the vignette so well; the sad but happy, nostelgic look of a girl who danced with her imaginary quinceañera dress, how two boys exchanged roles to between a police man that stopped them on a night’s walk to get some ice and the boys who got pinned down even though they did nothing wrong swiftly was just awestrucking. Production was amazing as well – using sitting actors as poles to put up police line was not only visually intersting but also symbolized that the children in the motel were deeply embedded in all the tragedy happening in the place.

In all, Somebody’s Children was a beautiful and socially-conscious play that used experimental lines-vignettes-to deliver the theme and did it, not over-dramatically but emotionally affluently. Highly recommend to anyone looking for performances that speaks about the modern world.

REVIEW: Hair

Joann Leave a comment

I love the musicals where the ensemble comes out to perform multiple numbers. ‘Hair’ was one of the musicals where they made fantastic use of the whole cast. Colorful, wild, and energetic, ‘Hair’ was an exciting and dramatic performance. The actors’ wide-ranged, fast movements that filled the stage throughout the whole performance created the vibrant, dizzy, and youthful vibe that the hippie community (“tribe”) was sharing.

I also want to applaud the stage design and the set. While the actor’s vibrant moves were supposed to be the main part of the show, the set was there to back the actors up and make their moves even more dramatic. The colorful lighting design and stage set design served different purposes depending on the scenes. The orange/green colored one with squiggly patterns added to the vibrant energy of the show, while the skeleton concrete building which was the main structure of the stage design shifted from imaginary homes to a spotlighted platform for people that needed emphasis by the spotlight during Claude’s hallucination where George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Scarlett O’Hara were introduced. The concrete-looking structure was designed neutrally enough to be perceived as a different location in each scene. It was a marker of space separation, which was highly necessary for this musical where the focus had to shift from one actor to another in a quick beat, and imagination and real-life interacted in the same space.

The most interesting moment for me was when Claude expressed his dilemma between his hippie identity and the call of the military after his hallucination. After he went through the hallucination passively, he, for the first time in the performance, got rid of the confidence of his hippie self and showed his vulnerability by being torn between his faith and duty. The change was most dramatic when he listed all the ‘practical’ and ‘proper’ job names such as lawyers and dentists. This is the part where he connected to being a real person in the performance, not a single-sided hippie-persona who is mercifully away from all the worries and woes of living. The actor playing this part made the change very clear.

Another interesting feature was how every actor nailed the expression of excitement and jolliness but added so much diversity to it. The people on stage felt like real people, not just people pretending to be constantly happy, which is impossible. If I ever get to see this performance again, I’ll be focusing on the actor’s expressions to catch the details of their actions.

Lastly, about the message: I think this musical spoke about how the ‘normality’ appraised by society could be dangerous. Through the dramatic contrast between the Hippie “tribe” ’s life and the ‘normal’ life of the audience, ‘Hair’ is speaking about how the dangerous concepts and urges could be appraised by being framed as ‘normal’.

PREVIEW: Hair

Joann Leave a comment

Musical ‘Hair’, the classic rock musical, is being presented by the School of Music, Theatre&Dance’s Department of Musical Theater until this Sunday! This musical has history: based on a novel by Gerome Ragni and James Rado, the original performance opened on Broadway in April 1968 after its off-broadway debut in 1967. It did a revival in 2009 and won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for Best Revival of a Musical. The musical will take place in New York City as it follows the Bohemian lifestyle/politically active group. Several of its songs were used in the anti-Vietnam War peace movement.

As its history suggests, this musical will explore concepts of “identity, community, global responsibility, and peace”. I am really excited to find out how university students’ youthful energy will make synergy with this classic discussing the ideas that never got outdated. It’s also amazing that we can see a revival of the Tony Award-winning musical on campus. Don’t miss your chance to check this out!

+) Content warning – contains references to sexuality, war, racism, and drug use, may contain nudity. Recommended for Ages 17+

REVIEW: Fiddler on the Roof in Concert

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Confession: I had never seen Fiddler on the Roof prior to attending what UMS called a “lightly-staged concert performance” of the iconic Broadway-musical-made film over the weekend. 

However, I quickly wished I did–the production was so clearly made with a communal love and passion that I felt overwhelmed by the sheer amount of easter eggs and small artistic decisions that I felt I was missing out on. Even from a newcomer’s perspective, I found the story to be easily relatable, the music heart-pumping and familiar, and the actors and dancers to be absolutely phenomenal.

As a violinist, I was immediately drawn in by the opening scene: a solo violinist leisurely traveling across the stage, a single dancer with outstretched arms following along with disjunct flowy movements, the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra nestled comfortably in the background. John Williams’ opening cadenza is plucky, sweet, and edgy, with an almost improvised quality. The violinist played it with the practiced ease of both a street performer and virtuoso, leaning into the music’s gratuitous slides and stringy texture.

Additionally, it was a pleasure to see SMTD students share the stage with Broadway singers Chuck Cooper and Loretta Ables Sayre. Ella Olesen, Kate Cummings, and Kelly Lomonte as Tzeitel, Hodel, and Chava were charming and relatable as we got to watch them grow as characters. Chuck Cooper/Tevye’s interactions with his daughters were precious and sincere, while other times he easily commanded the stage with his character’s charisma and humorous asides. Furthermore, Diego Rodriguez and Christopher Tamayo as Motel Kamzoil and Perchik gave memorable performances as we were prompted to celebrate and sympathize with them throughout the story.

A highlight of the show I didn’t anticipate was the dancing. Only working with the sliver of stage available in front of the orchestra, the dancers launched themselves in tight spins and sharp, electrifying moves. A particular moment that stood out to me was the bottle dance during the wedding scene where the dancers linked arms and slid forward on their knees in giant, synchronized lunges whilst balancing bottles on their hats. It was ridiculously exciting. 

A beautiful collaboration between UM students and decorated professionals, Fiddler on the Roof in Concert was the production I didn’t know I needed to see. After this, I definitely plan to keep my eye out for future student theater productions!