“To be a fly on the wall, basically, is the dream,” graduating senior Erin Zhu said, smiling. In the background, there was the quiet hum of students in the Mayer Campus Center. Zhu, an experienced college journalist, was finally on the other side of the interview.
The colors on the screen rise and fall, nearly bursting from the borders of the geometric shapes.Walter Ruttmann’s 1921 short film “Lichtspiel Opus I”is oil paint on glass, but tonight in The Rockwell,the film is also sound and touch on sight. There is the seesaw of violin and song. Voices slip in and out of harmony. Triangles stab downward, and the voices become gasps and whistles. The dancer moves in front of the screen. Her arms roll over her body, which is enveloped in lime green. Aural crescendos match the swelling of shape and color.
“Parade” opens with a drumbeat for soldiers to march to and hearts to keep rhythm with. It is the American Civil War’s lethal metronome, keeping time that has been lost in carnage. For now, the year is 1863,and the place is Marietta,Ga. A young man kisses his love goodbye to head into battle, answering that rat-a-tat call to self-sacrifice. A Confederate flag is raised proudly, its stars and stripes beaming under the stage lights. The parade has begun.
Here in “The Grove,” language takes on a deeper shade of reality. Words are lived and breathed on the stage of theCalderwood Pavilion more fully than they ever can be in the waking world. There is a cacophony of English and Ibibio, with each tongue insisting upon itself. Shadow becomes substance, and substance slips into the sublime.
“This is kind of where it starts,” Jack Hall says, “This is the first rung of the ladder.” He is seated on an inflatable couch, in a bright little room that contrasts starkly with the loud, dim comedy club on the other side of the door. Time is occupying that liminal, anticipatory space it so often does before a show begins.
Fashion has been slowly degenerating since the 1970s. Today’s world is a wasteland of sweatpants, spandex and graphic T-shirts. While the future of clothing culture may look grim, the present is not wholly without merit. There have been glimmers of hope in the 2024 trend cycle, signs that maybe, just maybe, something greater than stay-at-home athleisure awaits the generations to come.
Four Greek columns tower over the barren sand, imposing an ancient and unfamiliar world on the actors and audience below them. Balch Arena Theater has been transported from American modernity to Athenian antiquity. “The Furies” is a tragedy written by the Greek playwright Aeschylus as the third piece in his “Oresteia.” The “Oresteia” was first performed in Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. Despite the millennia that have passed, “The Furies” still stands as a stirring and culturally relevant drama.
On the night of Oct. 12, I lost my virginity. The host challenged me and five other lucky virgins to do an impression of a Halloween character having an “earth-shattering orgasm.” The crowd jeered us on. A few minutes later, I found myself bent over a chair as, from behind, the host popped a symbolic red balloon against me. My latex cherry lay in ruins, and I was no longer a “Rocky Horror” virgin.
