Schenectady, N.Y.
(May 18, 2001) – Union College's Montebanks Theatre troupe has organized The
Drama Club, a program for Schenectady youth grades 4-6. The program will run on Saturdays from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m. at Union College's Kenney Community Center.
Through a series
of theatrical games and workshops the Montebanks Drama Club provides youth with
a methodology for collaborative learning, self-expression and increased social
awareness, as well as an opportunity to learn teamwork, gain self-confidence,
and creatively use their imaginations.
“How should we kill you?” a student asks Bill Finlay.
“Do you want to shoot me?” asks the professor of theater. “I have a gun in my office.”
Bizarre, even alarming, talk perhaps. But the exchange is de rigueur for a special topics class that Finlay is teaching this term on stage fighting.
Finlay circulates among the dozen student-combatants who are rehearsing their final projects, prodding them with questions and offering advice.
“Be careful, that's a dangerous hit,” the theater professor tells seniors Emily Kattef and Becky Rubin. With a small realignment, Finlay ensures that Rubin's fist is a safe distance from Kattef's nose.
Moments later, Rubin sends Kattef headlong into the door of the theater department's red pickup truck. A loud thud leaves a visitor convinced that Kattef has met certain injury. But her hand _ not her face _ makes contact with the truck. “OK,” says Rubin, “Let's write it down.” The fight comes to an abrupt halt as the two scurry over to a pad of paper to notate their moves.
The students are to give a public presentation of their final fight projects during the last week of classes.
In another brawl, seniors Adam Shebitz and Derrick Herrington are going at it with mops and brooms. They are staging a fight between janitors, a combat that will incorporate all the tools of the trade (dust pans, spray cleaners and feather dusters) and some that are not (plastic forks and swords).
Two other senior theater majors, Spencer Christie and Ali Struzziero, are rehearsing a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers dance that turns into a fight complete with swordplay.
Each of the dozen students has taken the pre-requisite “Movement for Actors” class, and Finlay goes to great lengths to ensure that all their moves are safe.
While the course may be unusual at most colleges, it is a standard offering at all major theater programs, according to Finlay, a specialist in combat choreography who previously taught the art at Boston University. Finlay also has choreographed fights for a number of plays and films.
“It is an absolute necessity that actors know how to fight and to fight safely,” Finlay says. “It is one of the requirements of the craft. It makes them more castable.”
Students – most dressed for comfort in sweats and t-shirts and all wearing protective gloves – began a recent class by warming up through a series of advances, retreats and evasive moves used in sword fighting. Finlay then pairs them up to practice a series of combat moves. “Listen to the rhythm of the swords hitting,” he says.
“Now remember,” Finlay says to his students, “I want your fight to include swordplay and at least one other form of combat that we've practiced in the class. And your fight does not have to end in a death.”
1. The minutes of the April 30, 2001 AAC meeting were corrected and approved.
2. The AAC approved the following course and catalog changes recommended by the Subcouncil on Courses and Programs:
Courses granted permanent approval:
HST 86/GER 36 _ Nazi Germany: History, Literature and Culture
GEO 151 _ Living on the Edge
SOC 147 _ Marginality and the `Other' in Europe, Japan and Brazil
ENS 10 _ Introduction to Environmental Studies
ECO 126 _ Economic Growth and Income Distribution
GEO 54 _ The Minoan Eruption of Thera, Greece: Geology and Archaeology in the Field
PSC 14 _ Introduction to Comparative Politics ENG 189 _ Junior Seminar
Approved changes to the Academic Register for the Performing Arts Department (see attached).
Approved the following number and name change for the Anthropology Department:
ANT 163 History of Anthropological Thought changed to ANT 055 Thinking about Culture.
Approved returning to requirement of seven upper-level courses that cover three of the four areas of the discipline for the Political Science Department.
Approved Religious Studies Minor.
Approved catalog revisions for the Modern Languages Department.
3. The committee continued a discussion of Civil Engineering.
Freshmen will initiate their advising process online using a new Web site launched this week.
All freshmen will fill out a form indicating their intended major, if any. The spreadsheet generated from this form will allow the office of undergraduate education to quickly sort and organize the information to see how many freshmen are planning to enter a given major, or how many are undecided, for example. The form also allows students to request a particular advisor.
“This form is a classic example of the Web evolving from a `gee whiz' technology into a useful tool that can organize information quickly and accurately in a very accessible format,” according to Tom Smith, Union's Web site director. “It represents a first step in an ongoing effort growing out of the College's Middle States review to use Web-based technology to improve the advising system on campus.”
Through May 20.Mandeville Gallery, Nott Memorial “Saints, Sinners and Sacred Spaces: Devotional Folk Art in Latin America.” All artwork in the exhibition comes from the collection of curator Beate Echols and Michael Shub. Echols is a collector of Latin American folk art, and a private dealer. She is faculty member of the Folk Art Institute of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, where she teaches “Art from the Americas.” She has also taught this subject at the New York City Graduate Center and New York University. A number of related events accompany the show.
Through June 1. Social Science Faculty Lounge Art Gallery. “The Photographer's Eye: People, Culture and the Environment,” an exhibition of works by three members of Social Sciences division _ Shelton Schmidt (black and white portraits), George Gmelch (black and white portraits of Irish Travelers) and Deb Ludke (color works of nature and objects). Gallery hours are weekdays 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, call ext. 6072.
