Tickets
are available for a Union
College bus trip to the
Radio City Christmas Spectacular on Saturday, Dec. 4. The group will depart the
Nott/Seward Parking Lot at 7 a.m., making a comfort stop mid-way. The show is
at 4:30 p.m. The group is to return to Union
at 10 p.m. Cost is $70 per person. For more information, contact George
Schiller in Human Resources, ext. 6108.
Undergrad research is focus of COT meeting
The Committee on Teaching will sponsor a discussion on “Successful
Models for Involving Undergraduates in Research” on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 12:15
p.m. in Everest Lounge.
“We will be drawing on our own in-house experts to share
their experiences of how to meaningfully and successfully get undergrads
involved in research, and how to manage them once they are involved,” said
Prof. Brad Bruno, who is organizing the session, which will focus on successful
models beyond the sciences and engineering.
Panelists are to include Teresa Meade, Stephen Schmidt,
Robert Baker and Ann Anderson.
Jazz Ensemble to play Nov. 10
The Union College Jazz Ensemble will
perform the music of Sonny Rollins, Duke Ellington, and Benny Golson in a
concert on Wednesday, Nov. 10, at 8 p.m. in the Reamer Campus Center Auditorium.
The
concert is free and open to the public.
Led by Professor Tim Olsen, the
Union College Jazz Ensemble is comprised of Union students and musicians from
the Capital District. The group performs music spanning the history of jazz as
well as original compositions and arrangements, and has appeared throughout New York and New England.
In May 2002 the group released its first CD, “Live!”,
comprised of concert performances recorded over a six-year period.
Mandeville show looks at World War II
“A Soldier's Eye: Europe 1944 — Photographs by Irving Shapiro” runs though
Dec. 19 in the Mandeville Gallery.
In 1944 Irving Shapiro of Glens Falls was a soldier
in the midst of the Second World War. But he was also a man with a camera, and
the photographs he took during the first months after the Normandy invasion are
a remarkable record of the people and places he encountered in that period of
turmoil and upheaval.
Also on exhibit are artifacts and
images of Union College's experience with on-campus Navy
officer training during the later years of WWII, known as the V-12 Program,
featuring research by Jeff Roffman '05.
During the exhibition, an evening
film series on World War II in Europe,
organized in conjunction with the History Department, will be held on
alternate Thursdays in Old Chapel.
Remaining films are:
— Nov. 4, 6 p.m. – Stalingrad [Dogs, Do You Want to Live Forever?]
(1958), with Prof. Wilfried Wilms; and
— Nov. 11, 6 p.m. – Sahara (1943), with Prof.
John Cramsie.
Yulman play puts water center stage
Nothing unusual appears in the
program for the College's production of Metamorphoses, running this week
in Yulman Theater, until you see the acknowledgement of “water
consultants.”
Donald Birch and Joseph Decowski,
who hold those titles, were instrumental in staging the first show at Union to feature water – a whole pool of it – as a
central “character.”
The two men, who normally hold
down duties on the Facilities staff, helped the Yulman crew design and build
what director Joann Yarrow calls “a magical place” — a 20- by 20-
foot pool of undetermined depth — for the play by Mary Zimmerman that is based
on the myths of the Roman poet Ovid.
The pool, Yarrow says, provides
the medium for human interaction in the play, and indeed the dozen characters
in the ensemble use it continuously. “It is definitely another character
in the play, another being with us,” Yarrow says.
The technical considerations for
staging a play with water were enormous, Yarrow says. “Can the floor take
the weight?” “How do we keep the water out of the basement?”
“How do we filter it and heat it?”
The production also requires some
items not normally found backstage: a large supply of towels (special thanks to
Athletics), a clothes drier, mops and squeegees. Actors have been rehearsing in
bathing suits; costumes, reserved for the production, need a full day to dry.
(“We could never do two shows in a day,” the director quips.)
Also contributing to the project
were Robert Balmer, dean of engineering, and students Victoria MacMullen and
Tim Pulask, who helped design the pool as a special project.
The play relies heavily on the
actors' physicality, Yarrow notes. “This is a movement-based work,”
she says. “The actor is not just a talking head. It's the body which
speaks as well.”
Yarrow brought in Louis
Guillemette of the Cirque du Soleil in Montreal
to help the actors to develop the work through a process called contact
improvisation. It was the actors themselves – not a choreographer – who
developed the movements that would become the play.
The play, according to the
program, “juxtaposes the ancient and the contemporary in both language and
image to reflect the variety and persistence of narrative in the face of
inevitable change.” Featured characters include Midas and Silenus, Alcyone,
Orpheus and (naturally, given the reflective medium) Narcissus.
The ensemble is Andrew Burke,
Kassandra Collazo, Phil Chorba, Aneesh Dambreville, Jackie Garrity, Ryan
Schiavone, Carly Hirschberg, Charles Holiday, Becca Hutton, Charles May, Mandee
Moondi and Davin Reed.
Set design is by Prof. Charles
Steckler, lighting by John Miller, costumes by Lloyd Waiwaiole, and sound by
Doris Lo.
Shows are through Saturday, Nov. 6
at 8 p.m., and Nov. 7 at 2 p.m. For tickets and information, call 388-6545.