Allegheny’s Playshop Theatre will close out its 2016-17 season with “Baby With the Bathwater” from April 20-23 in the Gladys Mullenix Black Theatre in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts. Performances are at 8 p.m. April 21-22, and at 2:30 p.m. on April 23.
“Baby with the Bathwater” was written by Christopher Durang in 1983 and depicts an extreme and hilarious take of bad parenting. In a review of the play, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes, “a playwright who shares Swift’s bleak view of humanity, Durang conquers bitterness and finds a way to turn rage into comedy that is redemptive as well as funny.”
Director Dan Crozier of Allegheny’s Communication Arts/Theatre Department is aided by stage manager Itzel Ayala and assistant stage managers Matt Lis and Cayla Brandon. Michael Mehler is the scenic designer, and Miriam Peterson designed the costumes.
The play is a counterpoint to Playshop’s previous production “Luna Gale,” which centered around problems of parenting as well, but with a serious plot and tone. The teenage family of “Luna Gale” dealt with drug addiction and a social worker’s involvement in their case, while the family in “Baby with the Bathwater” struggles humorously with the name and gender of their child, and the subsequent emotional and gender confusion of the child as he grows up.
This is the final show in the Playshop Theatre’s 87th season. The cast features Liz Colarte as Helen, the mother, and Daniel Keitel as John, the father, as well as Emily Wilson, Jen Ray, Megan Greig, Chloe Spadafora, Johanna Stanley, Mary Lyon, Mark Shimkets, Elijah Prince, and Emma Woodhead.
Tickets are $10 for adults and $8 for non-Allegheny students, senior citizens, and Allegheny employees. Admission is free for Allegheny students with identification, but they are asked to make reservations.
For more information or to order tickets, contact the Playshop Theatre box office at (814) 322-3414.
Associate Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Mark Cosdon hosted the seventh annual “Brilliance of the American Theatre” author series at the Tony-honored Drama Book Shop in Times Square, New York City. The event brought together authors from the University of Kansas, Tufts University and Ithaca College for a wide-ranging discussion of their new books with an audience of over 75 people. Cosdon also has been invited to participate in a plenary session on “Migrations in American Drama and Theatre” at the Fifth International Conference on American Drama and Theatre to be held at the Université de Lorraine, France in June 2018.
Associate Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Mark Cosdon hosted the seventh annual “Brilliance of the American Theatre” author series at the Tony-honored Drama Book Shop in Times Square, New York City. The event brought together authors from the University of Kansas, Tufts University and Ithaca College for a wide-ranging discussion of their new books with an audience of over 75 people. Cosdon also has been invited to participate in a plenary session on “Migrations in American Drama and Theatre” at the Fifth International Conference on American Drama and Theatre to be held at the Université de Lorraine, France in June 2018.
Allegheny’s Playshop Theatre presents “Baby With the Bathwater,” Tony award-winning author Christopher Durang’s outrageous take on the ultimate in bad parenting, April 20-23 in the Gladys Mullenix Black Theatre in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts.
In this absurdist satire, Helen and John are completely unprepared for their first child and cannot even decide if it’s a boy or a girl – their doctor tells them they can choose later. In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich wrote, “A playwright who shares Swift’s bleak view of humanity, Durang conquers bitterness and finds a way to turn rage into comedy that is redemptive as well as funny. Directed by Dan Crozier.
Performances are at 8 p.m. April 20-22 and at 2 p.m. on April 23. For more information, visit https://sites.allegheny.edu/playshop/87th-season-2016-17/
Clay Dawson stood under a giant American flag hanging from the plant’s rafters and studied his lines.
A few steps away, Allegheny College senior Shu Yi Tang flipped through sheets of paper that laid out the entire video shoot in detail: what scenes would be filmed and when, where and how they would be shot, and the people involved in each.
Lily Loreno, a senior at Allegheny, framed the opening scene with her hands, her fingers forming a square in front of her face. Sophomore Margaret West wheeled the camera into place.
“Every single second (of the video) has to be exactly perfect,” West, a 20-year-old communication arts major, said later.
The Allegheny trio had an important client to impress: Acutec Precision Aerospace Inc., a Meadville-based company that makes parts of the braking system used on Southwest Airlines jets, among other products, had tapped the group to create a commercial that would re-introduce the company to the community after a rebranding and, ultimately, encourage more prospective employees to walk through Acutec’s doors. Dawson, project manager for new product integration, would be one of the stars.
Acutec President and CEO Elisabeth Smith had worked with Allegheny students before and felt confident West, Loreno and Tang would bring the breadth of a liberal arts education to bear on the project.
“Who we look for (to work with) are people who think,” Smith said. “Allegheny students know how to think.”
The Acutec project is just one part of a larger multidisciplinary effort, still in the pilot stage, to create a student-run media agency at Allegheny that would connect students with local businesses and nonprofit organizations that need media, marketing and advertising services.
Vice President of College Relations Susan Salton proposed the idea of a student-run media agency when she came to Allegheny in 2015. Intrigued, Assistant Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Julie Wilson started talking about the possibility with other faculty partners in and across departments.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to showcase the creative talents of our students and serve the community in a real, tangible way at the same time,” Salton said. “Our students gain experience working with clients in professional settings, applying what they’ve learned in the classroom to the benefit of our region.”
VIDEO
Allegheny @ Acutec
The Acutec project started as a college-wide competition among groups of students interested in vying for the company’s business. Interdisciplinary groups of three students each pitched a storyboard and tagline. Tang, West and Loreno’s winning tagline? “It all starts here,” a nod to the region’s manufacturing roots and Acutec’s essential role in the supply chain creating individual parts that, pieced together, make the whole.
Once selected, the students were mentored to handle all the pre-planning and contract logistics. They hired a makeup artist and another person to help with some technical aspects of the shoot, scouted the Acutec’s Meadville and Saegertown plants, and shot the video over the course of several days
Tang relished the opportunity to put what she’d learned in her advertising and video production classes into practice.
“You get to have a real-life experience and talk to a client and get to know people. Why not take part?” she said. “It’s a very valuable experience, something I can talk about.”
They all felt pressure to deliver a quality product. The heightened expectations that came with working for a client gave the group “an opportunity to rise to the occasion,” West said.
“When you’re (working for) someone else, when you’re taking their time and their money, you want it to be that much better,” Loreno said of the video.
After a late-night scramble to the finish, the commercial debuted at a companywide breakfast on Feb. 8.
It was a success, Smith said.
“People really enjoyed it,” she said. “In terms of working with students, (the experience) was excellent. They were very professional.”
Associate Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Ishita Sinha Roy ran the Acutec storyboard competition and worked with the students, along with Assistant Professor of Art Byron Rich.
The Acutec project and the larger media agency effort are “a great way to respond to the critics that say that the liberal arts are impractical,” Rich said. “The ideas and critical thinking skills that we foster here can be put into practice in the business world.”
Working on the commercial “empowered students to bring their ideas to life” and allowed them to take ownership of a project from start to finish, Sinha Roy said. The commercial and other projects that will fall under the media agency umbrella also help foster and strengthen ties between the college and community — and that’s a good thing for all involved, Sinha Roy said.
When students work for and within the community and learn the stories of its people, “suddenly your neighborhood starts to become friendlier and more well-known in your mind,” she said.
The Acutec video is not the only project of the nascent media agency, though it might be the most visible. A group of communication arts students working under the direction of Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Michael Keeley have also filmed videos for the Tamarack Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education Center. And students working with Wilson and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Janyl Jumadinova developed a website and pitched a logo for an online food hub that, when launched, will connect restaurants and food wholesalers with local farmers.
Wilson stressed that the agency is still in very early stages of development. But if it’s successful, she said, it could be a model for business incubation that leverages the resources of the college to help promote economic development.
Wilson said she doesn’t know of many other colleges or universities similar to Allegheny doing that important work.
“If we get this up and running soon, we’ll be pretty cutting edge.”
Clay Dawson stood under a giant American flag hanging from the plant’s rafters and studied his lines.
A few steps away, Allegheny College senior Shu Yi Tang flipped through sheets of paper that laid out the entire video shoot in detail: what scenes would be filmed and when, where and how they would be shot, and the people involved in each.
Lily Loreno, a senior at Allegheny, framed the opening scene with her hands, her fingers forming a square in front of her face. Sophomore Margaret West wheeled the camera into place.
“Every single second (of the video) has to be exactly perfect,” West, a 20-year-old communication arts major, said later.
The Allegheny trio had an important client to impress: Acutec Precision Aerospace Inc., a Meadville-based company that makes parts of the braking system used on Southwest Airlines jets, among other products, had tapped the group to create a commercial that would re-introduce the company to the community after a rebranding and, ultimately, encourage more prospective employees to walk through Acutec’s doors. Dawson, project manager for new product integration, would be one of the stars.
Acutec President and CEO Elisabeth Smith had worked with Allegheny students before and felt confident West, Loreno and Tang would bring the breadth of a liberal arts education to bear on the project.
“Who we look for (to work with) are people who think,” Smith said. “Allegheny students know how to think.”
The Acutec project is just one part of a larger multidisciplinary effort, still in the pilot stage, to create a student-run media agency at Allegheny that would connect students with local businesses and nonprofit organizations that need media, marketing and advertising services.
Vice President of College Relations Susan Salton proposed the idea of a student-run media agency when she came to Allegheny in 2015. Intrigued, Assistant Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Julie Wilson started talking about the possibility with other faculty partners in and across departments.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity to showcase the creative talents of our students and serve the community in a real, tangible way at the same time,” Salton said. “Our students gain experience working with clients in professional settings, applying what they’ve learned in the classroom to the benefit of our region.”
VIDEO
Allegheny @ Acutec
The Acutec project started as a college-wide competition among groups of students interested in vying for the company’s business. Interdisciplinary groups of three students each pitched a storyboard and tagline. Tang, West and Loreno’s winning tagline? “It all starts here,” a nod to the region’s manufacturing roots and Acutec’s essential role in the supply chain creating individual parts that, pieced together, make the whole.
Once selected, the students were mentored to handle all the pre-planning and contract logistics. They hired a makeup artist and another person to help with some technical aspects of the shoot, scouted the Acutec’s Meadville and Saegertown plants, and shot the video over the course of several days
Tang relished the opportunity to put what she’d learned in her advertising and video production classes into practice.
“You get to have a real-life experience and talk to a client and get to know people. Why not take part?” she said. “It’s a very valuable experience, something I can talk about.”
They all felt pressure to deliver a quality product. The heightened expectations that came with working for a client gave the group “an opportunity to rise to the occasion,” West said.
“When you’re (working for) someone else, when you’re taking their time and their money, you want it to be that much better,” Loreno said of the video.
After a late-night scramble to the finish, the commercial debuted at a companywide breakfast on Feb. 8.
It was a success, Smith said.
“People really enjoyed it,” she said. “In terms of working with students, (the experience) was excellent. They were very professional.”
Associate Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Ishita Sinha Roy ran the Acutec storyboard competition and worked with the students, along with Assistant Professor of Art Byron Rich.
The Acutec project and the larger media agency effort are “a great way to respond to the critics that say that the liberal arts are impractical,” Rich said. “The ideas and critical thinking skills that we foster here can be put into practice in the business world.”
Working on the commercial “empowered students to bring their ideas to life” and allowed them to take ownership of a project from start to finish, Sinha Roy said. The commercial and other projects that will fall under the media agency umbrella also help foster and strengthen ties between the college and community — and that’s a good thing for all involved, Sinha Roy said.
When students work for and within the community and learn the stories of its people, “suddenly your neighborhood starts to become friendlier and more well-known in your mind,” she said.
The Acutec video is not the only project of the nascent media agency, though it might be the most visible. A group of communication arts students working under the direction of Professor of Communication Arts/Theatre Michael Keeley have also filmed videos for the Tamarack Wildlife Rehabilitation & Education Center. And students working with Wilson and Assistant Professor of Computer Science Janyl Jumadinova developed a website and pitched a logo for an online food hub that, when launched, will connect restaurants and food wholesalers with local farmers.
Wilson stressed that the agency is still in very early stages of development. But if it’s successful, she said, it could be a model for business incubation that leverages the resources of the college to help promote economic development.
Wilson said she doesn’t know of many other colleges or universities similar to Allegheny doing that important work.
“If we get this up and running soon, we’ll be pretty cutting edge.”
The Allegheny College Playshop Theatre will present “Luna Gale” from February 23-26 in the Gladys Mullenix Black Theatre in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts.
“Luna Gale,” written by Rebecca Gilman and directed by Mark Cosdon, centers on a social worker who is confronted with an unforgiving dilemma — what to do with a child born to drug-addicted teens. Family secrets, moral ambiguities, faith, biases, and the beleaguered welfare system collide in this contemporary drama. A play that The New York Times called “smart and absorbing,” “Luna Gale” is sure to provoke questions of how we care for the most vulnerable and at-risk.
Performances are at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Feb. 23-25, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 26.
The cast features theatre majors Mary Lyon ’17 as Caroline, the social worker; Ada Zech ’19 as Karlie, the mother, and Simon Brown ’19 as Peter, the father, as well as Alyssa Johnson ’20, Daniel Keitel ’17, Sam Richardson ’20, and Eddie Glass ’18. The production is stage managed by Johanna Stanley ’18. Michael Mehler is the scenic designer, Miriam Patterson designed the costumes, and William Kenyon designed the lights.
“Luna Gale”includes strong language and subject matter that some might find upsetting. The play is recommended for mature audiences only.
Tickets for all productions are $10 for adults and $8 for non-Allegheny students, senior citizens and Allegheny employees. Admission is free for Allegheny students with identification, but they are asked to make reservations.
For more information or to order tickets, contact the Playshop Theatre box office at (814) 332-3414.
The Allegheny College Playshop Theatre will present “Luna Gale” from February 23-26 in the Gladys Mullenix Black Theatre in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts.
“Luna Gale,” written by Rebecca Gilman and directed by Mark Cosdon, centers on a social worker who is confronted with an unforgiving dilemma — what to do with a child born to drug-addicted teens. Family secrets, moral ambiguities, faith, biases, and the beleaguered welfare system collide in this contemporary drama. A play that The New York Times called “smart and absorbing,” “Luna Gale” is sure to provoke questions of how we care for the most vulnerable and at-risk.
“Rebecca Gilman is a very contemporary playwright,” said Cosdon, associate professor of communication arts and theatre. “Her most well known plays are dramas without clear antagonists and storylines that don’t have easier answers. ‘Luna Gale’ follows this pattern. What Gilman consistently returns to are situations that never resolve themselves easily … and there’s never an easy solution when it comes to the welfare of a child.”
The play “asks us to consider our biases, and it also, I think, encourages us to think about where and how each of us takes responsibility for ultimately the most fragile of beings in society,” Cosdon said.
Performances are at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Feb. 23-25, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 26.
The cast features theatre majors Mary Lyon ’17 as Caroline, the social worker; Ada Zech ’19 as Karlie, the mother, and Simon Brown ’19 as Peter, the father, as well as Alyssa Johnson ’20, Daniel Keitel ’17, Sam Richardson ’20, and Eddie Glass ’18. The production is stage managed by Johanna Stanley ’18. Michael Mehler is the scenic designer, Miriam Patterson designed the costumes, and William Kenyon designed the lights.
“Luna Gale”includes strong language and subject matter that some might find upsetting. The play is recommended for mature audiences only.
Tickets for all productions are $10 for adults and $8 for non-Allegheny students, senior citizens and Allegheny employees. Admission is free for Allegheny students with identification, but they are asked to make reservations.
For more information or to order tickets, contact the Playshop Theatre box office at (814) 332-3414.
The Allegheny College Playshop Theatre will present “Luna Gale” from February 23-26 in the Gladys Mullenix Black Theatre in the Vukovich Center for Communication Arts.
“Luna Gale,” written by Rebecca Gilman and directed by Mark Cosdon, centers on a social worker who is confronted with an unforgiving dilemma — what to do with a child born to drug-addicted teens. Family secrets, moral ambiguities, faith, biases, and the beleaguered welfare system collide in this contemporary drama. A play that The New York Times called “smart and absorbing,” “Luna Gale” is sure to provoke questions of how we care for the most vulnerable and at-risk.
“Rebecca Gilman is a very contemporary playwright,” said Cosdon, associate professor of communication arts and theatre. “Her most well known plays are dramas without clear antagonists and storylines that don’t have easier answers. ‘Luna Gale’ follows this pattern. What Gilman consistently returns to are situations that never resolve themselves easily … and there’s never an easy solution when it comes to the welfare of a child.”
The play “asks us to consider our biases, and it also, I think, encourages us to think about where and how each of us takes responsibility for ultimately the most fragile of beings in society,” Cosdon said.
Performances are at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Feb. 23-25, and at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 26.
The cast features theatre majors Mary Lyon ’17 as Caroline, the social worker; Ada Zech ’19 as Karlie, the mother, and Simon Brown ’19 as Peter, the father, as well as Alyssa Johnson ’20, Daniel Keitel ’17, Sam Richardson ’20, and Eddie Glass ’18. The production is stage managed by Johanna Stanley ’18. Michael Mehler is the scenic designer, Miriam Patterson designed the costumes, and William Kenyon designed the lights.
“Luna Gale”includes strong language and subject matter that some might find upsetting. The play is recommended for mature audiences only.
Tickets for all productions are $10 for adults and $8 for non-Allegheny students, senior citizens and Allegheny employees. Admission is free for Allegheny students with identification, but they are asked to make reservations.
For more information or to order tickets, contact the Playshop Theatre box office at (814) 332-3414.
What are people reading and hearing about the Zika virus?
How are their behaviors changing as a result?
Those are the questions three Allegheny College professors are asking as part of an interdisciplinary effort here to better understand the global consequences of Zika, a virus at the center of an international public health emergency.
The answers could have profound social and economic ripple effects and change the way society talks about sexually transmitted infections, including Zika, a mosquito-borne virus that can also be spread through sex.
Vesta Silva’s work began this summer.
Silva, an associate professor of communication arts, and student Rachael Robertson ’17 analyzed an archive of American media coverage of Zika, looking for common themes. The stories, they found, focused on personal, not governmental or public, responsibility: Wear long sleeves. Use bug spray. When sexual transmission was part of the message, the message was limited to “Don’t get pregnant,” said Silva, who also teaches in the interdisciplinary Global Health Studies program.
Government officials weren’t talking about what federal, state and local agencies could do beyond insecticide spraying (visual, but not very effective, Silva said) or long-term research and vaccine development. Nor were they discussing direct actions communities could take now with the help of the government or nonprofit agencies, like installing window screens and air conditioning and cleaning up neighborhoods, Silva said.
“It’s not that there’s no role for the individual, but when you’re simply telling the story of individual responsibility and the government is responsible for vaccines only, we lose all sorts of possibilities for slowing the spread of Zika,” she said.
And just as important, what people read, hear and understand about the virus could influence their decisions and behavior.
As Silva was scouring newspapers and websites, Becky Dawson ’00 and Amelia Darrouzet-Nardi, both Allegheny assistant professors of global health studies, were surveying more than 2,000 women of childbearing age who live in states bordering Mexico or in states along the Gulf Coast, the areas in the U.S. most vulnerable to Zika infection.
A short questionnaire asked women about their behaviors and their future plans, whether they were sexually active and whether they planned to have children, among other questions. It also asked what form of birth control they used, if any, and which forms of birth control should be encouraged and used in light of Zika.
Dawson and Darrouzet-Nardi have just started to analyze the results, but answers suggest misconceptions about the virus and how it is spread.
“Our initial findings suggest that among the women who have heard about Zika, fewer than 15 percent are changing their sexual behaviors as a result of the outbreak,” Dawson said. “The number of women who are unaware that Zika can be spread between monogamous partners is staggering. We are also seeing that the majority of women believe that they know how to prevent spread of the disease by avoiding mosquito bites. The level of concern for the disease is lower than we anticipated.”
That could be because public health campaigns have largely focused on mosquito bite prevention. There has been relatively much less education around sexual transmission, and that’s especially problematic when it comes to Zika, Dawson and Darrouzet-Nardi said.
Infection during pregnancy can cause birth defects, including microcephaly, which could have major economic effects on a family.
“Having it happen to you would be so life-changing,” Darrouzet-Nardi said.
It’s also important to talk about sexual transmission because people typically think of sexually transmitted infections as something they’re vulnerable to only if they or their partners are not monogamous, Darrouzet-Nardi said. That’s not the case with Zika. A woman or a man in a monogamous relationship who has been infected through a mosquito bite could pass the virus on to his or her partner.
“Monogamy isn’t protection,” she said.
That’s a game-changer, potentially upending how everyone ought to be talking about sexually transmitted infections and safe sexual practices in the future, Dawson said.
“Now we can pass an infection with enormous consequences between monogamous partners,” she said. “It’s going to revolutionize the way we talk about sex.”
If women do start making family planning decisions based on Zika, the effects on demographics and the economy could be long term and far reaching, Darrouzet-Nardi said.
“Whether and how women attempt to plan pregnancies around various risks is still an empirical question, and the answer is essential for improving global maternal health, birth outcomes, and women’s empowerment. Regular monitoring of family planning decisions and outcomes is essential for understanding the patterns that emerge with respect to infectious diseases or other health threats,” she said.
An interdisciplinary approach to Zika is crucial, Silva said.
“Zika is not a problem that can only be addressed by science, social science or humanities alone,” Silva said. “If we don’t bring all of those perspectives to bear, we’re missing key elements of controlling this outbreak or future outbreaks.”
