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<p>Since the era of George Jean Nathan, Cornell Class of 1904, the first-string critics of New York’s major newspapers – overwhelmingly white, male and educated at elite universities – have wielded outsized influence on which plays and musicals succeed in New York and thus the nation.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.womenandtheatreprogram.com/">Women and Theatre Program</a> presented Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA) professor <a href="https://pma.cornell.edu/j-ellen-gainor">J. Ellen Gainor</a> with the <a href="http://www.womenandtheatreprogram.com/awards.html">Achievement in Scholarship Award</a> at their annual conference in Boston on August 1.</p>
Alison Van Dyke, retired senior lecturer of performing and media arts and an integral part of the Cornell Prison Education Program, died in London on Oct. 5, while on a trip to Spain, France and England.
<p>How many chances do we get to make a first impression? For Roland and Marianne, the two protagonists in <a href="https://pma.cornell.edu/content/constellations">Constellations</a> by Nick Payne, the answer is infinite. In the play, running November 1–3 in the Black Box Theatre at Cornell’s Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts, Payne proposes that life exists in a multiverse, in which countless parallel existences play out simultaneously, allowing for an infinity of possible futures.</p>
<p>Since its 1906 debut, “The Awakening of Spring,” by German playwright Frank Wedekind, has often been criticized and sometimes banned for its controversial subject matter, including sexuality, violence, and mistrust between generations.</p>
The performance was part of the National Theatre’s “Courage Everywhere” project, which features world-class directors producing plays on the themes of suffrage, courage and the fight for political equality in the UK and around the world.
<p>The Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA) presents its annual Mini Locally Grown Dance concert Nov. 29-Dec. 1 at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.</p><p>PMA senior lecturers Jumay Chu and Byron Suber direct and each contributes original choreography. The concert also features a combined piece choreographed by 16 students in Chu and Suber’s dance composition course; a duet from Deanna Myskiw ’18; and a piece choreographed by visiting lecturer Nic Ceynowa.</p>
<p>After graduating as a theater major, Dana Lerner ’14 wanted to make some connections on Broadway. So, as a budding entrepreneur, she began networking and investing in Broadway and off-Broadway shows.</p><p>Those early connections and projects, which introduced her to the inner world of Broadway productions, have paid off, giving her an understanding of everything from budgets to operating agreements.</p>
<p>Looking at an animated film by Lynn Tomlinson ’88, a viewer feels like they’re in front of an impressionist painting by Van Gogh or the Hudson River School painters, or riding the waves with fishermen in a work by Winslow Homer.</p><p>Tomlinson uses colorful, clay-on-glass animation to create her stories, a process where oil-based modeling clay is spread thinly on a glass sheet and moved frame-by-frame like a moving finger painting.</p>
<p>Twenty-six Cornell graduate students have won more than $42,000 in fall 2018 Research Travel Grants, which provide students up to $2,000 to conduct thesis or dissertation research away from campus. In a typical year, 70 to 80 students receive these competitive grants from the Graduate School. More grant winners will be announced in the spring.</p>
The first feature film of Department of Performing and Media Arts alumna Amanda Idoko ’10, "Breaking News in Yuba County," will be produced in mid-2019, starring Allison Janney and Laura Dern.
<p> <em>This is an episode from the “What Makes Us Human?” podcast's fifth season, "What Do We Know about Inequality?" from Cornell University’s College of Arts & Sciences, showcasing the newest thinking from across the disciplines about inequality. Featuring audio essays written and recorded by Cornell faculty, the series releases a new episode each Thursday through the fall semester.</em></p>
The George Jean Nathan Award Committee has named John H. Muse of the University of Chicago and arts journalist Helen Shaw as winners of the 2017-18 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, citing “their invigorating and perceptive theatrical analyses.”
A deceitful, pious man abuses his professional status to defraud and swindle trusting citizens in “Tartuffe,” written by French playwright Moliere in 1664. This enduring play, which challenges ideas of authoritarianism and hypocrisy, is brought to life by Cornell students in a performance venture at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts February 14–16.
What would you do if you only had 100 days left to live? That’s the central question explored in the musical "Hundred Days"; Julia Dunetz '19 is associate producer and alumna Dana M. Lerner '14 is co-producer.
The program "hopes to stimulate conversation across the campus about technology, visionary thinking and education.”
<p>On March 15–16, the Department of Performing and Media Arts will host an interdisciplinary symposium titled “Feminist Directions: Performance, Power, and Leadership.” Over the course of the symposium, internationally acclaimed artists Tisa Chang (Pan Asian Repertory Theatre), Holly Hughes (University of Michigan), Leigh Fondakowski (Tectonic Theatre Project), Rhodessa Jones (Cultural Odyssey), Peggy Shaw (Split Britches), and Lois Weaver (Queen Mary University of London) will join local artis</p>
In a commentary for the LA Review of Books, Mary Armstrong Meduski '80 Assistant Professor Samantha N Shephard launches a critique of the recent SpringHill Entertainment documentary, "Shut Up and Dribble". The documentary focuses on NBA athletes' historical relationship with civil rights issues and the power dyanmics of the league today. Sheppard, an expert in Black cultural production and production culture, criticizes the film's overly simplistic narrative of social change; one that omits women and other marginalized figures such as victims of HIV.
<p><a href="https://pma.cornell.edu/samantha-noelle-sheppard">Samantha Sheppard</a>, the Mary Armstrong Meduski assistant professor of performing & media arts, <a href="http://bit.ly/2H01yaB">writes in The Atlantic </a>about Oscar nominated film, "Hale County This Morning, This Evening," saying that the nod is a diversion from the Academy’s typical recognition of black cinema.</p>
<p>Three dance pieces, unique in concept and execution, explore intersecting themes of love, loss, and found community in the Cornell Department of Performing & Media Arts’ (PMA) annual Locally Grown Dance concert, March 7–9 in the Kiplinger Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.edintemann.info/">E.D. (Ed) Intemann</a>, M.F.A. ’84, a senior lecturer in the <a href="https://pma.cornell.edu/edward-david-intemann">Department of Performing and Media Arts</a> and resident lighting designer at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts for more than two decades, died Feb. 21 at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse. He was 60.</p>
Performers told stories from their lives and shared music, dance and poetry about being Latinx in Ithaca, in Habla/Speak, a bilingual collective creation performance.
<p>Bollywood director Nandita Das brings her breakout 2018 film “Manto,” the story of maverick writer Saadat Hasan Manto during the Partition of India, to Cornell on <a href="http://events.cornell.edu/event/sap_seminar_series_manto_film_screening_and_q_a_with_director_nandita_das">Thursday, March 14</a>.</p>
<p>The history of feminist performance is one of radical storytelling, of showing how the personal is political, and of carving out spaces in which women can feel, in the words of performance artist Holly Hughes, “at last, fully human.”</p><p>An interdisciplinary symposium at Cornell March 15-16 will explore what this history can teach us about the future of feminism, and how we can use performance to reflect the changes we want to see.</p>
<p>The winners of the Department of Performing & Media Arts’ Heermans-McCalmon undergraduate writing competition will be honored Friday, March 22, at 4:30 p.m. in the Class of ’56 Dance Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.</p>