test events

Description

Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for Professional Directions: A Conversation with Keri Putnam, A.D. White Professor-at-Large on Thursday, March 19, at 2:00 pm, in the Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Free and open to the public. Tickets are not required. The event will be moderated by Roger Moseley (Music, Milstein Program) and Sabine Haenni (Performing and Media Arts), and will include a Q&A with students.

During this conversation, Putnam will discuss how she went from having a B.A. in Theater History and Literature to a career at HBO Movies & Mini Series, to President of Production at Miramax, a major player in the independent film production landscape, to her key role at Sundance Institute, overseeing the Sundance Film Festival. She will share advice on getting started, on how to find and make most of mentors, on how to fight barriers and inequities in the media industry, on how to nurture transformative storytelling, and much more.

Keri Putnam is an award-winning media leader and producer, board member, and strategic advisor, who works at the intersection of the creative and business sides of the media and arts fields. In her roles as CEO and Executive Director of Sundance Institute, President of Production at Miramax, and Executive Vice President of HBO, Putnam guided strategy and led global creative and production teams to support, develop, finance, and supervise production on a vast array of critically acclaimed work. Putnam founded Putnam Pictures, a production company dedicated to championing dynamic, transformative storytelling, driven by adventurous vision and that reflect the complexities of the human experience. She also co-founded ReFrame, a groundbreaking, industry initiative designed to advance gender equity and dismantle systemic barriers in media–in front of and behind the camera–through strategic partnerships, advocacy, and innovative programs. Read more.

The Professional Directions series brings industry experts to campus to speak about their career journeys as screenwriters, playwrights, editors, producers, directors, theatre critics, dramaturgs, and more.

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Later in the day, join for Seeds - Screening & Discussion with A.D. White Professor-at-Large Keri Putnam and filmmaker Brittany Shyne, on Thursday, March 19 at 6:00 pm, at Cornell Cinema.

Description

Join PMA for An Evening with Nona Hendryx: A Conversation on Life, Music, and Creative Practice, on Thursday, March 19, from 5:15 pm to 6:30 pm, in the Milstein Auditorium, Milstein Hall. This event is part of the Black Sound Series, organized by Mendi Obadike and Keith Obadike. Co-sponsored by the Department of Performing and Media Arts, Sounds of Blackness, Milstein Program, Department of Music, Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program, American Studies Program, and the Department of Art.

Legendary artist Nona Hendryx will participate in a public dialogue with faculty members Mendi + Keith Obadike about her six-decade career spanning popular music, art, and technology. Widely known as a founding member of Labelle and the group’s chief songwriter, Hendryx went on to establish herself as an art rocker in the 1980s. In more recent years she has written music for theater and film and collaborated with visual artists like Carrie Mae Weems and Nick Cave. She has also presented multimedia performances at MoogFest and MASS MOCA.

Nona Hendryx: From her Hall of Fame worthy beginnings with Patti LaBelle & The Bluebelles to her revolutionary ventures into art-rock, new-wave, and now cutting-edge mixed reality experiences, Nona Hendryx continues to earn her title as music's "Queen of Transformation." With the group LaBelle, Hendryx earned three Gold Albums and a #1 Worldwide Platinum Hit with "Lady Marmalade." Her solo career encompasses nine studio albums and collaborations with Prince, Peter Gabriel, Talking Heads, George Clinton, and others. In 2024, she premiered "The Dream Machine Experience" at Lincoln Center — an ambitious mixed reality installation combining augmented reality, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence rooted in Afro-Futurism.

2025 marks an extraordinary year of recognition and new ventures for Hendryx. She is the honoree for the 2025 Creative Capital annual gala and selected as the Roth Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College for 2025-2026. Her current projects showcase her continued innovation at the intersection of art and technology, proving that true innovation comes from fearlessly embracing change while remaining rooted in authentic creative expression.

Learn more about Nona Hendryx.

Description

Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for PMAPS Colloquium with AE Stevenson: “‘Oh My Fucking God, She Fucking Dead’: Time in a Vine,” on Friday, March 20, from 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm, in the Film Forum, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. AE Stevenson is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies, University of Chicago. This event is free and open to the public.

“‘Oh My Fucking God, She Fucking Dead’: Time in a Vine,” is about the now-defunct social media app Vine and its patented looping feature that renegotiated online time, not to be mistaken with what Shane Denson calls “Screen Time.” The chapter centers around the case study of Kayla Newman who created the phrase “on fleek” on the app, which quickly became a major socio-cultural indicator for others to generate cultural capital from because it was not attributed back to its Black girl creator. However, while Newman did later get acknowledgement for the creation, it took time. The looping feature of Vine, meaning that the video begins replaying immediately after it finishes, quickly became implemented on all social media sites by 2014 changed the understanding of how long the experience of a video could be. Dr. Stevenson connects the way that time is elapsed on Vine to the way that Black women and girls on this app often could not find a way to own their creations. It has been only after Vine, and its loop, “closed” that these Black women and girls get to reap the nostalgic capital of their creations.

AE Stevenson is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago. She is currently a Residential Fellow at the Franke Institute for the Humanities, where she is working to complete her first monograph, Sites of Chaos: Scenes of a Black Social Life. Sites of Chaos analyzes Vine, TikTok, Instagram’s The Shade Room, and “blackfishing” to argue that Black women and girls have fundamentally changed the visual language of the Internet. She has published in Catalyst, Feminist Media Histories, and liquid blackness.  

This event is sponsored by the Performance and Media Arts Presentation (PMAPS) colloquium series. Inaugurated in Fall 2021, PMAPS is the latest iteration of a colloquium series within the Department of Performing and Media Arts. Its greatest vision lies in offering graduate students a space to present their work to students, faculty, and professionals of similar fields and interests. The content of its presentation’s ranges from media studies to dance, and such diverse nature has earned the attention of related communities both within and outside Ithaca, NY.

Description

Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for PENUMBRA: 2026 ANNUAL SPRING DANCE PRESENTING SERIES, an evening of original dance work featuring choreography by Babatunji Johnson and Assistant Professor of the Practice Danielle Russo, on Friday, March 20, and Saturday March 21, from 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm, in the Class of ’56 Flexible Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Get your free tickets here.

PENUMBRA presents two ensemble dance works that delve into the shadow self and the tensions between impulse, restraint, and the ego. Layers surface and recede as dancers move through the many selves they carry—some revealed, others concealed, held close or kept sacred as acts of survival during an era marked by fear, surveillance, and uncertainty. The evening draws on the psychoanalytic thought of Carl Jung, who understood the shadow as parts of the psyche that remain unseen or outside conscious awareness, alongside Sigmund Freud’s interplay between id and ego, where instinctual drives meet the forces that shape and restrain them. The title evokes the penumbra—the luminous edge of shadow—an image of the threshold where darkness thins and the possibility of light emerges, honoring the quiet persistence of our own.

PENUMBRA is the culmination of DANCING HOME/LAND, which is a yearlong series of live performances and activations, guest artist residencies and symposia, and extra/curricular experiences that engages dance and performance artists, students, and communities in dialogue around memory, migration, and place—and where fantasy can serve as a site for reworlding belonging and futurity. Participating students are enrolled in PMA 1611: Rehearsal and Performance, which is a project course designed to give Cornellians the experience of working with choreographers, companies, designers, and production staff in a professionally modelled setting.

Film work by Associate Professor Jeffrey Palmer. Costume design by Senior Lecturer Sarah Bernstein

Photo credit: Jini Li, Architecture '27

Description

Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for PENUMBRA: 2026 ANNUAL SPRING DANCE PRESENTING SERIES, an evening of original dance work featuring choreography by Babatunji Johnson and Assistant Professor of the Practice Danielle Russo, on Friday, March 20, and Saturday March 21, from 7:30 pm - 8:30 pm, in the Class of ’56 Flexible Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. Get your free tickets here.

PENUMBRA presents two ensemble dance works that delve into the shadow self and the tensions between impulse, restraint, and the ego. Layers surface and recede as dancers move through the many selves they carry—some revealed, others concealed, held close or kept sacred as acts of survival during an era marked by fear, surveillance, and uncertainty. The evening draws on the psychoanalytic thought of Carl Jung, who understood the shadow as parts of the psyche that remain unseen or outside conscious awareness, alongside Sigmund Freud’s interplay between id and ego, where instinctual drives meet the forces that shape and restrain them. The title evokes the penumbra—the luminous edge of shadow—an image of the threshold where darkness thins and the possibility of light emerges, honoring the quiet persistence of our own.

PENUMBRA is the culmination of DANCING HOME/LAND, which is a yearlong series of live performances and activations, guest artist residencies and symposia, and extra/curricular experiences that engages dance and performance artists, students, and communities in dialogue around memory, migration, and place—and where fantasy can serve as a site for reworlding belonging and futurity. Participating students are enrolled in PMA 1611: Rehearsal and Performance, which is a project course designed to give Cornellians the experience of working with choreographers, companies, designers, and production staff in a professionally modelled setting.

Film work by Associate Professor Jeffrey Palmer. Costume design by Senior Lecturer Sarah Bernstein

Photo credit: Jini Li, Architecture '27

Description

Join the Department of Performing and Media Arts for Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Auditions, on Monday, March 23, from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm, in the Black Box Theatre, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.

Twelfth Night, one of Shakespeare’s most beloved plays, will be produced in the Fall 2026 semester with performances on October 23-24 and 30-31. All are welcome to audition!

SIGN-UP FOR AN AUDITION

Audition Requirements: Please choose a 10–25-line speech from the audition material available here.

Description

"Chats with the Chair" invites PMA majors, minors, and those interested in the department to join the chair for food and fellowship. 

Come learn more about the department, give feedback, and talk about everything performing and media arts at Cornell and beyond! Lunch provided! 

Mark your calendar for: 

• CANCELLED: Friday, February 27, 1pm – 2pm (Please RSVP by February 25 to pma@cornell.edu)
• Friday, April 10, Noon - 1pm (Please RSVP by April 8 to pma@cornell.edu)

Location: Room 220, Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts