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This past weekend, I attended Penn State Centre Stage production of "In the Red and Brown Water," and I was sitting on the edge of my seat from start to finish, very much enraptured by the actors' portrayal of the complex characters and the production's handling of the intense themes.

The play, directed by Steve Broadnax and written by Tarell Alvin McCraney, centers on the main character Oya's coming of age and maturation within the realm of the Louisiana housing projects. Oya, a young African American woman known for her running talent and speed, is offered a scholarship promising to take her to college and away from the projects, but she sacrifices her dream to take care of her ailing mother.

Throughout the rest of the play, Oya struggles with the repercussions of her decision, feeling empty inside and unhappy, spending most days sitting on her front porch. As Oya watches her neighbors have children, she desperately yearns to have her own baby, someone to give her purpose and a meaningful life, someone she can look at and then see her "mirror image."

Two young men pursue Oya, further affecting her inner turmoil. Shango, a passionate, sexually charged lover who she argues with but clearly loves more, brings out her smile and the fire within her. On the other hand, her time spent with Ogun Size, a sweet, stuttering mechanic who simply wants to protect her and keep her safe, only exacerbates her melancholic feeling.

While the overall main plot carries a tone of despair, there is still a more humorous and comic side, which is in part due to the play's unique writing style. The playwright, McCraney, writes the stage directions into the dialogue of the play, such as "Shin hums," "Shango enters in his recruitment army uniform," and "Aunt Eleuga weeps." In this sense, the characters assert what they are going to do before they do it, and then the actions (Shin's humming, Shango's entrance, and Aunt Elegua's weeping) immediately follow. For example, when Oya watches her Aunt Eleuga dance, the character Oya first remarks, "Oya laughs, because how can she not," then pauses, then laughs out loud.

In my view, this original method definitely highlights the characters' self-awareness and self-consciousness of their inner mindsets and actions. It especially adds comic relief and a break from the drama when a character interrupts a serious scene to interject with a stage direction, such as when a grieving Oya says, "Oya comforts her aunt" and then proceeds to pat her weeping aunt's back.

These asides also break the fourth wall (the imaginary wall usually built to separate the audience and the actors), since the characters often faced the audience while stating their stage directions and then turned back to the action on stage. This allowed the audience to feel an even greater connection and interaction with the characters.

Even amidst the very tragic themes of heartache and loss, the characterization of some added another layer of humor. For instance, Aunt Eleuga's flirtatious behavior, particularly with one of her godniece's friends, earned a lot of laughs from the lively audience. The incorporation of music, such as the Pussycat Dolls' "Buttons" and the song "Bump 'N Grind," also contributed to tempering the heavy themes.

Ultimately, I was incredibly impressed by Centre Stage's performance and how it included elements of singing, drumming, and modern dancing, which were seamlessly interwoven into the dramatic play and added tremendously to the play's cohesiveness, energy, and overall impact. I left having enjoyed a fine night of theatre in State College and eagerly looking forward to attend more of their productions in the future.

Image: Penn State Centre Stage

Hello, everyone! My name is Grace Schmidt, and I will be following in former "Art Actually" blogger Paige Cooperstein's footsteps this semester as the new arts blogger. I am excited to explore and blog about the wide range of artsy-related events offered here at Penn State, from musical theatre shows to poetry readings.

Last week, the Center for the Performing Arts presented the Actors from the London Stage performance of The Merchant of Venice, a William Shakespeare play that centers around a merchant, Antonio, who signs a bond agreeing to allow the lender to cut off a pound of his flesh if he fails to repay his debt. A host of other subplots--such as the courtship of Portia, who can only marry after her suitors solve an elaborate puzzle her father created, and the rebellion of Jessica, a Jewish daughter who runs away to marry a Christian--intertwine and create a breadth of characters.

As I sat in the audience prior to the show, I wondered how five actors would be able to put on the entire show, which includes twenty vastly different characters. It didn't take long for me to become extremely impressed by how quickly the actors were able to transform into entirely different personas without even leaving the stage or substantially changing their costumes or props. They repeatedly demonstrated their ability to adapt, swiftly taking on the often diverging motivations, resentments, and back stories of the various characters they portrayed.

For example, one actor took on the roles of both Jessica and Nerissa and switched back and forth between them, differentiating the two by wearing a piece of cloth as a shawl when playing Nerissa and then wrapping it around her head when performing Jessica's parts.

In some instances, the actors even played several different characters in one scene, which I think added a lot to the humor of the show. As I learned in my sophomore Shakespeare class, The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare's more controversial plays because it grapples with issues of prejudice and the concepts of justice and mercy. There has traditionally been debate over whether it is a comedy, and it is often labeled as a tragic comedy due to its heavy themes and dramatic scenes. Ultimately, the switching back and forth between characters in a single scene, such as when the one actor transformed from doomed Antonio into the clown figure Lancelot, added substantially to the comedy of the performance.

The stamina, energy, and talent that the actors brought to their unconventional portrayal of the play (without elaborate sets, costumes, crew, or even a director) amazed me. The Actors from the London Stage are made up of five British artists who travel to perform at different universities, seeking to make Shakespearean plays more accessible to modern day audiences, according to the program. In my view, they were definitely successful.

Photo Credit: Peter Ringenberg

On Penn State's annual Blue and White weekend (April 20 - 22), the art makers across campus premiered their final showcases. As Matt Toronto, a Penn State theatre professor who premiered his first feature film at the State Theatre in March, would say, a premiere must be taken seriously.

Duly, Matt and Aaron Toronto rode into the State College premiere of their film The Pact on "man-sized" tricycles.  

Matt explained, "When we rented the red carpet, there were these man-sized tricycles that were just sitting there, calling out to us. We started riding them around the store while we were waiting for them to get our carpet ready, and my brother said, 'We need to enter on these!' And so we rented them that day, spur of the moment."

Matt's wife Jordan Toronto, who plays the local bartender in The Pact, didn't even know about the tricycles until she saw them enter the State Theatre for the premiere on Saturday, March, 31st (The Pact ran at the State Theatre until Wednesday, April 4th with a different set of student films showing as previews on each night). I got a taste of more student films at the Student Film Organization's (SFO) Blue and White Film Festival on Sunday the 22nd, but more on that later.  

First, on Saturday, the members of Blue in the Face (BITF), one of Penn State's A Cappella groups, premiered their 2012 CD. Blue in the Face filled 105 Forum with smoke and purple-blue lighting. I filed into the full house with 15 of my closest art appreciating friends for the two-hour show.

Some in the audience had signs, since BITF's spring concert also functions as an end of year celebration for its senior members, but my two rows had 16 (including me) pairs of hands to clap and hoot and holler for Ravi Shah, BITF's resident vocal percussionist. Also a member of the Blue Band's drum line, Ravi provided a well-timed and adaptable backbone to each song BITF covered, including a dub step vocal approximation in the song "Louder."

The 2012 concert felt especially special to all the seniors, who started their time at Penn State at the same time as Blue in the Face formed in 2008. The class of 2012 is the first official class of BITF-ers. Many of its senior members had a hand in starting the vocal group and have been with BITF since its inception. Audience members and performers alike could feel the magic of the last night for the senior singers.   

Blue and White Sunday, Penn State student film makers had the same chance to say "See what we have accomplished in our time at Penn State." SFO filled the State Theatre for a three and a half hour festival featuring over 17 films. The audience responded instinctively to their classmates' films, laughing at the funny parts and gasping at the scary parts. I must say that "Sins of Another" really got my knees bunched and knuckles linked. I peeked through braided fingers to watch their supernatural mini-thriller.

But the real stand-outs of the night were the animated films and the documentaries. For student films with limited production resources, using a concentrated topic enables the film to succeed. "Specs," an animation sublime in its efficient execution, features a guy who'd rather remain in his room with his imagination - through the lenses of his glasses his drawings come alive - than go out with a friend. I only fault the sound production for providing muffled lines of dialogue slightly incongruent to, and made redundant by, the subtitles for the speech. But visually, "Specs" was a well put together short.

Of course, I can't not mention the perfect animated short, "Space for Sale," directed by Alyssa Timoteo. This short was one of the student films I saw as a preview to Matt Toronto's The Pact. Alyssa created a focused plot, compiling five reasons why monsters don't live under your bed. She employed paper made characters in stop-motion animation to illustrate the monster under the bed in each example. She has a compact sense of humor that expresses itself perfectly in a short film. One hilarious rationale for monsters not wanting under-the-bed real estate: Humans are messy. The blue kidney-shaped monster then runs back and forth under the bed, toting a trash can to catch the pizza and dirty sock discarded by the unicorn-shirt wearing, human inhabitant of the room.

SFO's Blue and White Film Festival closed the night with a handful of documentaries. Kelsey Hoffman provided a good range of interviews in her "Adam, Meet Eve," a film that sought to dissect male-female relationships. She featured herself and two friends with their boyfriends, as well as Penn State professors of psychology and sociology, plus a doctoral candidate in women's studies.

Caitlin Keller provided the most entertaining documentary of the night, and again I will compliment the topic choice. Her documentary, "On Tour with My Hero Zero," followed the State College cover band with a hefty following among Penn State students. Keller even had on stage footage of the band playing at THON 2012. Many in the audience had seen this band play live, so they felt especially connected to the short film. And it didn't hurt that the guys in the band were that right blend of quirky and charismatic.            

Over the course of Blue and White weekend, I saw many Penn Staters taking stock of their time here with their overarching presentations of their work. No wonder, when you consider the kernel of the Penn State Blue and White tradition; Penn State's annual Blue and White football game has a complex scoring method not seen in any usual game of Nittany Lions football. Since the Offense plays the Defense, each team must play their usual role plus a little extra outside their comfort zone to score points.

In fact, haven't we all done that with our time at Penn State? Performed our usual role - in my case as an English student - plus a little extra - here a hat tip from your campus arts blogger of three semesters. On May 5th, I, and thousands of others, will graduate from Penn State. This Blue and White weekend, I took stock of my time here, and I've had four valuable years. Hats off to the Class of 2012, I hope you all continue to pursue your own arts!  

SOMA, not only the drug of choice in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, also houses a majority of the Penn State hipster artist scene. Operating under the acronym for Students Organizing the Multiple Arts, SOMA's famed events include open mic nights in Waring Commons and Arts Crawl, the mass migration held every spring in and around the Visual Arts Building for a sampling of visual and audio arts.

The hipster feel is so homegrown amongst this group of tight knit friends that constitute the club that before SOMA's most recent open mic night began, a guy from the audience observed, "I think 90% of the skinny jeans in State College are in this room right now! Not that I'm judging. I mean, hey, I have skinny jeans too." He looked down at his own pants longingly, almost wishing he had toted out his skinny jeans for the occasion.       

Enter the Valentine's Day themed open mic night coupled with a "Find your SOMAte" date auction, together deemed Sloppy Seconds. One of the emcees for the evening, Sam Hopkins, told the audience that SOMA's annual Valentine's Day open mic night/date auction usually rakes in big bucks for the club. With SOMA's main event a little over a month away (this year's Arts Crawl will run on March 30th), some fundraising was definitely in order.    

Performers could sign up separately for the two halves of Sloppy Seconds. In between the many performances - so many guitars and so many amps! Again reminding me of their close knit hipster-ness when Devin William Daniels took to the stage and realized he dropped his pick: "Can someone get me a pick? I know someone else has got to have a pick in this place!" - the people who signed up for the date auction with snarky personal ads sold themselves in the name of art. The typical bid was $5. For the majority of the night, I watched the winners claim their dates with a handshake and a rose. Everyone treated their "SOMAte" playfully, escorting their date off the stage with its candy heart backdrop.

But things got serious after the threesome of Ian, John and Ryan played their cover of "the mouse that is modest" (or Modest Mouse for the uninitiated). When Ian auctioned himself off, his value jumped from the traditional $5 to a fetching $22. I think it was his answer to favorite pick-up line that really sold him: WHAT ARE THE CHANCES OF US MAKING OUT RIGHT NOW??? Ian's friends filled out the form for him, but he owned the moment when he explained that you had to yell his pick-up line, hence the all-caps, otherwise it didn't have nearly the same success rate.

I thought for sure Ian would represent SOMA's highest take for the night. But then Cassandra Yatron took to the stage. She came from Problem Child, a Penn State Literary Magazine that also set up shop at Sloppy Seconds to sell Valentine's Day poetry. Her bidding war also ended in $22. Turns out Sam wasn't kidding. SOMA, with the help of its skinny jean wearing contingent, fundraised with the best of them.

SOMA might even come out richer still if they take advantage of some parting advice from the audience. When Sam's fellow emcee took the stage towards the end of the night and spotted Devin's pick lying on the floor, an audience member called out, "You can probably get ten bucks out of him for that!"

"Oh really?" the emcee chuckled.    

On Friday the 13th, theatre kids rose like the full moon. 111 Forum was characteristically bright on the first Friday night of the semester, but this time, was not preparing for a No Refund Theatre show to begin. At 6 pm, about 15 people gathered in Forum waiting for a specific set of instructions that would begin the 2012 VAGANZA weekend.

Steve Travis, a 2010 meteorology grad, who organized this year's VAGANZA, explained, "This year, you have the opportunity to adapt a big-budget movie for the stage, on no budget at all! These are movies that no one would be crazy enough to try to adapt into a play. But the key is parody. Don't take a script word-for-word and shot-for-shot...please don't. That would be illegal. But you can mock it all you want,"

In the past, VAGANZA gathered teams on the first weekend of the Spring or Fall semester, and gave each team a word. Teams had 24 hours to write, produce and rehearse their own 30 minute plays, somehow utilizing the theme word.

When Steve participated in VAGANZA, the word was "field," which his group turned into "Play the Field," a Dating Game inspired show. Another year included the word "inflation." One team that year turned the word into a musical based on the Hindenburg. According to Steve, VAGANZA has been around for at least a year or two before he joined the club in 2009.

But, Steve noted that recently interest had waned in NRT's annual theatre challenge: "And then one day, I was joking around with my friends. We were talking about how weird it would be, taking movies that are just so ridiculous and saying, 'Okay, now we're going to put them on the stage.' And then we just put the two together and said, 'That would be a really good idea for the VAGANZA.' It was something I would really want to do, so I thought I could get a lot of people interested in it."

That proved true for the 2012 participants. VAGANZA allows newcomers to NRT a chance to get their feet wet with the club. Anyone can participate. This year, Max Simone, current president of NRT, made sure that everyone cannonballed into the theatre pool, and had some fun splashing around in it before Steve assigned the teams, and those teams battled it out for their movie choices.

First came the license to let go and let the creativity flow. Everyone formed a circle, revealed their favorite Pokémon, and passed an imaginary bunny back and forth. And with that, they immediately bonded with their new teammates.

Team Max Simone included junior in English and film, Max Simone; freshman in nuclear engineering Brian Gutierrez; senior in computer engineering, Josh Angstadt; and senior in wildlife and fisheries, Luke Abercrombie. VAGANZA's Friday served as their first introduction to each other. Although Josh said he did participate in the pit for NRT's production of Dr. Horrible, in which Max also participated.

"I wore flannel!" Max said.

Brain bantered, "And nothing says participation like flannel!"

It was clear I was witnessing the birth of a great theatre collaboration.

Team Vince Tran included sophomore in telecommunications, Vince Tran; 2007 grad in secondary education, Dustin Yenser; senior in secondary English education, Martin Byrne; and freshman in civil engineering, Rachel Taylor (on the night of the show, Matt Kaye filled in for Dustin.) 

A pantomimed shoot-out settled the dispute of who would choose their movie first. Team Max Simone got the Jurassic Park movie they were gunning for, while Team Vince Tran decided to perform the complete works of Harry Potter...abridged! Martin thought the rule that prohibited teams from buying supplies for their shows provided the most excitement for the challenge.

"Being poor is a parody of being alive," he said. 

On the night of the show, however, no expenses were spared. The VAGANZA cup, which Steve deemed "legit" for the $60 he spent on it, sat center stage.

"This is what they're really playing for," Steve reminded the audience.

Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, Gebeba Baderoon and Shailja Patel entered Foster Auditorium like a storm two weeks ago. Thirty minutes before their poetry reading was scheduled to begin, I watched them strategize about microphones and drag the book table from its usual corner to the center of the room. While they were laboring, Wesley readjusted her gold and black head wrap and exhaled, "My son keeps telling me I'm in the 1%, but I promise, I'm a poet, I'm in the 99!"

Even as a professor at Penn State Altoona, Wesley was aware of the Occupy movement in University Park. Again, these poets reminded me how poetry is never far from a social consciousness. Throughout the evening, Wesley, Baderoon and Patel shared poems about their life travels that led them out of Africa. These three poets who represented Africa for an evening gave a unique perspective on America from the outside in.

Baderoon started the evening humbly. Referring to her fellow poets for the evening, she said, "I'm going to read as the opening act to the grown-up poets."

She read a poem called "Old Photographs" about her coming to America, which she admitted she did for love. Because Baderoon started with an open source love poem to South Africa, she paused to contemplate before her next poem: "You might wonder why I left. That's a mysterious question. I don't quite know yet...if I have left."

When she contemplates her lover in "Old Photographs," Baderoon asks, "Was this the beginning of leaving?" It was clear to the audience that we were seeing a South African woman, even in the midst of our American world. She never lost what it was in her to be South African because she continued to mine that identity in her writing.

Wesley came to the podium next with her poem "Home Coming." She gave the popole chant of mourning before she began, which she translated as "The world is ending, come, we finish." In the Liberian civil war, Wesley said her brother, her brother-in-law and her brother-in-law's entire family were drowned by the military. The hurt inspired her to write about what it would be like for her to go home after that tragedy, after so much time away.

She started her poem "Home Coming" with the line, "I don't want to be a stranger when I come home/ I want my brothers to take me in." Wesley later asks, "If they kill all my brothers/ who will welcome me home?" She wants to return to Liberia so her brothers can recite her praise names, in their proper order, to incessant drumming.

Wesley concluded her portion of the reading with a poem "for [her] children growing up in America." For her that was a foreign concept and she said that sometimes it was sad to think that her children were only growing up in America, even though she did ultimately love the country.

Patel went through a similar love-hate relationship with America and closed the evening with a portion of her "Migritude," which she read by memory. Migritude is a word that Patel made up to create the image of a migrant with attitude. Being a third generation Indian in Kenya who was then deported to England and eventually made her way to California, Patel knows a thing or two about being a migrant.

In "Migritude," Patel detailed the story of her parents flying to visit her and her sister in San Francisco. Her parents got detained in the airport, after flying for 17 hours, because of some small inconsistency on their passports. And when her mom hears the customs officer saying he's hungry, she offers him a bit of her sandwich even though she's just been traveling for 17 hours and isn't even allowed to leave the airport in America. But as Patel's Migritude shows, she learned from her mother to love the people around her.

Patel's final offering of the evening was to discuss her open source love poem to Oakland, California, which closed the evening on another Occupy movement reference. She detailed how Occupy Oakland had come for the city she loved and the people she loved. Baderoon and Wesley both praised Patel for the recurrence in her poem of "the city I love" and "the people I love," because, after all, their evening of poetry together was about love - love of each other, love of poetry, and most importantly love of the respective places that these women have found themselves in their lives.  

Paul Taylor had Graham Spanier talking about his moves. Before Taylor came out to greet the audience, Spanier said, "For a dancer like me," pause for laughter, "whose right hip doesn't know what his left is doing, I consider [Taylor] a marvel!"

That, if nothing else, makes Taylor worthy in my book of being the 2011 recipient of the Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities (IAH) Medal for Distinguished Achievement. Incidentally, Taylor is also special for being the only medal recipient to be born in Pennsylvania, giving the crowd attending Taylor's performance last Thursday at Eisenhower Auditorium a rush of home state pride. Taylor's performance was one of the first few performances thus far in the 2011 - 2012 Center for the Performing Arts season, which is shaping up to be a good one! 

At the top of the evening, Michael Bérubé, the IAH director, introduced the video that would detail Taylor's trajectory from professional dancer to choreographer. The video, produced with the help of WPSU, featured an exposition of Taylor's work written by Bérubé and Amy Vashaw. To hear Bérubé talk is to listen to an engaging essay, but even hearing his writing contribution narrated by Patty Satalia, it was clear he could articulate a thesis like nobody's business. The video got me jazzed to see Taylor's work live, especially his finale, choreographed to Piazzolla Caldera. I knew from the moment I caught a glimpse of this dance in the introduction that it was going to be my favorite performance.

But just like anything that's good, it was saved till the very end. I flicked through my program one last time to get a feel for the evening ahead before the house lights dimmed and the show was about to begin. Once the curtain rose, I was glad I did take that extra second to scan my program. I happened to catch the name Jennifer Tipton as the "Lighting by" credit, and I was glad, as the show began, that I had a name in mind to be thanking. The opening dance was lit in such a crisp white light that the entire stage looked fresh, including the dancers in their deer and moss colored costumes. Tipton was just as much a contributing artist to the scene as was Taylor in his crafting of the leaps and twirls that seemed to tell an early forest awakening through the movements of Bach's Brandenburgs. Every time one of the women spun across the stage, her skirt bellowed out in a velvet lily. 

More female dancers came out for the second sequence in the ensemble of dances. The ratio was almost even as the men and women entered the stage in torn, gauzy red-blue or green-brown leotards. The dance Taylor choreographed to The Uncommitted was much more active and much less fragile than the first sequence. Taylor created such a sad illustration of being alone in the world. All eleven dancers on stage lined up in a circle, first walking around it then gradually running around it, until two circles broke off from the original one as if in mitosis. One girl was left out in the middle. She looked to the right and made as if to join that circle, but didn't quite fit, so then she looked to the left and tried to jump in, but that was hard, too. Finally, she fell in behind the left circle, but I was left with such sadness for the lonely dancer that still didn't quite fit.

But finally, finally, my anticipation was satisfied with the dance to the Piazzolla Caldera. Taylor was quoted in the introductory video as describing this dance as the physical narrative of the sex act. There was great movement in this tango-tap hybrid dance that Taylor crafted, which was perfectly complemented by the tattered dresses that registered every movement, and the moving metal light fixtures that mirrored the fanned out shape of the dresses worn in Brandenburgs. The intensity of the dance was on edge the whole time. Each movement hit with the tight perfection of passion. The dance was the perfect combination of all the previous elements Taylor had exhibited in his choreography.

I didn't want it to end. But when it inevitably did, I walked out of the auditorium feeling incredibly grateful to the Center for the Performing Arts for giving me the opportunity to attend the Paul Taylor Dance Company performance. I encourage everyone to check out the rest of the performances that the CPA has to offer!

Linda Gregerson is a poet who loves multiple voicing. She admitted to this slightly self-effacingly somewhere near the middle of her poetry reading in the Foster Auditorium last Thursday. It made every poetry student in the room want to run up and hug her, comforting her with, "It's okay, we love you, we appreciate every 'she,' 'you,' 'they,' 'us,' and 'I' perspective you managed to cram into a single poem."

This past week, students in every poetry class on campus were reading either Magnetic North or The Woman who died in her Sleep in preparation for Gregerson's arrival. So when Gregerson finally did arrive, all white blonde hair and pixie stature, the crowd watching her was a self-contained interpretive community (shout out to Stanley Fish!) coming to her reading from equal preparation.

Normally, I go to readings by authors in the Mary E. Rolling Reading Series because I figure I better take advantage of the opportunity to hear an author read their work live. But this time, I had the added benefit of foreknowledge of Gregerson's poetry. From my poetry seminar with Robin Becker, I had the poems from The Woman who died in her Sleep on repeat in my brain for over a week before the reading.

At the reading, Professor Becker introduced Gregerson. Of course I had heard Robin Becker do her fair share of poetry reading in class, but there's something about putting her behind a podium and a microphone that heightens the drama of her voice, which already gives the feeling that something is truly at stake. Even Becker's prose had a stylized attention to rhythm, so much so that when Gregerson approached the podium and kissed a greeting to Becker, her first words were, "I think I should just have you read my poems."

But Gregerson's no slouch with her voice either. She opened her reading strong with the one-two punch of "Sweet," from Magnetic North and "For the Taking," from The Woman who died in her Sleep. She's not afraid to look at you when she reads or give her characters voices besides her own in the poem. Her readings were always an engagement with the audience.

Throughout, Gregerson was tightly hilarious in her delivery. In "Sweet," Gregerson reads the line, "Sweet, he said./ Your mother's wrong but sweet," there was a brief pause for laughter here. Gregerson appreciated the laughs in a later poem she read called "The Selvage." Describing a story her daughters told her about canvassing for Obama, she wrote the lines, "they used the word/ we've all agreed to banish from even our/ innermost thoughts, which is when/ I knew he was going to win." When a light skittering laughter made its way across the room, Gregerson said, "I love when people laugh there."

At the end of her reading, Gregerson returned to "The Selvage" to talk about its evolution as a poem. This was great to hear from the poet's own mouth the journey she took and the struggle she had with her own words. She explained how later in her writing life she turned to writing dramatic monologues.

"I like this dramatic monologue business," she said, "because it's an exercise in restraint for me."

But outside of the dramatic monologues (which she has written for Dido, St. Peter, and Ananias to name a few), she said she could never quite manage to write a short poem. Her poems usually occur in several movements. After writing the first movement of "The Selvage," which detailed the story about canvassing for Obama, Gregerson initially congratulated herself on finally writing a short poem! But the next morning when she came to the poem again, she shook her head and realized, "Nope, I just can't end it here. The ironies are predictable and the images clichéd." It takes a strong poet to realize when your own work isn't right. Gregerson wasn't afraid to struggle with her stunted attempt at a poem instead of abandoning it altogether.

Gregerson said she's learned a lot by forcing herself to write, either through commissioned pieces (which she announces as her "Favorite!") or through not being afraid to keep writing until she feels the writing is done. By the end of her reading, which she joked about as being long and arduous, Professor Bill Cobb opened the floor for the post reading discussion. His contribution to the talk, as hilarious as was his interaction with Rebecca Rasmussen, was to make a surprise announcement to his Intro to Creative Writing Class.

By way of posing a question to Gregerson, Professor Cobb said, "They don't know it yet, but my intro class is about to get their first poetry assignment," here he paused so that the members of his class at the reading could absorb his mischief, "So...do you have any suggestions for them?"

Art Actually is still around! After a successful semester of arts blogging in the spring, I'm back to reprise my role as art lover and blogger extraordinaire (in addition to my daily disguise as English major.) It's my senior year, which means I've got this campus down pat. I know what's going on when and where. I'm determined, I've got a plan, I'll be taking on my limited time with my Penn State Bucket List in hand. But even after four years of seeking out the arts underground at Penn State, and half a year of writing about it, I have to shake my head and chuckle at the fact that I can still be surprised by what goes on at Penn State.

The plan was to meet Mark Bartels, a recent convert to the theatre, by the fish tank in the HUB. No Refund Theatre was opening its fall season in 111 Forum with a two man show. On the way, I met my ever sassy sidekick, Jen Kach. And on our way to the forum, the funniest thing (if you're in the mood to appreciate a pun on a Latin class comedy) happened. The three of us had a celebrity run-in with Matt Nathanson.

Matt Nathanson's concert surprised us. Pollock road was closed off for a Block Party in front of the HUB the first weekend of the semester. Belly dancers were on the stage when Jen and I first walked into the middle of the street. Sound poured out of the speakers in a great echoing thud that reminds you you're one of many.

And then the crowd surged forward. Matt Nathanson was throwing his guitar strap over his shoulder. Here's the thing about Matt Nathanson. When you first hear him play "Come on Get Higher" (the song that Nathanson is most famous for), "Wedding Dress" or "Modern Love" you imagine he's every bit the sensitive brunette that takes on every affair of the heart with the help of his acoustic guitar. And his doughy-built doe eyed face smacks of eternal softness... until the day you see him perform at your school, all groomed scruff and loose cannon mouth.

I never expected Matt Nathanson to tell me that the best stories happen when you're naked or that he was going to eat Sabarros out of house and home after the show. My Matt Nathanson doesn't say such things. My Matt Nathanson only knows how to fall in love. Apparently, he also knows how to deliver an eyebrow-raising good time. His show was part musical chill session that the whole audience can sway to and part comedy tour.

Matt Nathanson loves his audience as much as he loves his music. He responded to shout outs from the crowd as if he were joking around with friends, and he explained one song as, "You know that girl who's so beautiful, with the long blonde hair that's so shiny you just want to touch it and run your hands through it. But then when it's lying down on the pillow next to you and you do finally touch it, you notice these devil horns hiding underneath...but you still don't really regret her because she's just that hot...yea that's what this next song is about...[cue devilish smile to the audience]" Out of anything else, when you see Matt Nathanson you will remember that Cheshire grin, especially when it hangs over you in the twilight like it did on the night of the Block Party.

Later, back at my apartment, we found out that No Refund Theatre was actually opening their season later in September. I had gotten the weekends confused. Looks like the Theatre Musketeers (Jen, Mark and I) are still good to troop over to the Forum for the actual season opener. In the meantime, we got to enjoy a surprise concert and an unknown side of Matt Nathanson. Proving, yet again, that you never know what you'll find in the Penn State arts scene. All you can do is go looking for it, which is what I'll be doing with my senior year (and on this blog!)

Here's the metaphor: Rebecca Rasmussen, who got an MFA from Penn State's creative writing program, just released her first novel, on April 11, called The Bird Sisters. From the moment I heard about her background as a published Penn State alumna, I decided to use this blog post of mine to explore further parallels between her and many other aspiring Penn State writers. It's a real up-by-the-boot-straps kind of tale. 

But first I want to take a moment to recognize how cool it is that Rebecca still feels so much attachment to Penn State when it was while doing coursework for her second MFA at the University of Massachusetts that she did the real writing of her novel which eventually became The Bird Sisters. Before she began her reading at Foster Auditorium, Rebecca acknowledged the recent cutbacks in Penn State's English department and volunteered herself as a resource in any way possible. She stressed how great her experience with the program was and as an English major myself I couldn't help but feel the same pride in Penn State English studies. Nothing could have set my Penn State pride going more.

And while we're on the topic of cool, can we also spend a moment getting excited by the fact that our very own alumna has a Wikipedia page in her name? You know you've arrived when you've hit the Wikipedia scene. She joins the ranks of fellow Penn State faculty writers Robin Becker (a frequent feature on the Liberal Arts Blog) and James Brasfield who have similarly been making a name for Penn State.

When Rebecca began her reading, she let the audience know that this Penn State stop was her very first one, not only on her book tour for The Bird Sisters, but also in her career as a writer. In her novel The Bird Sisters, there are really two narratives at work: one of two sisters Milly and Twiss as old women, and one of Milly and Twiss as younger women in the summer of 1947. Rebecca read an excerpt of each to give us a sense of how this one summer in and out of the Wisconsin town fostered a pivotal change in the lives of these two women. From the younger years, Rebecca created a hilarious priest that would rather be off in Mexico with a Margarita than moderating a cycle of peace be with yous. If you want to see for yourself, you can check out a preview of the book online.        

After her reading, Rebecca sent shout-outs to other Penn State faculty. Professor Toby Thompson, who I had last semester for a class on Gonzo journalism, was Rebecca's professor for biography writing. As a man who writes by the skin of his generation, he asked her about the challenges of writing about a generation that was not her own in the 1947 part of her story. She stated simply that she made it up; that was one of the benefits of writing about a rural town that was largely untouched by the war. She used her hometown experience in the rolling hills of Wisconsin as a model.

But the more interesting part of her response was when she referenced her class time with Professor Thompson, who is a successful Rolling Stone reporter and Bob Dylan biographer. She said she didn't think she could hack it in his class anymore where accuracy of detail was a must. Rebecca also had her fair share of memories and banters with Professor Bill Cobb, or William J. Cobb if you're looking at his own published novels.

"I was trying to forget about that," Rebecca said, laughing, in reaction to something from their class time together that Professor Cobb brought up.

It's thrilling to think that current Penn State professors, who are still teaching students now, had a memorable impact on a recently published writer. And it's thrilling to think of how many Penn Staters have truly made it in writing. During the question and answer portion of her reading, Rebecca made herself vulnerable for the hope of aspiring writers. She talked about the dark days of trying to get her novel published: the query letters, the rejected manuscripts, the yearlong adventure in crying and the painstaking revisions. She stressed that being a writer isn't easy, much less being a published writer, but that despite all the hardships you can find people who will support you. It is in building your own support group and working closely with them that a young writer can work towards success. And, Rebecca said, make sure to celebrate the small stuff. When she graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a draft of The Bird Sisters as her thesis, her husband had it bound and covered for her as a gift. They drank champagne and toasted to that accomplishment. The process is only worthwhile in the light of these little celebrations.      

When the actress Raye Lederman said she could pick me up a ticket for The Medium, she said that she would also be needing my physical address in State College as well as my email address. I was not just going to see a one act opera. I was going to see a one act opera at Graham Spanier's house, more formally known as The Schreyer House. It was quite a fancy experiment for me in theatre going. Apparently, it was an experiment altogether. According to the School of Theatre's program for the show, Nathan Brewer was presenting The Medium as a second year directing project for his MFA candidacy. The challenge, the program said, was to present no more than 80 minutes of a musical with budgetary and production limitations.

I have to say, though, that whatever those budgetary and production limitations were, they were completely unnoticeable to an audience member. And perhaps that was due in part to President Spanier generously lending his house to the production. The rooms you entered looked exactly like the parlour rooms of a Regency inn. Jen Kach and I went to see the show together and couldn't help whispering our awes as we hung our coats in the coat closet. You must whisper in the presence of greatness, you see. I almost felt like I should have curtseyed a thanks to the doorman who took our tickets and checked us off the list.

We were ushered into a plush sitting room where two rows of seats on three sides of the room inhabited the same stage as the actors. It was like a classic parlour entertainment for all sitting so intimately around the players. The show started promptly at eight with lots of playing indeed. The medieval chandelier brightened and Raye Lederman as Monica glided into the scene to find Blake Stadnik as Toby trying on a saffron silk scarf and a tambourine for a crown. Raye had an exceptional character variation in her singing voices. Because Toby's character is a mute, she had to sing her own parts in the made up adventure of a Babalonian king with one voice, while also singing Toby's would be parts in the duet with another. Throughout, Stadnik's facial expressions and delicate finger movements as the muted Toby sold the character beautifully to a close range audience.

The experience was so intimate that when the medium, and Monica's mother, entered upon the scene for the opening séance I did not realize that she was faking the séances. Raye Lederman's silhouette in the darkness appeared to sing "Mother, mother, are you here?" to one of her mother's patrons. But my immediate thought was that this was a choice made for the economy of the production. I figured the director did not want to insert another cast member into the mix for such a small appearance. Once it became apparent that the medium was using her daughter and Toby to set up the séances as hoaxes, the opera really got under way. You realize the medium is cheating at the same moment that she feels a hand reach out for her throat in the darkness.

As an audience member who has seen the medium's own orchestration of the seance, you feel she must be imagining things, having gotten too deep into the mood of the hoax. Still, right along with her, the audience is haunted by the "Mother" refrain as well as the sounds of a laughing baby that come from an unknown space offstage. These sounds, which the audience understands normally to be imitated by Monica as a stand in for actually communicating with the dead children of the medium's clients, are especially frightening when Monica is on stage with her mother and clearly not the source of them. But even before the sourceless songs or laughter are heard, the creepiest moment of the whole show was probably when the medium tries to expose her hoax to her clients to cleanse her soul. She has her daughter imitate each of their lost loved ones in front of them. The way Raye opened her mouth and shamefully hung her head to the side created an unnatural contrast to the playful baby laughter that echoed throughout the room.

Kira Lace Hawkins as the medium took everyone's tingling spines and tripped up and down them in the final scene of haunting. Clothed in her form fitting gown and sparkling jewels, the low candle light glinted off her as she ran around the room with her mouth open wide to the audience asking, "Afraid? Am I afraid?" She kept repeating this phrase to the very end, and yes, I was rather afraid. In the building tension of the final strains on the piano, the music abruptly, and almost unnaturally, cuts off to silence, leaving the audience shocked and enthralled. Not even the addition of the lights at the end of the show could completely allay our unease. When Jen and I collected our coats and walked into the thick darkness down Graham Spanier's drive, we linked arms, lest the off stage voices should follow us into the night.        

Take Battle of the Bands literally. It was a battle with forces moving from floor space to floor space like pegs on a strategy map. Last Saturday from 9 PM to 1 AM in the HUB's Alumni Hall, the student organizers of the free concert Movin' On set up stage. Or I guess I should say stages.

After flashing my ID and getting that always exclusive concert bracelet slapped on my wrist, I entered from the back of Alumni Hall into a mood-lit arena with two stages set up in front of the wall of windows. I was ready for a night of good music. The ever artistic Jen Kach assured me of this. She is a member of the core committee for Movin' On, which she jumps up and down to tell everyone is happening on April 29th on the IM Field West.

But back to the battle at hand, 12 bands duked it out for 4 spaces to play at Movin' On in addition to the headliners O.A.R., Lupe Fiasco and Little Big Town. Besides the five or six rows of seating set up in front of each stage, the majority of Alumni Hall was open and perfect for roaming or dancing along to the music. And off to the side, by the front doors of Alumni Hall, was a booth for the State College radio station B94.5, fully stocked with T-shirts for the bands to toss to the audience and to crowd banter between songs.

The Had Knots were already jamming on the left stage when I walked in. I think jamming really is the only word I could use to describe them. Their performance was free and fun. The stage was packed with people from a mini horn section to two acoustic guitar players and singers. Their set had a great family feel to it, like these were people who shared their lives and their music. It was fun to watch them laugh with each other. I felt good listening to their songs that I could easily snap and sway to. 

A little later in the night, the Zak Sobel Band took to stage right. Each band that played alternated stages from the last band that went on, and each time the next band came on there was a great migration of the crowd to get in front of the right stage. It was a great shuffle to be in the middle of. The Zak Sobel Band was another simply fun band to watch. Zak Sobel himself was a very charismatic front man who liked to call out the guitar and trombone players on their solos. He also did a killer solo on the harmonica during one of their songs. Two couples danced in front of the stage while they were playing and I must admit I danced along myself. How could I not with their dig deep melodies and smooth vocal combinations? Even more impressive than their Battle of the Bands performance was the fact that they were pulling double duty that night. They played Battle at 9:45 and were set to play at the Dark Horse Tavern by 11.

Back to the left stage and near the end of the night, I was also entertained by No Slip Condition. I could probably take or leave their rock music, but they had great stage presence. They joked about being rock star engineers since every member of the band is also a graduate student in Penn State's Aerospace Engineering program. You even get a taste of that humor of theirs in their online bio that explains NASA's budget cuts couldn't make them the first rock band in space, but could send them to State College instead.

By the end of the night I didn't quite get my wish list bands in the top four, but I will at least get to see the Zak Sobel Band playing at Movin' On. They took second place in the Battle. The fourth place winners were So Long, Pluto, third place went to Atlas Soundtrack and first place was 5 Cherry Lewis. Now I'm looking out for another great day of music to trek to. 1 month and 1 day!

A Complete List of the Battle Bands:

So Long, Pluto

5 Cherry Lewis

No Slip Condition     

Atlas Soundtrack

FreQontrol

The Good News

Chris Good

Zak Sobel Band

TonyP

Jordan Graves

Brethren

The Had Knots

"Free show" are the two greatest words in the English language. Even better than that, though, is when you get to see the hilarious and sad musical "Grey Gardens" for free. The show, which I saw this past Wednesday, was a preview night to Thursday's opening. The preview nights at the Penn State Downtown Theatre Center are typically free, knowledge which I serendipitously fell into thanks to Jen Kach, my sassy sidekick in all endeavors artistic. The preview was set to start at 8 p.m., but thanks to Jen's Theatre 100 course, we were told to make sure to arrive an hour early. Knowing us, we arrived even earlier than necessary.  

At first the theatre was completely empty and we felt a bit foolish for our eager beaver entrance. Jen and I loitered around and took a peek at the School of Theatre's class photo in the lobby. We scoped out any Theatre and Musical Theatre Majors like it was our job. Not long after our Where's Waldo? diversion, though, bunches of people started pouring in. We migrated to the hallway right outside the doors of the theatre where we continued to pass the time by looking through photos of past productions.

When it was finally time for the doors to open, the entire lobby and front hallway of the Downtown Theatre were full wall-to-wall with people. A bunch of students were there to get credit for various theatre classes, but an equal portion were there just to enjoy the show. It was pretty astounding. After making two lines, the woman in charge of seating had two of the ushers run down each line to count up to 69. This was the amount of students that the theatre would be able to accommodate. It was obvious that a fair amount of people waiting would have to be asked to see the show another night, although they would have to pay for a ticket on those other nights.

The usher who ran down our line joked, "You better remember your numbers now. This is crucial business!" Good thing we had gotten there so early because after the chaos of lining up, Jen was number three and I was number four. It was pretty much a guarantee that we would get in to see the show for free. But we did have a bit of a worrisome moment when a whispered conversation between the seating woman and a member of the crew resulted in the necessity of a second cut of students. Apparently, they had only budgeted one seat for the design team of the show. The rest of them were going to have to stand in the back of the theatre to watch, until they negotiated their seats. By the end of both rounds of cutting, almost 50 people had to be turned away. The intimate Downtown Theatre could only seat 130 students that night after subtracting the handful of seats for crew members of the show.

Sorting out the seating ended up taking so long that the show didn't get underway until 8:17. "There's one for the record books, kids!" Jen said. We definitely were not expecting to have to scramble so much for our seats.

Inside the theatre, we watched Act 2 of "Grey Gardens" as an adaptation of the lives of Big and Little Edie Beale, famous cousins of Jackie O. This mother daughter pair hilariously goes on with their eccentricities, singing about the high life they don't seem to be aware that they are no longer a part of. But at the same time, if you look beyond the songs at the home that they have made together in their Grey Gardens mansion, no longer fit for human habitation, their story of stagnancy turns tragic. They are pathos provoking pack rats. 

It becomes very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present, which the musical emphasizes by having past and present Edies on stage at the same time. And if you remember Jessica Lange's and Drew Barrymore's Big and Little Edies from HBO's 2009 TV movie "Grey Gardens", you know Little Edie is certainly preoccupied with what she could have had in her past. She thinks she was made for the pictures while her mother kept her at Grey Gardens.

Basically, the School of Theatre's show was a musical adaptation based on a fictional film adaptation of a documentary film of the lives of two eccentric women from the first, and probably only, family of American royalty. All of which made seeing "Grey Gardens" the musical incredibly intriguing. The story is all about why these two women would stay, not only at Grey Gardens, but also with each other. And just in case you missed the memo about the School of Theatre's presentation of "Grey Gardens," and if you don't have the hour and a half necessary for a viewing of the original documentary of the Edies (linked to above), definitely check out these famous scenes of Little Edie singing and Big Edie in the Pink Room. These are some fascinating women made to be watched.   

This is how these things work for a Penn Stater interested in the arts: word of mouth. A guy I worked with over the summer happened to be a member of the Singing Lions, a Penn State show choir, and he invited me to see his group's cabaret performance on Saturday the 29th at the Pavilion Theatre on campus. Any show at the Pavilion is definitely worth attending. To say it's an intimate setting doesn't even do it justice. The stage sits lower than the stadium seating, which surrounds it on three sides, and if you get the front row in any of these three sections you can reach out and wipe the sweat from any performer's forehead. That's how close you are.

When I walked into the Pavilion, the Glee version of "Teenage Dream" was playing over the loudspeakers. I made sure to get a front row seat. The girl sitting next to me was wearing turquoise and neon yellow sneakers. When she turned around to talk to the guy behind her she was gesturing with the Singing Lions program in her hand. "Here's my question," she said. "This says No Jazz Hands," (which was the title of the Singing Lions cabaret that night) "but what about just one hand? I think I'd be okay with one jazz hand, you know, for being excited. But if I see more than two I want my money back!" Thank you kismet for placing me in such a wonderful place to enjoy the show.

It was a little over a two hour performance that covered thirty songs with a ten minute intermission at the halfway point. The show started a little slow with a song about not being afraid to live up to your potential. In itself, not the most boring thing to sing about, but it featured four singers sitting in four café chairs and taking turns to step up to a microphone to sing their story. Just watching singers with their arms straight down by their sides was a little lackluster. The show quickly picked up, though, with the following tongue and cheek songs that the Singing Lions definitely put their acting skills in to. It was more fun as an audience member to see the Singing Lions when they were up and moving around in addition to their singing. 

The highlights of the evening were:

• "Accident Prone" performed by Lauren Lynch (The man of her dreams will have to learn to chill about her klutziness.)
• "Coffee" by Brian Poole and Jessie Leo (A bohemian tries to inspire a creature of habit.)
• "Sensitive Male Best Friend" by Alex Gallego (He's your best friend who's secretly in love with you and rammed into the car of your cheating ex-boyfriend to defend your honor and now needs you to help him make bail for that little escapade.)
• "Breaking Up" by Josie Farinelli and Tyler Segalla ("I just don't get why you...[cell phone signal cuts out]." "You're breaking up." "No, I just want to talk.")
• "The Sensitive Song" by Andrew Torchia (He just can't date you anymore and he's not shy about telling you why.)
• "Blue Hair" by Jessie Leo (Independent and totally rad, it's gonna look like wonderful, super fantastic, coolness, remarkable!) 
• "Mrs. Sharp" by all the guys ("I never thought my teacher could be hot!")
• "We're Just Friends" by Saeed Manley and Sarah Sewcheck ("We're just friends...with benefits.")
• The finale "It Gets Better" featuring everyone.

I only caught a few of these on film for your viewing pleasure but they were all worth a double take. Don't believe me? Then maybe it's time to befriend a Singing Lion and hear all about the excitement from the inside, not to mention hearing about all the upcoming performances you could be filling your nights with.

Whenever I feel ill at ease with the state of the world, I know I can always head to the Willard building. Not for the amateur theatrics of the Willard preacher, but for some anonymous pick-me-ups on post-its. Early last fall I was on my way to the library when a sudden urge for the bathroom hit me. Willard happened to be a perfectly en route spot for me to stop, where I found fate had suddenly delivered me upon the scene of an amazing piece of concept art in the first floor girl's bathroom. Immediately inside the bathroom two bright post-its were stuck on the face of the mirror. An orange one proclaimed "Never give up". A blue one read "You matter to me". More than the actual messages making me smile, the thought that someone had the idea to write them on post-its and display them in the girls' bathroom made me smile. I liked imagining some renegade artist stealing into the bathroom to tape inspirational messages on the mirror, in the stalls, and on the tiled walls. What a new age kind of graffiti. It seemed to me that art actually is all around.

Art being all around a college campus is something most people take for granted. With as many twenty-somethings crammed into one area as Penn State can boast, you would expect creativity to be bursting. Still, something my freshmen seminar professor said towards the end of our semester together continued to resonate with me: Penn State lacks that certain arts culture that is normally synonymous with university years. This was disheartening coming from my favorite professor who taught me the art of the first person narrative. And what made me even more reticent to believe this pronouncement was the fact that we were having this conversation in the mock living room of Irving's basement. I couldn't think of a more artistically tuned moment. I mean here we were, a group of vibrant college women, enjoying coffee and good conversation about books with our professor amongst the leather bound tomes on perfectly aged shelves.

But come to think of it, we were only a small percentage of the Penn State community at large, only a gaggle of freshmen English majors ready to romanticize the world. Unlike the description of my seminar professor's college years, there was not a movement of the overall student body to attend free film showings, poetry readings, or student gallery openings. With that perceived lack of interest came a perceived lack of opportunity to partake in such art events. It became my mission to seek out any and all art events that happened on Penn State's campus and enjoy every minute of them. I was truly after that bohemian college existence.

Now as a junior I feel like I have found just that existence by attending Outlaws performances in the basement of the Arts Building, spending Friday nights in the Forum for No Refund Theatre, and checking out the rotating exhibits in the HUB and Palmer amongst other things. My new mission with this blog is to share all of these artsy joys with you much like the anonymous author(s) of the bathroom post-its shared some joy with me. I am Paige Cooperstein and I vow to show you Penn State art, actually.