skidmore theater living newsletter

OBIE Award-Winning Actor John Douglas Thompson Gives Talk, Master Class in JKB

A Place In This World By: ZACHARY COHN ’16 The familiar red curtain of the JKB thrust stage theater descends behind two chairs and a blazing ghost light as the Friday company meeting begins. Professor Opitz, chair of the department, delivers an introduction. A crowd of murmurs dissipates as a man steps forward, commanding attention. […]

JKB Life: Playwrights Lab You’ll Be Fine

This week in JKB Life we talk to the cast and crew of the semester’s Playwrights Lab about working with the writer in the room, and learn what famous actors would play each cast member in the film of their life.

Birth, Death, and a Cup of Tea

“Ritual will always mean throwing away something: destroying our corn or wine upon the altar of our gods.”  -G. K. Chesterton If theater is a ritual, it is a ritual of death–of human sacrifice. I throw myself into the audience. I die as my character does. The audience members are my gods; I can only […]

JKB Life: Arts Party

This Fall marked the launch of the Skidmore Arts Quad Party hosted by the Theater Department. Take a look inside the party. See who performed, what games we played, and what hopes students have for the party in the future!

What I Learned about Theater from Not Doing Theater This Summer

Or: Coping with Judgment in the Arts By Adina Kruskal ’18 Against the better advice of my Skidmore professors, I did not pursue any theater-related experiences this summer. I spent two months of the summer at a Jewish day camp in Westwood, MA, as I have for nearly all of my life. A big part […]

Special Feature: Andrew Schneider’s YOUARENOWHERE

In this video feature, STLN sits down with performing artist and technical master Andrew Schneider to talk about the creative process behind his show, YOUARENOWHERE, after its NYC remount this Spring. Also featured are a number of Skidmore alumni who assisted with and bore witness to the evolution of this Off-Broadway, OBIE Award-winning hit! Featuring: Noel […]

Bard Is Dead.

An Essay/Collage By Gabe Cohn I. A friend of mine once opened a conversation by saying that he had licked Shakespeare’s grave. He’d been licking notable graves for years: Samuel Adams, Ulysses S. Grant, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, Miles Davis, Emily Dickinson…he’d licked them all. Somehow he’d gotten past the velvet rope in front of […]

We Begin, We End

Week One at the Orchard Project and an Interview with Barbara Pitts McAdams By Rachel Karp A Moment: We Begin. Sia’s Chandelier plays, Queen Mary stands center in a green dress with long ribbons attached; two attendants dressed in black tug at the ribbons, controlling Mary’s every move. Mary locks eyes with Queen Elizabeth, enveloped in […]

How to Make a Memory

From Abby Outterson ’16 When your significant other tells you the writer of a well-loved Broadway musical is giving the keynote commencement speech at his college graduation, surprise him by showing up. Remember, you are excited about the graduation part. Try not to drool during the speech. When you find out said significant other could […]

Watching Kaspar: On Language and Socialization

SCHREUER ’16: On the surface Peter Handke’s Kaspar seems to be a play about teaching someone to speak. But it is far more than that, because language is not just a communicative technique. Language constructs how we view the world, how we perceive it, the relationship between things, and our relationship to things. Language determines […]

Siti Summer Lessons in Failure

Hi there, and welcome to my blog series! In these posts, I will try to navigate and share the teachings and insights I’ve encountered during my month-long intensive with Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, in residency at Skidmore this June. These posts will contain some confused rambling, partly because I’m trying to fully absorb […]

Switching Hats in the 24-hour Play Festival

BY: ZIGGY SCHULTING ’18 With Skidmore College’s third annual Together We Can Do So Much More 24-hour play festival, producers Sonya G. Rosen ’17 and Brandon Bogle ’16 made the nearly impossible happen once again. The event featured a series of plays that were written, cast, rehearsed, and performed in the space of 24 hours. This year, […]

Spring 2016 Director’s Lab: “Kaspar”

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT BY: CAITY COOK ’18 The story is a disturbing and powerful modern myth. Kaspar Hauser appears on the streets of Nuremberg, Germany, with an anonymous letter addressed to a high-born army captain. The letter asks the captain to take Kaspar in and give him a position in the army. Apparently, the […]

A Post-Show Discussion With “Kaspar” Director Aaron Ardisson ’16

BY: GABE COHN ’16 KASPAR opened last night in the JKB black box. Written by 20th-century Austrian playwright/novelist Peter Handke, the play explores language and communication, often in intense and multi-sensory ways. It was directed here by Aaron Ardisson ’16. After the first performance, I met with Ardisson to discuss his experience in directing the […]

Moment-To-Moment: “Kaspar”

BY: KELLINA MOORE ’18 Peter Handke’s KASPAR, directed by Aaron Ardisson ’16, opens tonight in the JKB Blackbox. We sent staff writer Kellina Moore to one of the show’s final tech rehearsals to observe the cast and crew’s creative process. The following are her observations, presented in chronological order: 2:32 – I walk into the […]

“As You Like It” Takes Us Into the Woods

BY: PHILIP MERRICK ’19 I cross over the stream behind Wilson Chapel and into Northwoods, gazing around at the still-bare trees. As sun shines on my neck, I breathe in the clear spring air. We’re barely even in the woods, and already I’m struck by how free I feel. Here with nothing but fallen leaves […]

JKB Life: As You Like It

Spring 2016 Mainstage: “Hecuba”

In Hecuba: Bloodshed, Budweiser, and Raconteurs By: Gabe Cohn ’16 We tell ourselves stories in order to live. I thought of those words from the opening of Joan Didion’s “White Album” as I experienced Irish playwright Marina Carr’s new version of Eurpides’s Hecuba. Carr’s radical shift of perspective—which aligns us with the Trojans and paints them as […]