skidmore theater living newsletter

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 […]

A Reflection on “Hecuba”

By: Allyson Schult ’17, Assistant Stage Manager When I first got on board with the Hecuba project, I had no idea what the process would require. I was as green as you could get—untried as an ASM, and still fairly new to the world of theatre production in general. But, Stage Manager Kendall Gross ’16 was more […]

Spring 2016 Workshop #3: “Love & Information”

What constitutes love and what constitutes information? Can we love without information? Can information amount to love? Are “love” and “information” inseparable? Composed of a series of thirty-seven unconnected vignettes, Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information poses many questions, most indirectly, through its brief glimpses into the private lives of a wide range of characters. At first, […]

JKB Life: House Party//Bacchanal

Behind-the-Scenes: Researching “Hecuba”

Dramaturges Nick Graver ’16 and Francesca Parker ’17 discuss their experience preparing for Marina Carr’s Hecuba.

Moment-To-Moment: “Love & Information”

BY: KELLINA MOORE ’18 Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, the third student-directed workshop production of the semester, is currently running in the JKB. The show, directed by Kate Glowatsky ’16, is comprised of 37 vignettes. Though rehearsal for any show is a multifaceted process, a show like this one results in rehearsals being particularly scattered and […]

JKB Life: Hecuba Dress

Second City’s Rachael Mason Teaches Improv Comedy Workshop

Living on the Pulse of Satire By: GABE COHN ’16 Rachael Mason—Head of Advanced Improvisation at Chicago’s Second City—stands in the JKB design studio with the faces of twenty-one students peering back at her, her curly brown hair, purple glasses, and a blue sweatshirt perfectly complementing her confident devil-may-care attitude. On the front of her sweatshirt […]

JKB Life: Love or Information?

This week on JKB Life, we check in with the cast + crew of Love & Information, the third workshop of the semester, to ask the how they’ve been dealing with the the play’s many different characters/vignettes. Watch the video below:

Q&A With “Hecuba” Makeup/Hair Designer Alyssa Hagerbrant ’16

In advance of Hecuba‘s Friday night premiere, Staff Writer Nina Slowinski ’19 spoke with Makeup/Hair Designer Alyssa Hagerbrant ’16, who began work on Hecuba immediately after finishing up makeup design for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot last month. How did you get into makeup? Freshman year, I signed up for Theater Company and I […]