The Williams Record (https://williamsrecord.com/category/arts/)
In a statement issued yesterday, Williamstown Theatre Festival (WTF) announced the cancellation of all live performances for the 2020 summer season. The seven plays set to perform this year at WTF — including a Robert O’Hara-directed revival of A Streetcar Named Desire and five world premiere works — will instead be released as readings on Audible, the popular platform for audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment.
This past week, Williamstown community members and students alike crowded in the lecture halls beneath the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) to hear Iraqi food writer Nawal Nasrallah discuss the culture of food in the Middle East. Nasrallah’s lecture was presented in accordance with the ongoing exhibition in WCMA’s 1935 Gallery, The invisible enemy should not exist. The piece, by artist Michael Rakowitz, is an expansive reconstruction of seven limestone reliefs that once lined palace walls, using contemporary Middle Eastern food packaging from northern Iraqi brands.
Last Wednesday, Visiting Professor in Democratic Studies Rowan Ricardo Phillips hosted an event entitled “Silent Poems, Talking Pictures, and the Infinite Playlist.” Also speaking were fellow award-winning artists Teju Cole — novelist, photographer, critic, curator, and author of five books — and Ishion Hutchinson — Cornell professor, journal editor, and author of two poetry collections. The three read their pieces and discussed poetry as a tool for better understanding race and democracy.
The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) Berkshire Cultural Resource Center’s decision to offer a free shuttle bus dubbed the ‘art shuttle’ has the potential to serve all College students.
Ginya Marr ’21 found her passion for art with the help of the divisional requirement. During her freshman fall, she enrolled in just one introductory arts course, Drawing 1. Marr, now a studio art and comparative literature double major and an Armstrong-Pratt JA, discovered that she could never have a semester without an art class.
Avery Sharpe, who is retiring this year after 10 years teaching bass, leading jazz ensembles and advising the College’s gospel choir, held a performance of his album 400 last Thursday alongside a band of fellow music professors, students and guests. The album, which was released in 2019, includes 10 songs, nine originals and one arrangement, and was designed to encapsulate 400 years of black history in America.
With musicals, you either love them or you hate them. In commemoration of alum Stephen Sondheim ’50’s 90th birthday, the College’s theater department has teamed up with Cap and Bells to present a musical this upcoming weekend that they hope everyone will love: A Little Night Music.
Nicole Ford ’20 knew what she wanted to do when she came to the College: study studio art and astrophysics. While these two interests are seemingly polar opposites, Ford has taken advantage of the liberal arts curriculum to create art “informed by and infused with science.”
“Wherever people feel safe … they will be indifferent,” Susan Sontag writes in her 2003 essay “Regarding the Pain of Others.” How, then, might government officials or other privileged individuals above the net of danger, come to sympathize with the stories of those who are currently in a state of danger, whether that be through the implicit violence acted upon minoritized peoples, war-toiled peoples, or refugees whose flight was hastened by their home countries, terrorist groups, foreign invasions? Narratives, in their evolving forms, offer a potential to bridge this gap, to make those at the peaks of power structures understand more vulnerable and disenfranchised persons.
Conceived, planned and brought to life this past Winter Study, the Williams Burlesque Club has quickly established itself as a space of inclusivity and expression for all students interested in exploring their identity through theater and dance.
Walking toward Currier Quad on a warm day, one might see children climbing on the statuesque eyes embedded in the hill around the walkway, or possibly someone sitting on one of the eyes as they read. These moments of interaction between humanity and artwork are simple yet significant; they touch on the unique and multi-dimensional relationship between an artwork and its audience.
