Campus Stories - Theater & Performance
It’s a Wild Party at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium
It’s spring, so it must be time for a full-scale Broadway musical in Memorial Auditorium. This year Ram’s Head Theatrical Society presents The Wild Party. The production brings together approximately 70 undergraduate and graduate students in its cast, production team and orchestra. Ram’s Head intends the show to be a rallying place for students from…
Stanford Mohr Visiting Artist Majel Connery reimagines the string quartet
What happens when you imagine the string quartet as a theatrical genre? How can the inherent showmanship of the four musicians expand to interact with voice, acting and operatic performance? These are the questions Mohr Visiting Artist Majel Connery examined in her winter class, Theatricality and the String Quartet, with help from Pulitzer Prize-winning composer…
“The Tempest” behind the scenes
Stanford Theater & Performance Studies presents William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a vibrant, out-of-this-world tale of romance, revenge and forgiveness. As Shakespeare’s works go, few are more magical than The Tempest, a fantastical and deeply human play about an exiled sorcerer, his budding daughter, a civilization abandoned and a world reborn. This production is presented in…
Bringing Baby back at Dinkelspiel Auditorium
Sixty years ago, one of the first successful American operas, The Ballad of Baby Doe, made its West Coast premiere at Stanford’s then brand-new Dinkelspiel Auditorium. The opera, based on the true and tragic story of Elizabeth “Baby” Doe Tabor and her romance with the wealthy silver king Horace Tabor, was commissioned by Colorado’s Central…
Carl Weber, Stanford professor emeritus of drama and a protégé of director Bertolt Brecht, dies at 91
Carl Weber, the eminent director who brought German experimental theater to America, died in his sleep in Los Altos on Dec. 25. The Stanford professor emeritus of drama was 91. During the 1950s, the German director had been a protégé of Bertolt Brecht, one of the leading theatrical innovators of the 20th century. Weber was…
Harry Elam appointed vice president for the arts and senior vice provost for education
Harry Elam, vice provost for undergraduate education at Stanford since 2010, has been appointed to two additional key leadership roles in the Office of the President and Provost. He will now oversee the non-departmental arts programs as well as direct and coordinate critical efforts in education, President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost-designate Persis Drell announced Monday….
Gaieties marks its 105th year
As Stanford celebrates the year that it turns 125, Ram’s Head Theatrical Society is celebrating a Stanford tradition almost as old: Big Game Gaieties is turning 105. Gaieties is an original, student-written, student-produced musical parody thatPoster for Gaieties is performed in Memorial Auditorium the week before Stanford’s Big Game against Cal. This year, Gaieties is…
Stanford’s renovated Roble Gym welcomes student performers and spectators
Stanford students wasted no time getting into the renovated dance studio and new black box theater at Roble Gym in order to prepare for fall performances. A trio of inaugural public performances includes an evening of dance solos featuring Stanford doctoral candidate Rebecca Chaleff in the dance studio, the upcoming production of Spring Awakening, The…
Anderson Collection hosts Nick Cave exhibition
When the exhibition Nick Cave opens at the Anderson Collection at Stanford University, visitors will encounter the intersection of visual art and performance in a collection of Cave’s Soundsuits, videos and a documentary film. The exhibition opens Sept. 14 and runs through Aug. 14, 2017. The Anderson Collection is located at 314 Lomita Drive on…
High school students plunge into history, philosophy, art and science
Each summer, high school students fill the halls of the Stanford Humanities Center to grapple with questions that have dogged humankind for millennia: whether ideas create social change, or if the collective good trumps individual rights, for example. Such fundamental questions animate the Summer Humanities Institute, which welcomed 135 students this summer – up from…
Student Arts Grants: A Year in Photos 2015-16
From calypso to classical opera, from adaptations of classic texts to original, student-written theater, this year’s Student Arts Grants supported creative diversity across Stanford campus. This year’s grantees included the recipients of the inaugural Creative Spaces grants which provide support specifically for the costs associated with performing in some of Stanford’s most popular venues (such as the Bing Studio…
New Stanford dance performances highlight different views toward ‘space’
With a nod toward the artistry of “space,” the dance performance Spatial Shift will take place May 26-27 in Memorial Auditorium on the Stanford campus. The final event in the Department of Theater & Performance Studies’ 2015-16 performance season, Spatial Shift is a series of new dance works by Stanford faculty members Diane Frank, Aleta Hayes,…
Don Giovanni
Presented in collaboration with the Stanford Arts Institute and the Stanford Savoyards, Don Giovanni is a radical reimagining of Mozart’s 18th-century opera. Explore the space of the Mausoleum and the surrounding trails and woods as dusk turns to night and the characters of Don Giovanni weave in and out of the shadows, performing and engaging…
Ram’s Head presents the musical Rent
When today’s Stanford students were coming into the world, speaking their first words and taking their first steps, Rent was being born on Broadway. Rent, Jonathan Larson’s 1996 rock musical about struggling artists in New York City, a contemporary haven for alternative lifestyles, captured the zeitgeist of the end of the 20th century in America….
Behind the scene: Students Elizabeth Karr and Chris Sackes talk about the making of Rent
What is your history with Rent or La bohème, the opera that inspired it? Karr: While I have never worked on a production of Rent prior to this one, my history with Rentis rather a long one. I first heard the song “Seasons of Love” when I was in the fifth grade, when a friend…
Stanford’s historic Roble Gym to open in the fall after arts-oriented renovation
Roble Gym is undergoing a $28 million renovation to provide new program spaces for theater and dance productions for theDepartment of Theater & Performance Studies. The Roble upgrade will be finished late spring or early summer, and then open to students when the fall term begins in September. One key goal is to create a…
