Campus Stories - Theater & Performance
20.8% of the 2017 MacArthur Fellows were Stanford guest artists within the last year
Stanford congratulates the MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” winners who recently spent time on campus engaging with students, faculty and the public. Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based artist NJIDEKA AKUNYILI CROSBY, whose work tells elaborate and delicate stories of her life, was in conversation with Jodi Roberts, the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Curator for Modern and…
Fall quarter guest artists
One of the ways that Stanford is creating opportunities for meaningful engagement with the arts for students and the university community is by inviting over 100 artists each year to campus to create, perform and discuss their work. This fall quarter the roster of guest artists includes comedian and political commentator Samantha Bee in conversation…
Stanford Honors in the Arts capstone program evolves with a new Mellon grant
Stanford University has been awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to support the development of a new undergraduate, interdisciplinary program in the arts to be administered by Stanford Arts Institute. Honors in the Arts students present Bacchae, an immersive theatrical experience utilizing locations across the Stanford campus. (Image credit: Kristen Stipanov) The $400,000 grant provides support for…
Disaster and humor are a hit at the Nitery
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.” The famous observation by Karl Marx provided the inspiration for Stanford Repertory Theater’s 2017 summer festival, “The Many Faces of Farce,” directed by ALEX JOHNSON, SRT associate artistic director. Audiences are responding positively to the festival. Tickets for opening weekend sold out quickly, and this weekend’s performances are nearing…
Student Arts Grants: A Year in Photos 2016-17
This year’s Student Arts Grants supported a wide range of projects across the Stanford campus. The projects covered many genres including devised performance, contemporary dance, printmaking, classical and contemporary plays, documentary and fiction film shorts, musical theater, painting, photography, and more. Many of this year’s grantees utilized the new Roble Arts Gym as a rehearsal/work space as…
2017 Student Submitted Artwork
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Gender-swapped play takes on the ‘men’s rights’ movement
It’s a summer day in Sonoma Valley’s Bohemian Grove, where the country’s most powerful men gather to cavort, perform mysterious rituals and cement their social and political power. This year, however, they have a different agenda: whether to bar women from comedy and from voting. This is the premise of Men’s Rites: An Alt-Comedy, which…
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…
