Campus Stories - Theater & Performance
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…
A decidedly Stanford take on Leonard Bernstein
The Department of Music and the student-run troupe Stanford Savoyards are combining forces to present a LEONARD BERNSTEIN double feature in Dinkelspiel Auditorium: the satiric operetta Candide and the opera Trouble in Tahiti. Bernstein’s Candide, drawing inspiration from Voltaire’s novella that blends comedy, tragedy and farce, has been transposed to the Farm, using projections of images drawn from the…
Stanford Library Blog: Opern-Typen: opera meets the comics
Opern-Tÿpen consists of six volumes of chromolithographic plates depicting scenes from 54 operas popular in 19th century Germany. Each opera plot has been distilled into a mere six frames, with liberally adapted accompanying text. The visual charms of Opern-Typen are evident. The plates reveal a sophisticated understanding of the effective use of line, gesture, and composition…
Happy 2016!
With the opening of the McMurtry Building, the new home for the Department of Art & Art History, we reached a milestone in the university’s ongoing commitment to building programs, curricula, and resources in the arts. The new building provides an architecturally exciting and inspiring home for the department, allowing it to expand its programmatic…
![[wpbb-if post:acf type="image" name="image" size="thumbnail" display="alt"]Vintage photo of two men pulling the skin of another man](https://arts.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Manipulation-1-50x50.jpg)
Artistic works influence our minds and nervous systems, Stanford scholar reveals
No two disciplines could seem further apart than theater and science, but, as it turns out, they’re intimate bedfellows. As Stanford professor Matthew W. Smith has discovered, modern theater – and, by extension, film and television – basically owe their life to the scientific study of the nervous system. An associate professor of German studies…
Anna Deavere Smith talks about the healing power of stories
On Oct. 28, hundreds gathered at Memorial Auditorium for a night of storytelling and conversation with former Stanford faculty member Anna Deavere Smith, an award-winning pioneer in the field of documentary theater. Smith is best known for her one-woman, multi-character performances, which depict people reflecting on moments of intense catastrophe. Her plays range in dramatic…
Dry-5: Stories from the California Drought
Two Stanford alums and an undergraduate walk into a bar… Actually, they aren’t in a bar; they are on stage putting on a show about the California drought. So no drinks, but there is plenty of talk of being parched. The alumnae are MARI AMEND and DORIA CHARLSON, both of the Class of ’13, who…
From Stanford’s Braun Music Hall to the Big Apple
“Surreal and wonderful” is how Stanford alumnus LOUIS LAGALANTE described presenting the opening number from his original musical Mirror Image at the New York Musical Theater Festival this summer. Mirror Image, with music and lyrics by Lagalante, premiered at Stanford in March 2015 as Lagalante’s senior capstone project in music composition. The story follows three…
Stanford Repertory Theater presents the wide range of Noël Coward
Rush Rehm, theater professor and artistic director of Stanford Repertory Theater, admits to being something of a Noël Coward neophyte before organizing this summer’s SRT festival, Noël Coward: Art, Style, and Decadence. In Rehm’s thorough reading, listening and seeing all things Coward to prepare for the festival, he discovered to his great delight and amazement…
Spark! Grants: A Year in Photos 2014-15
From a rock band record release to Steve Reich, from Much Ado About Nothing to original, student-written musical theater, this year’s Spark! grant supported creative diversity across Stanford campus. These student groups, individuals, undergraduates, and graduates enliven the campus with their artistic endeavors. 2014-2015 Projects: SImps Workshops The Long Way Around The Benevolent Institution Proof…
