The Bowdoin Orient

If anyone tells you that they don't love Maurice Sendak's wild rumpuses chock-full of monsters and nighttime escapades in oversized kitchens, they're probably lying. As a childhood staple of many in our generation, Sendak's well-worn tales are often found on bookshelves at home, a throwback to times when playing dress-up was customary.

The Department of Theater and Dance opened its 2009-2010 season yesterday with an adaptation of the moderately obscure "Drums in the Night," a play from the influential German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

Approximately 150 people came out carrying candles yesterday for Take Back the Night, an annual campus march to raise awareness of sexual violence. The Bowdoin chapter of Take Back the Night was organized and sponsored by V-Day, a club devoted to raising awareness of sexual violence, Bowdoin Men Against Sexual Violence (BMASV), and Safe Space. The event, however, is observed internationally.

When you utter the words "deer hunter" on an early fall day to most residents of Maine, it conjures up images of leggy animals pursued by men in flannel and neon orange vests. This was not the case last night when the band Deerhunter graced the stage in Smith Union.

Senior Katherine Finnegan's independent study unexpectedly exploded from a small student gallery display to a headlining exhibition. "Third-Party Politics: Britain, France, and America in an Age of Revolution" opened at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art on April 9 and is the culminating project of an independent study in history. Under the guidance of Visiting Professor of History Aaron Windel and with the help of Mellon Curatorial Fellow Diana Tuite, Finnegan investigated prints that were created during the early decades of King George III's 60-year reign over Great Britain and Ireland in the 18th century.

Dancers will twirl onto the stage during the 38th-annual spring dance performance on Friday and Saturday nights—this time adding a few new twists. "Openings" is an hour-long dance performed by students in repertory dance classes 112, 212, and 312. It is choreographed by Gwyneth Jones and Paul Sarvis, both senior lecturers in dance performance.

A black man in whiteface will impersonate Abraham Lincoln this weekend as part of the thought-provoking show "Topdog/Underdog." Director Caitlin Hylan '09 will present the two-man show, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. The director and the two actors, Jamil Sylvester-John '09 and Tony Thrower '09, will perform the show as the culmination of an independent study.

"Attempts on Her Life" will challenge actors and audiences alike to break down social norms tonight and tomorrow in Wish Theater. Written by Martin Crimp, it tells the story of Anne, a woman who may or may not be created by Hollywood. The audience is never sure of whether she is real or fake, dead or alive, hockey mom, girl-next-door, or terrorist. With a strong focus on the media, the play explores the dilemma of determining what is real in the age of global capital and media culture.

Two seniors, Mo Zhou '09 and Jason Finkelstein '09, are putting new spins on two classic plays as they respectively direct "Miss Julie" and "Of Mice and Men" this weekend and next week. Written by August Strindberg in 1888, "Miss Julie" is the story of a strong-willed woman of high status and the daughter of a count. She flirts with Jean, the count's servant, who is engaged to Kristin, a cook. Miss Julie is self-loathing as well as gender- and class-confused. "She hates men, but she can't help flirting with them," Zhou said.

Eve Ensler's provocative show, "The Vagina Monologues," will make audiences laugh, cry, and think as it graces the stage of Kresge Auditorium tonight and tomorrow. Initially performed by Ensler in 1996, the show is made up of a number of monologues all relating to vaginas in one way or another—through sex, masturbation, birth, rape, menstruation, orgasm, or imaginative things it would wear or say. Ensler wrote the monologues after interviewing more than 200 women, and as a result, the monologues represent experiences of women of different ethnicities, classes, interests, and sexualities.

Andrew Abbott followed a unique trajectory into the art world: He was once a student who admitted to cheating in art history and claimed only to have taken the class to look at the pictures; now his quirky paintings grace the walls of Lamarche Lounge in Smith Union.