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Theater

Portrait of an Artist

Portrait of an Artist: Mira Pickus ’25

From Purity Pact to Masque & Gown, Mira Pickus ’25 has made an impact on Bowdoin’s stage within her first two years on campus. Pickus is best known for her comedic roles as a sketch and stand-up performer in Purity Pact, a comedy group made up of women and non-binary students on campus, but her work has touched countless aspects of the theater community from acting to technical design.

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Portrait of an Artist

Portrait of an Artist: Julia Jennings ’23

Since being cast in the role of a murderous old woman during her freshman year of high school, actor, writer and director Julia Jennings ’23 has only grown in her understanding and appreciation of theater. From studying at the National Theater Institute (NTI) in 2022 to, more recently, writing and developing a play titled “In the End, we all go to Providence,” Jennings has been involved in many different facets of theater production, ranging from writing to acting to stage management.

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Theater

“Our Town” wows despite last-minute change

Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize winning play “Our Town” depicts the lives of everyday people living in the fictional town of Grover’s Corner, N.H. at the beginning of the 20th century. This weekend, the Department of Theater and Dance is opening its own unique take of the American classic, directed by Professor of Theater Davis Robinson.

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RISE

RISE: Working together to represent the female experience

With auditions for RISE, the performance of Bowdoin women’s stories, coming to a close, the leadership team looks forward to an in-person production they hope will make campus culture safer for women. Khue Anh Tran ’25, a member of the RISE leadership team, was responsible for facilitating auditions with the rest of the RISE team on Sunday.

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performance

Bowdoin theater department to hold two main-stage productions this fall

After more than a year of performing over Zoom, Masque & Gown, Bowdoin’s student-run theater company, will hold in-person auditions for its fall production next week, while the Bowdoin Theater Department will continue its rehearsals for “The Wolves.” Masque & Gown Board Member Sinclaire Ledahl ’23 is working with the group’s other board members to select a show for their fall production and to begin rehearsals in the coming weeks.

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Performance Art

Department of Theater and Dance performs first in-person stage play “Cows of War”

Last Friday evening, the Bowdoin Department of Theater and Dance traded in vocal warm-ups and a house packed full of Bowdoin students for rapid pre-performance COVID-19 testing and cameras placed in an empty Pickard Theater for a staged production of the “Cows of War.” The play, written by Department of Theater and Dance Coordinator Callie Kimball and directed by Associate Professor of Theater Abigail Killeen, marks the Department’s first production since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.

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Faculty

Killeen stars in Smithsonian television episode

When Associate Professor of Theater Abigail Killeen first heard about the opportunity to act in an episode of the Smithsonian’s “America’s Hidden Stories,” she did not realize that she was auditioning for a starring role. Earlier this month—almost a year after that audition—she made her debut as Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union spy who fought for the abolition of slavery during the Civil War.

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Alumni

Sally Rose Zuckert ’19 explores making theater in the current moment with virtual show

In the current near-cessation of live theater due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sally Rose Zuckert ’19 believes that there is a chance for a reckoning: the invitation to reimagine the institution and question its history. Through her performance in the University of Chicago production of Diana Oh’s “My H8 Letter to the Gr8 American Theater,” Zuckert challenges theater as a cultural reflection and explores inequities that have always existed in the theater industry.

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Quarantine Cinema

The importance of Black stage-to screen adaptations

It’s safe to say that the majority of present-day moviegoers steer clear of stage-to-screen adaptations. There are films in this subgenre that would be considered classics, like Elia Kazan’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Milos Forman’s “Amadeus” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but there is something about the intimacy of watching the film version of a work originally performed as a stage play that turns many audiences off.

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Alumni

New costumer Lily Prentice ’10 joins the Theater and Dance Departmemt

During the initial chaos of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a month after Bowdoin’s emergency transition to remote instruction, the Theater and Dance Department hired Lily Prentice ’10 as its newest costume shop manager. While the fall semester has been unlike any other for the Theater and Dance Department, Prentice still has her hands full with small- and large-scale sewing projects, educating and advising students about the role of costume in the performing arts and organizing the costume shop—all of which the department lacked the time to do during typical, in-person semesters.

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Comedy

Improvising 2020: Bowdoin Improvabilities move remote

Between a pandemic and a precarious political climate, very little has gone according to plan over the past several months, and the world has had to learn how to improvise. “Improvabilities,”  Bowdoin’s oldest improvisational comedy group, has worked to modify and adapt their craft to suit a remote model.

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Theater

On a changing stage: Tina Satter ’96 named a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow

Tina Satter ’96 got the news that she had received a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and Performance Art just as the entire landscape of her life’s work began shifting, maybe for good. “The big question, and the constant micro-question of every day [is]: ‘How does theater exist on the other side of [the COVID-19 pandemic]?’ That I don’t even know how to answer, but you go back to the work,” Satter said in a phone call with the Orient.

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Dance

Theater and dance faculty share lip sync video

Dancing outdoors and sharing snapshots of quarantined family life, faculty from the Department of Theater and Dance relayed an exuberant and spirited message to the Bowdoin community last week. With 2,500 views and counting, professors starred in a video cover of The Temptations’ 1960s Motown hit “Can’t Get Next To You,” taking a humorous—albeit important—stance on the social distancing measures prompted by the coronavirus (COVID-19).

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Theater

One Acts continue M&G tradition

Rarely does the process of embalming incite romance, but in the Wish Theatre this past Saturday, love bloomed amidst dead bodies and shaving cream. Or, at least, it did for the duration of “Over My Dead Body,” written by Dylan Sloan ’22, Johnny Liesman ‘22 and Elizabeth Gracey ’22, which debuted this past Saturday at Bowdoin’s annual one-act play festival.

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Alumni

Zach Burton ’14 makes his debut

Hoping to share his own mental health story and help destigmatize these issues in the public eye, Bowdoin alumnus Zach Burton ’14 ventured into the world of theater and debuted his first play, “The Manic Monologues,” in May.

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Music

A legendary tribute: musical remembers the life of Cole Porter

With a shimmering silver and gold beaded curtain framing the stage, audience members of all ages will be transported back in time to the glitz of Broadway in the roaring 20’s. The vehicle is the music of composer extraordinaire Cole Porter, performed by the students in the Musical Theater Performance class instructed by Professor of Theater Davis Robinson.

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Theater

‘Too Much Light’ brings Neo-Futurism to the stage

Even before the show begins, shouts from the audience and screams of “Curtain!” set the stage for the vivacious and fast-paced production “Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind.” Tonight and Saturday, an intimate cast will take the audience through a whirlwind of 30 plays—a series of emotional, hilarious and thought-provoking storylines—in just 60 minutes.

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Theater

‘Sweat’ stages working-class anguish with empathy

Once audiences are confronted with the human cost of the American Dream, economics and politics will never look the same. On Friday night at Pickard Theater, tales of American workers take center stage as the Department of Theater debuts the Maine premiere of the Pulitzer and Tony award-winning play “Sweat” by Lynn Nottage.

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Theater

Snapshots of intimate encounters in ‘Heart of the City’

The hustle and bustle of New York City comes alive on stage to the familiar sound of a subway announcement. Complete with towering skyscrapers, dreamers and cynics, hurrying high-heels along congested sidewalk, the city was reimagined on stage at Pickard Theater last weekend in Masque and Gown’s fall production, “Heart of the City,” written by Eric Lane.

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Theater

Senior studio projects reimagine theater

Beginning this week, the Department of Theater and Dance will present a selection of senior studio projects in Memorial Hall’s Wish Theater and in other spaces across campus. Featuring original works, improvisation and new arrangements, the series will highlight the talents of each student in the culmination of their theatrical careers at Bowdoin.

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Theater

‘Love and Information’ is a play for the modern age

Watching “Love and Information” feels a lot like scrolling through your Twitter feed—which you might be, if you happen to sit in the “Tweet Seat” section. Based on the award-winning play by Caryl Churchill, the interactive play tackled what it means to be alive right now—to be constantly inundated by digital media.

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Theater

Green Day meets modern day in ‘American Idiot’

This weekend in Wish Theater, Masque and Gown will present ‘‘American Idiot,” a rock opera brimming with youthful angst and frustration. Based on the Green Day concept album of the same name, the show includes several of the band’s most beloved songs—including the title track “American Idiot,” as well as “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “21 Guns”—and weaves them into a story in which three central characters confront relationships, drug use and their own social and political disillusionment in a bleak, post-September 11 American landscape.

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Theater

‘The Poets and the Assassin’ spotlights Iranian women

Despite their centuries-long battle for human rights, the stories of Iranian and Muslim women have traditionally been overlooked in American society. Thursday night’s performance of the play “The Poets and the Assassin—Daughters of Iran” in Kresge Auditorium attempted to portray their stories and address the myth of the submissive, passive Middle Eastern woman.

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Theater

‘The Threepenny Opera’ is a beggar’s play, modernized

This weekend, the Pickard Theater stage will be filled with gangsters, prostitutes and the unusual sounds of Kurt Weill’s music in Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera.” From the plot to casting to music, this rendition of Brecht’s most well-known opera challenges perceptions of gender and class, particularly when viewed in a modern context.

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Theater

Masque & Gown stages ‘The Laramie Project’

Yesterday, Masque & Gown premiered “The Laramie Project,” a production choice that continues the group’s break with the more traditional shows that characterized much of its history. “We had three plays in a row during my time here and, I understand, several more before this that were like white, living-room, family dramas where people sat in their kitchen or living rooms and talked about their white people problems for a nice hour and a half,” said Kathleen Johnson ’19, director of the show, in a discussion at Burnett House last week.

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Theater

One-day play returns to stage

Most theater productions take weeks, or even months, to rehearse before the curtain rises on opening night. The same is typically true on the Bowdoin stage. But not this Saturday night. At 7 p.m. tomorrow, Masque & Gown actors will perform original plays that were written, directed and rehearsed in only 24 hours.

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Theater

Alumnae wow audiences in off-off broadway play

Continuing their success from the summer of 2016, Maggie Seymour ’16 and Olivia Atwood ’17 returned to the stage to perform “15 Villainous Fools” ­—this time in New York City. Based on William Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors,” “15 Villainous Fools” is a comedy that follows the adventures of two sets of twins.

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