David Kilper | WUSTL

Promo for the Performing Arts Department’s production of the Broadway hit, “Hairspray.” Directed by Ron Himes ID’s: Jeffery Matthews as “Wilbur Turnblad,” Johanna Elkana-Hale as “Tracy Turnblad,” Zachary Allen Farmer as “Edna Turnblad.”

As its final musical moment will have you believe, “Hairspray” is a musical about the celebration of equality in Baltimore in the early 1960s. It’s supposed to be a happy triumph for the underrepresented in society, the ones who have always fallen through the cracks because of their size, skin color or some other factor that shouldn’t matter but still does. Unfortunately, it was hard to feel the celebration in the Performing Arts Department’s production of “Hairspray” because, well, I couldn’t quite hear it.

During my show, the sound was just off—sometimes figuratively, sometimes literally. During “Run and Tell That,” Seaweed’s supposed-to-be-showstopping number, Seaweed’s microphone was turned down so low that you could barely hear senior Ari Scott over the band, and poor Little Inez’s (senior Desiree Thomas) only major solo was silenced. Ensemble members were given singing lines during the Act Two opener “The Big Dollhouse,” but they were not given microphones. Why bother giving a performer a moment to shine if no one is going to hear them?

This isn’t to say “Hairspray” lacked marvelous moments, and the musical in fact had quite a few of them. “Hairspray” centers on Tracy Turnblad (Johanna Elkana-Hale), a heavy-set teenager who lives in 1962 Baltimore. She has two dreams: to dance on “American Bandstand” clone The Corny Collins Show and to marry its beautiful star, Link Larkin (junior Pete Winfrey). Her mischievous exploits land her in detention where she meets Seaweed, the son of Motormouth Maybelle (senior Diamond Skinner), Corny’s co-host on the once-monthly “Negro Day.” Eventually the show turns into not just Tracy’s dream fulfillment but a stand-in for the entire civil rights movement. The story is a bit over the top, but the fun songs make up for it.

The PAD co-sponsored this production with the Black Rep, which means that the cast is not fully comprised of Wash. U. students. This sometimes looks awkward on stage, like in “Mama, I’m a Big Girl Now” when one portrayer is the appropriate age, one seems to be about 30, and one is a student here. It also means that the outsourced actors are wonderful in their roles. Zachary Allen Farmer plays the role of Edna, Tracy’s mom, with just the right amount of humor, making you forget that he’s actually a man in a dress.

The student cast performed admirably, as well. Standouts include Pete Winfrey’s Link and Skinner’s Maybelle. Winfrey played the role of a wannabe Elvis with ease, skulking across stage in an oh-so-dreamy way. His crooning during the written-for-Zac-Efron “It Takes Two” didn’t hurt, either. As the wise civil rights activist mother-figure, the role of Motormouth Maybelle carries particular weight, but Skinner understood the emotion behind her role perfectly. Her call-and-response gospel shouts during “I Know Where I’ve Been” might have been the best vocal performance of the night.

The stage put the audience in just the right mindset. The civil rights collage at the back of the stage set up the historical context, but the floor designs and string of lights dividing the stage in two provided just the right amount of whimsy.

All in all, “Hairspray” was a fun show. It was well-cast and well-acted, though the cast seemed to lack energy. Whether or not that was due to the cast or to the fact that I couldn’t really hear them sing, I can’t tell you. Hopefully the sound problems were just due to opening weekend jitters and the show will be in full form by the time parents see it this weekend.

David Kilper | WUSTL Photo Services

The fantastic plot of “Threepenny” is hilarious and engaging. Set amid the grimy streets of Victorian London, the production tells of the exploits of Mack the Knife (junior Daniel Davis), a notorious and wanted outlaw. Early in the musical, Mack marries Polly Peachum (junior Marissa Barnathan), the naïve daughter of Jonathan Peachum (senior Jonathan Levinson). Mr. Peachum helms a syndicate of beggars with power and influence rivaling a corrupt union boss or mafia don. He and his wife (sophomore Emily Fajardo) disapprove of the marriage and endeavor to see Mack hanged. The show’s resemblance to the typical musical’s stencil of “boy meets girl, loses her, then wins her back” ends immediately. Rather than flee, the amoral Mack seeks refuge among prostitutes and former lovers. As the noose of the police sergeant Tiger Brown (junior Ari Scott) tightens, Mack’s desperation grows; it seems only a miracle can save him.

“Threepenny” ably presents Mack as a protagonist for whom the audience feels sympathy. Despite his adultery, murderous streak and jocular regard of rape, Mack is the champion of the underworld, and the audience will unquestionably adopt him as their hero, too. This musical leaves St. Louis and tours an insular community in the bowels of London. For the riffraff of “Threepenny,” to philander, cheat or bribe is virtuous; this society disregards morals completely. As examples, Mr. Peachum ironically supports his enterprise with passages from the Bible, and one of Mack’s lovers is his best friend’s daughter. In a song and soliloquy, Mack admits his love for the easy wealth, authority and power that such loose morals permit. This characteristic, however, also reveals Mack’s inability to thrive outside of that society. He is trapped there.

The creation of a believable, distinct and wholly amoral society is probably the show’s greatest accomplishment, to which nearly every element of the production contributes. For instance, the set features strong vertical lines, which reinforce Mack’s ensnared state. In addition, a scrim (fabric curtain) separates the underworld from the audience. When Mack attempts to flee looming apprehension, he sprints under the scrim and through the theater. But our world of morals cannot support his sort, and he is quickly captured. The scrim also permits a seamless transition from one scene to the next, which serves the third act well when the action accelerates. Finally, the scrim serves as a screen for digital projections, including backdrops, photographs and film clips. My heaviest criticism for “Threepenny” is the digital projection of two solos onto the scrim. The video resolution is low, and the whole thing feels unnecessary.

“Threepenny” does not offer an obvious interpretation of its events, and a central theme is difficult to identify. Mr. Peachum’s ruthlessness and manipulation of lower classes could be read as a critique of capitalism. Sergeant Brown’s desire to prevent a war between the lower class and the upper one also fits with a Marxist perspective. Peppered throughout the dialogue are clever allusions and wordplay. For example, Mack’s betrayer sells him for 30 shillings. The play also pleads for the audience to “be careful how you punish wrong, for surely cold-hearted deeds will freeze and die away.” Whatever its message, “Threepenny” is solid entertainment, and well worth your time and money. The play kept me at rapt attention, and I intend to see it again.

“The Threepenny Opera,” directed by Jeffrey Matthews, plays at the Edison Theatre this weekend and next. Tickets are $10 for students.

Slam Nuba poet Amy Everhart won the 2009 Individual World Poetry Slam competition, making her the best spoken word poet in the world by official standards. Everhart will be performing in Wednesday’s competition, sponsored by The Black Repertory Theatre of St. Louis.

“This is going to be a really big competition,” said Jessica Davie, a liaison from The Black Rep. “Slam Nuba is very popular and has won a lot of competitions. But [WU-Slam] is also very talented. It should be a great event, and it would be great to see Wash. U. come out on top.”

The Black Rep contacted WU-Slam in July, requesting its participation in the upcoming competition.

“When they first contacted us, we didn’t know who we’d be performing against,” said senior Gerald Jackson, WU-Slam’s vice president and one of the performers in this Wednesday’s event. “We were told in August who was coming, and we immediately got to work.”

“It’s an honor to go against one of the highest regarded spoken word groups in the country, and I think we’ve been preparing accordingly,” added senior Aaron Samuels, the group’s co-founder.

Slam poetry is often described as a mix of hip-hop and poetry, but WU-Slam’s members see it differently. Senior Naia Ferguson describes the process as page meeting the stage, emphasizing the importance of sound writing.

Ferguson tries not to perform subject matter with which she isn’t personally familiar.

“I want my poetry to be as true to myself as possible. When I really feel what I’m talking about, I think the audience has a better chance of feeling it too.”

During the group’s most recent practice, Samuels commented on his team members’ performances, critiquing everything from their facial expressions and body movements to the speed, volume and intensity of their voices.

“It’s all about the performance,” Samuels said. “The way I see it, when you get up [on stage], you have three minutes to affect people. When I perform, I have just three minutes to say something original, three minutes to change the world. You have a room full of people giving you their complete attention—it’s an amazing opportunity to say something real.”

This week’s show will likely propel WU-Slam further into the national slam poetry spotlight. Two years ago, the group began to build a name for itself through its debut performance at the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI), where it were the only team to walk away with three awards. The group has been steadily gaining fame and popularity ever since.

WU-Slam has also won several of Wash. U.’s Excellence in Leadership awards and earned awards for the best piece of the competition and the best overall performance team at this year’s CUPSI tournament in Boston; they came in fifth in the most recent competition.

“If we made a name for ourselves the first year, I think we doubled that this time around,” Samuels said.

While all of the team members expressed some anxiety about their competition on Wednesday, they have confidence in their performance abilities and believe they will be strong contenders.

“It’s a tremendous honor to be asked to do this,” Jackson said. “When I joined [WU-Slam], I never thought I’d be competing against a group like this. I don’t want to say we deserve this because it’s all a blessing, but we did work for it, and it’s very exciting.”

The performance will be Wednesday, Sept. 15 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available through the Edison Box Office.

$20 for general admission, $10 for students.

Luster: March 23 at Cicero’s, 8 p.m.

Chicago’s own Luster has spent a year writing and recording, and the band now feels it can take its show on the road. The band bought an RV and booked a ton of shows all over the nation, and is coming to St. Louis. Catch them this at 8 p.m. Tuesday at Cicero’s. For more information, visit www.lusteronline.com.

Tiempo Libre: March 26 at Edison Theatre, 8 p.m.

The Grammy-nominated Latin jazz band will play in the Edison Theatre this Friday as part of the Edison Theatre OVATIONS Series. Directed by pianist Jorge Gomez, the band fuses Cuban rhythms with classical melodies. Tickets are $20 for students, $28 for seniors and Wash. U. faculty and staff, and $32 for everyone else. For more information, visit edisontheatre.wustl.edu.

Several student groups still use Mallinckrodt for varying reasons despite the dominance of the Danforth University Center (DUC).

For example, students in Carnaval rely on Mallinckrodt because the show takes place in the Edison Theatre located there. The lower level of Mallinckrodt, including the former food court area and the Gargoyle, is also still used for rehearsals and as an area for performers to wait before going on stage.

Senior Nadia Abouzaid, co-chair for Carnaval, worries that renovating Mallinckrodt could render the meeting spaces inaccessible for performing groups. The old food court area is very useful now that the University made changes to it, according to Abouzaid.

“Once [the University] renovated it, it became a really prime space on campus to use for practice,” Abouzaid said.

Other performances, including Diwali, Lunar New Year Festival and Black Anthology rely on Mallinckrodt for similar reasons.
Abouzaid also noted that the DUC lacks any large spaces to practice.

“I feel like the University did a really poor job of planning when they built the DUC, because [there was] news that they wanted to tear down Mallinckrodt or renovate it, but they didn’t provide any alternate large practice spaces for students to use,” Abouzaid said.

Abouzaid is concerned that the University will close Mallinckrodt so that it can  do the planned renovations, leaving Carnaval performers with no place to practice.

“I have no idea what [Carnaval] isgoing to do if Mallinckrodt’s not open to them,” Abouzaid said. “I was really nervous about where our dancers were going to practice, but thankfully they didn’t do that.”

While performers may use the building frequently, most students go there much less often.

“I feel like Mallinckrodt as a building has become less central, because when the food court was situated in that building, I think it was really the center of campus life, and now it’s not as much. But for me, our dance groups definitely utilize those spaces for practice,” Abouzaid said.

With a maximum capacity of 499 as determined by the fire code, the Gargoyle is almost unmatched on campus in its ability to host events with large audiences like concerts.

Mallinckrodt also continues to draw students to the building’s many businesses, including FedEx Office, the Danforth Campus Bookstore and Bank of America.

“To me, [the Mallinckrodt Center is] basically where the campus store is and Bank of America is. Those are the only things I routinely use Mallinckrodt for,” sophomore Ben Ingell said. “The DUC doesn’t really replace it, all it seems to add to me is a new place to eat.”

Ingell also said that he rarely uses the DUC for anything other than the food areas and that he still goes to Mallinckrodt because he uses the businesses located there.

The University had planned to renovate the Mallinckrodt Center and provide additional space to the businesses that will remain there, but the plan was put on hold in response to the recent drop in the school’s endowment.

The renovation would have cost the University $20 million.

The University has not indicated when new construction projects will resume.

Since September, students, faculty and other members of the community have put in long hours to choreograph the performance. According to Alicia Graf, market coordinator for the Performing Arts Department (PAD), the audition process was highly competitive.

“More than 100 students auditioned at the beginning of the semester and only several dozen made the cut,” Graf noted.

The PAD named the showcase after the final work, in which audience members will be invited to stand and join the stage to participate with the dancers.

“We blur the boundary between those who watch and those who dance,” David Merchant, senior lecturer in dance and choreographer of “Common Ground,” said. “In the end, we all come together, to dance on ‘common ground.’”

This year, dancers will perform two distinguished works set by visiting artists James Jordan and Liz Lerman. Jordan is ballet master for the Kansas City Ballet and restaged Anthony Tudor’s classic modern ballet “Dark Elegies.” Lerman is the artistic director for the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, and the parent of a University student.

Lerman staged “Still Crossing,” a work that originally premiered at the centennial celebration for the Statue of Liberty.

“[‘Still Crossing’] addresses the immigrant experience through community art dance,” Merchant said. “It not only casts Wash. U. student dancers, but also 30 members of the University and St. Louis community.”

Cecil Slaughter, senior lecturer in dance and director of Washington University Dance Theatre points out that “Dark Elegies” and “Still Crossing” mark very important occasions: The former celebrates the 100th anniversary of Tudor’s birth, while the latter, the Statue of Liberty.

Slaughter also noted that both works revolve around the idea of strong community.

“That sense of community extends to works choreographed by the PAD dance faculty,” he said.

Other works in the showcase include “Manic Music II,” choreographed by Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Dance Program Mary-Jean Cowell; “Falling Petals,” choreographed by PAD post-doctoral fellow Ting-Ting Chang; “Ganesha Sharanam,” choreographed by adjunct professor Asha Prem; “Overdrive,” choreographed by Slaughter; and “Passion,” choreographed by adjunct lecturer in dance Keith Tyrone Williams.

Merchant said he is especially excited about the show’s display of diverse performers and choreographers.

“There are dances from different artistic genres and different cultures,” he said. “People dancing are young students and older adults, people well-trained in dance and people new to dance.”

“Common Ground” will run from tonight to Sunday afternoon in Edison Theatre. Shows will be at 8 p.m. tonight and tomorrow night, and 2 p.m. Sunday afternoon. Tickets can be purchased at the show, at all MetroTix outlets or by calling the Edison Theatre Box Office at 935-6543. Ticket prices are $10 for University students, faculty, staff and seniors and $15 for the general public.

Diwali, the annual “celebration of lights” festival, is among the most successful cultural shows during the school year. It is held in Edison Theatre every fall semester.

Tickets to the mid-November event are highly sought after, and in most cases, are quickly sold out after ticket sales begin. Every year numerous people who want to attend the show are left out.

In previous years, students camped out in front of the Edison Theatre box office for hours to get tickets to the shows.

According to Manjaap Sidhu, the public relations chair for Ashoka, a new system of distributing tickets to Diwali, announced on Oct. 16, was devised with the help of Edison Theatre Operations Manager Bill Larson.

With the new system, every residential adviser must turn in a complete interdepartmental purchase order (IPO) on Nov. 2 between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m to an Ashoka representative standing at the bottom of the grand staircase in the Danforth University Center.

The IPO must contain the Residential Advisor’s (RA) name, phone number, the total number of tickets, total amount of money and show choices.

A lottery will then be used to decide the order in which RA tickets are distributed. Turning in an IPO earlier or later within the given time frame will not increase or decrease the chances of receiving tickets. Ashoka will randomly select RAs until all but twenty-three seats are filled for each of Diwali’s three showings.

RAs must go to the Edison Theatre Box Office after 1 p.m. on Nov. 6 to see whether they were selected for tickets in the lottery.

“If they were selected from the lottery, that RA will get an envelope of the tickets they requested. If that RA did not get selected from the lottery, he or she will have their IPO returned to them,” Sidhu wrote in an e-mail to Student Life. “Again, the time at which you come to the box office does not affect whether or not you get tickets and every RA that turned in an IPO must come to the box office, whether or not they got tickets.”

If an RA is not selected in the lottery, their residents must buy tickets set aside for the general public on Nov. 7.

Students however, have criticized these ticket distribution changes, saying that it is unfair that RAs are the first to have access to the tickets and that the general student population is allotted a minimal number of tickets.

“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any harder to get tickets,” junior Nick Burns said. “Since I fall into the general public, where’s the guarantee that I can even get a ticket? There’s not much room for the rest of us.”

Additionally, in the past, students have also complained about the long lines associated with purchasing Diwali tickets.

Ashoka believes the new “Diwali lottery” will help to alleviate the long lines for those living within Residential Life housing. Those who are not living within ResLife housing will have to stand in line as in years past.

Students have recommended that Ashoka further investigate other methods of distribution, particularly online ticket distribution.

Online ticket distribution, however, is against Edison Theatre policy and consequently is not a method that will be considered.

“We understand that a need for reform has been constantly demanded. After talking things over, we believe this slight change with the lottery tickets will ease the situation,” Sidhu said.