On April 12, 2019, Netflix released all eight episodes of "Special," a new series from Ryan O'Connell, the creator, writer and star. It is based on his 2015 memoir, “I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves” in which he writes about being gay and disabled. O'Connell was born with a mild form of cerebral palsy, a congenital disorder that affects movement and balance.
Posts published in “Arts and Culture”
The Theater Department recently hosted the 60th anniversary of its student-led event, “Do Clothes Matter?” The symposium was held April 6 in the Campus Center, where a group of students studying Costume Design presented the culmination of a semester of research, alongside keynote speakers such as Vanessa Friedman, Sonnet Stanfill and Jan Glier Reeder.
This year, English major Tanya Ritchie AC ’19 will be the first Smith student to complete a creative thesis in the format of a play with her piece “Them What Brung You.” While it may not have always been the easiest process, her work to establish the option should open new doors for future Smith students who want to take this path.
“Being undocumented means you don’t have any rights,” Teresa Lee, the original Dreamer, told the audience on Tuesday night for the world premiere of “The New Immigrant Experience.”
Smith professor Steve Waksman, upon being asked what style The Electric Eyes, the band he plays in, and their newly released album, come under -- said that they are altogether a rock band, with influences from it’s subcategories such as -- indie rock of the 80’s and 90’s and psychedelic rock of the 60’s and 70’s.
At 29 years old, pianist and Iva Dee Hiatt Visiting Artist & Lecturer in Music Jiayan Sun has already achieved his lifelong dream: the opportunity to perform the complete sonatas of the composer who, for him, inspired it all.
And The Kids has certainly been busy since their 2016 release of “Friends Share Lovers.” The band — consisting of Hannah Mohan on vocals and guitar, Rebecca Lasaponaro on drums and Megan Miller on synthesizers and percussion — opened for Blondie at MASS MoCA and have made appearances in the Paste Magazine studio and NPR’s “Tiny Desk” concert series. Now, the Northampton group is back with their third LP, “When This Life Is Over,” in which they continue to explore the complexity of human connection.
Emily Ehrensperger ’21 | Assistant Arts Editor
Fresh off of her debut tour through Europe, singer Madison McFerrin performed songs from her two recent EPs on Saturday, Feb. 23, in Sweeney Concert Hall. The daughter of music legend Bobby McFerrin (among his many accomplishments the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”), she exhibited her own unique style that explored soulful, sensual a cappella through electronic looping.
Walking through SCMA’s newest exhibit, I couldn’t get the chorus of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” out of my head: “Don’t cry / don’t raise your eye / it’s only teenage wasteland.” The song’s otherworldly warning seems to be woven throughout the artwork in “Plastic Entanglements: Ecology, Aesthetics, Materials,” an exhibit that documents the past, present and future of plastics and human existence. The 20th century got to enjoy the thrilling innovations of plastic, inadvertently creating an archive of the costly convenience of daily life. Now, the upcoming waves of youth will inherit what is left of this material’s legacy: an impending wasteland. “Entanglements” confronts the viewer with the medium’s metamorphosis, asking whether the possibilities of plastic can ever make up for the destruction it wreaks.
After two years of hard work, the experiences of this year’s cohort of candidates for the MFA in Choreography and Performance culminated in a thesis concert presented Thursday, Feb. 7, Friday, Feb. 8 and Saturday, Feb. 9, in Theatre 14, Mendenhall Center for the Performing Arts. Centered around the theme of “We,” each candidate’s piece examined the concept in a myriad of unique and captivating ways.