His first original work, “Long Way Down,” was a musical adaptation of The New York Times bestselling novel of the same name and opened last April. Nearly a year later, Kisare’s second original work, “Black Boy Therapy!” is set to run from April 4-6. While the storylines of these two shows are vastly different — “Long Way Down” is an electrifying and dark thriller on the cyclical nature of gun violence, and “Black Boy Therapy!” is a satirical piece on microaggressions and stereotypes — both of these works reflect Kisare’s desire to push the limits of Black storytelling on the stage.

“Stuff I have never seen in theater before — that’s what I want to create,” said Kisare. “I want to create theater that enriches and challenges our perceptions of the Black experience. I aim to use the universal language of music as a lens to uplift Black centered stories, helping redefine the landscape of musical theater.”

The upcoming production of “Black Boy Therapy!” invites audiences into the mind of a Black boy and introduces them to the emotions that live inside him: Sadness, Anger, Fear, Shame and Surprise. Viewers follow these five emotions on their journey, as they learn to unpack their trauma to find their missing leader, Joy — before it’s too late and everyone disappears forever. 

The show includes a broad variety of music, from genres that are seldom used in musical theater, like  R&B and bossa nova, to conventional genres, like pop. The musical landscape that Kisare creates becomes a major character in the work, working to enhance the scene at hand. 

“Juxtaposing the subject matter with the genre helps us understand, one, how this character thinks and sees the world,” said Kisare. “And it also helps the show be more entertaining for the audience and understand what I’m saying better. Because why am I presenting it in this music genre? Hopefully people wonder, like, ‘A shoplifting song as a pop song?’ It sounds ridiculous, but it’s all for a point.” 

While “Black Boy Therapy!” explores how a Black boy experiences and grapples with instances of racism, Kisare said that this show is meant to be a story that is appreciated and enjoyed beyond a Black audience. Especially as these stories are ones that “no one wants to talk about” and often get brushed under the carpet, he said. Humor becomes an effective medium for audiences to fully confront and digest conversations that they would have otherwise avoided. 

According to Kisare, the show navigates a tricky balance when it comes to satire: giving audience members the “permission to laugh,” while understanding the ultimate takeaway of the punchline.  

“The beautiful thing about theater is that they can’t talk, they can’t react, all they can do is sit and watch,” said Kisare. “And there’s a power in just knowing that we as actors in the show have control over their small amount of time to say whatever we want to say. And what I want to do is make theater that everyone can enjoy, but it doesn’t mean they have to relate to it.”

Alongside playwriting, Kisare maintains various other relationships to the stage. He has played the drums for “Long Way Down” and is on the piano for “Black Boy Therapy!” For both of these shows, he has been the musical director and music conductor.

In addition to his work off the stage, Kisare acted in the Broadway production “School of Rock” as a 12 year old. As Kisare observed the behind-the-scenes aspects of the production and spoke with professionals on set, he was inspired to create musical theater pieces of his own. 

“It opened up my eyes to the possibilities,” said Kisare. “I wanted to write because I’ve always loved musicals, but it wasn’t until then that I was like, ‘Okay, I can tangibly see a world in which maybe I could do this, and I would want to do it.’” 

Eventually, Kisare said, he hopes to act in one of his original works. 

William Romain ’26, who plays the role of Sadness in “Black Boy Therapy!” described Kisare as a confident individual with a direct sense of humor. These traits lend themselves to Kisare’s work ethic —  “he’s not here to play,” said Romain. 

According to Maxwell Brown ’25, a frequent collaborator and close friend to Kisare, Kisare is a prolific artist who is always thinking about the next big project. 

When asked about any future ideas, Kisare responded immediately with three different ideas, proving his collaborators’ description of Kisare to be correct. One of his ideas include an exploration of Black Santa and how the meaning of this figure has transformed throughout history — from the Blackface Santa that was at the center of minstrel shows to Black Americans’ reclamation of Black Santa amidst the Civil Rights Movement. 

While the subject matter of these plays is unique and idiosyncratic, these unconventional framings of the Black experience fulfill Kisare’s goals of creating boundary-pushing stories.  

“Jason has a lot of potential to be kind of, well, one of the biggest writers of our modern century drama,” said Brown. “And I think that’s very high praise. But I do believe it.  I think that it’s just really rewarding to be a part of this process and create new work that people haven’t seen before.” 

Kisare started working on “Black Boy Therapy!” in August of last year. 

The post PROFILE: Student playwright Jason Kisare pushes the boundaries of Black theater appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The two-person musical, co-directed and performed by Lucas Oland ’26 and Ava-Riley Miles ’26, is based on the classic novel by Jean Webster. The musical follows Jerusha — played by Miles — as she navigates a transition between her orphanage and college. Throughout the story, she writes letters to her mysterious benefactor “Daddy Long Legs,” whom the audience knows as Jervis, played by Oland. As the two begin to fall in love, a comedic romance of dramatic irony ensues.

“Our show should be one where people are leaving really excited to be involved with theater,” Oland said. “It’s a celebration of musical theater and the work we put into the show.”

This musical is a passion project for Miles, an English and theater double major, and Oland, a neuroscience major. The two began working on the project together in January when Miles approached Oland with the score.

After Oland listened to the soundtrack and fell in love with it, the pair decided to pursue the project together. 

Since the two make up the entire cast, their directorial approach was more conversational than instructional. 

“We come into every rehearsal, kind of like, ‘okay, what feels natural?’ and then we work from there,” Miles said. “It’s much less having someone tell you ‘And now you stand here, and you walk here.’ It’s more like figuring it out.”

The show’s intimacy is supported by the technical elements of the production. The set is fairly simple. It uses moveable trunks on one side and office furniture on another to “split” the set down the middle, differentiating between Jerusha’s environment and Jervis’s office. 

Lighting is also used to distinguish between environments.

There are no blackouts in between scenes, so characters move set pieces while engaging in dialogue. Miles rearranges the trunks in unique ways to establish settings like a log cabin, mountain or her college room.

“We’re really using the suspension of disbelief,” Miles said.

Additionally, most of the show involves Jerusha writing letters to her benefactor, which she does by singing out and facing the audience. This results in the production having the feel of a three-person cast comprising Jerusha, Jervis and the audience itself. 

Music plays a distinct role in the production. Music not only plays during elements where cast members are singing, but it also underscores many of the dialogue scenes.

The varying presence of music in the show allows for originality and inventiveness. 

“There’s so much room for your own creativity,” said musical director Lauren Kim ’26. “It can be challenging, but also a really cool experience.”

The musical ensemble is also intimate, consisting of a piano, cello and guitar. 

Though the cast is small, the laughter and love in this show will be big, according to the directors.

“I think it’s nice every once in a while to see a show that just leaves you feeling good,” said Miles.

Daddy Long Legs will play March 29 and 30 in the Saybrook Underbrook.

The post Lots of love in Daddy Long Legs appeared first on Yale Daily News.

On Saturday, March 30, the Asian American Cultural Center is hosting a cultural show to celebrate Pan-Asian American Heritage Month. Started last year, the showcase has become an annual event set to take place each spring. This year, the show’s theme is “Nostalgia and the Path Forward.”

“There is such a wide variety of acts beautifully representing this year’s theme for Pan Asian American Heritage Month, and I can’t wait to see our planning come to fruition,” said Thomas Kannam ’26, who organized the event in coordination with the AACC’s Assistant Director Sheraz Iqbal. 

Kannam said that they reserved the auditorium in the fall and worked on promotional content, scheduling and logistics over the past few months.

After advertising the show through entries in the AACC’s newsletter, posts on social media, physical fliers and personal outreach, Kannam finalized a lineup of thirteen performers from various affinity groups on campus. The showcase includes solo acts along with group performances from students affiliated with the AACC.

Showcase participant and an AACC First-Year Coordinator Marissa Halagao ’27 said shows like the one planned for Saturday exemplify the strength of the Asian community at Yale. 

Halagao, along with other members of Yale’s Filipinx student association, Kasama, will dance the Tinikling, a traditional Filipino dance that mimics the movements of the small “tikling” rail bird present across the Pacific. The dance form is known for its incorporation of bamboo poles. 

The group will dance to choreography by Resty Fufunan ’24, Ava Estacio-Touhey ’25 and Mark Chung ’25. Their performance will include traditional Filipino Tinikling and modernized components, which Halagao said represent the diaspora’s reclamation and adaptation of the dance style.

According to Halagao, Tinikling is thought to have originated during the period of Spanish colonization, when Filipinos forced to work on plantain farms were beaten with bamboo poles. Halagao said the dance evolved into a symbol of resilience and cultural reclamation over generations, ultimately becoming the national dance of the Philippines.

“Dancing Tinikling as a Filipino American has been so empowering for me,” she said, expressing her anticipation for the upcoming show. 

Along with providing Tinikling choreography, Chung is performing with UNITY —- Yale’s only student group dedicated to traditional Korean drumming. On Saturday, the group will play a style of drumming called “samul nori” that includes percussion instruments commonly used in Korean folk music. “Samul” means “four things,” while “nori,” means to play, and the genre’s name refers to four musicians and their respective instruments. 

Chung said UNITY, which was originally founded in 1991, was revitalized this spring after becoming inactive during the COVID-19 pandemic. The group has been rehearsing for the show since its revival. According to Chung, efforts by KASY — Korean American Students at Yale — and opportunities like the PAAHM Cultural Show have helped facilitate UNITY’s return.

“This has definitely been a learning process,” said Chung. “Many of us have played music before but are new to traditional music.”

The group’s efforts will culminate this Saturday along with the other performers including Stella Choi ’26 Sunehra Subah ’24, Annabelle Huang ’26, Valentina Pham ’24, Linh Buu ’26, Kelly Tran ’27, Linda Do ’27, Jana Nguyenová MED ’25, Eunice Kiang ’24 and Patricia Joseph ’26.

Kannam said the most rewarding aspect of planning the showcase is celebrating Asian creativity on campus. Noting the diversity of this year’s acts, he underscored the honored cultural traditions and innovative techniques that both make up the showcase’s performances. 

“I think art and performance has a unique ability to bring people together,” they said. “It’s one of the most effective paths forward.”

The Whitney Humanities Center’s Auditorium is located at 53 Wall St.

The post Cultural show celebrating Asian heritage to take place appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The film, which is Song’s directorial film debut, follows two childhood friends, Nora and Hae-sung, as they reunite with each other and confront all that has changed — and remained the same — over the last 24 years. Song’s speech touched upon intentional creative decisions within the film, her experiences in the theater and film industry and her reflections on her bilingual, bicultural identity.

This year’s PAAHM celebrations centered on “Nostalgia and the Path Forward,” a theme that resonated with “Past Lives,” said Song.

“At the heart of the movie’s audience are immigrants,” she said. “And it can be in India, or it could be in France, or it could be in the United States. But wherever it is, the audience that this is for, at the heart of it, are people who have [had their] feet in two different spaces.”

Song’s address was preceded by a performance from “UNITY,” Yale’s traditional Korean drum and dance troupe — as well as introductions from Joliana Yee, director of the Asian American Cultural Center and an associate dean of Yale College, and Zahra Yarali ’24. Song’s speech was followed by a short Q&A session, moderated by Diza Hendrawan ’25 and Jenny Lee ’25.

According to Yee, the theme of “Nostalgia and the Path Forward” is an important reminder to carry lessons from the past with us as we are moving forward to the future.

“This year’s theme, ‘Nostalgia and the Path Forward,’ is a reminder in an ever-changing, fast-paced and oftentimes turbulent society, of the necessity to slow down, pause and remember our roots, where we come from,” Yee said. “I have personally found that whenever I feel fear and doubt about the future, drawing from the strengths of my ancestors and communities, who shaped me into being, [has] been my most powerful tool.”  

For fans of rom-com and film buffs alike, “Past Lives” has received critical acclaim for its modest, yet emotionally devastating, portrayal of romance. In some ways, the film’s honest and realistic nature is unsurprising, given that “Past Lives” is partially inspired by Song’s own experiences.

The idea for this movie first came to her as she was sitting at a bar, in between her white husband Arthur and a childhood friend from Korea, translating between two men who had loved her across time, space and languages.

This moment would later serve as the inspiration for the opening scene of the film, in which two strangers observe Nora, Hae-sung and Arthur sitting at the bar and speculate about their relationships. They ask themselves whether Nora and Hae-sung are siblings. Is Nora introducing Arthur, her friend, to Hae-sung, her boyfriend? Viewers are left wondering how these three characters’ relationships are intertwined.

As much as this opening scene serves to tease out curiosity and tension between the characters, for Song, this moment is an empowering one. Her bilingual tongue, an insecurity of hers, seemed to be a “superpower,” bringing together the worlds of two strangers.

“I remember also knowing that the only reason why these two people ended up in this bar on the same night and our ‘in-yeon’ is because of me,” Song said. “Because of their connection to me. And I think that being in that room, being bilingual felt like a superpower. It felt like I was now able to collapse time and space and become whole and become bigger than an ordinary person.”

Since its release, “Past Lives” has enjoyed considerable success and popularity. Most recently, the film was nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards and received five nominations at the 81st Golden Globe Awards. 

Not everyone was sold on this movie at first, according to Song. Particularly during the pre-production stages, it was difficult for people to understand the marketability and feasibility of a bilingual film. Song had written the script before the success of 2018 film “Parasite,” which spurred critical discourse on how foreign-language movies were treated in award circuits, said Song.

It seemed as if this was a story nobody wanted to hear. Even the script-writing programs seemed to reject bilingualism, Song said. 

“I opened ‘Final Draft,’ and I realized that they don’t support any other alphabet except for the English alphabet,” Song said. “It’s a way of implicitly telling you that Hollywood is not interested in a movie that is bilingual.”

While “Past Lives” was Song’s first script-writing venture in the film industry, Song has been a playwright for more than decade. If there’s anything that Song has learned from her experience in the theater industry, it’s rejection. As a playwright, she said, you realize that “no one wants to do your plays anyway.” Just as she had done with theater-writing, Song pushed on and continued to write.

Even as she met and spoke with audiences in various different countries, Song noted that this story is particularly relatable for viewers who are used to having their feet in two different worlds: “sometimes bilingual, sometimes bicultural and sometimes not even fully that.”

At the same time, however, there is a universality to the heartache and yearning of “Past Lives,” said Song. She recalled a conversation she had with an audience member in Galway, Ireland, who tearfully spoke to her about his childhood sweetheart, all the while pronouncing “in-yeon,” the Korean word for fate, in a heavy Irish accent.

“There’s a way that you can watch ‘Past Lives’ where it is quite a universal feeling,” Song said. “Just by having been 16 once and no longer 16 and feeling displaced from the person that you were when you were 16 and having become a different person, because now you’re a little bit older … I think that’s the reason why the audience existed in such a big way.”  

For Lee, one of the co-moderators for the Q&A portion of the talk, “Past Lives” is more than a story of romance. 

The film presents a chance for its characters, as well as viewers, to properly say goodbye.

“To me, it was a story about a childhood sweetheart and a now-lover but also about letting go of a life that could’ve been,” Lee said in an interview with the News. “It’s about visiting Korea and seeing high school-aged girls in uniforms and wondering what I could’ve looked like in a Korean high school uniform. It wasn’t just a film about letting go of an imagined romance with someone but also about mourning versions of a life forfeited to, as Celine Song shared in her keynote, the Pacific Ocean and time.” 

Song’s play “Endlings” premiered at the American Repertory Theater in 2019 and tells the tale of three older Korean haenyeos — female sea divers — and a Korean-Canadian writer residing in New York. 

The post ‘Past Lives’ director Celine Song delivers Pan Asian American Heritage Month keynote speech appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The Yale Student Film Festival screens student films from around the world. Submissions are sorted into five categories: narrative, experimental, documentary, animation and high school. Films are then reviewed by a panel of judges, including industry professionals and Yale faculty members. The festival will include screenings of submissions and a featured screening of a film from David Hemingson ’86.

This festival is “an opportunity to see some of the best shorts that are being made around the world in one auditorium,” said co-director of the festival Gabrielle Burrus Bustamante ’26.

The submission team received over 600 films from 20 countries. Out of that pool, only 50 were selected for awards and screenings. The festival itself will include screening blocks for those films that were chosen, award ceremonies and parties.

This film festival is unique in the sense that it is curated specially for college filmmakers, giving them the opportunity to gain production and critical skills in filmmaking.

In addition to student screenings, the festival will host renowned film industry professionals to lead Q&A-style talks and workshops.

Big Apple Film Festival’s Women Filmmakers Short Film 2019 winner, Patrice Bowman ’15, will lead a color grading workshop. Producer of “Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind,” Anthony Bregman ’88, and producer of “Past Lives,” Pamela Koffler ’87, will lead a session on independent producing. Writer and co-executive producer of “The Boys,” Michael Saltzman ’86, will lead a talk on TV writing and producing.

A full list of the festival’s workshops and networking events can be found on their website.

With the appearance of talented Yale alumni, in addition to films by Yale students, the festival team hopes to bring light to the artistic talent of the Yale community.

“I’m interested in making a community for young filmmakers,” said director of programming Marissa Blum ’24, “and to give a name to Yale as a place for student filmmaking.”

The festival will host three feature screenings. The Connecticut premiere of the documentary “Roleplay,” a film following a group of Tulane students as they confront sexual violence on their campus, will include a post-screening conversation moderated by Yale Communication and Consent Educators. The film’s producer Jenny Mercein ’95 and director Katie Matthews will be present for the screening.

The sci-fi mystery “Karmalink” will be screened and joined by producer Valerie Steinberg — producer of the 2022 Cannes festival Caméra D’Or award-winner, “War Pony.”

The festival’s “spotlight screening” of “The Holdovers” will be joined by writer and producer of the Oscar-nominated film, David Hemmingson.

The festival is a “center for student filmmaking in the northeast” and aims to “celebrate the next generation of filmmakers,” said festival co-director Eli Berliner ’26.

Because the festival boasts submissions from across the world, some events will have the option of virtual attendance.

The festival’s goal is to bring together filmmakers and film lovers alike. It is open to all students, regardless of major. 

“​​One of our main missions is making the Yale Student Film Festival as accessible as possible,” wrote director of publicity Miette Maoulidi ’25 in an email to the News. “This means our tickets are free and available to anyone, no matter their academic institution or major. We are screening so many great films that the public deserves to see!”

The festival will be hosted April 11-14 in various locations across Yale’s campus.

The post Yale Student Film festival to feature award-winning speakers appeared first on Yale Daily News.

These paintings, usually priced at hundreds of thousands of dollars, capture creatures — both imagined and real — in excited strokes of color.  For Nava, the creatures that his work conjures are a product of the intentional and the nonsensical — a tension that he said is reflected in today’s world. 

“I’ve never seen a shark made out of wind before, but it could be,” said Nava. “I think imagination has the chance, and artists in general have the chance, to go to pretend places. They work in the realm of impossibility, where newness and absurdities can come out … We live in a misinformation age, as much as we live in an information age. Sometimes, I think like, yeah, if I see a shark and a frying pan and somehow it works, my mind is like, ‘Yeah, I kinda get that in this world.’ Like the bending of reality.” 

Nava’s stint as a steel-bender at a Queens metal shop was short-lived, lasting eight to nine months. Nava spent the next six years as a truck driver for a moving company, where he would work straight through the first and last ten days of the month, while dedicating one week in the center of the month to painting.

Initially, Nava was worried that his work as a truck driver would hinder his art career and lead to others viewing him as “not a serious artist.” He would dislike working in Chelsea because he was afraid of art collectors seeing him moving boxes, he said. 

Then, he stopped caring, said Nava.

“I think that’s when things got better,” said Nava. “The paintings got better. My mood and the job was a lot better. I had better leadership with the moving crew and running the crews. I was dubbed with a nickname, ‘The Wolf,’ like from Pulp Fiction … I think it’s funny that there were times when I really cared and was careful and cautious about that whole word ‘career’ and wanting things to happen. And the time that I actually didn’t give a fuck about that no more, everything lightened up.” 

According to Nava, this change in approach to his art and career showed in his work. 

While it’s difficult for him to compare the “betterness” of his works, Nava said that his 2012 creatures would “absolutely get eaten alive” by his 2017 creatures.

“If those paintings fought each other, those paintings will smoke the early paintings,” he said. “I can see the nervousness in them. I could see the, ‘You trying to do something,’ and then these other ones are just — they have a different level of confidence and different mysticism going on.” 

While these mythological creatures in Nava’s works have received wide attention, it has also attracted critiques of Nava’s art as “unserious” or “immature,” according to former School of Art Dean Peter Halley ’75.

Halley said that such negative feedback may come from the way Nava’s art attracted likes on Instagram before turning heads in the art establishment, rather than the other way around. For Halley, however, Nava’s explosive success can be seen as an example of the “democratic possibilities” of trends and taste-making on social media. 

“I think the delay between his high level of professional success and … his popularity has had something to do with how he paints,” he said. “You might almost say that people might have been distrustful, because these paintings had such a wide appeal, and that if they did so well on Instagram, could he really be a good artist? And again, when the dam finally burst, I found that delightful.” 

Behind the bold and urgent strokes of Nava’s work, one can find a certain intentionality and a history of formal instruction, said Halley. In describing his own art, Nava recalled an art professor who jokingly told him that Nava was a “backdoor formalist,” a secret lover of formal techniques, as much as he is a lover of rule-breaking.

While some might find Nava’s work “crude,” Nava’s form is what Halley considers a strength. In particular, he compared Nava’s misfit lexicon of sharks, dragons and planes to that of Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

“It’s action painting in that way, reflecting the movement of the body, his use of his tools, the way he’ll sort of let go and let it happen,” said Halley. “I find that a really strong part of his work … A person could also say that Basquiat paintings or drawings were crude, in some sense of the word,  so I think people will be better off thinking twice. And he’s created this self imposed world, that is a little like Basquiat.”

In terms of his critics, Nava remains rather level-headed. Some people like his work, and others don’t. And that’s “okay,” he said.

Differentiating between “good” and “bad” works of art is a tricky task, Nava said. Yet, if there’s one thing that Nava hopes to accomplish in his works, it is to convey a sense of sincerity and offer a “portal” to his viewers.

“It’s hard for paintings to lie and you can see those sincerities, from [the art’s] confidence to nervousness,” said Nava. “To me, making a painting or a piece, that’s the mirror, that’s the portal. So whatever my intentions or my feelings are, whoever comes to that piece down the road in years will have their own collective backpack of experience that they bring to the table and close out the other side of the portal with their viewership.”

Along with sincerity, Nava hopes that his work emanates “badassness.” When asked about this “badassness,” he said that it came from pieces that are “energetically charged”.

He referred to Vincent Van Gogh’s “Wheat Field with Cypresses” as a work imbued with “badass” energy. According to Nava, there is a hardened, yet delicate intensity within the landscape. 

“There’s just certain art that I personally love,” Nava said. “Even though it’s like flowers or something. Like those flowers will beat your ass, you know? They’re badass.”

While there is a heavy spotlight on ‘Robert Nava the artist,’ ‘Robert Nava the person’ remains largely enigmatic and hard to understand — a feature of his that has not changed from his time at the School of Art, said Halley and Sam Messer ART ’82, both professors who taught Nava.

Messer recalled Nava’s time as a graduate student, when he would submit works that did not seem to relate to his assignments; figuring out the connection was “invariably hard,” Messer said. 

“He was always kind of just doing his own thing,” said Messer. “He was always an enigmatic figure, I mean, in a really nice way … And I think a lot of the faculty and other students really didn’t know what to make of him. And you can probably say the same still about him, which is quite a good characteristic for an artist.” 

To eager-eyed spectators of the art market, Robert Nava is a rising blue-chip contemporary artist with  immense capital potential. To his professors, Robert Nava is remembered as an enigmatic, action painter who has created a radical mythology through sharks, airplanes and dragons. 

On paper, much has changed for Nava over the past decade. At his core, however, Nava has retained and remembered earlier parts of his career: his nickname of ‘The Wolf’, his favorite ’80s movies that continue to influence his work and his secret love for the compositional techniques that he learned as a graduate student. 

“It’s a different kind of speed now, than how it was in the trucks,” said Nava. “My dad would remind me like, ‘Remember, when you got tipped an extra like $200 in cash, and how happy you were about that because it would give you the time on the weekend to work more in the studio?’ And so I just keep telling myself, just keep things humble and hungry at the same time. Not forgetting where you come from, but also, you gotta be a dragon.” 

Nava was born in 1985

The post Robert Nava ’11 and his radical, ‘badass’ mythological creatures appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Before Swae Lee takes the stage, twin sisters Coco & Breezy will open the April 27 festival with a joint DJ set, followed by indie pop band Dayglow.

The Spring Fling committee announced the lineup in a video shown on Wednesday night during Woads, the weekly Yale-only dance party at Toad’s Place. Although weather conditions pushed last year’s Spring Fling indoors to College Street Music Hall at the last minute, this year’s event is set to return to its traditional location on Old Campus. 

“It’s such a dynamic lineup bringing in a ton of high energy and nostalgia,” Spring Fling Hospitality Chair Olivia Telemaque ’26 told the News. “The headliner, Swae Lee, is such a force. He brings in so much hype, with easily recognizable songs in his huge discography.” 

The process of curating the lineup of musical acts for the annual festival begins over the summer, when Spring Fling leadership meets to decide their joint vision: genres to explore, goals to accomplish and elements to improve from the following year. The search for artists then begins as soon as members of the committee step foot on campus. 

This year’s committee — led by Telemaque alongside Talent Chair Luis Halvorssen ’25, Production Chair Nour Tantush ’26 and Marketing Chair Karela Palazio ’25 — crafted a student-facing survey intended to gauge interest in different musical genres and festival styles. 

Many college music festivals in the United States take place at similar times in the late spring, Halvorssen said, which can make it challenging to secure the artists before other colleges book them. 

“One surprise about this experience is how dynamic the music industry is,” Halvorssen told the News “One week we’ll be discussing a potential artist and by the next week, they’ll be booked by a different event. It makes for a thrilling process and results in so much celebration when an artist is finally booked.” 

This year’s three acts represent a wide variety of musical genres, performance styles and backgrounds. 

Identical twins and DJ duo Coco & Breezy, specializing in Afro-Latina-infused dance and house music, will open up this year’s festival. 

“They are a hugely talented duo, representing Afro-Latina influences as they challenge the bounds of electronic and dance music,” Telemaque told the News. “They infuse so many genres into their craft. As a Black woman myself, it’s so inspiring to see up-and-coming artists reclaiming genres, and breathing so much life, love, and healing into their music. They’re producers, musicians, style icons, and just such a vibe.” 

Tantush matched Telemaque’s excitement, citing that the pair “encompass[es] a lot of what we were looking for.” She noted that electronic dance music was one of the most requested genres in the survey sent out to students this year, which makes inviting this artist to campus especially exciting. 

Besides DJing, Coco & Breezy are also known for their “cool-girl aesthetic” and “eponymous sunglass brand.” Palazio noted that she’s been incorporating the artist’s album covers into her color inspiration for the “entire festival identity.” 

Following Coco & Breezy, the “fun and vibrant” Dayglow, as Halvorssen described the indie pop band, will take the Spring Fling stage.

Led by lead singer Sloan Struble, audience members can expect to hopefully hear some of the group’s top hits like “Hot Rod” and “Can I Call You Tonight?” 

Telemaque said that she has had the songs on repeat for weeks. 

“Their music to me represents the epitome of band music and is very reminiscent of the spring,” Tantush added. “I spent a lot of time over this New Haven winter listening to Dayglow, and I think they have such a youthful and summery sound.” 

That sound aesthetic has influenced the design of the festival’s merchandise, Palazio said, which will be available for purchase prior to the festival. 

Finally, headliner Swae Lee will close out the night. Swae Lee, who acts as one half of the hip-hop duo Rae Sremmund with his brother Slim Jxmmi, has a long history of iconic performances at major festivals including Coachella, Governors Ball and Rolling Loud. 

“He’s everywhere,” Telemaque said. 

All four Spring Fling chairs described a continuous thread of “nostalgia” in this year’s artist lineup; Swae Lee’s headlining performance is perhaps the most emblematic of that theme. 

“We’ve been listening to his music for years and growing up with the challenges that he’s [experienced] too,” Telemaque told the News. 

In 2016, when the viral “Mannequin Challenge” hit its peak, Rae Sremmurd’s hit song “Black Beatles” became the unofficial anthem of the video trend. 

As part of the committee’s efforts to incorporate an air of nostalgia in all parts of the festival, Wednesday’s announcement video — produced by videographer Reese Weiden ’27 — brought the audience back in time. Just as the internet trend in 2016 had people across the country posing as frozen mannequins, the Spring Fling committee did the same, announcing to cheers from the crowd at Toad’s that Swae Lee would headline the festival.

Besides partnering with Slim Jxmmy, Swae Lee has collaborated with a variety of other artists in a plethora of different musical genres throughout his career, which allows him to appeal to a variety of students, Halvorssen said. In addition to working with world-famous rappers Travis Scott and Drake on 2018’s “Sicko Mode,” Swae Lee collaborated with Post Malone on hit song “Sunflower” from the film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” also in 2018. He also co-wrote Beyonce’s hit single “Formation.” — just three of Swae Lee’s big-ticket collaborations.

“Swae’s collaboration with so many different artists is what makes him an excellent choice for

headlining Spring Fling,” Halvorssen told the News.  “If you put his complete collection on shuffle you’ll hear Rap/Hip-Hop, Pop, R&B, EDM, Reggaeton, and even Country. With Swae having such a wide reach, he’ll be a great fit for all music fans.” 

While the committee does not control the specific set lists of the artists they book to perform at the festival, per Tantush, they do extensive research on each artist’s past performances and how their sets will complement one another. 

For Swae Lee, audiences may expect to hear some of his biggest songs, including “Sunflower,” “No Type,” “Unforgettable” and even some songs from his previous work under Rae Sremmurd, like “Come Get Her” and “Black Beatles.”  

In addition to the booked professional artists, Yale students will also have the opportunity to be a part of this year’s festival lineup. The committee will hold both a “Battle of the Bands” and “The Dock” competition to select student bands and DJs to begin the day’s musical festivities. 

“I think the thing I am the most excited and proud of as Production Chair is facilitating a festival which will showcase both the artists we have chosen and also the student talent on campus,” Tantush told the News. “What makes Spring Fling so unique is our ability to combine mainstream acts with Yale’s very own talented musicians.”  

Last year, the committee hosted “Battle of the Bands” at the Yale Farm. The three winners  — DJ Leon Thotsky, PJ Frantz ’23 and Tired of Tuesdays — opened for Ravyn Lenae, Dombresky and Pusha T at College Street Music Hall. 

The Dock, however, is a new creation this year, which Halvorssen spearheaded to reflect the growing presence of student DJs on campus. 

Both student-artist events will take place after spring break.

The post Swae Lee to headline Spring Fling 2024 appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Written by Caryl Churchill and directed by Liz Diamond, “Escaped Alone” will premiere on March 8 and run until March 30 at the Yale Repertory Theater. According to Diamond, the play explores the complexities of female friendships, alongside the mundane truths that lurk in everyday conversations. 

“I think that what’s so brilliant about this play is the way Churchill asks us or invites us to appreciate the way we function in simultaneous parallel universes of conversation with contemplation, subconscious yearnings, suppressed grief, fears that percolate up in us and apocalyptic visions,” Diamond said.

The play unravels in a backyard in suburban London, in which a trio of friends — Sally, Vi and Lena — is joined by Mrs. Jarrett, a less-acquainted individual, who appears at the door of the fence. As these four characters chat, the conversation is interrupted by Mrs. Jarrett’s startling monologues that deliver apocalyptic visions of the future. 

Mrs. Jarrett’s rants are more than panic-inducing soliloquy; Embedded within these words is a concerning, yet deeply necessary truth, said Diamond. 

“She’s a kind of Cassandra figure,” she said. “During the monologues that are spoken by Mrs. Jarrett, she punches through the membrane of the universe within which the women live a kind of domestic, contemporary, middle class working class, English existence into another dimension to report back to us what happened to the world … She’s not necessarily telling us what we want to hear. We might prefer to think, within her words, there is a kind of madness. We might want to console ourselves with that, but in fact, there’s a kind of terrible, terrible truth in her speeches.” 

LaTonya Borsay, who plays Mrs. Jarrett in the play, described her character as not just a soothsayer but as someone whose prophetic visions seek to inspire action. For Borsay, the play is largely “preventative” in nature and provides clues to evade future catastrophe — before it is too late.  

These clues lie in the power of community, according to Borsay. 

“Even though we’re individuals, we’re not living completely isolated lives,” Borsay said. “We are on the planet existing, breathing the same air, seeing the same sun and watching the moon rise … Getting people to act in whatever ways we can consciously act to keep everything sustainable for all life is her charge.” 

Rita Wolf, who plays the role of ‘Lena,’ characterized the play’s commentary on the future as somewhat characteristic of Churchill’s other works.

Wolf pointed to “A Number,” a 2002 play that centered around the ethical questions raised by human cloning, particularly the concept of  “nature versus nurture.” Her work “Far Away,” published in 2000, creates a world permeated by fear and authoritarianism. 

“Caryl Churchill is a writer who is very prescient,” said Wolf. “If you know anything about the history of her writing, she’s always kind of one step ahead in terms of her concerns about the wider world … particularly Western society.  Certainly in her recent work, she’s looking into the crystal ball a little bit in terms of anticipating the next possible iteration of humanity.” 

Diamond described Churchill’s writing as “a complicated geometry,” as the play’s dialogue is self-referential and self-interrupting. As a director of the play and resident director of the Yale Rep overall, Diamond said that she had long been attracted to plays with language that require the “unpacking” of the playwright’s “poetic strategies.”

She called the play’s writing “virtuosic,” similar to the ways a great contemporary jazz piece is interspersed with repetitions and revisions. 

“One of the delicious opportunities of directing this play is to, much the way, say, an orchestra conductor would be required to do, open up the score of the writing,”  Diamond said. “The conversations are sort of interleaved. In the way that when you sit around with a big family or a bunch of old friends, and you know, nobody is playing the role of conversational referee. The conversations interleave break off, are picked up again later on.” 

The Yale Rep’s production of “Escaped Alone” holds personal significance for Diamond, as the show marks her first show since the start of the pandemic. Diamond said that her return to the stage was a “marvelous” feeling. 

Diamond described the process of working with stage and lighting designers as one full of “play.” After all, theater is all about grown-ups “playing make-believe,” she said. According to Diamond, the collaboration between sound, lighting and set design teams played an important role in bringing her conceptualization of the lush, verdant backyard to life. 

“An image that came to me when I was thinking a lot about this was the image of terrariums,” Diamond said. “People create these strange little ideal worlds that exist within a much bigger and quite chaotic world, the world we live in … This garden, it’s a refuge, as people’s private outdoor spaces are, but it sits in a rather vast and unaccommodating space. The universe, which is hurtling us toward we don’t know what, perhaps the end or the apocalypse or the strange outcome that awaits us, is in no small measure, part of our own making.”  

In a story that prophesies about the future, the central voices are the voices of women who are “at least seventy,” the script specifies. While she does not know the exact reasoning behind Churchill’s decision, this detail of the characters seems to be an intentional one, said Diamond. 

Churchill herself is in her mid-eighties and continues to be an “absolute powerhouse,” she said. The older age of the characters is an attractive facet of the play, Diamond said, as it offers tremendous roles for women of a certain age and highlights the beauty and resilience within aging. 

“These women who have lived so long contain universes of feeling, lived experience, unresolved conflicts, buried angers. They are great continents of lived experience and I think that they thus give Carol an opportunity to talk about our human condition and our relationship to mortality, to the world in which we live in and its mortality, and the role we seem to be playing in destroying life on Earth.” 

“Escaped Alone” is Caryl Churchill’s 43rd play to be produced and was published 58 years after her first play — “Downstairs” — in 1958. 

The post Hard truths in a cup of tea: Yale Rep’s ‘Escaped Alone’ to open on March 8 appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is a hotline for individuals in crisis or for those looking to help someone else. To speak with a certified listener, call 988. 

Crisis Text Line is a texting service for emotional crisis support. To speak with a trained listener, text HELLO to 741741. It is free, available 24/7 and confidential.

To talk with a counselor from Yale Mental Health and Counseling, schedule a session here. On-call counselors are available at any time: call (203) 432-0290. Appointments  with Yale College Community Care can be scheduled here.

Additional resources are available in a guide compiled by the Yale College Council here.

From Feb. 29 to Mar. 2, the Off-Broadway Theater became a home for an undergraduate production of the 2015 Broadway musical “Fun Home.” The show adapts Alison Bechdel’s 2006 graphic novel memoir, documenting her relationship with her sexuality and her father through three stages of her life: childhood, her college years and finally, at 43 years old.

Audience chatters fell quiet in the Off-Broadway Theater as an upbeat piano melody bounced into the air. A spotlight landed on an upstage desk, complete with sketch pads, Micron pens and an adult Alison. Before her, a childhood memory with her father unfolded as her past was constructed through alternating memories.

In the play, it is revealed through non-linear vignettes that Alison’s father — a high school English teacher, funeral home director and closeted gay man — died by suicide in her freshman year of college, shortly after she came out as lesbian. Their psychologically complex and changing relationship, through her childhood and early adulthood, is examined as Alison turns 43 years old — the same age as her father when he died. Alison, never leaving the stage, becomes an audience to her life through lenses of grief and logic-seeking reflection. 

Bechdel, the show’s subject and creator, is an acclaimed cartoon artist. Her comic-strip serial “Dykes to Watch Out For” was published for 25 years, illustrating a string of unrelated plotlines between a group of lesbian women. The Bechdel Test, a metric for sexism in the fictional portrayal of women, originated within the series. Though Bechdel originally wrote the concept as comedy, it has grown to widespread use in film and media critique since its 1985 publication.

Her creation of “Fun Home” brought her to literary notability as the graphic memoir was a finalist for the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award. It also won the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book, the Stonewall Book Award for non-fiction, the Publishing Triangle-Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award and the Lambda Literary Award.

The memoir’s musical adaptation was equally recognized, winning five Tony Awards including Best Musical and Best Original Score. The musical adaption also received a nomination for the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album and was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. 

Critics of “Fun Home,” in both its literary and theatrical forms, commented on the narrative’s poignant and vulnerable portrayal of the human experience. This trait was a focus of the undergraduate production’s direction. 

Naomi Schwartzburt ’24, the director of “Fun Home,” spoke about her connection to the show and its essential emotive arc in an interview with the News. 

“The structure of Fun Home is so unique and compelling because it’s nonlinear. We’re not necessarily seeing the story as it unfolded in real life, but we’re seeing the important emotional components come together and build,” Schwartzburt said. “This show just leaves you with so many feelings. Every single person has a different experience and identity and will connect to these characters in a very different way.” 

Connection, a central element of the story, is what distinguishes the musical from other representations of similar themes. Bechdel’s memoir roots the queer experience in nuclear family dynamics, shifting the show’s statement from a general comment on the queer community to an exploration of its role in intimate, domestic settings.  

Individual expression, combined with self-exploratory themes, was central to the show’s musical direction as well. 

Violet Barnum ’25, the show’s musical director, wrote in an email to the News that “Fun Home” demanded a stronger focus on musical interpretation and expression than on complex harmonies. 

The solo and small group songs allowed her to “guide the actors on taking more time with a certain phrase” or to be “more intentional about dynamics,” she wrote. Barnum added that this role allowed her to appreciate the show from all its angles, drawing attention to the complex intersection of joy, sadness, queerness and family. 

By nature of the novel’s form, the musical is also defined by its focus on artistry and expression through visual details. This element was preserved in the show through background graphic design, as actors were planted within the pages of Bechdel’s comic strips.  

An intimacy of creation was continued in the show’s graphic design, as it was hand-drawn to resemble frames of Bechdel’s novel. Mia Kohn ’27 used ink and watercolor to emphasize the show’s emotional fluidity, as well as to visually convey themes presented in the narrative. This connection to the form was also reinforced by the Off-Broadway Theater’s size, where a 130-person occupancy limit created a proximity with the set that neared audience involvement. 

Sitting only feet away from the actors, audience members were asked to view the characters as individuals with deeply complex lives, not simply tools for a larger movement. This is a perspective that the music aspires to promote, creating a space where audiences can consider human connection. 

This was emphasized by the musical’s co-producer, Marissa Blum ’24, who commented on the work’s significance. 

“‘Fun Home’ really demonstrates the unique, intergenerational nature of the queer community. It captures both the nostalgia and the pain that older generations of queer people have felt through not being able to express their identity,” Blum said. “But it also shows how they’ve laid the groundwork for future … queer people to live and be proud. It is an opportunity to remember the people who’ve come before.”

The complete slate of producers, actors and contributors for Yale’s adaptation of “Fun Home” can be found online.

The post  ‘Fun Home’ comes out to audiences with themes of queerness and family appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Dhamaal is one of two major cultural shows that Yale’s South Asian Society, or SAS, hosts each year, accompanied by Roshni in the fall. While Roshni traditionally only features Yale-affiliated groups, Dhamaal includes student groups from other universities. 

This year, the intercollegiate spring showcase will feature six Yale teams and seven outside teams from Duke University; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Rutgers University; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Harvard University; the University of Connecticut and Carnegie Mellon University. The event will take place this Saturday, March 2, from 4 to 6 p.m.

“The day of Dhamaal in itself is also so much fun,” said Maanasi Nair ’25, who is co-captain of both classical dance team Kalaa and Bollywood fusion group Rangeela. “It can be insanely busy and everyone tends to be in a frenzy, but it brings us all so much closer together. I love the energy and excitement of the hours leading to the show.”

Tarun Kota ’26, another member of Rangeela, shared similar sentiments about Dhamaal — particularly noting how rewarding it is to see his team’s rehearsals come together for the final performance.

Rangeela has weekly practices every Saturday morning, and throughout the week, subgroups of the team have additional practices together. During tech week, which is the week before the show, the team practices every day for two hours. 

Nair said that Kalaa schedules their practices with flexibility for dancers who can choose how many hours to commit each week. The team starts with choreography, welcoming any dancer with an interest in exploring that element of the process. 

Kalaa ensures their choreography reflects the various types of classical dance before they move on to begin rehearsing. Depending on how many pieces a dancer is in, that rehearsal time could range from two to five hours per week.

According to Amadie Gajanaike ’26, communications chair for SAS, preparations for Dhamaal include booking venues, gathering sponsors, editing promotional videos and coordinating with groups from other schools. The organization began planning the showcase in December, with meetings and discussions held during the Asian American Cultural Center’s after-hours meetings. 

“We send out Dhamaal information to around 50 South Asian performing arts groups at universities across the US and they submit an audition,” said Gajanaike of SAS’s efforts to select guest teams. “By January, we choose 7-8 of those groups and contact presidents.”

Kota said that the showcase fosters community between students from different institutions, noting that members of SAS host students from other universities during the weekend of the event. Last year, Rangeela had a post-Dhamaal mixer with Dartmouth Raas.

Gajanaike said she worked with Zahra Virani ’26 and Sheel Trivedi ’26 of SAS’s Cultural Committee to assign housing, plan photo-booth decorations and decide what causes donations should be sent to. 

Kavya Gupta ’27, who dances for Yale Jashan Bhangra, a group dedicated to the Punjabi dance form bhangra, expressed her gratitude for her team and excitement to see other groups perform this weekend. 

“It feels like we have come closer as a team, learning to communicate and apply all our hard work from the past few months,” she said. “We are all so excited to see the other Yale groups and teams from other schools perform.”

Kota and Nair shared Gupta’s excitement about being able to perform for her community. Kota said sharing his cultural heritage with friends is his favorite part of Dhamaal, and Nair said that her team feels like a family.

“Our shared love for art and performance is so special,” said Nair. “It’s something I cherish immensely and will forever continue to value.”

Registration for Dhamaal is available on Yale Connect.

The post South Asian Society to host Dhamaal showcase this weekend appeared first on Yale Daily News.