Virtual Culture Suggestions
While in-person cultural happenings are still on hold, virtual offerings are proliferating. Here are a few recommendations for art and theater from Swarthmore College and Hedgerow Theatre.
The List Gallery Presents Online Access to “A Wider View”
In a new film titled “Rackstraw Downes: A Wider View / A Conversation with Robert Storr,” curator Robert Storr, Swarthmore College ’72, discusses Downes’ career with List Gallery director Andrea Packard, curator of the gallery’s recent survey exhibition of Downes’ work. The 50-minute film, created and edited by Packard, explores Downes’ accomplishments as one of the world’s foremost painters.
Another online offering, a 30-minute podcast titled “Rackstraw Downes: A Closer Look,” offers a more intimate and informal appreciation of the work’s thematic and formal concerns. Created by List Gallery Assistant Tess Wei, the podcast features Wei and Packard discussing the 23 paintings that comprise “Rackstraw Downes: A Wider View.” A video slideshow of these paintings accompanies the podcast.
The film, podcast, and slideshow can all be accessed here.
Hedgerow Theatre Virtual Programming
With the COVID-19 pandemic stopping all live performance in its tracks, the Hedgerow Theatre in Rose Valley is putting its artists to work in a different way. Every day, the members of the theatre’s repertory company, ranging in age from 24 to 70, are creating video and audio programming, combining new work with previously created works that are in the public domain. Some of the programs are geared to a youth audience, some to families, and some to adults. New episodes drop every day. Some content is free; the rest can be accessed by purchasing a $15/month subscription on Patreon.
Seven of the contributing artists are quarantined together at the Hedgerow House and Theatre: Adam Altman, his sons Seamus and Lucius, Amanda Coffin, Luke Davis, Thane Madsen, and Michael McInerney. Other members of the repertory company — Susan Wefel, Jared Reed, and Robert Smythe — are lending their voices and technical knowledge to the project from afar.
Swarthmore College Theater Department Presents: THAT WHICH WILL REMAIN UNSEEN, “The Women of Trachis”
Michał Zadara’s “The Women of Trachis” takes place with neither audience nor performers. Photo courtesy of Swarthmore College.
In the midst of the pandemic, director Michał Zadara, Swarthmore College ’99, stages an unusual version of Sophocles’ “The Women of Trachis.” In this play, Sophocles has his chorus of young women witness a usually non-public aspect of Heracles: his brutality toward women, animals, and societies.
Today, theatres are closed, and so, in a way, Sophocles’ truth must remain hidden. However, Zadara and his students have developed a version of Sophocles’ tragedy that consists of objects and multimedia controlled by a computer. The theater will be empty; there will be no live performers. No audience will discover what the women of Trachis saw. This knowledge will remain unheard and unseen.
Directed by Michał Zadara, with Alex Kingsley ’20, Nadia Malaya ’22, Josephine Ross ’21, Cynthia Ruimin Shi ’23, and Ziv Stern ’20 (dramaturg).
