Premiere of Peace Talks for Chorus and Orchestra by James Matheson ’92

Founders Day Concert with the Swarthmore College Chorus and the Swarthmore College Orchestra

December 5, 2014; 8:00 p.m.
Lang Music Building
Swarthmore College (directions)
(Universal moment of silence at 8:00 PM EDT)

Featuring the premiere of Peace Talks for Chorus and Orchestra by James Matheson ’92, commissioned for the Swarthmore Sesquicentennial

James_Matheson_Peace_Talks

The program will also include works for orchestra by Sibelius and Fauré, and choral works from a variety of American composers and traditions.

This event is one of several planned during the 2014 calendar year to celebrate Swarthmore’s Sesquicentennial

Production Ensemble 2014’s MAD FOREST (11/14 – 11/16)

Caryl Churchill’s remarkable play, MAD FOREST takes place before and after the revolutionary events of December 1989 in Romania that marked the end of a Communist dictatorship. The title, which alludes to a Romania of the past, a Romania populated with forests and horseman warriors, simultaneously evokes the surreal nature, the euphoria, and the devastation of a revolution.. The play puts a human face on the turning point of a people and of a nation – two families under scrutiny from the secret police, one rich, one poor. Blending stark realism and uneasy fantasy, Churchill achieves a look into the belly of the revolutionary beast as the characters succumb to and rebel against the shifting realities of a world in transition.

With a stark and simple set by Matt Saunders, costumes by Laila Swanson and lighting by James P. Murphy, and sound by Liz Atkinson, director Alex Torra takes the ensemble cast of eleven (Sarah Branch, Rex Chang, Avni Fatehpuria, Makayla Portley, Htet Win, Nina Serbedzija, Kate Wiseman, Katy Montoya, Jaime Maseda, Thomas Butler and Oliva Jorgenson) on a supple journey into the tumultuous times of the late 80s in Bucharest.

Alex Torra is a Philadelphia-based director, performer, producer, and educator. He is a Company Member with Pig Iron Theatre Company, where he has worked as a Performer in Twelfth Night, Zero Cost House, Cankerblossom, Welcome to Yuba City, Pay Up, 365 Days/365 Plays, and Anodyne; as Director of Come to my Awesome Fiesta, it’s Going to be Awesome, Okay?; and as Creative Producer for PAY UP 2013 and I Promised Myself to Live Faster. He also serves as Co-Founder and Resident Director for Team Sunshine Performance Corporation, where he has directed Punchkapow and JapanAmerica Wonderwave, and the upcoming production ofThe Sincerity Project in December at FringeArts. Alex has received fellowships from the Independence Foundation, the Philadelphia Live Arts Brewery, the Princess Grace Foundation, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and NY’s Drama League, and last year was a finalist for the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist. He received his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his M.F.A. in Directing from Brown University.

LPAC Pearson-Hall Theater (Mainstage)

November 14, 2014 – 8PM

November 15, 2014 – 2PM & 8PM

November 16, 2014 – 2PM

“Mad Forest” is presented by special arrangement with SAMUEL FRENCH, INC.

For more information about these and other events in the Theater Department contact lpacevents@swarthmore.edu or call 610-328-8260.

https://www.facebook.com/events/314715605379534/

Honors Dramaturgy Thesis: THE IMPERIAL HOUSE (11/8 & 11/9)

There are two great chances to see this staged reading adapted from interviews at the Imperial House apartment building, in Pittsburgh, PA.

Throughout the spring of 2014, Nathan Siegel ’15 conducted interviews with residents of the Imperial House–an apartment building largely, but not entirely, populated by senior citizens, many of them Jewish. The most compelling pieces of these interviews have been adapted, added to, and mixed together to create several characters: sisters, brothers, friends, husbands, wives, rivals, and neighbors. The Imperial House tells their collective and individual stories. What does it mean to grow old in a community like this? What will happen if someone tries to put flowers in the lobby? If a new resident runs for the board? If someone slices the challah instead of ripping it? The Imperial House seeks to create a hilarious and poignant portrait of what it means to live, and grow old, in a communal space.

Dramaturgical adaptation by Nathan Siegel
Advising and direction by Rebecca Dizzy Wright

LPAC Frear Ensemble Theater
November 8, 2014
1PM

Church of the Crucifixion
(620 S 8th Street, Philadelphia, PA)
November 9, 2014
1PM

https://www.facebook.com/events/762351120479884

Lecture: THE ART OF THE TAWAIF with Prof. Rita Ganguly (11/6 @ 6PM)

Tawaifs’ were a elite female community of dancers and musicians in pre-colonial, India. In the process of creating an official ‘classical’ culture in post-independence India, several art forms fell into neglect, forcing many Tawaifs, their teachers, and their accompanists underground. Tawaifs became popularly perceived as prostitutes, a perception legitimized by the ultimate new music patron, All India Radio, who banned their performance. This confluence of puritanical Hindu state, Victorian morality, and colluding ‘Ustads’ annulled Tawaifs’ creative expression and economic freedom, negating that their accomplishment benefited the entire dance and music community.

Professor Rita Ganguly is an authority in the field of semi-classical Indian music, with particular reference to the romantic repertoire of Kathak dance and music performed by female courtesans or Tawaif. She is the foremost disciple of the legendary Ghazal singer Begum Akhtar. She has contributed richly to several fields – music, theatre and literature. Trained at the Martha Graham School, New York, she joined the faculty at the National School of Drama, Delhi (NSD) and set up a pioneering course in mime and movement. As a Fellow of the Ford Foundation, she did pioneering work on professional singing women, which gave her a PhD degree. Her project brought about a revival of interest in the practitioners of this art. Over the years Rita has developed her own distinctive style of performing music. Her interest in poetry led to a preference for`Nazms` sung in her unique style.

Lecture: LPAC 2 (Troy Dance Studio)

6PM

November 6, 2014

Lecture: THE ART OF THE TAWAIF with Prof. Rita Ganguly (11/6 @ 6PM)

Lecture: LPAC 2 (Troy Dance Studio)

6PM

November 6, 2014

Peace drama performed 100 years ago on campus

This story in The Phoenix, Swarthmore College’s student newspaper, from October 27, 1914, only three months after the start of World War I, was brought to our attention this week.

The clipping below reports on the performance of a Founders’ Day “peace drama” about one soldiers’ struggle with the horrors of war, his return home, and a vision for “an era of peace, unsullied by the sword.”

Swarthmore is celebrating its sesquicentennial this year.

Science and Compassion: John W. Thompson’s Trajectory From Swarthmore to the Nuremberg Trials

Science and Compassion: John W. Thompson’s Trajectory From Swarthmore to the Nuremberg Trials

A lecture by Paul Weindling

Wednesday, November 12, 2014 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM

Kohlberg Hall, Scheuer Room

Swarthmore College (directions)

John W. Thompson taught as professor of Physiology and Anatomy from 1929 to 1932.

Paul Weindling’s lecture will focus on his research contained in his new book, John W. Thompson: Psychiatrist in the Shadow of the Holocaust (University of Rochester Press) is the biography of a doctor whose revulsion at Nazi human experiments prompted him to seek a humane basis for physician-patient relations. As a military-scientific intelligence officer in 1945, Thompson was the first to name “medical war crimes” as a category for prosecution. His investigations laid the groundwork for the Nuremberg medical trials and for the novel idea of “informed consent.” Yet, Thompson has remained a little-known figure, despite his many scientific, literary, and religious connections. Thompson has a connection to Swarthmore College having taught as professor of Physiology and Anatomy from 1929 to 1932.

Paul Weindling is Wellcome Trust Research Professor for the History of Medicine at the Centre for Medical Humanities at Oxford Brookes University, UK. He has served on historical commissions on Nazi science including the Max Planck Society’s Presidential Commission for the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism, and is a Trustee of the Council for At-Risk Academics (CARA) which originally rescued many scientists from Nazi persecution.

Sponsors: Sesquicentennial Events, Peace and Conflict Studies, Department of Biology

Holocaust survivor to tell his story

All are welcome to hear David Tuck tell his story about surviving the Holocaust.

November 18, 4:15 PM, Science Center 101

David was born in Poland in 1929. Life drastically changed on September 1, 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. David and his family were deported to the Lodz ghetto, and then David was sent to Posen, a labor camp in Poland; after Posen, David was sent to Auschwitz, where he worked in a sub-camp building anti-aircraft guns, and eventually to Güsen II, an underground factory to build German aircraft.

On May 5, 1945 the Americans liberated Güsen II; David weighed 78 pounds. David then spent the next several months recuperating in refugee camps and then immigrated to the United States in 1950, where he has lectured widely about his experience as a Holocaust survivor.

A reception will follow.

Sponsored by the Department of Religion.

Interreligious Dialogue in Israel and the Middle East

“The Other Peace Process: The Role of Interreligious Dialogue in Israel and the Middle East”

Sunday, October 26
4:00 pm
Kohlberg 116, Swarthmore College
Featuring Rabbi Dr. Ron Kronish

Founder and Director of the Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel (ICCI) since 1992, Ron Kronish is also a noted rabbi, educator, author, lecturer and speaker. He has lived in Jerusalem for the past 35 years, serving as Director of the Israel Office of the American Jewish Committee, Director of Staff Development and later Co-Director for the Melitz Centers for Jewish Zionist Education, and lecturer in education at Tel Aviv University and at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Dr. Kronish lectures to a wide variety of groups in Israel, including synagogue groups, Jewish community missions and Jewish, Christian and interreligious groups. In addition, he has been a scholar-in-residence in universities, synagogues and communities across the United States, Canada and Europe and in the Far East.

Educated at Brandeis University (BA), Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in New York (MHL, rabbinic ordination) and the Harvard Graduate School of Education (doctorate in philosophy and history of education), Dr. Kronish has published articles and essays on Jewish politics, faith communities and the peace process, as well as education, culture and contemporary issues in America and Israel. He has represented ICCI at the Vatican and at many international conferences, and is frequently consulted by media representatives for background information and briefings. In addition, he blogs regularly for the Times of Israel and the Huffington Post.

Dr. Kronish is the editor of a new book,: Coexistence and Reconciliation in Israel: Voices for Interreligious Dialogue (2015). In addition, he has edited: Towards the Twenty-first Century: Judaism and the Jewish People in Israel and America, an anthology in memory of his beloved father, Rabbi Leon Kronish, Toward the Third Millennium and Pilgrimage in a New Millennium. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Amy and is the proud father of 3 wonderful daughters (and 3 wonderful sons-in-law) and the even prouder grandfather of 4 fabulous grandchildren.

Please join us for a lecture followed by refreshments and a question-and-answer session.

Hosted by J Street U and the Israeli Cultural Society. Funded by the Forum for Free Speech and Peace and Conflict Studies.

Militant Buddhism, Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Politics in Sri Lanka

A Talk on Militant Buddhism, Nationalism, Ethnic Identity, and Politics in Sri Lanka

“The Politics and the Anti-politics of the Bodu Bala Sena in Sri Lanka”

A Talk by Tudor Silva
Senior Professor of Sociology
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka

4:30 Thursday October 30 2014
Bond Memorial Hall
Swarthmore College

Professor Silva’s talk will focus on a group of Colombo-based militant Buddhist monks the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), evolved in the aftermath of the military victory of the Government of Sri Lanka over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. In the backdrop of the resulting Sinhala Buddhist nationalist triumph and the tendency of the ruling elite to by and large ignore minority concerns and demands, the BBS articulates a populist Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian position vis-à-vis ethnic and religious minorities in the country, including certain Muslim and Christian groups who the BBS claims are all out to destabilize the “Sinhala-Buddhist nation.” The demographic clustering of ethnic minorities in urban Sri Lanka and their apparent economic domination and visible presence in trade and commerce as well as in the religious and cultural landscape have enabled BBS to target them in their various propaganda campaigns. The movement presents itself as free of and opposed to party politics in is effort to represent Sinhala-Buddhist interests but seeks to expose whatever it identifies as harmful to the cultural integrity and wellbeing the majority community. Employing a range of propaganda techniques including public rallies, mass media, face book and rumor, BBS has managed to influence a section of the Sinhala public, including youth, business lobbies and public sector employees, shaping their opinions, perceptions and sentiments. The mistrust so generated has been instrumental in some recent outbreaks of ethnic riots in small towns in the Western coastal belt in Sri Lanka. While the BBS shares a lot with earlier Sinhala Buddhist campaigns, the direct involvement of militant Buddhist monks as cultural border guards publicly inclined to take the law into their own hands represents a new development in post-war Sri Lanka. The presentation will explore the implications of BBS for social harmony, multicultural heritage, ethnic reconciliation and political developments in the country.

Kalinga Tudor Silva is a Senior Professor of Sociology at University of Peradeniya. He has regularly served as a member of the Intercollegiate Sri Lanka Education (ISLE) Program teaching faculty in Sri Lanka for over twenty-five years. Professor Silva has published more than a dozen books and over fifty articles and book chapters. His research interests include ethnicity, caste, economic development, and social aspects of health. His latest book Decolonization, Development and Disease: A Social History of Malaria in Sri Lanka was published by Orient Blackswan in March 2014.