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Ron Jenkins, “To See the Stars” (2012)

July 9, 2012 By Professor Arielle Saiber

ron-jenkins-to-see-the-stars-2012

“Lynda Gardner, Saundra Duncan, and Deborah Ranger will give a reading of a new play at a Harvard University conference next week. A different kind of alma mater qualifies them for this appearance: York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Conn., a high-security state facility for female offenders.

“While behind bars at York, all three joined theater workshops with Wesleyan University professor Ron Jenkins and students from his Activism and Outreach Through Theater course. They got to know Shakespeare and Dante, and it changed their lives.

“‘I spent my first six months [in York] trying to figure out ways to kill myself, and the next four and a half years trying to see how much more I can live,’ says Gardner.

“Inspired by these three and other inmates he worked with, Jenkins wrote a play about their existence behind bars, ‘To See the Stars,’ which mingles inmates’ stories with bits of Dante’s epic 14th-century poem, Divine Comedy.

“The women have their own perspective on ‘Divine Comedy.’ They tend to say that they are still working on its third part (Paradise) but that they are well versed in the first two (Hell and Purgatory).

“‘I’ve been in a lot of the circles of hell,’ says Gardner, 63. ‘It really isn’t about hell; it is about hope. Climbing out of those circles.’

“The trio will perform ‘To See the Stars’ on March 3 in a lightly staged reading at a Harvard conference on race, class, and education called Disrupting the Discourse: Discussing the ‘Undiscussable,’ sponsored by the Graduate School of Education’s Alumni of Color. The Harvard performance is open to conference participants only, but the public can attend a free performance at Brown University’s Lyman Hall in Providence on March 2 at 3:30 p.m.”  — Joel Brown, Boston.com, February 12, 2012 (retrieved on July 9, 2012)

See also Rachel Apfel’s piece in the Harvard Ed. Magazine.

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 2012, Cambridge, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Niantic, Prisons, Theater, Universities

BYU’s Divine Comedy

July 21, 2011 By Professor Arielle Saiber

divine-comedy-brigham-young-university“In 1994 two BYU students were in a communications class together and found that they had a common love of sketch comedy that was clean but still really, really funny. They decided to start a comedy troupe. They held auditions for cast members and behold, Divine Comedy was born. Each year a few members would leave the group and they would hold auditions to replace them. Being in Divine Comedy is a bit like being the Dread Pirate Roberts.”    —Divine Comedy, Brigham Young University

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 1994, Comedy, Humor, Universities, Utah

Metro Station, University of Naples

April 24, 2011 By Professor Arielle Saiber

metro-station-university-of-naples

“On March 26, the 40,000 commuters of Naples, Italy, who pass daily through the University of Naples metro station found that virtually every surface had been transformed into a candy-colored kaleidoscope by the American designer Karim Rashid. . . . He printed wire-frame patterns on quartz flooring, applied portraits of Dante and Beatrice to the stairs and tiled the walls with words coined in the digital age.” [. . .]    –Shonquis Moreno, The New York Times, April 20, 2011

Contributed by Hope Stockton (Bowdoin, ’07)

Categories: Image Mosaic, Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2011, Dante Portraits, Italy, Naples, Subways, Transportation, Universities

Dante Project, Wesleyan University – Prison Outreach

December 26, 2010 By Professor Arielle Saiber

dante-project-wesleyan-university-prison-outreach“. . .Dr. Jenkins, who has taught in Wesleyan’s theater department for 11 years, introduced prison outreach into the curriculum in 2007, bringing students to the York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Niantic, to work with inmates on literary classics. In 2009 and 2010, they began concentrating on ‘Inferno’; this year, because of construction at York, the class took place at the men’s facility in Niantic, the J.B. Gates Correctional Institution. . .
The semester culminated with performances. The Gates inmates presented their work to their peers, and at Wesleyan, the students performed the writings of the inmates for the college community. In the classroom at Sing Sing, the inmates performed for the Wesleyan students, and then the students presented the Gates men’s words, for which they received a standing ovation from the inmates. All of the performances ended with the same line, the last of the poem: ‘E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.’ “And then we emerged to look again at the stars.” [. . .]    –Susan Hodara, The New York Times, December 24, 2010

Categories: Performing Arts
Tagged with: 2010, Connecticut, New York City, Prisons, Theater, Universities

Hell’s Half Acre, Lazarides Gallery London, October 12-17, 2010

November 17, 2010 By Professor Arielle Saiber

hells-half-acre-lazarides-gallery-london-2010“Dante: no other medieval author continues to exert such an extraordinary force on the modern imagination. Those who’ve read his Comedia never recover; those who’ve never read him still feel like they know the Inferno, and because it has become such a cultural norm, they probably do know it. At Cambridge, Prof. Robin Kirkpatrick has been undertaking a massive critical and creative engagement with Dante over the past couple of years in a project entitled Performance, as well as a conference at CRASSH entitled Pain in Performance and ‘Moving Beauty’. This year, on October 30th, Performance 2010 will further explore Dante and other texts in a series of performances, music, dance, art and drawings.” [. . .]    —Miglior Acque, October 22, 2010

Contributed by Patrick Molloy

Categories: Performing Arts, Visual Art & Architecture
Tagged with: 2010, England, London, Theater, United Kingdom, Universities

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How to Cite

Coggeshall, Elizabeth, and Arielle Saiber, eds. Dante Today: Citings and Sightings of Dante's Works in Contemporary Culture. Website. Access date.

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