Arts in the News
Chicago Comes to King Theatre
The magic of musicals returns to King Theatre this month with a production of Chicago, Milton’s first live musical since the fall of 2018.
Director and Performing Arts Department faculty member Eleza Kort said the show—a satire of sensationalized crime in 1920s Chicago—was chosen for its spectacle and potential for escapism.
“We wanted to do something big, something fun, something with amazing music and cool and interesting dancing, and something with an intriguing plot,” she said. “I wanted a show with a little darkness, but that’s not too dark. We wanted to invite people back to the theater with something that will razzle-dazzle them.”
COVID-19 paused live theater everywhere, said Kort. This year, Milton has returned to live plays, including a fall production that featured 1940s-era radio plays and this spring’s 1212 Play, Ripcord, written by graduate David Lindsay-Abaire ’88. Kort hopes that Chicago—one of the most popular and longest-running Broadway shows in history—reminds people why they love going to see shows.
Chicago stars Talia Sherman ’22 as Roxie Hart and Ingrid Krisnan ’22 as Velma Kelly, competing singers who achieve notoriety when they each become murderers. The story follows their push to get and stay in the limelight as a fickle public quickly moves on to the next sensational stories. The show also stars Manny Uzobuife ’22 as Billy Flynn, the women’s lawyer who stokes tabloid news coverage, and Phuc Ngo ’23 as Amos Hart, Roxie’s put-upon husband.
“They’re all excited, and they’re all working incredibly hard,” Kort said.
Performing Arts Department Chair Kelli Edwards is choreographing the show, which was originally choreographed by the legendary Bob Fosse. The Milton show honors Fosse’s distinct style. A combination of student, faculty, and professional musicians will perform live on stage throughout the show, which pays tribute to Chicago’s theme of “life as performance,” Kort says. Chicago opens Thursday, May 19 at 7:30 p.m. and runs Friday, May 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, May 21 at 7 p.m. Tickets are available for reservation through the Performing Arts website.
Students Recognized for Excellence in Art and Writing
“homage to california” digital artwork by Claire Mallela ’22
Milton artists and writers received dozens of honors in the Massachusetts Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, the nation’s longest-running competition to identify creative talent among students. Twenty-seven student writers received 52 awards total, including 13 Gold Key awards; 29 student artists received a total of 57 awards, 12 of which received Gold Key honors.
Senior Samuel Dunn’s personal essay and memoir piece “On Confession” received the competition’s best in category award; jurors selected it as a piece that exceeded the expectations of a Gold Key award.
Scholastic works in conjunction with the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and The Boston Globe to judge regional winners. Gold Key winners are welcome to participate in the regional awards celebration, which will be held on March 14 at Tufts. Gold Key work is currently being reviewed at the national level in New York City by panels of creative professionals for National Medal honors. A full list of Milton’s winners and honorable mentions is below:
Gold Key Winners—Art
Blake Ankner ’23: photography
Blake Ankner ’23: photography
Dingning Cao ’24: drawing and illustration
Dingning Cao ’24: digital art
Evelyn Cao ’22: art portfolio
Claire Mallela ’22: digital art
Claire Mallela ’22: digital art
Amara Prather ’26: fashion
Christopher Scanlon ’22: photography
Elio Thadhani ’23: photography
Natalie Williamson ’23: photography
Annie Winter ’22: photography
Gold Key Winners—Writing
Samuel Dunn ’22: personal essay and memoir
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Stephanie Fuentes ’22: poetry
Alec Hamblet ’22: short story
Melany Hirsch ’23: poetry
Sneha Jaiswal ’22: poetry
Jacob Mulliken ’23: journalism
Phuc Ngo ’23: flash fiction
Se-Aun Park ’24: critical essay
Katheryn Prather ’22: poetry
Katheryn Prather ’22: flash fiction
Gavin Randolph ’22: poetry
Elliot Smith ’22: poetry
Silver Key Winners—Art
Evelyn Cao ’22: mixed media
Isabelle Fitzgibbon ’23: photography
Jack Greenip ’23: photography
Jack Greenip ’23: photography
Seo Jeong Hwang ’23: digital art
Seo Jeong Hwang ’23: digital art
Christopher Scanlon ’22: photography
George Sherbrooke ’22: photography
Elliot Strauss ’22: photography
Elio Thadhani ’23: photography
Natalie Williamson ’23: photography
Natalie Williamson ’23: photography
Annie Winter ’23: photography
Felicity Wong ’25: film and animation
Silver Key Winners—Writing
Alison Cao ’22: poetry
Alison Cao ’22: flash fiction
Alison Cao ’22: personal essay and memoir
Alison Cao ’22: personal essay and memoir
Michelle Chen ’22: personal essay and memoir
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Lan Hai ’23: critical essay
Melany Hirsch ’23: poetry
Melany Hirsch ’23: poetry
Melany Hirsch ’23: poetry
Melany Hirsch ’23: personal essay and memoir
Aria Kamal ’23: poetry
Simone Moise ’22: poetry
Se-Aun Park ’24: critical essay
Katheryn Prather ’22: writing portfolio
Eliza Sadhwani ’23: poetry
Honorable Mention—Art
Blake Ankner ’23: photography
Elena Ferrari ’24: photography
Isabelle Fitzgibbon ’23: photography
Isabelle Fitzgibbon ’23: photography
Isabelle Fitzgibbon ’23: photography
Isabelle Fitzgibbon ’23: photography
Melanie Forney ’24: photography
Jack Greenip ’23: photography
Abby Holcomb ’23: photography
Isabella Kanczuk ’23: photography
Isabella Kanczuk ’23: photography
Mikka Kelechian ’23: photography
Savanna Leung ’23: drawing and illustration
Griffin MacGillivray ’22: photography
Dixon McClintock ’23: photography
Christopher Scanlon ’22: photography
Christopher Scanlon ’22: photography
Ava Scheibler ’22: photography
Ava Scheibler ’22: photography
Alden Smith ’23: photography
Alden Smith ’23: photography
Elio Thadhani ’23: photography
Elio Thadhani ’23: photography
Rajan Thakore ’22: photography
Zahra Tshai ’22: sculpture
Jack Weil ’23: photography
Jack Weil ’23: photography
Natalie Williamson ’23: photography
Annie Winter ’22: photography
Felicity Wong ’25: film and animation
Andy Zhang ’22: digital art
Honorable Mention—Writing
Alison Blake ’22: poetry
Alison Blake ’22: poetry
Alison Cao ’22: short story
Alison Cao ’22: critical essay
Henry Dallman ’23: poetry
Teddy Ellis ’22: personal essay and memoir
Elena Ferrari ’24: poetry
Aidan Gao ’25: short story
Melany Hirsch ’23: poetry
Melany Hirsch ’23: poetry
Melany Hirsch ’23: critical essay
Isabella Kanczuk ’23: poetry
Simone Moise ’22: poetry
Jacob Mulliken ’23: journalism
Talia Sherman ’22: personal essay and memoir
John Truesdale ’23: poetry
Yi Yang ’23: poetry
Sam (Yi Xuan) Yu ’24: short story
Sam (Yi Xuan) Yu ’24: poetry
“Murder, Mayhem, and Mystery” Brings the Wide World of Sound to King Theatre
Record players provide just some of the sound effects for the winter play, Murder, Mayhem, and Mystery.
Rotary phones, crunchy gravel, and a tiger’s roar—well, an overturned hand drum containing a precise number of metal nuts—are among the many objects carefully arranged on the King Theatre stage as student Foley artists and actors prepare for Thursday’s opening of the winter play, Murder, Mayhem, and Mystery: An Evening of Radio Dramas.
The show tells four classic radio dramas and takes the performers back to the early 20th century, when radio plays were can’t-miss entertainment. As students perform the stories, they use dozens of handmade sound effects. A vuvuzela, extended and retracted, becomes an elephant; a train chugs into station with a combination of metals and whistles; big band music scratches out from a vintage 78 record.
Directed by Performing Arts Department faculty member Darlene Anastas, the show includes “Sorry, Wrong Number,” written by Lucille Fletcher and made famous by actress Agnes Moorehead; a Dick Tracy suspense mystery, “Big Top Murders”; and two Agatha Christie stories, “Personal Call,” and “Butter in a Lordly Dish.” Like classic radio plays from the 1940s, the show has a “sponsor,” Tootsie Roll, and live ads are interspersed throughout.
Star Bryan ’23 plays Ms. Stevenson, the main character in “Sorry, Wrong Number,” as well as Inspector Narracott in “Personal Call,” and Julia Keene in “Butter in a Lordly Dish.” Learning the different roles within separate stories provided an interesting challenge.
“Ms. Stevenson is angry or frustrated through basically the whole story, and Julia Keene starts out flirtatious, but then takes a turn,” Bryan said. “I’m not used to playing anger or flirtation, so getting into both roles took time.”
“Seeing how different assorted objects can be used to make realistic sounds is fascinating. [This show is] truly not like any show I have ever done at Milton.”
– Manny Uzobuife ’22
The production is unlike any that Milton has done in a long time, Anastas said. While audio storytelling has seen a resurgence in podcast and audiobooks, the school hasn’t recently created a dramatic performance so rooted in listening and sound effects. The hand-crafted and mechanical sound effects provide warmer and richer sounds than a digital soundboard could. Learning how to operate some of the older objects, like rotary phones, has been a fun exercise for the students, she said.
Manny Uzobuife ’22 was “shocked” upon hearing the train sounds come together for the first time, saying, “Seeing how different assorted objects can be used to make realistic sounds is fascinating.” The audience will have fun guessing which objects make which sounds, Bryan said. Uzobuife noted that the play is “truly not like any show I have ever done at Milton.”
The best part of being in the show has been connecting with castmates, said Abby Rochelle ’24. They’ve “bonded over late nights and weird sounds,” she said.
“Everyone at Milton should see our show because it’s something they have never seen before,” Rochelle said. “Nobody performs radio plays in front of an in-person audience. It will be such a fun experience to see not only the actors giving the characters life, but also to see the behind-the-scenes creation of the sound effects.”
Murder, Mayhem, and Mystery runs Thursday, February 10, and Friday, February 11, at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday, February 12, at 7 p.m., in King Theatre. Register for tickets in advance. All in-person audience members must wear masks at all times while in the theater and the Kellner Performing Arts Center. The show will also stream live on Zoom.
Mohamad Hafez is this Fall’s Gold Visiting Artist, Nesto Exhibitor
“Art is so damn powerful,” Syrian American artist and architect Mohamad Hafez told students Tuesday during a Gold Fund presentation on campus. “Don’t do art just for the sake of beauty. That’s valid, but art is more than that. Art has the ability to cross borders, to cross hearts, to demolish walls between us.”
Hafez, who was born in Damascus and raised in Saudi Arabia, came to the United States to study architecture, later becoming a successful corporate architect. Art was initially a hobby for him and a way to process his homesickness and nostalgia when he was unable to return home following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. Then, as he witnessed the Syrian civil war wreak havoc on his homeland and his own family—many of whom fled as refugees to other parts of the world—creating art took on a deeper and more urgent purpose.
Using found objects, careful architectural details, memories, and images of the Middle East, Hafez creates surreal, sculptural pieces with political and social messages—depicting the senseless violence of war, the baggage (physical and emotional) that refugees carry from home, and the widespread cultural losses occurring in Damascus, an ancient but advanced city critical to the history of several civilizations and world religions.
“We all watched Notre Dame burn in Paris, and we all felt that pain of history being wiped out in front of our eyes,” Hafez said of the 2019 cathedral fire; on screen, he shared an image of a 1,200-year-old minaret destroyed in Aleppo. “How does it feel for a Syrian, Lebanese, or Tunisian person to see their own history blown up out of existence? How does it feel to see all this bloody imagery over and over? What could I have done? To me, art was no longer just about beauty anymore.”
Although it’s in response to struggle and tragic events, Hafez said his work is not pessimistic. The streetscapes he makes often feature “graffiti” with optimistic slogans or verses from the Quran or the Bible. In his current work, Hafez accompanies visual art with audio recordings that capture life in Syria before the war: Conversations and laughter, the Muslim call to prayer, Christian churchbells, taxis, and the busy din of restaurants and businesses—sounds of a vibrant, alive city.
“It’s built to build hope,” he said of his work. “Life is not only about loss. There is rebuilding, there is moving on.”
“Life is not only about loss. There is rebuilding, there is moving on.”
– Mohamad Hafez
In addition to his presentation to students Tuesday, Hafez spent the week working with visual arts classes in workshops and will be available for an open Q&A with Milton community members Friday. His visit is sponsored by the Melissa Dilworth Gold ’61 Visiting Artists Fund, which brings nationally recognized artists to campus.
This month and next, Hafez’s work will be on display in the Nesto Gallery, beginning with an opening reception Thursday, November 4, from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibit, called Home, will run in the gallery through December 17. The Nesto Gallery, located in the lower level of the Arts and Media Center, is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. when school is in session.
Students at the opening reception of the exhibit, Home.
Treasure Island Opens Thursday
A swashbuckling tale of pirates, sword fights, and buried gold will take the stage in the chapel tent this week, as the Performing Arts Department presents Treasure Island.
Directed by performing arts faculty member Shane Fuller, Treasure Island is based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson and adapted for the stage by Mary Zimmerman. It tells the story of Jim, the son of a tavern owner, who finds a mysterious treasure map among the possessions of a sailor who died at the tavern. Jim sets sail with some trusted local friends to locate the island and the treasure—and they’re accompanied by a covertly mutinous crew of pirates, including the ship’s cook, Long John Silver.
“It’s a fun show,” Fuller said. “There’s a little bit of sword-fighting, there’s pirates, there’s a lot of adventure. We didn’t want to do anything too serious or too heavy, because this is the first season that we’ve had live on campus in almost two years.”
Because of the pandemic, all of this fall’s shows will be in tents on campus—masks are required for all audience members—which presents an interesting challenge for the actors and crew. Faculty members Evan DelGaudio and Darlene Anastas are assisting the Treasure Island production with lighting and stage design, respectively. All 11 students in the cast each play multiple roles.
“The whole cast has to be a true ensemble,” Fuller said. “The show moves from place to place, so the cast members have to move the set pieces around and recreate the environments. It’s been fun, it’s a different kind of experience.”
Treasure Island opens in the Chapel tent Thursday, November 4 at 7:30 p.m.; it runs Friday, November 5 at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, November 6 at 7 p.m. Tickets are free and can be reserved online.
