- Underwriting for this showcase has been provided by John and Beth Drews, and George and Kathy Karenik,
- and we would like to thank them for their generosity. Please let us show our appreciation by giving
- them a round of applause. And while this is a very happy occasion this afternoon, we've all been touched
- by the sadness of the deaths of some of our
- colleagues and students, we would like to dedicate today's program to the memory of Georgina Joshi,
- Robert Samuels, Garth Epley, Zachary Novak, and Chris Carducci. These five budding young artists at
- the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music were, as you know, killed in a plane crash this last week.
- I'd like to ask you to please stand for a few moments silence as a mark of respect to these students.
- Thank you very much. Our first performer this afternoon, Stephanie Lampe hails from Syracuse, New York.
- And she is a junior honors college student at Indiana University pursuing dual degrees in ballet and
- mathematics. She graduated from the Interlochen Arts Academy, where she was honored with the Young Artist
- Award, a Young Scholar Award,
- and designation as co-salutatorian of her class. I think I mispronounced that. Salutatorian of her class.
- We don't have those in South Africa. At Indiana University, she has been featured in the ballet theater's
- productions of Cinderella and The Nutcracker and appeared in Serenade, Sleeping Beauty Act III,
- Viva Vivaldi, The Final Point, and Wins from the South. In addition,
- She danced in the IU Contemporary Dance Faculty Dance Concert in 2005 and 2006, and with the IU Opera
- Theater in 2003 and 2004. Stephanie will be representing the Bloomington Chapter at the NSAL National
- Dance Competition next month in Jacksonville, Florida. Since the requirements of the preliminary phase
- of the competition include two solos, one ballet variation, and a modern dance or jazz solo,
- Both our dancers today will be doing two numbers. Stephanie's first piece is a modern dance solo entitled
- Reflection and is choreographed by Laura Poole.
- Christina Harvey is a fiction writer in the second year of the Master of Fine Arts program in creative
- writing at Indiana University. She received her BA from Stanford and is most recently from San Francisco,
- California, where she worked at Google as a creative maximizer. Chris was the nominee for fiction in
- Indiana University's 2005-2006 AWP intro journal project. She also received the 2005 Gene Shepard Literary Award
- 2004-2005 Ernest Hemingway Fellowship, and the 2004-2005 William E. Wilson Fellowship from IU. Chris
- will be reading a selection from her short story, Cross Your Heart. Please welcome Christina Harvey.
- I'm going to be reading the beginning of my short story, Cross Your Heart, which is about a little girl
- named Danica who has kind of a troubled relationship with her parents, which as a result leads her to
- kind of enact a certain power over her peers on the playground. It's also a story about a little girl
- kind of investigating the differences between telling a lie, not telling the truth, joking, and using
- her imagination.
- crossed your heart. When Danica was nine, she began to throw away her food. It started with the Brussels
- sprouts. She hated the leafy green balls that looked fun to roll, but tasted so bitter her tongue wanted
- to curl up and die. One night, with four left on her plate, she wanted to give up. The rule was that
- she couldn't leave the table until she had cleaned her plate
- but she couldn't see how to do it. Eating Brussels sprouts felt like a slow choking. She had already
- eaten two, cutting each one in half and forcing herself to chew fast like a machine, trying not to let
- anything touch her tongue, nearly gagging, then rinsing it down with apple juice. She had to save the
- apple juice, make it last the whole meal. But with all the apple juice in the world,
- She was certain she couldn't eat the last four Brussels sprouts. She swung her legs under the table
- and put her chin on her hands, looking anywhere but her plate. She felt sleepy. Her mother and father
- were in the living room and she could hear Dan Rather's voice droning, pausing. She had once knocked
- her TV tray with her knee and spilled everything when they let her eat with them.
- So now she had to eat at the kitchen table alone. She didn't mind too much, except when the news was
- over and one of her parents' shows came on and she heard the laugh track. It made her feel lonely, and
- she pressed her lips together and wiggled them with her fingers. If she finished her supper, she would
- be allowed to watch with them until the end of the show. She cut another Brussels sprout in half and
- stabbed it with her fork. The kitchen lamp glared over her,
- but the windows were big and blank, and anything could be out there watching her. Her father came in
- to put his plate in the sink. He liked to let the dishes soak before he washed them. On weekends, she
- helped him do the dishes. She was the official rencer and stacker. He looked at her plate. Still having
- trouble with the Brussels sprouts, he asked, and she nodded. Here, I'll eat one and help you out a little.
- She picked it up
- He picked it up with his fingers and popped it in his mouth like a gumdrop. She smiled to see it disappear
- so easily. Delicious. Now you eat the rest. Eat one while I'm watching. She raised the fork with half
- a Brussels sprout on it and put it in her mouth and chewed her teeth into it. She pressed her tongue
- against the roof of her mouth to protect it, but she could still taste and she started to gag. When
- she made a noise, her father pressed his hand over her mouth.
- Finish it, he said, and she kept chewing and swallowed it, tiny, swimmy tears, squeezing out of the
- corners of her eyes. Good, he said, keep going. When Danica was nine, her parents worked and couldn't
- pick her up right after school, so every day she stayed at after-school care and played on the playground.
- Erica and Allison and the new girl Heather, who'd just transferred into school a week before, had to stay too.
- One day, after drinking purple Kool-Aid at 4 p.m. snack, competing to see who could jump off the swings
- from the highest point and investigating half a dead beetle covered in swarming ants, they sat on the
- monkey bars and swung their legs. Allison hung upside down, her blonde ponytail nearly touching the
- ground, all the blood running to her head. Danica wanted hair like that.
- long and straight and light, and when she saw it swishing in the air like a magic broom, she wanted
- to pull it right off. What should we do, Erica asked? Let's play witch, Danica said. Heather looked
- up from the ground, her knuckles white as she held the metal bar. She looked nervous. How do you play?
- Danica, Allison, and Erica looked at each other. Allison swung upright again. Danica's the witch, she said.
- and we're good little girls playing in the forest. You have to do what I say," Danica said. We can tell
- you how to play if you want to play with us. Heather nodded and stuck out her chest. Of course I want
- to play. First we run away, Erica told her, and Danica has to catch us so she can cut out our hearts.
- So the girls swung off the bars, small puffs of dust rising from the ground where they landed.
- They ran in separate directions across the fenced-in playground, Erica toward the swings, Allison toward
- the outside wall of the gymnasium, Heather toward the log forts where the boys staked their claim. Danica
- took her time sliding down the bars, watching the boys play Ninja Turtles and chase each other around
- the playground. She knew she was faster and could catch the other girls almost too easily. Danica liked
- the running,
- the pounding in her chest and head, the way the air sliced and whistled against her body. As she caught
- each girl, she dragged her back across the playground to the monkey bars, the witch's castle, squeezing
- her wrist as tightly as she could. Thought you could escape from me, my pretty? She asked. The first
- time she threw something away, it happened by accident.
- Even with only two and a half Brussels sprouts left on her plate, she couldn't make herself keep going.
- She picked up a whole one with her hand the way her father had and imagined sticking it in her mouth.
- She thought it might make her choke. It looked like a tiny green alien head. She wiggled it between
- her fingers and pretended it was talking to her. When she heard her mother in the hall, almost to the kitchen,
- She was startled and accidentally dropped the Brussels sprout. It fell in her lap on her napkin, and
- Danica squeezed it with her legs so it wouldn't fall on the ground. Her mother didn't notice and saw
- only that there was one less Brussels sprout on her plate. Danica could feel it making a wet spot against
- her leg through the napkin, and she felt like gagging again, but she didn't. Good, sweetheart, her mother
- said. You're almost done. Just eat up. Don't be a baby.
- After her mother went back to the living room to watch more TV, Danica looked at her plate and saw how
- much nicer it looked with only one whole Brussels sprout and another half left. She lifted up her napkin
- and looked at the green ball inside the damp translucent white film. It had been so easy to get rid
- of it. She picked up the other whole one and dropped it in her napkin. She would eat the last half,
- she told herself, but she twirled her fork on her plate
- and crossed her legs like an Indian, then uncrossed them and sat like a lady, and finally decided she
- couldn't make herself eat the half if she didn't have to eat the rest. She tore at the corner of the
- napkin with her fingers and made a line of tiny white balls that were ants marching to take her last
- half of Brussels sprout away. When she dropped it into the white pocket of her napkin, she pretended
- the white ants had eaten it. Her napkin bulged slightly,
- but she threw it in the trash can anyway, lifting up the potato peels to hide it underneath. Thank you.
- A master of fine arts candidate in acting at Indiana University, Eric Van Telen is about to complete
- his second year of study. He was born and reared in Salt Lake City and grew up singing, playing the piano,
- and acting. He received his BFA from the Utah State University in 2003 and acted professionally until
- moving to Bloomington. His favorite roles include the MC in Cabaret, Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened
- on the Way to the Forum, and George in Our Town. You may have seen him locally in the IU Theaters production,
- The Scarlet Letter, Arcadia, Macbeth, and She Stoops to Conquer.
- Eric represented the Bloomington chapter of the NSAL at the National Acting Competition in Hawaii last
- year, and he will be joining the Tony Award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival for a second season
- this summer. His performance for us this afternoon will include portions of Remember from A Little Night
- Music, Yvonne's monologue from Art, and Martin Guerre from Martin Guerre.
- Funny little games that we played, remember? The unexpected knock of the maid, remember? The wine that
- made us both rather merry and oh so very frank. Ah, how we laughed. Ah, how we drank. You acquiesced
- and the rest is a blank. What we did with your perfume, remember, darling? The condition of the room,
- When we were through Our inventions were unique Remember, darling I was limping for a week You caught
- the flu I'm sure it was you My friend Serge has bought a painting It's a canvas about
- Five feet by four, white. The background is white, and if you screw up your eyes a little bit, you can
- just make out some fine white diagonal lines. He'd been lusting after it for months, this painting,
- this white painting with white lines, but just got ahold of it on Saturday. It's unsettled me. It's
- filled me with some sort of indefinable unease. $200,000.
- He's comfortable, but he's not rich. Just comfortable, and he spends $200,000 on this white painting
- with white lines? I could have used a less aggressive tone. I could have been nicer. Even if it makes
- me physically ill that my friend has bought this painting for $200,000, I should have been nicer.
- From now on, I will be on my best behavior.
- Satan's child.
- know the man that they plead, as if a man can love on demand except his life is already planned. There's
- no demon inside, just a man full of pride, for my old salmon died. Look. Look, I'm Martin Gare. Too
- young to love, but still above the lie they live.
- Father, I'm brave and from your grave you'll keep me strong.
- Christopher Noctrab is completing his final semester at Indiana University, pursuing a Bachelor of Science
- in ballet performance with an outside field in comparative literature. He is a member of Phi Eta Sigma
- and the Golden Key Honor Societies. He originally trained under the guidance of his mother in his native
- New York. During his years with the IU Ballet Theater, he has been featured in The Nutcracker, Sleeping
- Beauty Act III, Cinderella, Winds from the South, Spring Waters, and Who Cares?
- And he's also appeared in Serenade, Glassworks, Viva Vivaldi, and The Final Point. In addition, he has
- performed in productions of the IU Theater and the IU Opera Theater, most notably as Puck, Benjamin
- Britten's operatic staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and very recently, A Chorus Line. Christopher
- performed as an apprentice with the Chautauqua Ballet Company in 2004 and received the diamond, the
- Mark Diamond Award for best choreography for his work.
- His first solo today will be the male variation from the Act III pas de deux of Swan Lake, Christopher Noctrath.
- as a BFA in musical theater performance from Western Michigan University. After college, she did summer
- theater in Colorado, where she met her husband John, and then soon afterwards moved to New York to begin
- an acting career. Since then, she has appeared in a national tour of the NBC series, Ed, and in many
- other productions. In 2004, she moved to Bloomington, where her husband is now getting an MFA from Indiana
- University.
- Since arriving here, she's played in the importance of being earnest at the Brown County Playhouse,
- Bicentennial Babies at the Bloomington Player Arts Project, and the Cardinal Stage Company's production
- of Our Town at the Buskirk Chumley Theatre. Her favorite role to date, however, is wife to John and
- mother of son, Jack. For us today, Anginette will do monologues by Amanda from Nicky Silver's The Food
- Chain and by Salome from Salome by Oscar Wilde.
- and asks if I'm alone. I'm at a booth by myself. What, did he think I had my imaginary friend with me?
- I was alone, you know? And I can't imagine that he's not alone every single day of his miserable, pathetic
- life. He has bad skin and it's not attractive. I'm not the way that, you know, bad skin is attractive
- on some people, on some men.
- never attractive on women. Have you noticed that? Just one more of the injustices we are forced to face.
- We have bad skin, we're grotesque. Let a man have bad skin and he can be Richard Burton for God's sake.
- I'm straight. So, I simply respond, no, I'm married, thank you. Well, he leans back in really the most
- super silliest manner. He says,
- I meant, were you eating alone? I knew what you meant. I know what he meant. I would just like at some
- point in my life to cling with whatever energy I have to my dignity. What have we got but our dignity?
- Women are worthless in this world. Every aspect of our culture keeps us subjugated under the oppressive
- thumb of the beauty myth. If you're attractive, congratulations.
- because you own it all. You run the world. But God forbid you should have bad skin, or gain a pound,
- or lose a leg, or in any other way deviate from what the magazines and the television and the government
- and the oil companies who own all the other stuff to begin with. God forbid you should deviate from
- what the president of Shell Oil decides is attractive.
- Not that I'm unattractive, mind you. I just wasn't feeling very attractive today while I was being stared
- at. I just stood there in that diner for what seemed like hours, and with all the composure and dignity
- that I could muster, which was considerable, I said, I've changed my mind, thank you, and I left.
- I was all the way on 43rd Street before I realized I'd left my purse. Thou wouldst not suffer me to
- kiss thy mouth, your cannon. Well, I will kiss it now. I will bite it with my teeth.
- as one bites a ripe fruit. But wherefore dost thou not look at me, O cannon? Thine eyes, that were so
- terrible, so full of rage and scorn, are shut now. Wherefore are they shut? Lift up thine eyelids,
- O cannon. Art thou afraid of me, that thou wilt not look at me?
- serpent that spat its venom upon me. How is it that the red viper stirs no longer? Thou wouldst have
- none of me, O Cammy. Thou didst speak evil words against me. Thou didst bear thyself towards me as to
- a harlot, as to a woman that is a wanton to me, Salome, daughter
- the man I loved alone among all men. My body was a column of ivory set upon feet of silver. My voice
- was a sensor that scattered strange perfumes. And when I looked on thee, I heard strange music. Wherefore
- didst thou not look at me? Thou didst put upon thine eyes the covering of him that would see his God.
- Well, thou hast seen thy God, Yocannon. But me, me thou didst never see. I saw thee, and I loved thee.
- Oh, I loved thee. I loved thee still, and what shall I do now?
- thou wouldst have looked at me, thou wouldst have loved me. Well, I know thou wouldst have loved me,
- and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death.
- From the native of New York, baritone Christopher Bolduck has completed his work on a Master of Music
- degree at IU, and this summer he will perform the role of massette in Don Giovanni with Colorado's Central
- City Opera. And then in the fall, he heads to Philadelphia, where he will be an artist at the Academy
- of Vocal Arts. For two seasons, he was an apprentice at the Santa Fe Opera, where he covered massetto
- in Don Giovanni and calchas in La Belle Hélène. The opera awarded him
- Richard Tucker Music Foundation Award in 2003, and the Donald and Luke Graham Memorial Award in 2004
- for his outstanding potential on the operatic stage. Christopher has also won prizes from numerous
- organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions at the Tri-State Region,
- the Liederkranz Foundation Awards for Voice, the Fritz and Lavinia Jensen Competition, the Connecticut
- Opera Guild Competition,
- and the classical singer convention competition. Christopher is here this afternoon, but unfortunately
- he cannot sing due to his doctor's orders. You will be able to meet him a little bit later when the
- awards are presented, however. We will now take a short break. The restrooms are out the door and across
- the hall for those who need to use them. And I've been asked to ask you to please be back in your seats
- in seven minutes time. Thank you.
- Come on, Ms. Norris. You've got three seconds. Returning to our program, we begin with a reading by
- the poet Robin Vogelsang. Robin comes from Jericho, Vermont, and is a fourth-year graduate student in
- the English department at IU, pursuing both a PhD in American literature and an MFA in creative writing.
- She loves to travel and has lived in Austria, England, and Spain.
- She translates from Catalan and is currently working on a book project of translation of Catalan poetry.
- Her poetry weaves together her interests in music, language, philosophy, and religion, as well as cognitive
- and anatomical science. For her, poetry is a way to allow words to bear the full weight of their multiple
- meanings and sounds, an exploration of the familiar by making it new. She will read three of her poems for us.
- Three poems are from a series about the life of Wilson Bentley, who was a Vermont farmer from my hometown
- who invented a way to combine a microscope and a camera and discovered that no two snowflakes are alike.
- Wilson Snowflake Bentley, age 16. It's a question I like to think on when bailing hay or sugaring maples
- yoked by sap buckets. The singularity
- of snowflakes. Clouds make such quantity of crystals that surely a few might repeat. But the more I
- worry it, the more I'm certain. Each is unique, miracle made to melt. Grandmother's lace doesn't compare,
- though I study those orderly asterisks, too. I've looked at hundreds, thousands maybe, under my mother's
- old microscope from teaching days, best present of my life.
- Other boys play with pop guns or slingshots, but I watch water drops or feathers from a bird wing, tiny
- stones, everything veined or slivered under my lens. Mary Blood sometimes watches me with solemn gleaming
- eyes. She doesn't mind the cold when I'm at work. She likes to peer into the scope. I tell Mary Blood
- to go inside or at least wrap up in a wool barn coat.
- but she prefers to wait with her straight spine, observes the movements of my mittened hands. My parents
- took in Mary Blood when she was nine, her mother sick with the cancer and her father with three girls.
- That was last year and ever since she finds time to watch despite the chores. Her eyes could ruin the
- crystals just by looking they've got so much fire. But they're spangled enough to remake the snowflake
- she melted.
- On the coldest day, I told her, even your name won't warm you, Mary Blood, and she went inside. She's
- unique for sure, and I want her with me, but I'm nervous when she's here. Best times is winter, snow,
- silent ticker tape spin, hat throw hurrah just for me and my scope. I look and sketch, wonder if I'll
- ever find one crystal's twin, knowing I won't.
- So I hope for snow every day I wake, which in our Vermont Valley sometimes comes late as May, which
- is sometimes my name for Mary. Seance. In High Spirits, Mother tells us to look for her after she passes,
- says, sleep in my bedroom and I'll visit you in the night. Don't cover the mirrors. My nieces giggle,
- but such jests don't make me smile. She's been sick too much.
- My mother Fanny, school teacher who taught me all she knew, who cajoled my father from microscope money,
- who always believed in truths of science, who hardly went to the congregational church on the green
- in Jericho, now hosts seances, which want things to float up, knocks to sound in the silence. Around
- a table in a darkened room, heavy with cloth and closed eyes, hands and breath held
- Voices more present for being of the past. When the ladies gather, I leave the house for my own divining
- out of doors. Like a dowser with his split stick pointed to the sky, I see freshets and streams of snow
- crystals to come, vibrate, and spin my eyes. Lenses almost adept enough to magnify flakes in motion
- to see what floats down as a beckon.
- Snowflakes break more often than you may think. In fact, they're just clumps, conglomerate crystals
- that fracture and smash in jostling as they fall, sky-crowded shoulder to crystalline shoulder, ghosts
- bumping elbows in midair. In a light, dry flurry, a crystal might find its way alone. It's what I hunt,
- the perfect lonely sample, unbroken and ripe for a phantasmic shudder click.
- I hold out my homemade tray, painted black for the catch, handles wired to keep body heat apart. When
- I spot that tiny cog wheel, I prod gently with a broom straw until it sticks and drop it onto the microscope
- slide, adjust the depth and bellows, photograph my subject, Sunday soul in the parlor. Silver Screen.
- In high winter when the road is snowed over,
- I can't go out to see the pictures with Mary Pickford and her feisty smile or Laura LaPlante's clever
- grin. Stars like Mary Miles Minter have a symmetry to their mouths. They shine a singular light. Right
- here in Jericho, Helen Shiner's light is her tidy mouth, teeth arrayed like snow, and just as grand
- as those in motion picture. Snipping them out, I've noticed no two smiles are alike.
- Whether local charmers or starlets, their secret beauty is the lips' curved symmetry. Helen, though
- just a girl, loves the symmetry of the universe as I do. The northern lights enchanted her, as did my
- trove of snowflakes, magnified, collected in mirror-etched pictures. She favored delicate, lacy ones,
- and her smiles were bright as when we'd telescoped the stars.
- But much as I'm fond of those grinning stars, human company wants something of symmetry. Preferable
- the prism of crisp morning light, my daily hunt to capture fast-falling snow, stilled by silver nitrate
- onto glass plate pictures. The small mouths of snowflakes always smile. I can't see much beyond a woman's
- smiles, so it's best to admire the silver screen's stars.
- I suppose marriage makes a kind of symmetry, but I have always worked by solitary light, and my only
- real sweetheart is the snow. Six-sided valentines are versed in my pictures. I haven't seen her in years,
- not even a picture, but the best I ever saw was Mary Blood's smile. Her eyes were fire, her eyes were
- always stars. Maybe her life has forged its own symmetry. Just look how her and Charles's wedded light
- was overexposed.
- a union cold as snow. In clipped cameos and snow crystal pictures, I can hold the silver smile of moving
- stars, their silent speech, and symmetry of light. Thank you. Christopher Noctreb returns now to dance
- his second number. This is a jazz piece.
- Too Darn Hot and is choreographed by George Penny.
- I like to coo with my baby tonight And pitch the woo with my baby tonight I like to coo with my baby
- tonight And pitch the woo with my baby tonight
- The thermometer goes way up, and the weather is sizzlin' hot. Mr. Gov, for his squad. A Marine,
- for his queen. A GI, for his cutie pie is not.
- It's too darn hard. It's too darn hard.
- I think George Penny deserves a round of applause too. Vanessa Ballem is finishing her third and final
- year in the MFA acting program at IU. Her credits here include major roles in Macbeth, The Cherry Orchard
- and Pal Joey, and appearances in the ensembles in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris
- and The Laramie Project. A recording artist with covenant communications,
- Vanessa currently studies with Patricia Wise in the IU Jacobs School of Music. She's a former Miss Utah
- and received the Burke Parks Talent Award in the Miss America Pageant. She's been a recurrent performer
- with the Utah Festival Opera, the Old Lyric Repertory Company, and the Utah Shakespearean Festival.
- After graduation, she can be seen playing Desdemona in the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival's production
- of Othello.
- Today, Vanessa will be doing monologues by Cynthia from Reality by Curtis Cook and by Martine from Molière's
- The Learned Ladies. Please welcome Vanessa Vallum. We've been married for five years, and I love you
- more than I love myself.
- I'm sorry that I can't give you what you want. I know that you say that it doesn't matter and in time
- it will take care of itself, but I look in your eyes when we make love and I see how much it means to
- you. I see you almost wishing for it. Maybe this will be the time if I just hold her a little tighter,
- if I just love her a little more. I see that, Jimmy.
- and I feel it inside of me. I want a baby as much as you do, and I'm so afraid that you're going to
- leave me. I know that you say that you don't want to, but part of me feels that if you did, you'd have
- every right to. Don't! Jimmy, please don't.
- asking when we're going to have a baby and I keep saying that we're just not ready. That we just don't
- want a child right now. That's a lie. And they know it's a lie and they laugh. Well, they're not laughing,
- but I can hear them laughing at us. They don't know how much I love you and you love me. They don't
- know how much pain we're going through. They just know they're books.
- And there, TV shows that point and blame and find alternate methods, other ways of doing what's natural,
- what was meant to be done with the one that you love, the way that God meant it to be done. They make
- me so angry. The ones that have no right having babies, three or four children, no money, three or four
- different men, children, dirty and crying,
- They shouldn't have that child. I should. I want a baby and I can't have one, but they have three or
- four. Three or four. I have none. Zero. None. And it makes me angry. Makes me want to hurt them. To
- hurt their baby.
- she had no right to having that child and I don't have one. She is a whore. She sleeps with so many
- men. She's sick. Her baby is sick, but she has one. I have none. Now she has none because I don't want
- her to have one. If I can't, she can't. If I can't, I did it for you, Jimmy.
- we don't have to watch her coming to church every Sunday with that sick baby that we don't have.
- It was wrong. It was so wrong, but I couldn't stop myself. I just, I just jumped down there and stopped
- it from breathing. I just, I jumped down and I covered its mouth as everybody yells
- I did mean it. I killed her baby. It just ain't right for the wife to run the shop. The man, I say,
- should always be on top, though I've sacked
- Ten times for saying so. Its cocks, not hens, should be the ones to crow. If I had a husband, I wouldn't
- wish for him to be all meek and womanish. No, no. He'd be the captain of my ship. And if I happened
- to give him any lip or crossed him,
- He'd be right to slap my face a time or two to put me in my place. The master's heart is rightly set
- on finding a proper man for Henriette. Well then, here's Pletandra. Why deny the girl a fine young man
- like he? And why give her a learned fool who prates and drones? She needs a husband, not a bag of bones
- who'll teach her
- I tell you, just don't suit her. Talk! Talk, as all these pedants know how to do. If I had a husband,
- I've always said it wouldn't be no learned man I'd wed. Wit is not the thing you need around the house,
- and it's no joy to have a bookish spouse. When I get married, you can bet your life
- My man will study nothing but his wife. He'll have no other book to read but me and won't, so please
- you, ma'am, no eggs.
- Born in Ukraine, Marina Rosnitovsky immigrated to Israel when she was six years old, and she began studying
- the harp at the age of 12. She earned her Bachelor of Music from Indiana University under distinguished
- professor of harp, Suzanne McDonald, and she is currently pursuing a master's degree at IU
- in harp performance and pedagogy. She has received the American Israel Cultural Foundation Scholarship
- four consecutive times,
- as well as a number of other awards from the Dooney Wiseman Conservatory in Haifa, Israel. Marina has
- performed with a number of professional orchestras in Israel and the United States, and several of her
- performances have been broadcast on national Israeli television. She plans to follow a career of teaching
- and performing as a soloist and orchestral harpist. She will play Abesidoles by Bernard Andres.
- Armstrong is in his second year in the MFA acting program at Indiana University. He began his career
- at IU in 1996 and graduated with a degree in musical theater. During his undergraduate years, he had
- major roles in Into the Woods, The Pirates of Penzance, and Parade. Since returning to IU, he has had
- key roles in the Indiana University Theater's productions of Dracula, Happy Birthday, Wanderdune,
- Pal Joey, Falsettos, and Our Country's Good.
- as well as at the Brown County Playhouse in the production of Forever Played. His non-IU credits include
- roles in the productions of Into the Woods by the Rocky Mountain Repertory Theater in Grand Lake, Colorado,
- where he met his wife, and Company by the Broward Stage Door Theater in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, as
- well as the National Touring Company of Seussical the Musical. But thus far, he claims his favorite
- roles would have to be husband to Anjanette and father to Jack. Who wrote the script?
- David. His performance today will include parts of Undressing Girls from So Long, 174th Street, Alan's
- monologue from The Lion That Picked Up A Thousand Babes, and me from Beauty and the Beast.
- that you'll never breathe a word. What I'm about to tell you now, Marvin, promise you'll forget you
- ever heard. Each time I see a girl walking down the street, I start undressing her with my eyes. It
- doesn't seem to matter what girl I meet, I start undressing her with my eyes. Her every who's and what's
- in that thingamabob
- Inside my head I visualize I must be a pervert or a sexual deviator Day and night my brain is just a
- non-stop burlesque theater You think a guy can stop me tries But it's out of control now I start undressing
- girls with my eyes Sales girls and waitresses and relations too I start undressing them with my eyes
- Without so much as even a how do you do I start undressing them with my eyes
- I do it every day to a thousand girls of every shape and color and size. Cindy Dorfman, Jenny Greenblatt,
- even her sister Sheila. One time in that movie show, I did it to Ruby Keeler. Boy, would my mother get
- a surprise. She would die if she found out. I start undressing girls with mine. How I'm undressing girls
- with mine. I keep undressing girls with my eyes. I'm a nice guy.
- I'm a really nice guy. And I say that, not because I think it's true, but because that's what everybody
- says. I mean, if you ask any girl who's known me for more than a week, that's how she'll describe me.
- Oh, Alan? Oh, he's a nice guy. And they say that because, well, you know nice guys, right? They don't
- try to hurt people, try to be a gentleman, and treat people right, because that's what we learn girls
- are attracted to. They want to be treated right, right?
- I mean, if you get girls together and get them talking about guys, you know, they'll dream you up a
- perfect gentleman. But in real life? Okay, that's very different, because if you get girls together
- and get them talking about real guys, not figments of their imagination, but real people, what do you
- get? Men are stupid, and men are scumbags, and men are slime. And you'll notice how all those words
- start with the letter S, and I think there's something to that. But anyway, guys are all these S words.
- You know, all these and more, but who
- girls date. You know, who comes on to them at the bars? And who do they go home with? The scumbags!
- The slime! And then when they get hurt, and they always do, they call me up to confide in me because,
- long go, we decided that we were just gonna be friends. I swear, you girls need to get a whole
- new vocabulary, okay? You've started so many cliches, it's not even funny. So anyway, these girls call
- me up and they say, Allen, Allen! Oh, guys, they're slime!
- And then they realize they're talking to a guy, and they say, oh, except you, Alan. You're a nice guy.
- And when you find a girlfriend, she's going to be so lucky. But it can't be me, because I'm attracted
- to guys who are going to shit all over me. So great. Now I've got all the friends I need. So why should
- I be a nice guy anymore, huh? Yeah, I think I'll be a scumbag now. Yeah, I think I'll learn some stupid
- pick-up lines and use them on girls who are dressed to get laid. I think I'll be proud of how loud I
- can belch.
- And I think I'll use women like the Black and Decker screwdrivers because obviously that's what they
- really want to hear. So, oh great, great. Life begins now. Come on, babe. Let's go back to my house
- and do it. I can see that we will share all that love implies. We shall be the perfect pair, rather
- like my voice. You are face to face with destiny.
- Thanks.
- Back again is Stephanie Lampe who will be representing the Bloomington Chapter at the National NSAL
- Dance Competition. This time she will dance the variation with fan from Don Quixote.
- is in her final year of a Master of Music program at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music,
- where she is a student of Costanza Cucaro. She received her B.M. from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music,
- where she had roles in many productions, including Alcina, Die Fledermaus, The Rape of Lucretia, and
- The Barted Bride. At IU, she has sung in the Magic Flute, The Merry Widow, and Cosy Fan Tutte.
- Vera spent two summers at the Chautauqua Institute, where she was seen in A Midsummer Night's Dream
- and Le Mamel de Teresias. Today, she will sing an aria from Semera Midi by Rossini.
- That concludes our performances. Now I will turn things over to David Albright, President of the Bloomington
- Chapter of the NSAL. He will introduce the area chairs who will in turn present the awards to all the
- award winners in the 2006 NSAL competitions. It has been a pleasure being with you, and I wish you all
- a very good afternoon. Before I proceed, I want to say
- We really should give Murray a big, big hand. And I also want to thank our underwriters again, John
- and Beth Drews and George and Kathy Koenig. They have been very generous with us. Now, as you know,
- competitions don't play
- take place without hard, lengthy work. And our area chairmen have really, really labored in the vineyards
- this year, some very difficult competitions and so forth. I'm going to introduce all of the chairmen,
- then in each case, one of them will wind up making the presentations. Our visual arts chairs have been
- Kathy Kornak,
- Lady Finkelstein, Gladys Devane, and Jane Otten. Kathy will make the presentations. Thank you, David.
- We have a wonderful art show downstairs and I do hope everyone joins us there after this program along
- with the reception. We do not have any white paintings with white diagonal stripes and none of them
- are worth $200,000 but we have some wonderful paintings and each one is tagged and has the price on it.
- that the artists would like to receive for it. We had 32 artists that entered 57 works of art in the
- competition with slides. We narrowed those down to 20 artists with 28 pieces of work, and those are
- in the show downstairs. And I want to thank my co-chairs, Linda Finkelstein
- Glass Devane and Jane Otten for all the work they helped with, and the judges who were Robert Kingsley,
- Betsy Stewart, and Lydia Finkelstein. And I also want to thank all the wonderful donors that donated
- money for the awards. Now I'm going to call the artists up here, visual artists up here, and if you'd
- come and stand here, I'd appreciate it. It's Melanie Lawrence, Ann Potter,
- Ari Pescovitz, Michelle Rosic, Gregory Witt, and Jessica Held. If you'll kind of line up the way I called
- you so that I don't get confused, but I'm giving the awards out.
- Now, I will give the awards out, and I will ask that you hold your applause for all of them until afterwards.
- To Melanie Lawrence, went the Klein Merit Award. Congratulations, Melanie. To Anne Potter, went the
- Shiner Merit Award. Congratulations, Anne. To Irie Paskowitz, went the Alma Eichmann Memorial Award.
- Congratulations, Ari. To Michelle Rosick went the Nur Primo Merit Award. Congratulations, Michelle.
- To Gregory Witt went the Chris Kahn Merit Award and a Pygmalion gift certificate. The gift certificate's
- not in here, but we will give it to you. Congratulations.
- To Jessica Held, went the Rosemary Frazier Merit Award, and also a Pygmalion gift certificate.
- And as I said, we don't have the gift certificates yet, but we will get them to you. And to Amy Klein,
- who didn't come up. Oh, I'm sorry. And Amy Klein won our chapter award. I'm sorry. Congratulations to you.
- Joanne Athanas and Mary Stroh were our dance chairs and boy did they work. Mary will do the presentations
- for the dance.
- As you've heard, this year the focus of the national competition is dance. And it was a little bit different
- this year because we had the ballet element, but we also had a contemporary dance and a jazz element
- as well. So the dancers had to be quite versatile in all the styles. Stephanie and Chris, where are
- you? Come.
- while they're coming up. The local competition was held on February 5th in the IU School of Hyper Dance
- Studio. And they had, all the participants had classes in ballet, contemporary, and jazz. And they also
- performed a classical ballet variation as well as an original piece of jazz or contemporary dance choreography.
- I'd like to say many thanks to our three judges who were David Ho Choi. He is artistic director of Dance
- Kaleidoscope. Alan Jones, former artistic director of the Louisville Ballet and a prolific choreographer.
- And Cynthia Pratt, who is a dance faculty member from Butler University. And we had teachers from our own NSAL
- gang, George Penny and Liz Shea and Violette Verity. It now gives me great pleasure to present these
- two awards. Winner of the Robert Sullivan Memorial Award, the Marjorie K. Borkenstein Memorial Award,
- and the Violette Verity Merit Award, Christopher Nochtraub.
- And winner of the Mrs. Granville Wells Memorial Award and the Lila and Stephen Hughes Travel Award,
- Stephanie Lamp.
- Our Drama Award Chair is Marilyn Norris, and Marilyn will do the presentations. I think she will refuse
- to use the microphone, but that's Marilyn. Will you please come on stage?
- is the interaction of the voice of the heart with the voice of the soul. Few arts better realize Yates'
- definition of art than does theater. And of the 31 very talented competitors in the drama competition
- this year, the three judges acknowledge these actors as those who best realize that synthesis of the
- voice of the heart.
- and the voice of the son. Our congratulations, and we ask again that you hold the applause until they
- have all received the awards, go for the Roy Matten House Memorial Award to Rebecca Falkenberry.
- Congratulations. Yes. The Hersamalas Merit Award to Zachary Spicer.
- Rocket, Carol Moody, and Fran Snig Memorial Award to John Armstrong. The Laura Shiner Memorial Award
- to Anjanette Hull Armstrong. And the Chapter Career Award in Drama to Vanessa
- Congratulations. Thank you. The literature chair this year stayed right in my home, I guess. My wife
- was all right.
- Thank you, David, and thank you for having me in your home. Thirty-one wonderful young writers entered
- the competition this year and they submitted, one was a playwright and several submitted novels, some
- submitted poetry, short stories. We even had several high school students enter the competition.
- I want to thank the judges this year, Dorian Gossie, Mary McGann, and Roger Finxton, who did a wonderful
- job of sorting through the excellent entries and coming up with our winners this year. Will all of the
- literature winners please come forward? I'm not going to read your names in case I skip one, so I leave
- it to you to know if you're a literature winner. For the first time this year, we had two winners from Purdue.
- University and our competition. Okay, the Bachman Merit Award goes to Elizabeth Snow, who I think is
- not here. I did not see that her name tag was picked up. I do see you are Brian, right? We do have one
- Purdue person here. The Albright Merit Award goes to Ann Timberlake. Ann, congratulations.
- Josephine K. Piercy Memorial Award and the Wilson Merit Award goes to Michelle Ross. And Michelle is
- not here. Michelle has won probably four or five awards in our literature competition over the years.
- This is her last competition because our age limit stops at 29 and she's about to turn 30.
- Anyway, congratulations to Michelle. The O'Mara Merit Award and the Will H. Hayes Junior Memorial Award
- to Brian Dunn, who is one of our Purdue winners.
- I'm delighted, and I hope Purdue keeps entering our competition. And I hope we may just stay in Bloomington
- Pleasant. We don't always with Purdue visitors. The Roy Battenhouse Memorial Award goes to Christina
- Harvey. Congratulations. And our Chapter Career Award goes to Robin Vogelsang.
- The music chair this year was Stan Hamilton, and I'm going to let him tell you what kind of dilemmas
- that he confronted in conducting this competition, which incidentally included both instrumental and
- voice. Thank you very much, David. Will the music award winners please come and join me at the podium?
- without your names being called. And as usual, we request that the applause be held until we're finished.
- David asked me to summarize the wonderful difficulties in the 47 auditioners for the two days of music
- auditions. Perhaps a comment regarding one of the prize winners will tell you, if you don't already know,
- of the talent and perseverance, and I should say charm, that all of our student of music bring to the
- competition. The one musician whom I know, who I know is not here, Zhao Zhang, who is a winner of the
- Margaret Bueller White Memorial Award, she is in Beijing at the International Flute Competition. So
- I think that in alone self suffices to tell you of the difficulties of our judges.
- Winning the Hatfield Merit Award is Nino Cocharella. Is Nino here? No. Winner of the Jacobi Merit Award,
- the McDonald Merit Award, and the Davis Merit Award is Mark Chapman. Congratulations, Mark. Winner of
- the Barbara Merit Award and the Tatlock Merit Award is Yunbei Li. Congratulations.
- Winner of the Donald Felton Award is Christia Starnes. Winner of the Caldwell Merit Award and
- the Stavropoulos Merit Award is Christopher Bolduc. We couldn't hear today, but he's kindly graced us
- with his silent presence. Winner of the Ralston Merit Award is Vera Savage.
- And winner of the chapter career award is Marina Rosnitovsky.
- And needless to say that the chair of our musical theater competition is George Penny. That's monster
- of a choreographer for Christopher Noctav. Thank you. With the musical theater award winners, please approach.
- There were 23 entries in this year's competition. Our judges were from the Indiana Repertory Theater,
- Richard Roberts and Megan McKinney, who was a past winner of the NSAL in drama. The Albright Merit Award,
- Alexander Meisner. The Scott Berges Jones Tribute Award, Amy Linden.
- Rory Battenhouse Memorial Award, Jesse Burnett. The Caldwell Merit Award, Kinzington Blaylock, who's
- in a performance of quilters in Evansville, Indiana. And they are just going down, I have the feeling.
- The Robinson Merit Award and Governor Merit Award, Eric Van Telen. And the Chapter Career Award, John
- Armstrong.
- concludes our awards and I want to congratulate all the award winners and to remind them of two things.
- That we are having a reception which Lenore Hatfield and her helpers have put together and we really
- would like to have you spend some time with us and so that we can tell you how much we enjoyed your
- performances.
- and how much we enjoyed your exhibit and the arts exhibit. I also should tell you that you might keep
- in mind that this year has been kind of banner year. We've had a former award winner from this chapter,
- who got her first break here, debut at the Metropolitan Opera,
- And we just had another young man who got his first break here, too, won the Richard Tucker $30,000
- prize. So with that, let me say that we hope you all have bright shining futures. Will all of the award
- winners stay very briefly here so we can get a group picture of you? We'd like to post our award winners
- on our website. With that, I bid you
- Good afternoon.