Clifford Odets’ play “Awake and Sing!” features a struggling Jewish family torn between the parents’ lofty ambitions and the children’s fight to find a voice. The play premiered on Broadway in 1935 and 80 years later, its portrayal of economic strain on a family during the Great Depression resembles that which many endure today. Starting […]
Category Archives: Theater & Fine Arts
‘These Paper Bullets!’ opens at Geffen Playhouse, fresh take on Shakespeare
Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and Shakespeare – an unusual combination for a play, but one which the creators of “These Paper Bullets!” think will prove a winning one. Opening Tuesday at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, “These Paper Bullets!” is known as a rip-off of William Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” The play takes […]
‘The Scarlet Stone’ shows political, social changes in Iran
A Hercules-like hero and a rival princess secretly conceive a son, Sohrab, in an ancient Persian myth. Romance turns to tragedy when Sohrab is later killed by his own estranged father in battle. This tale is the foundation of “The Scarlet Stone,” a multidisciplinary dance, music and poetry piece performed at Royce Hall Saturday in […]
UCLA alumna hosts Indian classical dance program at Fowler Museum
Landowners and city officials commissioned nine-year-old Malathi Iyengar to decorate the entryways of the temples and festival halls in Bangalore, India with bright patterns made of colored flour, grains of rice and flower petals. To Iyengar, creating the designs, known as rangolis, was much more than just a hobby – the rangoli was a powerful […]
Student develops mobile app to connect visitors to Sculpture Garden
UCLA Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy saw in 1967 the completion of 31 sculptures planted in UCLA’s North Campus. Forty-eight years later, along with its installations, the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden remains, but as a spot teeming with movement of dancers rehearsing or students reading between class. Inspired by the vibrant interaction between visitors and […]
Alumna’s play “All American Girl” explores religious extremism
When playwright Wendy Graf watched news coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, she noticed something unusual about reports on the wife of one of the bombers. Graf, a UCLA alumna, said none of the news reported on Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s wife’s role in the act of terrorism, only choosing to focus on her identity […]
Two UCLA employees take San Diego Comic-Con for panel on geek identity
TRANSCRIPT NABOR: For five days in July, geeks come from all over the world to downtown San Diego for Comic-Con International. This year, two of those geeks were UCLA staff members. They represented UCLA as program participants in a panel discussion on Thursday called “Bringing Geek Back to Higher Education.” According to the panelists, colleges […]