From Clark’s New Play Festival

And… Likewise

Writer: Hannah Yukon
Director: Danny Zeliger

Dramedy. It’s perhaps the most common genre and one of the broadest, encompassing any blend of comedy and drama. And what a hard balance it is; if the greatest cliché a critic can give is “I laughed and I cried” is it better to do both at once? And is it wrong for a show to segregate them to the point that the two don’t function as a whole?

Hannah Yukon’s new dramedy And…Likewise tries to walk this fine line. It starts simply and lightly enough, with a girl named Sue (played by the ever brilliant Alex Tennant), her newly ex-boyfriend Lee (Wyndham Maxwell), and her flirty lesbian one-time college lover Dylan (Shauna Noone), who is returning from France to seduce her. The comic possibilities of such a trio are endless, with the majority of the first act being a long, ceaselessly hilarious sequence between Sue and Dylan that’s mined for more awkwardness and joy than I’ve seen in any play in years.

Marc on the Menu: India Cafe, 84 Boston Turnpike, Shrewsbury

by Marc Kadushin
Scarlet Staff

Well it looks like the day has finally come when I write my last review (at least as an undergraduate). It has been a good run and quite a bit of fun to boot. I’d like to take a moment to thank those of you that have accompanied me on my restaurant shenanigans over the years. If not for you guys I would never have been able to continue providing “quality” reviews for as long as I have. I hope you have all enjoyed my culinary ramblings.

Image courtesy of http://indiacafeonline.com/index.htm

For my final review I decided to go with a discipline of food I have yet to critique. This week, Indian food was on the menu. I headed over to India Café to give their food a try.

India Café’s décor is pleasant but a bit plain. The floors are made of beige tiles and the walls are painted red. The tables and chairs are made of faux wood, but it is fairly nice looking faux wood. There are paintings, statues, and other cultural trinkets placed about the restaurant. It almost has a classy feel to it, but there are two large televisions continuously playing Cops. Also the place has just a tad bit too much open space.

The prices at India Café are alright. They’re not particularly cheap, nor are they prohibitively expensive. Entrees run between $11 and $13. Drinks, nan, and the like cost between $2 and $4. I suppose it’s actually not that expensive, but this is the sort of place where you’ll need soup or nan to supplement your entrée. Regardless, the prices are certainly reasonable for a place as good as this.

Liberal art[ist]s

Studio art senior thesis show offers a diverse mix of mediums and meaning

By Ashley Klann
Editor-in-Chief

This year’s senior studio art thesis show was a very diverse arrangement of photos, paintings, sculpture, and more. The pieces in the exhibit ranged just as much as the topics and statements behind them.

Customarily, the gallery opening and reception was celebrated with a spread of delicious food, drinks, and a great turn out on Wednesday, April 25th.

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Overall, the works were all over the place with ideas going in all different directions, but there was a cohesive portrayal – as in all art – of the artists behind the work. Even in portraits of others, all of the artists put a lot of themselves into their work, technique, and reason behind the execution.

On the first floor, Richard Segals’ series One, Two, and Three Twist Pull Push greet at the entrance. These three photos are a symmetrical, pleasing first glimpse at the unique exhibition. Overlapping labels from antique toasters and other circular knobs make up these pieces, evoking the design and nostalgia.

On the right is a series of oil paintings of food by Victoria Grogan including detailed depictions of Goldfish crackers, a turkey club, an open face egg sandwich, and others.

Next is Nina Eichner’s series of impressively recognizable portraits of friends next to a portrait of the artist and her sister. Eichner’s work does not strive to be realistic, but anyone who has seen her friends around campus will spot them in Traina.

Editor’s Corner

Staying Thankful

Ashley Klann
Alumni Editor

Each week, I try to cram something interesting or important into this box. I try to be a little bit more real than I usually allow myself in other things I write… at least those that get published. Editor’s Corners provide a chance for us to say something a bit more personal and one-on-one with our collective audience, and the last ones are always the hardest. I want to write something that will resonate with everyone that reads this, and the only thing I can think of is to speak about the value of our time.

Week to week, time fades away as we monotonously go through the motions of what a Monday feels like. Of what we expect our routines to be. Eventually you’re so caught up in your regimented actions that time kind of leaves the scene. Pretty soon another month has flown by. Perhaps moments like your birthday or a holiday highlight significant points, but for the most part, it’s painfully easy to forget about the weeks that pass. We’re all guilty of it.

With graduation looming and a serious job in my grasp, it’s becoming more and more obvious to me how important it is to cherish your time. Even if those few free moments you have are spent staring into space, mindlessly, emptying your mind, it’s so important to realize that we all need moments to stop and breathe and decompress. Keep doing the things that bring you the most joy, even if the time you allot for them shrinks a little. Keep being thankful, and keep your mind fresh. Because it’s far too easy to fall into the monotony of day to day life without noticing it.

Professor earns Guggenheim

Stephen DiRado speaks about his accomplishment and photography

By Ashley Klann
Editor-in-Chief

Clark professor of photography Stephen DiRado will join the 181 new Guggenheim fellows in 2012 for his work photographing naked hipsters at Martha’s Vineyard. Yes, you read that correctly.

The prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellow award goes to general scholars in many fields, including social science, science, humanities, and the arts.

“Our idea is to let people do their thing, do their work, to free them to create in ways they were meant to create,” said Edward Hirsch, President of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, in a video issued via their Facebook account.

Aquinnah, MA, Sage, 2011. Photo by Stephen DiRado.

DiRado’s work has earned him many accolades in the past, and with this new grant, he plans to continue his passion.

To what do you attribute this award?

SD: I submitted a proposal to continue and expand my photography work on the island of Martha’s Vineyard, particularly emphasizing portraits of hipsters. And also by expamding my horizons by way of making films of that same group of people. Like it is mentioned in that film by Hirsch on how the Guggenheim judges, I had to jump through a number of hoops before my request for a fellowship was approved.

Counterpoints in wonderland

Clark’s all-female a cappella group stays sharp

By Jeremy Levine
Scarlet Staff

I love a cappella. Having a group of talented and passionate students taking popular music and reinventing it is just a fantastic way to entertain. Clark’s Counterpoints embodied this idea at their annual spring benefit concert, Counterpoints in Wonderland.

The group transformed Tilton Hall from a plain room with terrible acoustics to a colorful space that still had terrible acoustics. Despite a somewhat overwhelming number of flowers, doilies, and other frilly things, the group did a good job matching the decor to their theme. The room was not arranged in a typical theater format, but instead guests were seated around a number of round tables, creating a relaxed atmosphere.

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The show got off to something of a slow start. The group opened with a rendition of “No Rain” by Blind Melon. It was better than I expected, but there’s only so much you can do with such a boring song. It’s pretty plain.

Next was an arrangement of “Little Lion Man” by Mumford and Sons. The group made an interesting (but unsuccessful) choice in using a soft, subdued arrangement. “Little Lion Man” is in no way a subdued song, and this version completely lost the raw, foot-stomping nature found in the original. They really screwed it up that time. 

From Clark’s New Play Festival

The Greatest Biblical Adventure Ever Told
Writer: Michelle Houle
Director: Chelsea Long

By Ethan Goldstein
CCNews Reporter

Michelle Houle’s contribution to the new play festival, The Greatest Biblical Adventure Story Ever Told, follows that love-hate treatment of Catholicism and manages to use it to brilliantly humorous effect.

In a sequence of events that does not quite make sense, teenagers Mark and John (Shauna Noone and Tanner Bryan) find themselves in biblical times after their friend Luke (Brendan Toussaint) is sucked through a dimension portal, and are promptly assigned by Jesus (a calm, yet ceaselessly side-splitting Wyndham Maxwell) to get him fast food.

The self-aware strangeness is written with skill and humor, and there is enough of it to keep the audience in constant laughter, though it quickly becomes apparent that simple jokes are frequently pushed much farther than they should be, often dragging on for minutes at a time.

Marc on the Menu: Shiraz Armenian Cuisine, 259 Park Ave.

By Marc Kadushin
Scarlet Staff

I frequented Shiraz, an Armenian restaurant down Park Avenue.

The décor of Shiraz is somewhere in between a diner and a cafeteria. There is a lot of open space that makes the restaurant feel sort of empty. The bottom half of the walls are blue painted wood. The top half is made of plaster and adorned with random pictures. The chairs and tables seem to be the artificial stock furniture you find at many establishments. The décor isn’t particularly bad; it just did nothing for me.

The prices at Shiraz are phenomenal. Lunch entrees run between $5 and $7; this is bumped up to $10 for the dinner platters. All the entrees are served with your choice of salad, soup, or hummus.

The portions are sizable and the prices are a great deal.

I started my meal off with the chicken egg lemon soup. This may seem like a string of random ingredients, but it actually worked out quite nicely. The soup was thick and creamy, almost stew like in consistency. The soup had the savory flavor of chicken soup with a strong citrus taste, and was full of orzo that had soaked up the broth.

Editor’s Corner

Keeping karma on your side

Gwen Walsh
Alumni Editor

Last Wednesday night, instead of catching up with other group members or being hypnotized by Scarlet layout like usual, I sat on Florence Street, in front of my apartment, fruitlessly trying to start my car. I knew I would stay up most of the night finishing the newspaper, and had to leave for work first thing in the morning, so it was now or never.

I was parked nose first in the driveway, so jumper cables wouldn’t reach, but when recharging the battery with a long extension cord proved useless, my friend Joe and I decided to put the car in neutral and roll it onto the street to position it for a jump. Turns out there is a small dip at the bottom of the driveway apron that we couldn’t see in the dark. My car ended up halfway across Florence Street, Joe pushing with all his might from the back, and me trying to steer, push, and look for traffic, and not get my foot run over all at the same time. In the middle of this catastrophe, a shiny new BMW came barreling down the street at about 50 mph, which we all know is absurdly fast for the bumpy, congested, pedestrian trap that is Florence Street. He either did not notice Joe in the road behind my car or did not care, because the car didn’t slow down at all and Joe literally had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit, and the driver came dangerously close to colliding with my vehicle. And as he sped away, going straight through the stop sign on the corner of Florence and Maywood, he screamed out the window “it’s not my f*cking fault your crappy car died.”

Marc on the Menu: Seder, Kadushin Family Kitchen

By Marc Kadushin
Scarlet Staff

Normally this is where I would write a review about a restaurant, but not this week. If you’re wondering why, the answers is that this week is Passover. I won’t be getting into the religious significance of the holiday, because I am an amateur food critic not an amateur theologian. I was able to get one of the highly coveted seats to my family’s Seder. This year my aunt and uncle hosted, and let me say they proved themselves to be chefs of the highest caliber.

There is no proper way to start off a Seder diner other than gefilte fish. Gefilte fish is a mixture of ground fish that is then pickled and formed into balls. It has a mixture of sweet and fishy tastes, with just a hint of saltiness. I like to top it with horseradish to give it some extra kick.

There was also a platter of pickles. These pickles had been brined alongside some hot peppers. The result was a fusion of the different vegetable’s flavors. The sweet cucumber flavor and saltiness of the pickles mixed with the heat of the peppers. They ranked highly amongst pickles I have sampled.