Category: Yellow Springs News

Yellow Springers have an opportunity to learn about how theater improvisation can enhance civic engagement in a free workshop this Saturday at Antioch College. The workshop, which is open to the public and funded by National Endowment of the Arts, will be led by Paul Zimet and Ellen Maddow, founders and members of The Talking Band, a cornerstone of the New York City avant garde theater, which was recently praised by Ben Brantley of the New York Times as “one of the boldest and most venerable politically minded companies in New York experimental theater.”

The workshop, titled “Devised Theater and Civic Engagement,” takes place at the Foundry Theater on Saturday, Feb. 13, from 1 to 4 p.m.

In an email this week, Zimet wrote that he hopes the workshop attracts “artists — theater, music, dance, writers, visual artists who have an interest in community based art, or collaborative creative process, or both. We will be sharing exercises that Talking Band uses in the creation of its own works — in movement, music, writing and the creation of characters and theatrical images.”

Those interested in attending the workshop are invited to simply show up to the event on Saturday afternoon, according to Antioch College Associate Professor of Performance Louise Smith.

The New York City artists will be on the Antioch College campus in residence for five days this week, as part of a project that also includes the production of their play, “Marcellus Shale,” which will take place Friday and Saturday, March 11 and 12, at 7:30 p.m., also at the Foundry Theater.  The play focuses on how fracking affects a community, and the project includes a panel discussion on fracking on Saturday, March 12, from 3 to 5 p.m.

Directing the production will be Smith, a longtime friend and colleague of Zimet and Maddow. Smith, a graduate of the Antioch’s theater department in the late 1970s and former head of the college’s theater department, came out of the New York City avant garde theater movement herself, and has had long regard for the work of Zimet and Maddow.

Smith aims with this project to engage the Yellow Springs community in a discussion of the issue of fracking, which affects many Ohio communities, especially in the northeastern part of the state. She believes that theater, and especially this production, can help those on all sides of the issue listen to each other.

“This is meant to invite the audience into an aesthetic space where we can talk about the things that are important to each other,” she said in a recent interview. “We hope the project invites compassion from the audience, that the laughter, beauty and catharsis of the theater allows us to let down our guards.”

Zimet and Maddow wrote the play and its accompanying music (although it’s not a musical) after their own upstate New York community became involved in the fracking controversy. While the state currently has a ban on fracking, most of Zimet’s neighbors have signed contracts with oil and gas companies to use their land if the ban lifts, he said in a statement regarding the process of writing the play. And while he opposes fracking and has not signed such a contract for his own land, he interviewed his neighbors for the play. But he didn’t ask them about fracking; rather, he asked them about “What really matters to you? What would be the last thing you give up? What do you consider the good life?”

What Zimet hopes audience members leave with is a sense of “the humanity of the characters — an appreciation of the multi-dimensionality, the complexity of their lives, and the high stakes for everyone,” he wrote in the statement. “When audiences leave the show, I would be glad if they were moved to take action to avert the disaster that has fallen on the land and the people of the play, but I would be disappointed if they came away believing one side is good and one is evil. My wish is that the audiences will recognize how good and bad is entwined in the characters of this play, as it is in all of us.”

Collectively, the company and founders of The Talking Band have won 15 Obies (off-Broadway theater awards) and numerous other honors for their productions, according to a press release. The Talking Band has “created over 40 new works illuminating the extraordinary dimensions of ordinary life,” the press statement says, “each marked by a commitment to radical collaboration and a fusion of diverse theatrical styles and perspectives.”

Thomas Manley, current president of the Pacific Northwest College of Art, has been named the new president of Antioch College. (Submitted photo by Matthew Miller)

Thomas Manley, the current president of the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, has been chosen the new president of Antioch College. Dr. Manley will be the second president at the revived Antioch, following Mark Roosevelt, who is leaving the job at the end of his five-year contract on Dec. 31.

Manley will start his new position in March, 2016. Current Antioch College Vice President for Finance and Operations Andi Adkins will serve as interim president between December and March.

“Reading the search description, I was impressed again and again with the boldness of what was being imagined,” Manley stated in a college press statement released Wednesday, Nov. 18. “Here was a vision for transformational education that was value-based and pragmatic, intellectually demanding and experientially grounded. How could I not raise my hand to join in its success?”

Manley brings to the job more than 35 years of experience in education. At Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, where he’s been president since 2003, he is credited with leading a turnaround for that college into “Portland’s most well-rounded, diverse and most established arts institution,” according to the press release. The turnaround also included a campus expansion and the cultivation of the largest gift to an arts organization in Oregon’s history.

Before coming to PNCA, Manley spent 22 years at the Claremont Colleges in southern California, mainly at Pitzer, a small liberal arts college with an emphasis on social justice and social responsibility. There, he was a member of the faculty and also held several administrative positions.

A specialist in Japan, he has a bachelors degree in East Asian history and education from Towson University, a masters in Asian studies and a doctorate in education from the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif.

More than 200 applicants applied for the job, according to the press release, and Manley was selected by a 21-member search committee composed of college trustees, staff, students and alumni. The committee was headed by Malte von Matthiessen of Yellow Springs.

“I am thrilled — but not surprised — that we were able to attract Dr. Tom Manley as our next president,” Von Matthiessen said in the press release. “He is compatible with Antioch College values and traditions and I am convinced he is the right person to lead Antioch into a new era.”

Manley was impressed with not only the college’s historic traditions and values, but its path since reopening in 2009. He described that path as “distinctive and brave.”

“American higher education — which has long been a beacon in the world — must seek its reinvention and I am among those who believe Antioch is doing just that. By embracing entrepreneurial opportunities and innovative strategies in its own redesign, the college is stepping forward to lead once again,” he said in the press release.

Manley is married to Susanne Hashim and they have a young daughter, Chedin. He also has a son, Dashiell; a stepdaughter, Karina; and a stepson, Johan.

A longer story on Manley will be in next week’s paper, along with an interview with Mark Roosevelt, the outgoing president of the college.