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Hit the Wall
No full textCliff, featured on the right, is a draft dodger, who embraces a free spirit, and was inspired from participants of Woodstock. Carson, on the right, is wearing a dress I designed with an influence from dresses worn by Judy Garland.https://ir.uiowa.edu/costume_design/1120/thumbnail.jp
Resilient Turns: Epistrophe, Incrementum, Metonymy
Get PDFIn this essay, we demonstrate how rhetorical analyses of style can maintain their focus on linguistic patterns while simultaneously attending to material ones. Focusing on the trope of metonymy and the figures of incrementum and epistrophe, we show how these devices represent different modes of material-semiotic addressivity, resiliently turning and reconfiguring the rhetorical ecologies they capacitate. Using three case studies—a corpus of news articles about water quality amid extensive wind turbine development in Chatham-Kent, Ontario; traditional and “rogue” pain scales; and scientific literature about CRISPR—we explore the stylistic affordances of epistrophe, incrementum, and metonymy, showing how these “turnings” allow resilient material-semiotic articulations. We conclude by suggesting how our framework may be applied and extended to other topics and how this understanding of tropes and figures may align with other research trajectories in RSTM
Hit the Wall
No full textRoberta attempts to rally the media to cover the riot. She screams into the handset of the payphone in the dark of night while the riot continues behind her.https://ir.uiowa.edu/lighting_design/1174/thumbnail.jp
Hit the Wall
No full textHit the Wall dramatically retells the night of the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which opened the door for an entire community to begin their journey out of the closet. Through the narratives of a diverse group of fictional LGBTQ characters, the audience witnesses a day in the life and the panic, chaos, and victories of the riot itself. This story attempts to fill the gaps left from the lack of media coverage at the time and its often-neglected place in teachable historic moments.
For our production at the University of Iowa, the creative team decided to lean into the musicality of the script by setting moments of the play to originally composed music. This allowed me as a lighting designer to explore more of a concert design aesthetic applied to a traditional stage play. As much of our current lighting technology did not exist in 1969, it was discussed early in the production process that we would be adhering to a concept of anachronistic storytelling. I maintained a more realistic quality to the interior scenes, whereas transitions or moments when characters stepped out of their history to address the audience were embellished with a rock concert aesthetic. I chose colors that were inspired by the concert posters of the 1960s and lighting effects, like a line of traditional PAR cans, to evoke the feeling of attending a music festival.
Choosing moments to bring the audience into the minds and emotions of the characters was my priority in this process. As much of the audience was unfamiliar with the events leading up to the riot, my job was to help them identify and gain a deeper understanding of the emotional state of these people. As the ultimate goal of this story is to shed light on a turning point in LGBTQ history, it is important that we made sure that we were opening the viewers to more than a televised documentary. They needed to feel it. I did this by creating a heightened reality. Bright, isolated highlights keyed the audience into the shock and loneliness of moments. Vibrant colors and movements enhanced the freedom and escape that the Stonewall Inn offered the characters. Finally, flashing lights, smoke, and backlighting created the complete chaos and confusion that was the riot itself, both in its moments of triumph and brutality.
The challenges I faced within this production revolved around defining moments without distracting from the action onstage. By creating a set of rules for myself that I adhered closely to, I created a cohesion within the world. The level of comfortability with oneself was represented with by intensity of light. The more exposed the characters felt, the brighter the scene was. As the story progressed, the stage became darker. This signified the security that characters felt to be themselves, specifically within the Stonewall Inn. Flipping the typical narrative of color, red become representative of empowerment instead of violence. Brutality took place in the cold, more realistic environments. In making these decisions, I learned how to use continuity to flip traditional conventions
Faculty/Graduate Dance Concert 2020
No full textI designed the lighting for 8 different pieces within Faculty/Graduate Dance Concert 2020. I decided to feature two of which in my thesis that were particularly strong and resonated with me as a designer, Organo Plano and A Course in Rigor & Cheese: Disney in Abstraction, choreographed by Kristen Marrs and Christopher McMillan respectively.
Organo Plano was the first dance piece of the concert that was a twelve-minute ballet set to J.S. Bach’s “Passacaglia and Fugue in Cm.” Like the music, the choreography was built on the exploration of common themes that recapitulated with variety as the piece progressed. To support this in the lighting my color palette mainly consisted of variations of white light ranging from warm to cool. This contrasting balance between color temperatures of light also visually represented the “call and response” nature of Bach’s music that is a staple in the compositional style of the fugue. As my color palette was fairly limited, the emphasis of my lighting was on the form of the light, and the variety of ways that I was able to sculpt the dancers in order to provide dynamic growth throughout the piece.
A Course in Rigor & Cheese: Disney in Abstraction is a seven-movement dance piece that explores the memories of our childhood and the wistfulness of looking back on them that I was ecstatic to collaborate on. Having worked as a lighting technician at Walt Disney World, I was able to draw on what I learned by working with Disney Imagineers and apply it to this work, while also adding my own flair. As the piece was heavily rooted in the abstraction of the feelings of nostalgia, the choreography was a mixture of both classical ballet and contemporary styles performed at the same time by the dancers. These dance styles were juxtaposed next to each other by the individual dancers having to achieve modern styles similar to Merce Cunningham from the waist up, while maintaining the integrity of classical point technique in their legs.
In order to the achieve seven unique atmospheres of the diverse musical selections,
I paired a heavily saturated color palette with a wide variety of form sculpting that allowed me to convey the essence of each song’s respective movie. The large amount of variety that I was able to achieve also allowed me to transform the environment seamlessly between sections. The first large dramatic shift was from an emotionally stimulating duet set to Pocahontas’ “Colors of the Wind” to a sinister trio for the villainous “Be Prepared” from The Lion King. To achieve this, the lighting for the former emulated a rich saturated sunset that faded into that of a dark, moon-lit night with stark white uplight hitting the dancers from the wings of the stage.
I was extremely successful in designing every piece of this dance concert. The largest challenge was only having one hour with each choreographer and their dancers to refine the lighting to the best it could possibly be. The preparation of doing most of the programming beforehand, combined with being able to quickly make adjustments and communicate with the choreographers led me to a successful lighting design
Faculty/Graduate Dance Concert 2020
No full textThe second solo of Organo Plano. Here I increased the dominance of warm white from the sides and shifted the icy white to hit the dancer from above to convey a visual counterpoint to the first solo, as well as support the growth and recapitulation of Bach’s music.https://ir.uiowa.edu/lighting_design/1121/thumbnail.jp
Marat\u27s Dead: Media Sample
No full textMany custom videos were created for the emotional moments of the play to be displayed on the screens. This distorted hexagonal tile was manipulated to look like scaly flesh alluding both to Johnny’s skin condition and his distorted view on reality.https://ir.uiowa.edu/media_design/1017/thumbnail.jp
The Bod Squad
Get PDFHealthy habits and lifestyle choices have been at the forefront of the public mind for years. Even more intriguing is the connection between these habits and the functions of the immune system. While the general public has seemed to understand this concept, there is oftentimes a disconnect when it comes to demonstrating these ideas to young children. The primary goal of The Bod Squad is to bridge this gap. By providing illustrated comparisons of immune cells to superheroes, a relatable plotline, and ideas children can comprehend; this book sets out to offer children a deeper understanding of how their habits impact their health. Public engagement in these conversations was also increased by involving community members in a virtual book reading. This reading, in addition to the published book, have been posted online to make them accessible to individuals outside of the University of Iowa. Included in the page below is a document that further details the ideation and implementation phases of this project. This extended article can be found utilizing the download button on this page. Additionally, pictures and videos depicting the book and virtual reading have been included in this publication. These artifacts are shown above and below this text
The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730-1865
Get PDFReview of: The Alchemy of Slavery: Human Bondage and Emancipation in the Illinois Country, 1730–1865, by M. Scott Heerman