Raise the curtain, cue the lights, and enter our scene: an actress who discovers a hidden passion for costume design, a dedicated designer who seizes a prime opportunity, and the department where it all happens. This is the true story of seniors Lucy Lavely and Robert Jenista, theatre students in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT), who played major design roles in the spring 2011 production of Proof.
The Elect, a documentary by University of Notre Dame undergraduates Erin Zacek and Dan Moore, has been selected to screen at the prestigious Los Angeles Film Festival.
Filming in and around 8,000 sheep, directing first-time actors who also happen to be immediate family, and scrambling across badger-ravaged fields on dark December nights—it’s all part of the movie-making process for senior Film, Television, and Theatre student Javi Zubizarreta.
“Toi, toi, toi” is a superstitious invocation of opera singers, meant to encourage a winning performance before taking the stage. “We don’t say, ‘Break a leg,’” fifth-year senior and University of Notre Dame Chorale member Joshua Diaz explains. Diaz might be hearing that old stage charm at an extraordinary venue later this month—the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome—where he and about 50 other members of the Notre Dame Chorale are scheduled to perform for Pope Benedict XVI and the bishops and pilgrims in attendance at a general audience on May 25, 2011.
It has been “a blessing and a journey”—and one that happened almost by chance, says Notre Dame senior Ryan Belock, whose passion for the arts led him to pursue majors in music and graphic design and theatre.
In the Department of Art, Art History, and Design, graphic design students learn to combine visual arts and technology in a way that transcends words and pictures. Recently, several of those students flexed their technical and creative muscles in the Poster Clash contest hosted by the American Institute of Graphic Arts. The results were impressive.
A group of advanced industrial and graphic design students at Notre Dame dove into commercial design this semester, working with Kenneth Cole and Heritage Travelware to develop new luggage concepts, many of which will be put into production for retail sale.
The University of Notre Dame Department of Film, Television, and Theatre will host the fifth annual Notre Dame Undergraduate Film and Television Conference (formerly the Midwest Undergraduate Film and Television Conference) April 1 and 2 (Friday and Saturday) in the Browning Cinema of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
The University of Notre Dame Department of Film, Television and Theatre (FTT), in partnership with the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival, will present William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona April 5 to 10 (Tuesday to Sunday) in the Decio Mainstage Theatre of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
Ninjas, mysterious dream worlds, and evil social-networking sites are among the themes that will play out on the big screen this weekend during the University of Notre Dame’s seventh annual Asian Film Festival and Conference. Presented by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center March 25-26, the festival will showcase five recent animated films from Japan, including two from internationally acclaimed director Satoshi Kon.
What must we change in order to help us bridge the gap between the world as it is, and the world as it should be? In its first year, the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (NDIAS)—inspired by the classical values of beauty, goodness and truth—began transforming the academic landscape through an annual conference, lecture series and fellowships.
According to The Art Bulletin’s recent centennial anthology, Kathleen Pyne’s 1996 article on Charles Freer is one of the top 32 essays “that made a difference to us as art historians and as people”—considered among the “greatest hits” since the journal’s debut.
The Robinson Community Learning Center has been awarded a $10,000 Better World Books Literacy and Education in Action Program (LEAP) grant for a six-week intensive summer Shakespeare program for inner city youth.
All of William Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets will be read aloud by University of Notre Dame administrators, faculty and students during Sonnet Fest 2011, a free public event that will take place Monday, February 14 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Great Hall of O’Shaughnessy Hall on the Notre Dame campus.
Television plays a role in the daily lives of most Americans—but its impacts can be even greater among the fan groups that spring up around popular shows. To explore the interplay between one television director’s work and the fan culture it inspires, Notre Dame senior Stephanie DePrez recently traveled to Southern California to research and film a short documentary.
Director Peter D. Richardson, a 2002 alumnus of the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, won the prestigious U.S. Documentary Competition Grand Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.
Charlotte Lux, a graduate student in the University of Notre Dame Department of Art, Art History, and Design, is using her skills as an industrial designer to rethink the way breast cancer patients experience a particularly stressful diagnostic test.
The University of Notre Dame will celebrate Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 255th birthday on January 27, 2011, by performing his works in the O’Shaughnessy Great Hall from noon to 4 p.m.
Danielle Beverly, a visiting assistant professor of filmmaking at Notre Dame, is headed to the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 for the world premiere of the documentary Rebirth. Beverly, who began teaching in the University’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre this fall, spent the last nine years working as the movie’s field producer.
The University of Notre Dame Band has been awarded the 2011 Sudler Trophy, recognizing “collegiate marching bands of particular excellence that have made outstanding contributions to the American way of life.” The trophy was presented Dec. 17 during the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago.
Two recent graduates from the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television, and Theatre won a student award at the 2010 U.S. International Film and Video Festival. Mark Lyons and Alex Wheeler, both from the Class of 2010, were honored for Trunk, their documentary short about Jeb Barsh, a Portland, Ore., zookeeper, and an Asian elephant named Rama.
The University of Notre Dame Department of Film, Television, and Theatre (FTT) will present Boy Gets Girl by Rebecca Gilman November 11 to 21 in the Philbin Studio Theater at Notre Dame’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
Notre Dame Department of Music alumnus Patrick Dupré Quigley’s latest project topped the iTunes classical charts when it was released in August. And for a brief time, the recording was even more popular in the iTunes all-genre category than superstar Lady Gaga’s “The Fame Monster.”
Throughout October, the South Bend/Notre Dame community will celebrate the works of 19th-century American author and master of the macabre Edgar Allan Poe with a full calendar of events designed to encourage community reading and discussion of The Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe.
The University of Notre Dame’s French and Francophone Studies Program, Department of Film, Television and Theatre, and Nanovic Institute for European Studies will present The Tournées Festival, a showcase of five of today’s internationally recognized and celebrated French films, from September 30 to October 28 in the Browning Cinema of the University’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
The University of Notre Dame’s Department of Film, Television and Theatre will present four plays in its 2010-11 theater season, beginning Thursday, September 30 with The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged).
This past semester, students studying abroad at Notre Dame’s London Centre brought the mission of the University to life in a local school play that was far from the typical gymnasium fare. Led by Anton Juan, professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, the undergraduates helped bring to the stage the stories of migrant families as seen from the perspective of the children at Sacred Heart Primary School.
Javi Zubizarreta, a Notre Dame student in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, has won a 2010 Princess Grace Award from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA (PGF-USA). He will also receive the PGF-USA Cary Grant Film Award, which is bestowed on only one filmmaker each year.
The 11th season of the Notre Dame Shakespeare Festival (NDSF) continues through the end of August with a variety of performances on campus. As the professional theatre in residence at the University of Notre Dame, NDSF presents world-class productions on its Mainstage while fostering young actors through unique educational performance opportunities such as the Young Company and ShakeScenes programs.
In recognition of his work as a scholar and teacher, the College of Arts and Letters has named Jim Collins, professor in the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre, the 2010 Sheedy Excellence in Teaching Award winner.