Grace Connell, Staff Writer

April 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: This piece contains mentions of sexual assault. Galatea Erupted is a play written by College fourth-year Ashton Doll and directed by College fourth-year Becca Dulaney. It is showing in the Kander Theater April 25–28 as part of the Oberlin Theater Lab Series. The play is a senior capstone production, originally written for Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Chair of Book Studies Wendy Hyman’s Shakespeare and Metamorphosis class. Overall, it is an insightful,...

Calvin Ray Shawler, Staff Writer

April 19, 2024

Last weekend marked the end of a two-semester-long workshop for the original play My Dead Boyfriend is a Robot. This staged reading was written and directed by Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Preston Crowder, OC ’16. Crowder began working on the show as a semifinalist for the National Black Theatre’s I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency Program based on a scene they had written in their MFA program.  “From there, I put it away again,” Crowder said. “I didn’t...

Jasper Swartz, Production Editor

April 5, 2024

The premise of Love Lies Bleeding alone is enough to cement it firmly into the canon of lesbian cult classic cinema: Kristen Stewart as a lonesome, futchy gym manager who falls hard for a hot-headed female bodybuilder in a pulpy, sexually-charged thriller released by A24. What’s not to love? Throw in themes of addiction and family trauma, some trademark A24 neon-saturated lighting, and a healthy dose of magical realism, and you’ve got yourself a sapphic hit on your hands. The film’s promotion...

Lucy Curtis, Arts & Culture Editor

March 15, 2024

One of my resolutions this year was to start watching more movies. I am someone who likes to be up to date on popular culture, but I realized that I really had no idea about the current state of film. I’d seen Barbie, because of course I had — it was the event of the summer. However, out of all of the films nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars this year, that was it. So, about a week ago, in one of my most elaborate schemes to procrastinate homework, I decided to try and watch as many Best...

Sydney Collinger, Senior Staff Writer, Layout Editor

March 15, 2024

A plethora of exuberant “Yes Aunty!”s reverberated through the crowd at drag queen Dr. LaWhore Vagistan’s show “Lessons in Drag” at the Cat in the Cream Monday. The show included some lecture, some lip syncing, and some audience participation. The show sought to inform people on South Asian and South Asian-American issues through drag, and it successfully did just that. Dr. LaWhore Vagistan is the drag queen persona of Dr. Kareem Khubchandani, associate professor of Theatre, Dance, and...

Loie Schiller

November 10, 2023

On Friday, Nov. 3, I walked into Warner Main and sat down on the crowded mats in front of the bleachers. I was there to see Fall Forward, the annual performance put on by the Oberlin College Dance department. Before I walked into the show, one of my friends told me that there was a controversy about a half-hour senior dance piece that was part of the program for the night. It was about whether or not a piece that took up three dance slots in the show should have been allowed or whether it should...

Ava Cantlon, Staff Writer

April 7, 2023

For the first time since 2019, students gathered by the hundreds in Hales Gymnasium for the Dandelion Romp, an event put on by the Oberlin Contra Dance Club consisting of live music, dancing, and socializing with both old friends and new acquaintances. Contra dance is a form of American folk dance in which couples dance in line with others, often to fiddle music. The Dandelion Romp was canceled for the past few years due to COVID-19, and the reestablishment of the Romp created quite...

Dlisah Lapidus, Arts & Culture Editor

March 31, 2023

Al Evangelista is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, choreographer, and assistant professor of Dance. His work focuses on social justice, queer and Filipinx identity, and technology. He is currently choreographing a performance for this semester’s Spring Back event, exploring movement in spaces and working with audio about recent legislation restricting freedoms for transgender people. Evangelista recently contributed to the Dance Studies Association’s Chats issue and is on the...

Juju Gaspar, Arts & Culture Editor

October 28, 2022

There are over 17 student-led dance groups at Oberlin, including troupes like VIBE Dance Company, Kinetik Hip Hop Crew, AndWhat?!, Capoeira Angola, and more. That’s not to mention that Fall Forward and Student Showcase: Dance Umbrella are coming up. These groups offer a diverse spectrum of dance styles and many opportunities for those interested in dance to get involved.  Yet despite the large number of groups, there are far more students wanting to get involved in dance on campus than already...

Milo Ono

May 20, 2022

Bright, colorful artworks were on display in the lobby windows of the Irene and Alan Wurtzel Theater this past week, marking the first part of Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista’s multidisciplinary project Somewhere Good. The project is a collaboration between Oberlin’s Dance, Theater, and TIMARA departments as well as a community project between Oberlin dancers, English for Speakers of Other Languages, students of the Conservatory, and residents of Kendal at Oberlin. This Friday and...

Lucy Curtis, Arts & Culture Editor

April 26, 2024

Whether one is gleefully soaking it in like the sun or sick of hearing about it, I’m sure by now that everyone has heard: Taylor Swift released a new album. While she has been famous for over a decade, it seems that her status has grown exponentially over the last few years. She skyrocketed into hyper-stardom — she was the global top artist on Spotify in 2023, and this new album, The Tortured Poets Department, was streamed over 300 million times within the first 12 hours of its release. She released...

Delaney Fox, Editor-in-Chief

April 26, 2024

On Tuesday, April 23, John G. W. Cowles Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum Andria Derstine led the dedication ceremony of a sculpture, “Charles River,” by Athena Tacha, OC ’61. Tacha’s sculpture, “Charles River,” was gifted to the College by Tacha and her husband, former Oberlin Professor of Art History and Director of the AMAM Richard Spear. The sculpture now permanently resides in the Eric Baker Nord Performing Arts Annex.  Tacha received her masters’ degree in Art History...

Sydney Collinger, Senior Staff Writer, Layout Editor

April 19, 2024

To elevate the existing exhibit The Body, The Host: HIV/AIDS and Christianity in the Ellen Johnson Gallery at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, students from the Conservatory and the Theater department separately put on pieces that brought out its multi-faceted nature in “A Day of Connection: Art, Music, and HIV/AIDS” on April 13. “The exhibition is a Venn diagram between works dealing with HIV/AIDS and Christianity,” Ellen Johnson ’33 Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Sam...

Kathleen Kelleher, Senior Staff Writer

September 29, 2023

This past Saturday morning, I queued up outside the Allen Memorial Art Museum, much as I have for the last three years. When I arrived at the front of the line, I noticed what would become my painting, for a semester at least: Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, OC ’94’s “White-Tailed Deer (America’s Most Dangerous Animal).”  When I picked it up, my housemate remarked, “You got the digital art piece.” The rather large piece looks somewhat like a QR code. Staring at it in my living room, I parsed...

Kathleen Kelleher, Senior Staff Writer

September 22, 2023

Oberlin welcomed a new mural to town this week as artist Jared Mitchell put the finishing touches on the Oberlin Community Mural Project’s new vintage postcard-inspired wall. The mural sits on the south side of Mill on Main, at the intersection of West Vine and Main Streets.  This is the second mural from the Oberlin Community Mural Project, after the “We Are Oberlin” mural on the wall behind the bookstore. The group’s organizer, Tanya Rosen-Jones, OC ’97, said the community wanted more...

Olivia Wohlgemuth

April 26, 2024

Today my rabbi said The opposite of re-member is dis-member.1 A memory a collection of fragments, radiant points torn and stitched into something resembling a quilt, maybe, or a curse. Or a map. The Angel of History2 stands, back to the future, wings wide against the storm, Rubble at her feet. One single catastrophe. I remember sunlight, and I remember love before I knew what else there was. I remember death that is not mine. I remember what I’m forbidden to forget. I dis-member...

Grace Connell, Staff Writer

April 5, 2024

Dr. Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, associate professor and director of the MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Maryland, visited Dye Lecture Hall April 3 to read some of their recent and selected works. Bertram’s expertise and talent is widely recognized, as they previously held positions at institutions such as the University of Massachusetts Boston, Williams College, and Ithaca College. Bertram is the author of a myriad of poetry collections, prose, and essays. Their work has earned them...

Holly Yelton, Illustrator

April 22, 2022

Holly Yelton, Illustrator

March 25, 2022

Holly Yelton, Illustrator

March 5, 2022

January 7, 2022

Chloe Boccara, Staff Writer

April 26, 2024

Holly Handman-Lopez is an assistant professor of Dance at Oberlin College and has choreographed numerous works, including her three most recent engagements: Ancestra, L’Orfeo,...

Sadie Howard, Staff Writer

April 19, 2024

Tali Hinkis is a member of the artist duo LoVid. On Wednesday, she came to the Clarence Ward Art Library to give an Artist Talk on her unconventional practice. This article...

Elena Rabin and Josephine Rosman

March 15, 2024

Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, documentary filmmaker, teacher, and Zen Buddhist priest. She will be visiting campus Tuesday, March 19 to give a talk on Zen and the Art of Realizing...

Lucy Curtis, Arts & Culture Editor

March 8, 2024

College fourth-year Sofia Tomasic and College first-year Bella Schmitt are members of this year’s Drag Ball committee. Alongside other committee members, they have been...

Calvin Ray Shawler, Staff Writer

March 1, 2024

Laura Carlson-Tarantowski is a renowned scenic director and is a scenic designer and lecturer in Theater at Oberlin. She is in the midst of construction for the upcoming production...

Nikki Keating, Editor-in-Chief

February 9, 2024

Preston Crowder, OC ’16, is a visiting assistant professor of Theater and Africana Studies at Oberlin. Recently, he directed At the Wake of a Dead Drag Queen at Dobama Theatre...