Kate Fishman, Arts & Culture Editor

December 6, 2019

College second-year Cyril Amanfo is a Neuroscience and Theater double major from Lowell, MA. Last year, Amanfo was the assistant stage manager for Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Caroline Jackson Smith’s staging of BJ Tindal’s, OC ’16 play, What We Look Like, an experience that inspired Amanfo to try his hand at putting on a play. Amanfo is writing, directing, and acting in the resulting show alongside a cast of nine and design team of seven. The result is a bold fusion of dance and...

Kabir Karamchandani, Staff Writer

December 6, 2019

Described in the director’s note as “an eerily relevant takedown of Capitalism’s worst case scenario,” the Oberlin Theater Department’s production of Urinetown, a darkly satirical 2001 musical, is still uncomfortably applicable to our political and social climate today. The production deals with a variety of heavy themes, including the dangers of capitalism run amok, as well as racially-charged violence, climate change, and more.  Yet the show itself is anything but dreary — filled...

Aly Fogel, Arts & Culture Editor

November 22, 2019

In the dark of Kander Theater, Bee, an adolescent girl, sits on the floor, trying to draw a tree. Behind her, a ladder in the back of the room stretches from floor to ceiling, making the audience feel as if they too are underground. Bee’s father peers at his daughter’s drawing, perplexed and disappointed by its inaccuracies. Bee explains she’s never seen real trees to reference. Deep in a small ’50s bunker, designed to weather nuclear fallout, the two characters in The Size of a Fist live...

Lyala Khan

December 13, 2019

It is impossible to sit in on an AndWhat!? rehearsal and not be blown away by the power and energy they build. In their drive to rehearse each piece again and again until it is just right, and their ability to channel complicated and raw emotions into moving pieces, the group’s hard work, energy, and talent are palpable. AndWhat!? is a powerhouse hip-hop group that slays each performance, and creates an important space at Oberlin. “AndWhat!? was founded [in 1999] on the idea of Black female...

Katherine MacPhail, Editor-in-Chief

November 22, 2019

Kara Nepomuceno

November 8, 2019

Six figures in electric blue shorts huddle in a circle on the smooth wooden stage, their arms held tightly around each other. Walking clockwise, their circle begins to spin, whirling faster and faster until every other dancer is able to lift off the ground. Supported on the shoulders of their peers, their legs spiral outwards, and the circle blooms like a parachute with air. Just as suddenly, they land and careen to separate ends of the room, the circle dispersing into blue light.  The moment...

Rachel Fang

October 4, 2019

Kate Fishman, Arts & Culture Editor

October 4, 2019

Raphael Sacks and Neva Cockrell, two Oberlin alumni, performed their dance-theater work Prime in the Warner Main Space this past Wednesday. The two created their own ensemble company, Loom Ensemble, and have also worked with the Art Monastery Project, which they now run out of a communal living farm in Vermont. Cockrell also dances with the renowned company Pilobolus. They spoke to the Review about their focus on collaborative art making, and the paths they have taken building careers in a creative...

Aly Fogel, Arts & Culture Editor

September 13, 2019

 As a younger actor, I remember times when I sat across from the actor playing my romantic interest, each of us stumped by the next line in the script: “The two share a passionate kiss.”  “Let’s skip that part,” I’d suggest, timidly. While it’s possible to side-step around this stage direction for the first few weeks of rehearsal, the moment inevitably comes when the intimate scene must get staged. In my experience, what follows has ranged from giggling teenage awkwardness to...