Each time a poet took to the stage and announced their name and pronouns followed by “I’m a first-year,” the audience erupted into a chorus of snapping and cheering. This was “Back 2 School Open Mic,” hosted by OSlam, Oberlin’s poetry collective. The event, which occurred last Friday at the Cat in the Cream, was the first opportunity this academic year for Oberlin students to hop on stage alongside OSlam’s three current members and share some of their work. “I’ve worked a lot of open mics because I work at the Cat in the Cream, and it can be really hard,” College junior Amy Sahud said. “The energy can definitely dip, [but] I feel like we sustained it. I thought [the audience] was really supportive,...

Editor’s note: This article contains mentions of intimate partner violence. A love story without spoken dialogue, Adam Wachter’s Sign: A Silent Film follows two men named Aaron and Ben as they navigate their relationship through fights and celebrations. The film has a particular focus on their communication, since Aaron is deaf and Ben is hearing. The film is punctuated by several jarring scenes — for example, Ben sitting in a chair at a party with Aaron’s friends before he knows how to sign, watching them communicate while holding a bowl of popcorn in his lap; another, a fight during which Ben violently grabs Aaron’s hands in the middle of speech, effectively silencing him. Ultimately, the film itself se...

Brendan Baylor is an interdisciplinary artist whose work in printmaking, digital media, drawing, and installation is fueled by research and conceptual investigation. His Wednesday talk, “Landscapes of Power,” focused on the political ecology of place and several of his recent projects have investigated “extractive industry, settler colonialism, and white supremacy across the upper Midwest and East Coast.” This week, he will be working with Professor Corinne Teed’s reproducible media class. Bay...

In the history of Western ballet, some characters stick out as emblematic of the genre — Giselle, Odette and Odile, the nutcracker, to name a few. Then again, some roles — like Hiccup, Toothless, Ruffnut, Tuffnut, and Green Death — have likely never been performed in a ballet until this weekend, when Ballet Oberlin’s production of How to Train Your Dragon: The Ballet opened in Wilder Main Space. The show ran on Friday and Saturday, debuting an original choreography in an adaptation of the...