Student Blog: The Campus is Buzzing Again - Frosty's World #16

We are still wearing masks indoors, but the Baldwin Wallace University campus is a lot more lively than it was last fall. Live theatre performances have returned. A perfect day framed our homecoming celebration that featured a big win from the football team, along with the premier features, food trucks and the outdoor stage concert starring the legendary Cleveland cover band, Disco Inferno. Make fun of the scene if you will -- students with all types of musical tastes bouncing to the pulsing bass lines of the 1970s. Then try to get the Bee Gees, Gloria Gaynor and Michael Jackson disco tunes out of your brain. It will take weeks.

Next door to the football stadium, the Baldwin Wallace Kleist Performing Arts Center hosted a return to student performance before a live audience with Lily Houghton's Dear, directed by my Theatre History Professor, Dr. Martin Friedman. It's definitely a dark and contemporary tale -- a story about college students and portrayed by student actors. The playwright is a recent college graduate that is accumulating many honors as she starts her career. This staged reading was paired with a great performance of Anne Baker's The Aliens. It felt great to gather as a theatre community again.

It's even better if you combine an arts gathering with pizza. I think that Baldwin Wallace Univerisity's Conservatory of Music found the primo combination by producing an outdoor performance of Handel's opera, Alcina, on the steps of the Boesel Musical Arts Center. I don't understand Italian, but I am fluent in pizza; the Scott's Fire and Ice food truck was called in for the event on the night I attended. The student voices were amazing. The show used the facade of Kulas Hall for striking projected backdrops, and its windows as perches for some of the arias. The translated dialogue was available on a video screen for the audience, who sat on chairs and lawn blankets on a beautiful October night. The opera, with English translation, is still available on Facebook Live.

The Broadway community is also springing back to life. September's airing of the Tony Awards was a welcome sight! The awards hold special interest on our campus; each year we root for Baldwin Wallace University alumni who are nominated. This year brought another big win for the Yellow Jackets. Alumna Sainty Reid Nelsen and her husband Eric Nelsen took home hardware as co-producers of The Inheritance, which was named Best Play. Sainty has accomplished so much since leaving campus, including two Emmys and dozens of major acting roles on stage and on the big screen.

Student clubs and activities are also making a comeback. Our Arts Management Association annual auction will be a big success. The Baldwin Wallace Film Society is back in action. The film presentations are held every Wednesday night, with film choices organized around a common theme that allows the students in attendance to vote for what they see. I'll be glad when October is over. Horror films are not for me!

Our arts classes frequently invite guest speakers who connect the classroom concepts with experiences from the arts industries. Last week, publicist Ashley White paid a visit to Dr. Sean Murphy's Music Industry class. Murphy, by the way, is the founder of Murphy Music Press, the nation's premier publisher of wind ensemble and saxophone compositions. He introduced White, who started her own firm after working 15 years with a major record label. Her client list includes Jason Mraz, Straight No Chaser and the nationwide stage tour of Disney Princess The Concert. She shared colorful stories about her work with many other stars, along with some lessons learned. Our academic program has provided me with insight into the countless behind the scene occupational roles in theatre and performing arts. This provides hope for those of us who do not have Laura Benanti's singing voice.

Beginning my senior year as a major in arts management and entrepreneurship, I've been lucky to get through some of my less-favorite academic requirements. Yes, things that involve math. The Baldwin Wallace University business management portion of the curriculum is especially rigorous. Intermediate-level accounting and economics taught me to admire students who love that material. I have to credit my accounting and economic professors for building my interest. See what I did there? Who would have guessed that you need money to run a theatre, music or arts business? After completing these required courses, my attitude changed from "Stayin Alive" to "I Will Survive."

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