Invigoration & Exhaustion

I rarely pick up and leave in the middle of a quarter, but this year was an exception. My parents wanted to return to Hawaii, where we had lived from 1963-67. I’ve been back several times but my father had just flown in and out in 1969 and my mother hadn’t returned since we left 42 years ago. She and my brothers lived on the island of O’ahu for almost four years without leaving, so I wanted to show my parents the Big Island, Hawai’i, which I had explored several times.

There’s something quite mystic about the Big Island; the volcanoes have an overshadowing presence and at times I would swear that I feel them growing. Snorkeling at Kahalu’u Beach Park was one of the highlights. I spotted the neon blue lips of the state fish (humuhumunukunukuapua'a), watched multiple turtles float by, and identified angelfish, butterflyfish, needlefish, and others. I even observed one fish (still unidentified) building a nest by biting on and spitting out sand, then watched her entice a male fish over where she laid eggs which the male fish fertilized.

Whenever I have any vacation time, I like to catch up on back issues of the New Yorker but this year I added several novels into the mix. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was somewhat amusing but it’s a difficult task to add anything to the already stylish and compact prose of Miss Jane Austen. I also read John Hamamura’s The Color of the Sea which actually begins in Hilo on the Big Island, lingers in California and Japan, and ends in post-war Hiroshima. Since I was in the midst of reliving in part my childhood journeys to Hawai’i and I had also lived briefly (before Hawai’i) in Japan, Hamamura’s novel was a topical tie-in to the vacation. Finally, I read Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, a sad novel about the loss of home and displacement of emigration/immigration.

Returning to Cal State LA, Saturday, November 14^th, was a marvelous evening for the arts. I passed the Music Hall, where many were gathering for a student recital, on my way to the opening our master’s thesis show in the Fine Arts Gallery. This show lasts a short time so come out and see it soon. The work is very strong and engaging, including an interactive piece that lets one push the art around the room.

Next was Evita which I hadn’t seen since the first national tour WAY back in the last century. I had forgotten how challenging it is to sing the role of Evita and our two students who played Evita did wonderful work. The staging of the two Evita’s in introspective conversation and evolution from a young to mature character was handled wonderfully. There are several showstoppers that you really must get out to see if

you have the opportunity—this weekend (the19^th-22^nd) only!

This Wednesday, the Center for Contemporary Poetry and Poetics had a good crowd for its major fall event but I had to pass it by to attend the new media discussion panel hosted by the American Communities Program. This evening, I get to speak at the “Attire for Hire” program co-hosted by students from the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Business and Economics. Having just been to the Los Angeles Textile Association’s annual scholarship lunch where several of our students were awarded scholarships, I naturally feel that I have much to offer in the way of fashion tips. Alas! Tonight is the final night of this season’s Project Runway. While I’m looking forward to the finale, I’ll have to arrange another Thursday evening activity for the next several months.

This Saturday I’m looking forward to our second Larry Harlow concert at the Luckman main stage. Mr. Harlow is already here providing workshops and rehearsals for our Afro Latin Ensemble. Please come out this Saturday at 8 pm for a sizzling world premiere of Harlow’s “Salsa Suite.”

Midterms Come and Gone

October has flown, midterms have come and gone, and I’ve hardly had a chance to sit down and share. Now it’s November and ninety degrees (again); time to report the not so latest in Arts and Letters.

Our welcome party for the first exchange students from Korea University was a smash. Several officers of the Korea University Alumni Association, including the President of the chapter for the Americas, honored us with their presence. Faculty from several colleges, administrators from International Programs, and Cal State LA students who have studied in Korea came to welcome our three KU undergraduates. We wish them luck in their studies and hope to bid them farewell at the end of their stay.

On October 17, I attended the 12th annual Billie Jean King dinner, a fundraiser for Cal State LA Athletics. As usual, student athletes from Arts and Letters were among those honored at the dinner. This year Dora Kiss of Theatre Arts and Dance not only won a scholarship, but a walk-on during Saving Grace, Holly Hunter’s award winning television series. Another student athlete in Arts and Letters, Vivien Wadeck (Communication Studies ) was honored along with Gabriela Bulawczyk (Business and Economics) and Chris Matzner (Charter College of Education). Ms. Hunter served as a guest MC (matching the absent Patricia Cornwell’s $20,000 bid for the final live auction item), briefly taking over from regular MC, Mary Carillo. I last saw Ms. Hunter live in 1982 in Crimes of the Heart during my first trip to New York City — seven plays in two weeks.

Last year Billie Jean was ill and couldn’t attend. This year, she seemed in particularly good spirits—perhaps because in her 12-year legacy she has raised $2 million for Cal State LA Athletics. A good friend, Chris Freeman, attended, found a new tennis partner and walked away (after a suitable donation) with the table centerpiece.

Last weekend was packed with activities. Friday night the 23rd, the Department of Music, along with Cal State LA and its Luckman Performing Arts Complex, hosted “The President’s Own” US Marine Corps Band. It was great to see the Luckman packed for this free concert and a wonderfully diverse audience from our surrounding communities with many excited elementary students admiring the band from the front rows. Professors Belan, De Castro, and Ford joined Chair DeGraffenreid in trying to interest the young musicians present in coming, one day, to Cal State LA’s music programs.

The next evening, Saturday the 24th, I attended a production of Tea produced by our Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. We were lucky to have playwright Velina Hasu Houston attend. After the performance, Dr. Houston, a Professor and Associate Dean at USC, stayed to take questions from actors and the audience with Dr. Pamela Dunne (Director) and I joining her to converse with the audience. Every now and then I meet a truly lovely person with a wonderful, genuine and generous presence; Ms. Houston is one of those individuals. During the Q&A she briefly praised the set design (Dr. James Hatfield) and our actors’ performances as they played the characters, their husbands, and their daughters. The playwright described other productions of Tea that had involved non-traditional casting citing the benefits for the actors and the audience as well as the reasons why university theatres may want to or need to cast actors across gender, ethnicity, or “race.” We heard that she writes several plays at once and now and then takes out an older piece to see if she can rework it for new purposes.

This past week the schedule didn’t let down. Humanities and Social Sciences Deans of the CSU met at Cal State Fullerton to commiserate on the budget, explore ways to collaborate across our campus boundaries, and to learn how CSU students can get involved in the 2048 Project (http://74.220.219.58/~drafting/2048-project) towards full enforcement of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I topped this past week by wishing farewell to Ben Phan of Extended Studies, then attending our Charter College of Education’s Outstanding Educator of the Year Awards. Somewhere in between these activities, I completed my WASC white paper on the Introduction to Higher Education course, met with Department Chairs to do more painful budget planning, and met with our ASI representatives to begin to plan next quarter’s events.

Spring forward, fall back; I was glad to have an extra hour to recuperate this weekend. More fantastic events await!

For more info about The Salsa Suite, visit www.luckmanarts.org
For more info about Evita, visit www.calstatela.edu/dept/theatre_dance/purchasetickets.php

Mixing it Up

Now that the school year has begun, it’s time for mixers. Not the kind that some use to make cheap margaritas, but mixers that bring together people, ideas, exchanges of information, and in the case of our college mixers, iced or hot tea. Despite our budget woes, there is much to celebrate this year, so I’ll give you a quick rundown of some of the social events of the past ten days.

First there was a reception on October 6 to honor the recipients of the Outstanding Professor Awards. This year’s President's Distinguished Professor, Dr. Roberto Cantú, is joint faculty shared by the Department of English and the Chicano Studies Department. Both are proud to share in Professor Cantú's accolade. Arts and Letters is also proud of the Department of Art’s, Dr. Manuel Aguilar Moreno, who received an Outstanding Professor Award. Last year’s President’s professor, Dr. Domnita Dumitrescu, was our host for the afternoon.

On October 8 we really mixed it up. At noon there was a gathering of international students as well as staff from the Office of International Programs, Cross Cultural Center, Associated Students and others who support international programs. I chatted with Professor Sachiko Matsunaga, Chair of Modern Languages and Literatures, who enjoys recruiting students for language classes and cultural events. Later that afternoon we had a welcome event for our first year freshmen in the courtyard of the Music Building. Professor Rebecca Davis, who teaches Fashion in the Department of Art as well as one of our sections of Arts & Letters 101, was there to greet some of her students. Our Associate Dean, Dr. Bryant Alexander and I were pleased to see so many freshmen turn out for pizza and conversation on a beautiful afternoon. I was a bit chagrined to learn that some of our first time freshmen still don’t enroll in a course related to their chosen major during their first quarter and I hope we can correct that in the near future.

On a different note, the LA Philharmonic had quite a mixed plate on Saturday night, the opening of my season ticket. The debut piece featuring Chinese mouth organ was challenging for the harmonically inclined but I could imagine a striking modern dance set to the varying music of composer Unsuk Chin. Two things about the evening were exceptionally fun. First, I enjoyed watching Dudamel bounce and fly during his extra-energetic performance. Frankly, I worry about whiplash, although I’d encourage him to cash through selling workout tapes, “Batonicize with Dudamel!” Second, I talked to a couple of ushers when I overheard that one was a Cal State LA student and the other, a Los Angeles Community College student, was considering transferring to us. During intermission I conducted an impromptu counseling session with the potential transfer student.

Many of the new tenure-track faculty in Arts and Letters came to mix chez moi this past Sunday on a beautiful afternoon in Pasadena. Several came with spouses or partners and one even brought three delightful children. On fall faculty day it was striking to hear how many faculty had overlapping interdisciplinary interests and, as I had hoped, it appeared that some of our new faculty members were forming intellectual and social alliances that might last for some time.

Today, October 12^th-- Another mixer! Our very engaged and competent Associated Students representatives Kristine and Ana organized and hosted an open forum for students at the Music Building patio, our College back yard. Dr. Suzanne Regan and Dr. Matsunaga (who also attended the freshmen mixer) got to meet students studying in their departments. While it was grey and gloomy, the much expected rain had not yet hit and we had a good turnout of students, including a small contingent of new MA students in Theatre.

This week will end with one more mixer, a small party to welcome our first exchange students from Korea University. I’m very excited to meet our three KU students, coming in exchange for the students we are sending to Korea University each summer as part of our Strategic Language Initiative in Korean. Also, we’ll be welcoming the U.S. President of the Korean University Alumni Association.

More mixers are in your future. Come. See. And be stirred by another Arts and Letters mixer.

University Professors Underpaid, by Terry L. Allison

From the Pasadena Star News: http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/ci_13447415

Through a Scrim Darkly

How often do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I better hurry and get ready for the opera?” Well, when Wagner’s monumental nearly five-hour Siegfried is on the bill, you’d better get your daily ablutions out of the way early enough to enter the temple of music, properly cleansed with mind and senses awake. A double espresso also might help, especially when said Siegfried is an afternoon performance, 1-6 p.m. on an Indian summer day in Los Angeles. Sadly, I observed one person collapsing from heat outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The third in the cycle of LA Opera’s gloomy Achim Freyer production of Der Ring des Niebelungen, this Siegfried doesn’t make it easier to stay awake on a hot day—the backdrop is pitch black for most of the opera and a dark scrim shades the audience’s perspective throughout. One neighboring spectator, alert and laughing at Graham Clark’s “Mime” in the first act, was asnooze by the third.

Siegfried is as chat driven as the rest of the Ring Cycle but Freyer seems to want to distance us doubly from any action, making it all darkly cerebral. The Director/Designer literally takes the blue fluorescent light sword “Notung” from the hero’s hand, giving it to a brown body suited cipher who otherwise, in butoh style, crosses and recrosses the stage throughout the entirety of the production. (In the third act, with the similarly suited Norns suspended overhead, I finally wondered whether their grounded, pacing brethren also were Norns endlessly weaving?) Freyer seems to want to deconstruct action to get to some deeper IDEA but I would venture that during the five hours we have plenty of time to reflect without the production’s insistence that we must STOP and THINK. The ugly costuming is crudely symbolic, underlining Siegfried = “Man,” Brünnhilde =“Woman,” Erda =“Mother,” etc., and Siegfried’s transition from blue to red action hero (don’t ask) was rather clumsily handled. I’m all for new interpretations of standard works; for example, after one too many cherry blossom fests I loved Robert Wilson’s minimalist Madame Butterfly. This Ring just seems over thought and messy, with Siegfried frantically trying to undo his guide wires and the butoh Norns tearing Velcro-attached black ribbons from the floor to reveal a painted light spiral.

Luckily for the audience, a sizable number of whom booed Team Freyer, the singing was mostly very strong. Clark was clearly the crowd favorite and rightfully so, an evil yet comic Mime, with delightful wheezes and snickers as well as convincing, character-driven gesticulation. Vitalij Kowaljow (bass) was a forceful, deep Wanderer/Wotan, and the brief appearances of Oleg Bryjak (as Alberich) and Eric Halfvarson (Fafner) proved equally compelling. Stacy Tappan was a delightfully chirpy Woodbird. Jill Grove, whom I found the weakest of last season’s cast of Das Rheingold was in much better voice as this opera’s Erda, though hampered somewhat by a giant Cher/Diana Ross wig as was Linda Watson’s Brünnhilde. While not the most powerful Wagnerian, Watson approached the ringing metallic quality that the role demands. Still, she and John Treleaven’s Siegfried could have blended better in their ecstatic finale, their timing—and presumed partnership—was definitely off.

And finally to our Siegfried. While of a certain age, Treleaven pranced convincingly as a naïve young hero in a Halloween hero costume. He acted through his Joker make-up, raising the brows and curling the carved lips convincingly. After Act One I said to my friend, upon his first Siegfried, “You can hear how demanding this role is, but isn’t he doing well?” By Act Three the test of the voice was a bit more apparent as Treleaven for brief moments barked and gasped only to recover for some more forceful singing. All in the (long) day of an international Heldentenor and a clue why there are so few left.

The opera orchestra under James Conlon’s conducting was also significantly and deservedly cheered. Musically, this was a strong Siegfried, an A-. Dramatically, a B for effort and C- for execution. But I’m a tough grader so you’ll want to go and bring your own scorecard.

Terry’s Top Ten List of To Do's (or Not To Do's) on Furlough Fridays

Terry’s Top Ten List of To Dos (or Not to Dos) on Furlough Fridays

Trying to make the best of a bad situation, your Dancing Dean has come up with his top list of things to do on his unpaid furlough. He can’t be Dean these Fridays but he sure can dance!

1. Take an extra long walk through my neighborhood looking for haiku inspirations.
2. See if I can make this Friday a non-gas consumption day. If not, try to get to a beach or a park as part of my day.
3. Invite a friend to dinner and cook for a change.
4. Don’t shave!
5. Send out another op-ed promoting universal health care, higher education, or humanities.
6. Chat with a neighbor I would rarely see otherwise, send a card to Mom & Dad, or do both.
7. Catch up on Facebook.
8. Rewind highlights from last night’s Project Runway.
9. Sit down, concentrate, and read a book and/or work on a long delayed research project.
10. Watch Ellen and dance along with her.

After a full day of such fulfilling tasks sleepy Saturday is sure to follow.

Shakespeare, et alia

During three of the past five summers I spent a week at the Santa Fe Opera, watching the dramatic, distant lightning backlight the stage and enjoying some wonderful productions of La Somnabula (with Nathalie Dessaye), Tea: a Mirror of Soul (composer Tan Dun), and last year’s beautiful Billy Budd and Le nozze di Figaro. This year’s main attraction was La Dessaye in Traviata but having heard an excellent La Traviata at LA Opera this spring I decided to skip Santa Fe and its tempting art galleries to join the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Although I was attacked by hornets and fell in Lithia Park, I still had a splendid time.



















Apparently I had not been in Ashland since 1993 when I saw wonderful productions of Lips Together, Teeth Apart, The White Devil, A Flea in Her Ear, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, and Richard III. Where had the time gone? Mostly in Europe, I figured, as I traversed the Atlantic a good 15 times in the 90’s and 2000’s. So to catch up, this year’s goal was eight plays in eight days, and I just fell (literally) short.

I had an inspiring journey to Ashland, flying into Oakland where longtime friend, Gary K, picked me up and whisked me northwards. Our first stop: the California Maritime Academy. Why? You may well ask. The Maritime Academy was the last stage of my CSU pilgrimage; I now have visited each of the 23 campuses in our system! Next, on to Redding! Why (again), you might ask? We stopped to view the Calatrava designed footbridge, a contemporary architectural triumph, a taut harp strung for our pleasure.

Once in Ashland, we immediately set out to see plays but Henry VIII was an inauspicious beginning. While Vilma Silva was a strong Catherine of Aragon and delivered a powerful, impassioned defense of her wifely devotion, the play is one of Shakespeare’s weakest. Henry comes across as a vapid lightweight with barely sinister overtones. The second day we saw a quite timely Depression era story, Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost, followed by a delightful new production of Don Quixote. On subsequent days and evenings we enjoyed convincing productions of All’s Well that Ends Well and Servant of Two Masters in the New Theatre (anxiously awaiting a patron’s name). We were unfortunate witnesses to a noisy, shouted Macbeth wherein for the very first time I heard an audience laugh, YES, LAUGH, at Macbeth’s “She should have died hereafter. There would have been time for such a word.” Luckily, we previously had enjoyed Bill Cain’s new play, Equivocation, which invokes “the Scottish play” while addressing contemporary anxieties about freedom of artistic expression, state-sponsored torture, and religious strife. Especially within the context of a “Shakespeare festival,” Equivocation touched nerves, stroked the egos of knowing Shakespearian connoisseurs, and left probing, unanswered questions; in short, a decent evening at the Theatre.


And speaking of connoisseurs, we also found time one afternoon to see Julie and Julia, a cinematic sonnet to Julia Child in which I reveled. While I have seen very few programs from her television series, I learned to cook by reading From Julia Child’s Kitchen. I never deboned a duck or baked one in puff pastry, but I did learn to make that puff pastry, and gateaux, mousse, and other gourmandises thanks to Chef Child. Bon appétit!











After a few weeks of work apparently my taste for drama had not been whetted, nor my taste for fresh air. This past weekend I fled the smoke and Station/Morris fires, heading down to San Diego for a long weekend at the Old Globe and catching up with old friends and familiar places. After a pilgrimage to Bread & Cie and Peet’s Coffee on University Avenue, I met Karen K for dinner at a French bistro in downtown San Diego. Then, off to The Mystery of Irma Vep, Charles Ludlam’s play that ran most of the time I lived in NYC in the mid-80’s but that I never saw there. (Way back then, I did enjoy his Ridiculous Theatre Company’s production of Galas: A Modern Tragedy, naturally starring Ludlum himself.) Irma cuisinarts a variety of genres to create a satisfying comic shake with flavors that cinema, theatre, and comic fans will enjoy identifying. Karen and I wanted to recommend, then were vexed to learn that Sept 7 was its final showing. Then to a Coriolanus with a hulk-like hero dripping in bloody sweat. How had I missed this play? And how could Shakespeare, once again, remain so topical in a tragic state tragedy in which everyone is wrong? Finally, a delicious Twelfth Night set in the 50’s on the Italian Riviera. Yes, it worked, exceedingly well, and the Viola (Dana Green) as well as the Feste/Fool (James Newcomb) worth the drive to San D! I met up with other dear friends during the weekend, whom shall remain to you mysterious, and then buzzed home early to beat the traffic to enjoy lunch and dinner in my own back yard, smoke and ash free. Somehow I squeezed in the end of Melanie Oudin’s match and ascension to the quarterfinals of the US Open as well as Federer’s balletic leap into that selfsame round.


Sometimes, amid smoke, ash, and furlough Fridays, life can be grand and we can be so lucky!
















Photo of Oregon Shakespeare Festival available under GNUFDL1.2.