“It Can’t Happen Here” is the political tale based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 satire of what could happen if Fascism spreads to the United States. Photo provided by Andy Krieger.
A political tale timely for the upcoming elections is the featured fall production for the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College.
The cast of “It Can’t Happen Here” rehearses for the political tale which opens Thursday, Nov. 1, at the Festival Playhouse.
“It Can’t Happen Here” is based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 satire of what could happen if Fascism spreads to the United States. The stage adaptation focuses on political candidate Buzz Windrip, who no one takes seriously until he promises to return America to greatness and prosperity.
After Windrip wins the presidency, his administration devolves into confusion and danger. Journalist Doremus Jessup explores themes of the responsibility and freedom of the American news media. Please be aware the production includes mature content.
The play, directed by guest artist Marissa Harrington, is a Michigan premiere and continues through Sunday. It follows the theme of Assumption and Confusion, highlighting the gap between what seems to happen and what really happens.
Show times are 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse, 129 Thompson St. Kalamazoo College students, faculty and staff are admitted free with a College ID. Public tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors 65 and older and $5 for students. Reserve your tickets at festivalplayhouse.ludus.com.
For more information on other shows this season and the Festival Playhouse itself, visit its website at reason.kzoo.edu/festivalplayhouse.
Family Weekend 2018 begins Friday at Kalamazoo College. Below you will find a list of activities along with links to the campus map in our virtual tour, providing the locations of each facility. Questions about Family Weekend 2018 may be directed to Dana Jansma, associate dean of students in the Student Development Office, at 269.337.7209 or dana.jansma@kzoo.edu.
Where to Eat
Family Weekend 2018 will be Friday, Nov. 2, and Saturday, Nov. 3, at Kalamazoo College.
Campus dining will be available from 7:30 to 10 a.m., 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and 5 to 7:30 p.m. Friday, and 9:30 to 11 a.m., 11:15 a.m. 1:15 p.m. and 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at Welles Dining Hall. Options there will include pizza, regional cuisine, soup, a salad and deli bar, and vegan and vegetarian foods. Family members pay $5.15 per person for breakfast, $7.21 per person for lunch and $10.30 per person for dinner.
Hot chocolate, tea or specialty espresso along with grab-and-go foods will be available from the Book Club Café from 7:45 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, and 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Grab-and-go foods including sandwiches, salads, yogurt parfaits, fruit, sweet and salty snacks, and beverages will be available at the Richardson Room from 10 a.m. to midnight Friday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday.
Friday, Nov. 2
8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Hicks Student Center atrium: Pick up lists of Kalamazoo shopping, walking and dining suggestions at Family Weekend 2018 information tables throughout the day.
8:15 a.m. to 4 p.m.: Attend a K class. A list of classes available is at the information table at Hicks Student Center atrium.
9 a.m. to 5 p.m., lower level, Hicks Student Center: The Kalamazoo College Bookstore will feature 20 percent off all K-imprinted items.
11 to 11:50 a.m., Stetson Chapel: Kalamazoo College observes Honors Day in the fall term of each year, recognizing those who earned special recognition during the previous academic year.
3:15 to 4 p.m., Room 103, Dewing Hall: Financial Aid Director Becca Murphy and Student Accounts Coordinator Patrick Farmer will provide important financial aid deadlines and review commonly asked billing questions related to study abroad. This is also an opportunity for families to get answers to their general financial and billing questions.
4 to 5 p.m., Center for Civic Engagement Community Room, Dewing Hall: Associate Director Teresa Denton and Assistant Director Moises Hernandez will talk about the important work of the Center for Civic Engagement and a student panel of Civic Engagement Scholars will provide a glimpse into current students’ experiences working through local community partnerships.
Evening: Explore Kalamazoo. Pick up a list of shopping, walking, and dining suggestions at the Information Table in the Hicks Student Center atrium.
7:30 p.m., Nelda K. Balch Playhouse: See Kalamazoo College theater students perform “It Can’t Happen Here” based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel. Demagogue “Buzz” Windrip is surprisingly elected president on a promise to restore America to its former greatness and prosperity. Journalist Doremus Jessup explores themes of the responsibility and freedom of the American press. This funny and timely political tale. Additional information is available at reason.kzoo.edu/theatre/festival/. Tickets are available at festivalplayhouse.ludus.com.
9:30 p.m., Room 103, Dewing Hall: K’s weekly film series will feature “Crazy Rich Asians.” Free admission, popcorn and soda. Show up early to ensure a seat.
Saturday, Nov. 3
8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Hicks Student Center atrium: Pick up lists of Kalamazoo shopping, walking and dining suggestions at information tables throughout the day.
8:30 to 9 a.m., Hicks Student Center, Banquet Room: Complimentary coffee, donut holes and hot chocolate.
10:15 to 11:15 a.m., Hicks Student Center, Banquet Room:Center for Career and Professional Development Director Joan Hawxhurst will discuss the College’s commitment to integrate career exploration and development into a student’s four years at K. Parents and others will learn how they can get involved.
10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Upjohn Library Commons, Third Floor, A. M. Todd Rare Book Room: Come and see the largest, smallest, oldest and most unusual items the Rare Book Room has to offer.
10 a.m. to 4 p.m., lower level, Hicks Student Center: The Kalamazoo College Bookstore will feature 20 percent off all K-imprinted items.
1 to 3 p.m., Lilian Anderson Arboretum: Join the Roots in the Earth first-year seminar class for a guided nature hike at Kalamazoo College’s Lillian Anderson Arboretum. The arboretum comprises 140 acres of marsh, meadow, pine plantation and second-growth deciduous forest in Oshtemo Township. Please park at the Oshtemo Township Park, 7275 W. Main St. Your guides will meet you there.
4 to 5 p.m., Mandelle Hall, Olmsted Room: Enjoy punch with President Jorge G. Gonzalez.
7:30 p.m., Nelda K. Balch Playhouse: See Kalamazoo College theater students perform “It Can’t Happen Here” based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel. Demagogue “Buzz” Windrip is surprisingly elected president on a promise to restore America to its former greatness and prosperity. Journalist Doremus Jessup explores themes of the responsibility and freedom of the American press. This funny and timely political tale. Additional information is available at reason.kzoo.edu/theatre/festival/. Tickets are available at festivalplayhouse.ludus.com.
9:30 p.m. to midnight, Hicks Student Center: Experience student performers including musicians and dancers. Afterward, listen to why they vote and fill out a practice ballot with the Center for Civic Engagement’s K Votes team.
Students participate in Grateful for K Day by writing thank-you notes showing appreciation to Kalamazoo College donors.
Students, faculty, staff and alumni will celebrate a day honoring Kalamazoo College’s philanthropic donors from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Hicks Student Center.
Sponsored by the Kalamazoo College Fund, Grateful for K Day – conducted twice a year – calls on students to honor the importance of philanthropy in sustaining and enhancing Kalamazoo College by writing personalized notes to thank donors for their support. Donations help about 98 percent of K students receive scholarships or some other form of financial aid.
All students are welcome to participate. Coffee and cookies will be served.
The College Singers, a 32-voice choral ensemble at Kalamazoo College, will perform a program featuring the music of pop artists such as Carole King and Stevie Wonder in three cities in November.
The concerts are at:
The College Singers’ Earth-themed concerts will feature the music of pop artists such as Carole King and Stevie Wonder.
8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 9, at Okemos Presbyterian Church in Okemos, Michigan (Lansing area);
2 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 10, at Church in the Hills in Bellaire, Michigan; and
4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 11, in Dalton Theater at Kalamazoo College’s Light Fine Arts Building.
The program will combine global song, folk music spirituals and other styles in an entertaining and enlightening program centered on our relationship with the Earth, each other and ourselves. Songs such as “I Feel the Earth Move” and Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” will be interspersed with music of different cultures, Appalachian folk music, spirituals and other global fare. All concerts have no admission fee but a free-will offering will be taken to help defray travel expenses. The concert is about 75 minutes long and is a fast-paced, informative and uplifting performance.
The College Singers represents various cultures and areas of study on the school’s liberal arts and sciences campus. The College Singers is led by Assistant Music Professor Chris Ludwa, who is also the director of the Kalamazoo Bach festival. The ensemble includes music majors and non-music majors alike, offering a different approach to choral singing. Ludwa calls it “singing with a higher purpose,” a hallmark for which he is well-known in the Midwest.
Kalamazoo College, founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences college and the creator of the K-Plan, which emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, independent research, and international and intercultural engagement.
For more information on the concerts, please contact Ludwa at cludwa@kzoo.edu or 231.225.8877.
The Academy Street Winds concert Friday will follow a theme of “Sacred and Profane.”
Music lovers will gather at 8 p.m. Friday for an Academy Street Winds concert at Dalton Theater in the Light Fine Arts Building.
The Academy Street Winds, formerly known as the Kalamazoo College Symphonic Band, functions as a beloved creative outlet for woodwind, brass and percussion students. Community musicians joined the ensemble in winter 2016 to expand the group’s sound and capabilities.
The group, conducted by Music Professor Thomas Evans, performs one concert each term, playing exciting arrays of challenging band music. The band is a great favorite for its members and its audiences as the programs are coordinated around diverse themes, which allow for performances of much-loved pieces, both classic and new.
The theme on Friday for the fall-term concert will be “Sacred and Profane.” Songs within the performance will include “The Imperial March” from Star Wars, written by John Williams and arranged by Paul Murtha; and “Ride of the Valkyries,” written by Richard Wagner and arranged by Robert Longfield.
Admission is free.
For more information, contact Susan Lawrence in the Music Department at 269-337-7070 or Susan.Lawrence@kzoo.edu.
A leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and one of Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders is the 2018 William Weber Lecture speaker.
DeRay Mckesson, a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement, will be the speaker Oct. 24 at the 2018 William Weber Lecture.
Civil-rights activist DeRay Mckesson will deliver his talk, titled “On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope,” at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 24, at Stetson Chapel. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. and seating will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Mckesson will conduct a short book-signing event after the lecture. Some copies of his book will be available for sale in the lobby before and after the lecture.
As a civil-rights activist, Mckesson focuses on issues of innovation, equity and justice. He has advocated for issues related to children and families since he was a teenager. He is a leading voice in the Black Lives Matter movement and the co-founder of Campaign Zero and OurStates.org.
Mckesson has become a key voice in the effort to confront systems and structures of justice since the death of Mike Brown and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. He is also the host of Pod Save the People, a weekly podcast focused on activism and social justice.
Mckesson was named as one of the World’s Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine in 2015 and one of the 30 Most Important People on the Internet by Time Magazine in 2016. Mckesson, a Baltimore native, graduated from Bowdoin College and has an honorary doctorate from The New School.
The William Weber Lecture in Government and Society was founded by Bill Weber, a 1939 graduate of Kalamazoo College. Weber also founded the William Weber Chair in Political Science at the College. Past lecturers in this series have included David Broder, Frances Moore Lappé, E. J. Dionne, Jeane Bethke Elshtain, William Greider, Ernesto Cortes Jr., John Esposito, Benjamin Ginsberg, Frances Fox Piven, Spencer Overton, Tamara Draut, Van Jones and Joan Mandle.
Other Homecoming events this Friday-Sunday include:
the Alumni Association Awards Ceremony at 7:30 p.m. Friday. Join us in the Dalton Theatre at Light Fine Arts to honor the award recipients for 2018 including Distinguished Service Award winner Rick Gianino ’78, Distinguished Achievement Award winner Sandra Greene ’74, Weimer K. Hicks Award winner David Barclay, Young Alumni Award winner Eli Savit ’05, and the Athletic Hall of Fame Awards honorees. The athletic awards honorees include Kristyn Buhl-Lepisto ’04 (women’s golf); Meaghan Clark McGuire ’05 (women’s tennis), Eric Gerwin ’00 (football), Scott Whitbeck ’04 (men’s swimming and diving), and the 1955, 1980 and 1981 men’s tennis teams.
reunions of the classes of 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008 and 2013.
receptions and gatherings for groups including the 1833 and Stetson societies, the Alumni of Color, the Emeriti Club, and alumni from specific academic departments.
guided campus tours of historical sites, the campus in general and the new hoop house.
performances by Monkapult, Cirque du K and theater seniors.
opportunities for alumni to tell their K stories in video through Story Zoo.
gatherings where alumni can offer advice and compare notes with current students.
The African Studies program will host a screening of the documentary “The Language You Cry In” at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, in Recital Hall at Light Fine Arts. The screening will precede a talk with anthropologist Joseph Opala, one of the documentary’s principal authors.
Anthropologist Joseph Opala will speak Thursday, Oct. 25, in Recital Hall at Light Fine Arts after a screening of his documentary, “The Language You Cry In.”
Opala spent more than 40 years studying Bunce Island, the largest British slave-trading base on the Rice Coast of West Africa, and its links to South Carolina and Georgia. He has produced documentary films, museum exhibits and popular publications about those links. “The Language You Cry In” chronicles his research and a Georgia family’s return to Sierra Leone, where they met a family from the Mende ethnic group in a small, remote village.
The two families had worked to preserve a historical song that islander Amelia Dawley had been taught by her mother, Octavia “Tawba” Shaw, who was born into slavery. Citizens in Sierra Leone eagerly followed the Georgia family’s homecoming through public celebrations and their local media.
The lecture that follows the documentary will be titled “Crossing the Sea on a Sacred Song: An African-American Family Finds its Roots in Sierra Leone.” For more information on the lecture or the documentary screening, contact Professor of History Joseph Bangura in African Studies at 269-337-5785 or joseph.bangura@kzoo.edu.
The public is invited to join the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership for two events related to its With/Out-¿Borders? gathering, which is scheduled for Oct. 8-15.
The opening ceremony is slated for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, at the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, 205 Monroe St. A community breakfast is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, in the Hornet Suite at K’s Athletic Fields Complex, 1600 W. Michigan Ave. Register for either event through email at acsjl@kzoo.edu.
Sunni Patterson, Denenge Akpem and Shannon Haupt participate in a ritual performance of release and healing during the 2016 With/Out – ¿Borders? Afrofuturism breakout session “Breaking the Legacy, Conjuring Futures.”
The third With/Out-¿Borders? invitational gathering will bring together land activists who approach social movement work in small grassroots organizations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, South Africa, Canada, Colombia, Mexico and the Pacific Islands. They will discuss how land is essential to indigenous sovereignty movements, contested through forced dislocation, and an asset for strength and nurturance.
“The activists coming to Kalamazoo in October are engaged in some of the most effective and forward-thinking work around land sovereignty and protection in the world,” Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Executive Director Mia Henry said. “We are honored to have the opportunity to use our resources to uplift and strengthen the work of each of our guests, living into our mission of capacity building on a global level.”
The purpose of the With/Out-¿Borders? gathering is to:
unite global grassroots activists who envision a world free from oppression while actively working toward that vision;
create an environment where activists can learn from and support each other; and
develop deep and meaningful relationships between the Kalamazoo College community, these activists and their work.
The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College develops and sustains leaders in human rights and social justice through education and capacity building. Kalamazoo College, founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts college and the creator of the K-Plan, which emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, independent research and international and intercultural engagement.
For more information on the With/Out-¿Borders? gathering or either of its public events, contact Bailey Mead at 269-337-7398 or bailey.mead@kzoo.edu.
The Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse 55th season features the theme of Assumption and Confusion, highlighting the gap between what seems to happen and what really happens.
The Kalamazoo College Festival Playhouse features three professionally directed plays each academic year. “Intimate Apparel” concluded its 54th season. The 55th season will begin with “It Can’t Happen Here.”
The fall production, “It Can’t Happen Here,” Nov. 1-4 will be a Michigan premiere. The story is a cautionary political tale based on Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 satire of what could happen if Fascism spreads to the United States. The stage adaptation focuses on political candidate Buzz Windrip, who no one takes seriously until he promises to return America to greatness and prosperity. After he wins the presidency, his administration devolves into confusion and danger.
“Student Body,” written by Frank Winters and directed by guest artist Bianca Washington, will run Feb. 21-24, 2019. Ten college students discuss what to do when they find a video of a sexual encounter recorded at a party. They debate whether it shows a sexual assault, who they should tell about it, and their responsibilities of reporting it.
William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night or What You Will” is scheduled for May 16-19, 2019. The production, directed by Theatre Arts Professor Karen Berthel, is known as one of Shakespeare’s most provocative and complex examinations of love and gender identity. Viola, disguised as a man, woos Olivia on Orsino’s behalf. However, Olivia falls in love with Viola’s male identity, who in turn longs to be with Orsino.
All three shows will be performed at the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors 65 and older, and $5 for students in the general public. Tickets are free to patrons who present a Kalamazoo College ID. As they go on sale, tickets will be available at festivalplayhouse.ludus.com or by calling the box office at 269-337-7333.
Visit the Festival Playhouse’s website for more information on the upcoming theater season and additional student productions.
