These one-act plays, written by advanced playwriting students in the Creative Writing Program, are presented in collaboration with the Department of Theatre and Dance, student directors and actors and other Wheaton students.
Contemporary artist Elliott Jerome Brown, Jr. discusses his photographic installations and architectural and sculptural pieces. Brown’s work consists of compositionally obscured faces that heighten the interior landscape of the individual and the domestic spaces they inhabit. He has been featured in New York Magazine, Vice, Teen Vogue, Dazed, and more.
California-based comic artist Yumi Sakugawa talks about her creative practice and leads a meditation workshop on making friends with creative failure and surrendering to imperfection. This event is part of Spring into Wellness week and is sponsored by the Master Class in the Visual Arts Fund, given by a Wheaton alumna within the Evelyn Danzig Haas '39 Visiting Artists Program.
Muhammad Muwakil and Lou Lyons front Freetown Collective, a band that defies genre, delivering eclectic music and drawing on Trinidadian tradition and life experience. They perform infectious, transformative music fused with poetry and politics, philosophical and spiritual inspiration; and social justice is central to their music and creative vision. Join us for a virtual concert followed by a Q&A with the artists.
Sumell, an award-winning multidisciplinary artist and activist, will share her work on interrogating the abuses of the American criminal justice system. Sumell will talk about her ongoing public art project, Solitary Gardens, created to protest solitary confinement and consider alternative land use. Join us to imagine a landscape without prisons as we prepare to bring a Solitary Garden to Wheaton.
Renowned musicologist Matthew Morrison discusses his recent research, which historicizes the rise of American popular music, performance, and race in the nineteenth century. His talk centers on Blacksound, which Morrison uses as a foil to demonstrate how popular entertainment, culture, and identity have been shaped by the legacy of blackface minstrelsy in and beyond the United States.
This semester's festival format will be adjusted for virtual presentation and will feature five-minute plays. As always, the plays are written, directed, and acted by Wheaton students.
The 2021 Wheaton Biennial is an open-call exhibition focused on new media and juried by author and curator, Legacy Russell. Presented virtually, this exhibition includes artists whose work challenges and celebrates new media. As with past Biennials, our definition is boundary-pushing and inclusive, seeking a diverse range of experimental work, collectively evoking an open-ended conversation.
The world knows Stacey Abrams as a political leader, founder of the nonprofit Fair Fight Action, and New York Times bestselling author. Ms. Abrams’ tireless commitment to promote nonviolent change via the ballot box recently earned her a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Lesser known is her creative work as an award-winning author (often using the name of her alter-ego, Selena Montgomery) of eight romantic suspense novels and several non-fiction works. Following the presentation of the Otis Social Justice Award, Abrams will join Artist-in-Residence Joe Wilson, Jr. to have a conversation about the powerful and transformative roles storytellers hold in our society, and how her work as activist and author strengthen each other.
Jonathan Maniscalco has taught English to ESL learners in Japan, Spain, and New York City. A Massachusetts native, he is a graduate of Boston University and a stringer for the New England Review of Books. Ten Stories to Manhood is his first published book. Via Zoom, registration required.
