Arcadia: Free Will vs. Determinism

Join us for a Post-Show Conversation with Harvard Professor Edward J. Hall and moderator Robin Abrahams! You may remember Professor Hall from last Spring’s Central Conversation during the run of Mr g; we’re excited to have him return to discuss the laws of nature and themes of free will vs. determinism in Arcadia.

Edward J. Hall is the Norman E. Vuilleumier Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Prior to his current position, he was with MIT’s Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He works on a range of topics in metaphysics and epistemology that overlap with philosophy of science. (Which is to say: the best topics in metaphysics and epistemology.) Professor Hall’s research and teaching focus on basic philosophical questions about the nature of reality, and about our knowledge of that reality that are prompted by scientific inquiry and reflection.

The Intersection of Art & Science in Arcadia

Join us for a Scholar Social with Rhodes Scholar Anya Yermakov as we discuss the intersection of art and science in Arcadia!

Anya Yermakova spends most of her time exploring the space in between various branches of mathematics. With a diverse collection of (almost) five degrees all in different disciplines, she earned her undergraduates at Northwestern University, and her masters at Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Now a doctoral candidate at Harvard in History of Science and in Critical Media Practice, she researches both the improvisative within mathematics as well as the emergent structures within a given creative process. Her performance teachers have included Vijay Iyer in improvisation, Olli Mustonen in composition, Cruceta Flamenco and Diego Amador in flamenco, Jill Johnson and Rick Nodine in dance, and James Giles in piano. In the last year she has collaborated with members of the International Beethoven Project, Hubbard Street Dance, and Tunisia88, as well as Harvard’s Center for Evolutionary Dynamics and the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning. With inspiration from collaborators at the time, in 2015 she co-founded the Intense Listening Institute, which aims to connect spaces of learning with spaces for performance, ignited by her interests within mathematics.

See anyayermakova.com and intenselistening.com for more.

Untold Stories: Staging Narratives of People of Color

Join actor, director and CST Teaching Artist Vincent Ernest Siders along with Alaisha Alexander, Gwendolyn Baptiste, & Samantha Harper for a conversation on the importance of representation on stage, film and television!

Vincent Ernest Siders is an actor, director, producer, and educator.   He is the lead teaching instructor of Underground Railway Theater’s resident youth acting ensemble: The Ambassadors. He has received two Acting awards and two nominations for Best Direction from the Independent Reviewers of New England, the Elliot Norton Award for Best Actor, and Boston Magazine’s Best of Boston Award for Best Actor. Vincent is the founder and artistic director of TYG Productions, home of the Family Beef Feast Fest. His most recent roles include Shahryar in Arabian Nights (The Nora Theatre Company and Underground Railway Theater co-production, at Central Square Theater) and Joe Bell inGuided Tour by Peter Snoad (Hibernian Hall, Roxbury).

Alaisha Alexander is a Mechanical Engineering and Theater student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been involved in theater since she was a child. Her experience with theater, specifically technical work, played a large role in her exposure and excitement about engineering. It also gave her a way to describe and understand the place and expectations of people of color, women, and women of color. She is currently a Co-chair of MIT’s Black Women’s Alliance and the Academic Excellence Chair of the MIT chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers.

Athena-Gwendolyn Baptiste is the newest front of house team member at CST, as well as a long time family member and alumni of the YU Ambassador program. They’ve also participated in other Boston Area projects geared toward artistic community outreach such as the Boston Playwrights Festival, CST’s “Youth Night” Central Conversations, and formerly as a member of the Boston Children’s Chorus Premier Choir.  They are currently the assistant to the director for this year’s YU Ambassador Touring Production, Don’t Knock Opportunity.

Sami Harper is an actor, and burgeoning young artist who has tried her hand in many spaces including playwriting, producing, directing, and other designer roles in MIT’s theater community. This fall, combining her passion for the arts with entrepreneurial spirit, she co-founded the student-run Experimental Theater Company (ETC) on MIT’s campus to provide opportunities for students to collaborate on all aspects of contemporary and experimental theater productions. She is a member of the Catalyst Collaborative@MIT Student Council and is excited about exploring the intersection between theater and science.

Post-Show Scholar Social with Charlotte Brathwaite

Join us for a post-show Scholar Social with Charlotte Brathwaite, Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at MIT!

A native of Toronto, Canada, Charlotte Brathwaite joined the internationally renowned La MaMa E.T.C’s Great Jones Repertory as an actor at the age of 16 and performed in New York and in over 12 countries with the company. An independent director, her works presented in the Americas, Europe, the Caribbean and Asia, range in subject matter from the historical past to the distant future illuminating issues of race, sex, power and the complexities of the human condition without adhering to limitation of genre. A director of classical and unconventional texts, operas, dance, multi-media, site-specific, installations and concerts her work has been commissioned and presented by Central Park SummerStage, DC Arts Commission, 651 Arts, the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, Aarshi Theater Company Kolkata, Test! Festival Zagreb, Het Veem Theater Amsterdam, Scarlett Project Trinidad, The Living Theater, Joe’s Pub, La MaMa E.T.C, JACK Brooklyn, Studio Museum Harlem and HAU Berlin among others.  Awards/Honors: Princess Grace Foundation Award; Julian Milton Kaufman Prize for Directing; Rockefeller Residency (A.I.M); National Performing Network Creation Fund; Glimmerglass Festival Young Artist Program (2013/14, 2014/15); Princess Grace Foundation New Works grant; Visiting Artist Williams College; Visiting Professor Amherst College. BA, Amsterdam School for the Arts, the Netherlands; MFA, Yale School of Drama. Brathwaite is currently Assistant Professor of Theater Arts at MIT.

Colonialism: Whose History?

Join us Saturday, February 6th, for a pre-show Symposium that asks: “What is its impact on how people see themselves and the world? What is its legacy? And who gets to tell the history?” Featuring special guests Robin Chandler, Brian Corr, and Sylvain Patrick.

Robin Chandler’s publications include Women, War, and Violence: Personal Perspectives and Global Activism and “Artisans and the Marketing of Ethnicity: Globalization, Indigenous Identity, and Nobility Principles in Micro-Enterprise Development”. She is a Board member for the National Association of Ethnic Studies, and her art work was included in the touring exhibition, IndiVisible: African-Native American Lives in the Americas, National Museum of the American Indian.

Brian Corr is Executive Director of the Peace Commission at the City of Cambridge, and has also served as Executive Secretary of the Police Review & Advisory Board, the city’s civilian oversight agency. He has been involved in a wide range of efforts, from electoral campaigns to Jobs with Justice to Technology for Social Change to the American Civil Liberties Union. He is a board member of both the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and the José Mateo Ballet Theater. Brian has previously served on the national board of the American Friends Service Committee, as chair of the national board of Peace Action, and as chair of Citizens for Participation in Political Action.

Patrick Sylvain is a poet, writer, translator, and academic. He is a faculty member at Brown University’s Center for Language Studies. Professor Sylvain has taught as a lecturer at Harvard, Rhode Island School of Design, Tufts, and UMass Boston. His political essays, poetry and fiction have appeared in – among many other publications – African American Review, Caribbean Writers, Haiti Noir, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Revista: Harvard Review of Latin America, Fixing Haiti and Beyond. He has been featured on NPR’s Here and Now and The Story, and has been a contributing editor to the BostonHaitian Reporter. Sylvain received his ED.M. at Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and an MFA from Boston University, where he was a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow.