Collidescope 2.0 was the culmination of the Art, Legacy, and Community project, a two-year investigation into local African-American history, and uses theater as a powerful means to interrogate where we have come from and where we are going as a society. Art, Legacy & Community is made possible in part by the generous support of UMass Department of Theater, WEB DuBois Dept. of Afro American Studies, Commonwealth Honors College, President’s Creative Economy Fund, Public Service Endowment Grant, Arts at Amherst, MOSAIC (Five College Multicultural Theater Committee), Five College Theater Chairs, Jackie Pritzen Endowment of Five Colleges Inc., Five College Consortium, Institute for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development, UMass Interdisciplinary Studies Institute, CMASS (Center for Multicultural Advancement and Student Success), Amherst College English Dept., UMass History Dept., UMass English Dept., UMass Communications Dept., Mt. Holyoke College History Dept. UMass College for Humanities and Fine Arts and the Office of UMass Chancellor Subbaswamy.
Collidescope 2.0 represented the product of 2 years of work by many of its collaborators and was the culmination of our season. We were proud to host Presidential Medal of Honor recipient Ping Chong as co-creator and director, MacArthur Fellow Mimi Lien to design sets, Kate Freer as projection designer, and long-time department friend Talvin Wilks as the piece’s other co-creator and director. It was all hands on deck on April 15 when we filled nearly every seat in our theater for a student matinee (preceded for one school with a workshop with the dramaturgy team), and we drew an engaged audience on April 21 when the Chancellor himself attended the show and stayed for a post-show conversation.
Those were far from the only events scheduled; we were extremely fortunate to have co-creators Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks grace the department with their presence for an afternoon of conversation about art, the courage to create, and other topics as part of the Rand Lecture.
The press release for the lecture read in part:
Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks make cutting-edge theater that asks incisive questions about the society we live in, and on April 4 at 4 p.m., these two artists will offer a look at their artistic process when they deliver the Rand Lecture at the University of Massachusetts Department of Theater. The event will take place in the Rand Theater, in the UMass Fine Arts Center, and it is FREE and OPEN to all local students and community members. UMass Theater invites everyone with an interest in theater or social justice to come listen and bring questions.
The Rand Lecture is presented by the Department of Theater thanks to Margarita Hopkins Rand, the wife of Professor Frank Prentice Rand, who died in 1971 and for whom the Rand Theater is named. Mrs. Rand supported the arts as much as her husband did and created a sort of salon in her home where faculty and students gathered to share ideas and socialize. In her will, she left the department funds to support scholarships for theater students and to provide “entertaining and articulate lectures of interest to students in the Humanities.” We are proud to use Mrs. Rand’s bequest to fund this year’s event.
For this year’s Rand Lecture, Dramaturgy faculty Priscilla Page will facilitate a conversation with UMass Theater artists-in-residence Ping and Talvin, who will discuss their long-standing collaborative relationship and provide insights on their creative process for Collidescope 2.0: Adventures in Pre and Post Racial America, a UMass Theater production later this spring. Ping and Talvin’s credentials are impressive: Ping is a recipient of the 2015 National Medal of the Arts and Talvin is an acclaimed director, dramaturg, and playwright who has worked on Bessie award-winning productions with Bebe Miller. Ping and Talvin have a twenty-year history of making meaningful and provocative work together, the latest of which is Collidescope 2.0.
The Rand Lecture is held April 4 at 4 p.m. in the Rand Theater in the Fine Arts Center and is FREE and OPEN to all.
Dramaturg Priscilla arranged a number of pre- and post-show talks to further engage audiences with the many issues raised in the play, as outlined in the schedule of events below: Saturday, April 16 at 5 PM: Ping Chong, Talvin Wilks, and Judyie Al-Bilali will share thoughts about this process and Art, Legacy, & Community. Wednesday, April 20 at 5 PM: Gilbert McCauley and Oscar Collins (CMASS): Mentoring and Leadership with students of color. Thursday, April 21, post-show: Chancellor Subbaswamy and the Cast will discuss social justice on our campus. Saturday, April 23 at 5 PM: Megan Lewis and Tom Schiff will discuss white ally-ship.
Video and Photo Collections
Collidescope 2.0 - Campus Unrest from Katherine Freer on Vimeo. Click to view a scene from the UMass Amherst Department of Theater production of Collidescope 2.0: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America, presented April 2016 in the Rand Theater.
UMass Amherst photographer John Solem captured these behind-the-scenes images of rehearsals of our production Collidescope 2.0: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America. Click to view the slideshow: Rehearsal photos by UMass photographer John Solem
One year after the production on the UMass Campus, co-creators Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks returned to campus to discuss their production and successive iterations of the work. Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Articles published in Stages
The UMass Department of Theater published Stages, its newsletter for alumni and friends of the department approximately 6 times a year, giving us an excellent online venue for documenting the Art, Legacy, and Community project as it progressed from the planning stages to the final production of Collidescope 2.0. Below in reverse chronological order, you will find excerpts of the articles published between July 2015 and May 2016, with links to each of the full pieces as they appeared on the website.
Collidescope 2.0: Students share their perspectives
In Stages, over the past few months, we have been sharing interviews and stories told from the perspective of the guest artists and industry professionals that we brought together as collaborators on the UMass Spring 2016 production of Collidescope 2.0. We wanted to wrap up this coverage by sharing the perspective of some of our UMass undergraduate and graduate students who had the opportunity to work with these professionals on this production. Below are interviews and excerpts compiled by members of Collidescope's dramaturgical team, Gaven Trinidad and Priscilla Page, as well as MFA Directing student, Mary Corinne Miller. ...
Meeting one of the minds behind Collidescope 2.0: Co-Creator Talvin Wilks
By Priscilla Page
Talvin Wilks is an acclaimed director, dramaturg and playwright who took time out of his busy schedule to talk with me by phone about our upcoming production of Collidescope 2.0: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America, which he has co-written (and will co-direct) with Ping Chong. The performances will take place at the Rand Theater, April 14, 16, and 20-23. He is currently in residence at Penumbra Theater in Minneapolis wrestling with Adrienne Kennedy’s The Owl Answers, an imagistic and hauntingly imaginative meditation on colonialism, race, and identity. From there, he will return to UMass to dive into Collidescope 2.0. He is a masterful theater artist who deftly moves from the troubling interiority of Kennedy’s play to the far reaches of outer space with his upcoming project at UMass. ...
Collidescope: Art Legacy and Community begins its next chapter
by Priscilla Page
...Last year, Professor Al-Bilali inaugurated Art, Legacy & Community, a two-year exploration of the legacy of Black radical activism and creative expression in our department, on our campus and in our community. She has been an active participant in this rich legacy from three vantage points: as an undergraduate student working with choreographer Diana Ramos and jazz musician Archie Schepp in W.E. B. DuBois Department of Afro-American Studies; an MFA graduate student mentored closely by Professors Virginia Scott and Dick Trousdell; and now as an Assistant Professor who specializes in Theater and Performance for Social Transformation. Between her comings and goings at UMASS, she founded Brown Paper Studios, an applied theater company in Cape Town, South Africa and has also taught at both NYU and CUNY. Through Art, Legacy & Community, Professor Al-Bilali models her approach to theater, one that is equal parts political and cultural pushing the bounds of aesthetics. ...
Art, Legacy, and Community: Using theater to explore Amherst's African American cultural legacy
by Priscilla Page
This year was a busy time for professors Judyie Al-Bilali, Gilbert McCauley and Priscilla Page as they worked on their collaborative, creative endeavor Art, Legacy & Community.
This endeavor, which brings the Department of Theater together with Afro American Studies and the Commonwealth Honors College, is a two-year project that has received significant funding from a number of sources including, prominently, UMass’s President’s Creative Economy Fund to investigate art and activism in our area. ...