Sarah MacMillan (Pompey) and Shannon Luster (Abhorson) plot mischief during the final performance of the FST's production of William Shakespeare "Measure for Measure." Photo by Jeremia Schrock/Sun Star.

By Jeremia Schrock

Sun Star Reporter

The final performance of the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theatre (FST) production of Measure for Measure, directed by Graham Watts, was a bawdy look at the timeless conflict between the individual and the state, with love and sex as the primary instigators.

Measure for Measure tells the story of Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, and his attempts to spy on his city’s affairs. Pretending to leave the city, the duke disguises himself as a monk, leaving the stern judge Angelo in charge. Angelo, a fierce defender of the law and unyielding in matters of sexual morality, cracks down on the city’s brothels, arresting Claudio and his lover in order to make an example of them. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, pleads with Angelo for her brother’s life. The judge decides that if Isabella will sleep with him, giving him her virginity, he’ll release her brother.

Isabella, through the duke/monk’s efforts, convinces Mariana, Angelo’s formerly betrothed, to sleep with him in her stead so that Isabella can keep her virginity intact while still freeing her brother from prison. Mariana sleeps with Angelo, who decides to kill Claudio anyway. The duke then returns and, through a comic mishap, is revealed to be the monk. In the end, Claudio is released from prison, marrying his lover, and Angelo is forced to wed Mariana. It is heavily implied, although it varies between productions, that the duke later on marries Isabella. A subplot in the play has a fourth marriage: one between a brothel-goer named Lucio and a woman he impregnated. Lucio throughout the play badmouthed the duke to the monk and, in turn, the monk to the duke. The duke orders Lucio to be whipped, giving rise to the play being labeled in the FST playbill as “four weddings and a whipping.”

The play was enjoyable, if at times hard to follow. This was due in no part to the cast, but instead to the very nature of Shakespearean play-writing itself. With lines such as “I think thou dost; and, indeed, with most painful feeling of thy speech: I will, out of thine own confession, learn to begin thy health; but, whilst I live, forget to drink after thee” who could refrain from the occasional look of bewilderment? Shakespearean scholars and aficionados would refrain, of course, but there were few of those in the audience.

However, the cast excelled when it came to physical action. Measure for Measure is one of Shakespeare’s less violent plays, with not a single sword rising from its sheath. Instead, much of the play’s physicality came from the actors themselves. Madeline Fendrick (Isabella) threw herself around the stage with such controlled abandon, and could contort her face into such dejected shapes, that one easily believed that this was the heartbroken sister of a man condemned to death. b.d. Rogers (the duke) could move mountains with his eyes and was at his most physical when portraying the monk. Rogers was capable of gripping and spinning around other actors so suddenly, and with such force, that sometimes it seemed as though Rogers had handled them almost too hard and too believably. Tom Robenolt (Angelo) a veteran of the FST, made the otherwise despicable and loathsome Angelo almost sympathetic. One particularly memorable scene had him verbalizing his angst over Isabella by yelling at a Bible he’d placed on the stage. The distance Robenolt placed between himself and the Good Book exemplified the play’s struggle between the demands of the governor (the Bible) and the desires of the governed (Angelo).

Anne Thibault (Mistress Overdone), of I Wrote This Play To Make You Love Me fame, was only a minor character but easily commanded the audience’s attention with her passion and masterful voice. It also didn’t hurt that costume designer Jessica Pribble bedecked Thibault in beautiful and regal-looking raiment. Longtime FST player Andrew Cassel also delighted the audience with his performance of Lucio; a man never too busy (despite being on crutches) to make a ribald joke or two (or three). Two weeks prior to opening, Cassel broke his ankle. “When I was able to get back on the stage I crutched through my blocking and sat with my leg up between rehearsal moments,” he said. It is obvious to see why after 10 years with the FST, they keep bringing him back for more.

One actor who deserves special attention is Shannon Luster. Luster, who portrayed Elbow and the executioner Abhorson, was an absolute scene-stealer. The chemistry between him and Sarah MacMillan (the pimp Pompey) was palpable and even though the character of Abhorson was present on stage less often then Elbow’s, he proved to be the better of the two. Elbow’s lisping dyslexia was, at times, hysterical though.

While not unforgivable, the choice to end the play on a high note (Isabella’s consent to marry the Duke) is not altogether accurate. The original play ended unresolved with Isabella simply looking at the Duke in silence.

Everclear frontman Art Alexakis playing to a raucous crowd at the Blue Loon on Friday, July 23. Photo by Tom Hewitt/Sun Star.

By Tom Hewitt

Sun Star Reporter

As Everclear frontman Art Alexakis sat in the lobby of the hotel before heading to his band’s show at the Blue Loon Friday night, he allowed that he once walked the halls of academia.

“I was actually a journalism major for a couple of semesters,” Alexakis said, continuing to say that although he stuck with college for a few years, it didn’t last. “I dropped out because it was getting in the way of my alcoholism,” he laughed, “and I couldn’t let that happen.”

Alexakis said he’s been sober for 21 years, but few in the raucous crowd of more than 2,000 who packed Everclear’s outdoor show that night could make a similar claim. The concert was marked not only by the signature riffs of the band’s standards like “Father of Mine” and “Everything to Everyone,” but also by shoving matches near the front that threatened to boil out of control, as well as a string of stage-crashers who were met with an increasing hostile response from security personnel.

The show was the first visit to Fairbanks for Alexakis and his bandmates, but the group isn’t a stranger to Alaska. Everclear played at the Palmer state fair in 2003, and Alexakis said his third wife hailed from the Wasilla-Palmer area. At the time, he said, the mayor of the town was an up-and-coming politician named Sarah Palin. “I’ve got stories,” he said, declining to elaborate.

At the show, Alexakis earned a little Alaska credibility with his banter between songs. “So I know that up here Fred Meyer is the place to be,” he told the crowd, who roared their approval. “Well, we’re from Portland, which is where Fred Meyer was invented. Oh yeah. Fred Meyer is my dad.”

The band stuck to its bread and butter in their Fairbanks show, peppering their set with hits from their most popular albums. The near-capacity crowd sang and shouted along to most of the songs in the set, from the opener – “So Much for the Afterglow,” from the album of the same name – to the final encore, “I Will Buy You A New Life.”

Some members of the audience at Friday’s show were born after Alexakis first formed the band in 1992, but the veteran frontman said he doesn’t worry that the band’s audience is in flux. “I think some of them have [evolved and continued to follow the band], and I think some have moved on… Good art is kinda timeless, though. I think it will always have an audience.”

Alexakis said he doesn’t have very many regrets about his time in the band – now 18 years, with two complete revamps of the band’s lineup – or the choices he has made so far. The only change he would make if given the chance would be to trust his own instincts. “If I could give anybody wisdom, I would tell them to listen to themselves, to trust themselves more… That little voice inside is usually right.”

The band is currently working on their eighth full-length album, to be released later this year. Alexakis expressed excitement about the new record Friday. “I’ve got a fire in my belly that hasn’t been there since 1996 or 1997,” he said, recalling the band’s heyday and their most successful release, So Much For The Afterglow. “This is the biggest guitar record yet… there are a lot of intense stories on there.”

Alexakis said he hasn’t settled on a name for the new album yet, but that he’s mulling over several possible candidates. “I actually just thought of one last night,” he said, chuckling softly. “Setting People on Fire and Other Love Stories. It probably won’t be that, but that’s kind of where my head’s at right now.”

The crew of the "Mission Imposible" defend against a water balloon attack during this past Sunday's Red Green Regatta. Photo by Jeremia Schrock/Sun Star.

By Jeremia Schrock

Sun Star Reporter

Despite being overcast, entrants into the 14^th Annual Red Green Regatta, named for the eponymous host of The Red Green Show, refused to let the weather dampen their spirits. According to KUAC, the UAF-affiliated public broadcasting station that hosted the event, the regatta allows participants to construct vessels out of “whatever floats their boat”, so long as the crafts construction includes at least one roll of duct tape – the “Handyman’s Secret Weapon.”

It might not have rained, but the event quickly became a wet one as both boaters and observers became enmeshed in a fierce water fight. Many regatta entrants floated down the Chena armed with water guns and balloons, while others equipped themselves with stationary slingshots capable of hurling a water balloon over 40 feet. As one boat drew close to the Cushman Street bridge, a 3-year-old aboard with water gun in hand, shouted, “Hi, Fairbanks!” before spraying water up at the crowd that had gathered. On the bridge itself, a man in camouflage cargo pants darted among individuals shouting, “Arr! Pirates!” before lobbing water-balloons at the boats below.

On a pedestrian bridge just outside of Pioneer Park, Michael Schwietert, 20, an applied sciences student at UAF, saw a friend float under the bridge below him. “Well, look at him!” he said, smiling, “He’s doing well for himself. He’s captain of his own boat!”

Robert Gambardella, of Gambardella’s Restaurant and captain of the Gilded Meatball, said that the regatta was something he had always wanted to do. Why the Gilded Meatball? Because his family and most of the crew are Italian. “Except Scott,” Gambardella said, looking over at a tall, shirtless gentleman.

“Yeah,” Scott began. “One Irishman and a bunch of frigging Italians!” he said, laughing.

Robby, Gambardella’s nephew, said that the regatta was great but that they had come under-prepared for the water fights. “Next year we’ll be better armored,” he said seriously.

While the regatta, according to KUAC’s website, is a “flotilla of fun,” some boaters used the event as a means of political protest. The crew of one boat, the Possum Lake, decided to draw an analogy between the gulf oil spill and Possum Lake itself, the notoriously filthy location in The Red Green Show. The craft, complete with a broken oil pipe lodged in a toilet bowl topped with an orange bucket that said “BP Cap”, was one of the more jarring boats in the flotilla. Frank Keim, the boatswain of the Possum Lake, talking about the recent oil spill, said that he felt that, “Red Green probably isn’t very proud of us.”

Melissa Mitchell sings during her performance at the Wood Center Sunday night. Photo by Jeremia Schrock/Sun Star

By Jeremia Schrock

Sun Star Reporter

Seeing Melissa Mitchell and Friends play was a bit like being given a guided tour of New Age folk rock if the tour guides were Yoko Kanno, Deep Forest and Brandi Carlile.

Hours before the show was set to start, the threat of a thunderstorm forced Cody Rogers, the director of the Student Activities Organization (SAO), to move the gig to a less potentially rainy venue, the Wood Center multi-level lounge. The change, as it turned out, was for the best. The indoor setting allowed for a more relaxed environment for the listening audience.

The concert opened with a brief introduction by UAF Concert Board chairman Caleb Kuntz. Bedecked in his signature black leather, pork-pie hat and bare feet, Kuntz welcomed both the audience and the band to the Wood Center, stating that all three women in the band were “Pisces, so, you know, they’re going to be as feisty as ever.”

While this performance was the second of three installments in the Beluga Nights series, this was the fourth and final show of the band’s Triple Goddess Tour in Fairbanks. While the night prior had the band playing The Marlin, this show was going to be different. After hitting the bar scene, the band felt that playing for an audience instead of over a crowd was a welcome respite. “Why not do a quiet, intimate gig with our whiskey voices?” said Mitchell.

The band was surprisingly at ease on stage. In between songs they would talk to the audience and each other, laugh, and change instruments. Shawn Zuke, a mistress of the didgeridoo, guitar and flute, even invited an old friend on stage to accompany the band on violin. At one point, the band’s percussionist Kliff Hopson (of local group Gangly Moose) switched from a djembe (an African drum) to a zydeco tie, an instrument that is exactly as weird as it sounds. Hopson, considered by Mitchell to be “the heart of the band,” was unfazed accompanying the band on their Triple Goddess Tour.

Why?

“Because we’re all goddesses,” Mitchell explained. “Even Kliff. He’s my man goddess.”

When asked why he chose Melissa Mitchell and Friends, SAO coordinator Cody Rogers responded that in SAO’s summer series, “we wanted to showcase some really good talent that we have in the city and the state.” Most of the band is itself from in-state. Mitchell is from Anchorage. Zuke currently lives in Homer. Hopson lives off of College Road in Fairbanks. The only non-Alaskan in the bunch is Michelle McAfee, who is visiting the state from Oregon.

It was actually McAfee’s visit to the state that inspired Mitchell to go on tour. “I wanted to give Michelle the full breadth of Alaska. So, we did the trek!” McAfee herself was grateful for the trip, and told the audience during her show that “Alaska’s growing on me!” McAfee was also impressed by Fairbanks’ devotion to live performance.

“This town loves music. It makes me really want to give music to the people who enjoy it,” McAfee said.

By Jeremia Schrock
Sun Star Reporter

This month saw theater major Sam German debut his film, “Visual History of the Alaskan Sea Ice” at the PolarCINEMA film festival, an extension of the 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY) conference. German’s film is a montage of photographs and video footage showing the movement of sea ice from the 1950’s up to 2008. While easily a nice addition to any student’s curriculum vitae (to say nothing of an undergraduate’s), what is more impressive is that the film debuted not at a local festival, but in Oslo, Norway. And that German shot the film because he was dirt poor.

“I was having a lot of financial issues at the time,” German said. “There was [an] error in my financial aid. I was paying out-of-state tuition while my aid was being based on the in-state tuition rates so I only got a $140 refund.” As German was living off-campus at the time, money suddenly became one of German’s primary concerns. “So, there was a lot of motivation to get a grant or extra funding from some other place.”

That “other place” ended up being the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). EPSCoR is a university-based, federal-state partnership that aims to enhance science and technology infrastructure in the private sector, government, and education through grants to academic professionals, both student and non-student alike.

German began working on the film in February of 2008. He began by organizing footage shot in 2007 by Maya Salganek, Assistant Professor of Digital Performance Media.  That was followed by a strenuous search through the Rasmuson Library’s Goldmine computer system for any and all archival footage that might have contained images of sea ice. When all was said and done, German estimated that he viewed close to 80 different archival videos in order to acquire enough footage for the film. In May 2008, German traveled to Barrow and spent two weeks shooting with Salganek and a team of student filmmakers before settling down in the summer to begin the editing process.

However, the focus of EPSCoR is on scientific and technological research. German is a theater major with a film minor, not a science student.

“It was a film that was dealing with science so I wondered how “cool” it would be. I also know that I’m not a very “science-y” guy so I wondered how well I would be able to [do] a video about something related to science,” said German. Once he started filming, however, German discovered how motivated and interested the scientists were in their research, a feeling that quickly rubbed off on him. “[It] motivated me to try to create something that they would enjoy…and has inspired me to work more with scientists and try to get their projects/work out there for everyone to see.”

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Reporter

The UAF Art Department hosted a ceramics sale fundraiser last week for a memorial scholarship that will benefit art students. The scholarship is in memory of Tom Rohr, who died last summer in Eugene, OR of a heart attack at 45.

“Tom was very much about sharing what he did … and he would want that to continue,” said Teresa Shannon, a former student of Rohr’s who is organizing the fund with Karen Foote.

More than 100 pieces of ceramic artwork decorated the UAF Art Gallery for the auction on May 28. About 50 national and local potters and students created pots, purses, baskets, and jars for the fundraiser. Some artists also volunteered at the event.

Dorothy Nash takes in the new exhibit at the Museum of the North titled "Then and Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape." Photo by Jesse Hoff/The Sun Star

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Reporter

The UA Museum of the North, along with two guest curators, drew from society and ecology to provide a new look into the Arctic in the special exhibit “Then & Now: The Changing Arctic Landscape.” The exhibit opened May 15, and will run until Jan. 8, 2011.

Visitors to the exhibit are greeted with a text panel: “For several thousand years, the landscape has offered vistas of tundra punctuated by dramatic mountains and glaciers. Now, the Arctic is changing.”

The final performance of Winter Shorts featured the poem Foghat, as slammed by Michael Shaeffer. Photo by Jesse Hoff/The Sun Star

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Contributor

Winter Shorts opened last Friday at the Salisbury Theater. Exploring the production process, students performed plays, improvisations, and poetry on a cozy and versatile set. Winter Shorts is a student-driven production that occurs every semester, and stretches its roots back to 1997.

“It’s all student-directed, student-acted, student-designed,” said Katie Sousa, the managing director of the Student Drama Association. Sousa coordinated meetings and deadlines in preparation for the event.

By Jessica Hoffman
Sun Star Reporter

Traditional Alaska Native music will blend with contemporary music Wednesday night at the Davis Concert Hall. Alaskan Voices: A Confluence of Cultures will feature works composed by Anchorage’s Craig Coray and Fairbanks’ John Luther Adams as well as traditional Alaska Native music.

The College of Liberal Arts’ Center for the Arts is presenting the evening of music as part of an effort to encourage interdisciplinary ventures at UAF.

Lori Bean dances on stage in the Great Hall for the Ingrimuit Yup’ik Dance Group Thursday, March 4 during the Festival of Native Arts. Photo by Angela Milliron/The Sun Star

By Kelsey Gobroski
Sun Star Contributor

Hundreds of Alaskans spent the first weekend of March at UAF celebrating Alaska Native art and culture.

Representatives from eight cultural groups performed in the Great Hall and about 30 vendors set up shop in the Wood Center for the 37th annual Festival of Native Arts on March 4, 5 and 6. Alaskans from all over the state attended the event, said UAF student Naaqtuuq Debra Dommek, who is working on her degree in Alaska Native Studies and danced at the event.

“It’s a way to bring people together – not just the Fairbanks community, not just the university, but statewide,” said Dommek, who compared the event to a reunion. “It’s a way for us to share culture with people and celebrate it through the arts.”