afterMAPH » Entertainment

MAPH Reunion Early Registration Deadline Extended

Linda — Fri, 08 May 2009 17:01:00 +0000

Hey MAPHers,

Great news– the Alumni Association has extended the early registration deadline until NEXT Friday, April 15. So, you still have the chance to get $10 off of your MAPH Reunion admission fee, making the event FREE!!

To register for the outing, please visit http://alumniweekend.uchicago.edu/events-register.shtml or call 800/955-0065

As a reminder, the event is Friday, June 5 at 7pm at Bin 36 in downtown Chicago.

If you have further please contact Heather Upshaw at hupshaw@uchicago.edu.

Cheers,

Linda

MAPH Reunion early registration deadline is extended!

Linda — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:13:14 +0000

Greetings MAPHers!

Good news, early registration for the MAPH Alumni Reunion has been extended until Friday, May 8th. If you register by this date, you will get $10 off the price of the event, making it FREE for you (though additional guests will still have to pay $10). As a reminder, the event will be at 7pm on Friday, June 5th at Bin 36 in downtown Chicago.

To register please visit: http://alumniweekend.uchicago.edu or call 800/955-0065

ALSO– we have made the MAPH Reunion a Facebook event to spread the word. Please add yourself and invite other MAPHers if you’re on Facebook (note: RSVPing on Facebook does NOT mean you’re registered. you still must go through the alumni weekend site)

If you have further questions or need to update your contact info with the Alumni Committee, please contact Heather Upshaw at hupshaw@uchicago.edu.

Take care,

Linda

Alumni Weekend MAPH Reunion—Early Registration!

Linda — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:58:54 +0000

Hey MAPHers!

Alumni Weekend is quickly approaching which means that the MAPH Reunion
is coming up! This year we’ll be meeting on Friday, June 5 for cocktails
and appetizers at Bin 36, located at 339 N. Dearborn in downtown Chicago.

Tickets are only $10 each, but if you register by Friday, April 24 you will get a $10 discount off of your total alumni weekend registration package (that’s right, it’s free for the Reunion if you’re
going sans guest!). You can register online or by calling 800/955-0065. I hope you have a wonderful spring and I look forward to seeing you all in June!

Cheers,
Linda Smith (AM 2007)

Alumni Happy Hour Returns!

Braden Grams — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 18:09:15 +0000

Hey afterMAPHers, once again it has been far too long since we gathered for a MAPH alumni happy hour, but fear not. This is about to be rectified, and you can help by joining your fellow MAPH alums at Sullys House. One of your fellows, Peter Adams (MAPH ‘04), is the GM at this recently opened watering hole, and has promised to treat us to a fabulous night of excellent beverage, and fabulous pub food (and if that isn’t enough enticement, there is appearently some device called a Wii that has something to do with a 100“ HD projection screen… Anyway if your in Chicago you should make you way there, and as always MAPH is picking up the bill.

You can RSVP for this fabulous event online by visiting the new alumni calendar, or by contacting the MAPH Coordinator (me) at grams@uchicago.edu, or by calling 773.834.1201

For those of you working downtown or down South here in Chicago, Sullys is just a block from the North and Clybourn stop on the Red Line.

Summertime is made for backyards at the Museum of Contemporary Photography

Linda — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:29:29 +0000

Beginning on June 16th and running through August 23, the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College downtown Chicago will be showing its newest exhibit entitled, Beyond the Backyard. This exhibit offers up the works of contemporary photographers and their different conceptions of the modern backyard. These pictures include both yard scenes of small town and urban settings, re-envisioning the traditional conception of the American backyard and looking at some of its deeper, ideological and cultural significances. This show calls in to question how one understands and thinks of the backyard and compares these ideas with popular media conceptions, analyzing how these two align, or don’t align.

Special MAPH kudos for this event go to MCoP collections research fellow and MAPH Alum Karsten Lund (’07) who has written the essay introducing and describing the collection (much more succinctly and poignantly than I have done here), as well as made many of the crucial decisions concerning the exhibit’s layout and design.

The show is open to the public beginning June 16th and there will be an opening reception for the exhibit at the MCoP on Thursday, June 26 from 5-7pm.

Save the Date – MAPH Reunion, June 6

Linda — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:09:41 +0000

Hey MAPH Alums!

The MAPH Reunion is approaching and as part of the reunion committee, it is my great pleasure to invite you to join me and your fellow MAPHers, preceptors, faculty and friends for an evening of celebration as the University hosts its annual Alumni Weekend. Last year we has the most successful Reunion of any program campus-wide! So, I hope you will mark your calendars as we gather together again to celebrate all that we have accomplished. Our private MAPH Reunion will take place on Friday, June 6 at Landmark Grill and Lounge, located at 1633 North Halsted. Tickets are $20, with a discount of $10 if you register before April 25. A formal invitation is forthcoming. For more information, visit http://alumniweekend.uchicago.edu/ or call Heather Upshaw at (773) 834-2502.

Hope that all is well and I hope to see you in June!

Linda

Reunion Committee
Hallie Gordon (AM ‘05)
Patrick Reichard, Chair (AM ‘02)
Linda Smith (AM ’07)
Kamran Swanson (AM ’06)
Miranda Swanson (AM ’01)

Keeping us in the Light

Linda — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:53:20 +0000

MAPH Alum Joel Witmer (’07) is up and at ‘em again with his newest blog The Dark Room, a blog that discusses and reviews movies and television shows. You may remember Joel’s past fame with his Ohio sports based blog, The Disappointment Zone, and its famed appearance in the Wall Street Journal Online.

This time around, Joel has taken his other love, that of the audio visual world, and transformed it into insightful commentary, opinions, riffs, and reviews of movies and TV shows of all genres. He also lists movies he’s seen this year (alphabetically and hierarchically, of course) as well as his current NetFlix queue, just so you can keep abreast of his movie watching, note his credibility as a movie goer, as well as strike up an online conversation with him.

As with his sports blog, Joel’s commentary is well thought out and carefully presented with just the right amount of film elitism and average movie watcher humor, making it enjoyable to read often difficult to disagree with him*.

*author’s note: no matter how elegant his prose or how convincing his analysis is, I shall never agree with Joel about Ohio State.

Adaptation at the Smart Museum

cjlind — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:50:30 +0000

The Smart Museum’s exhibition Adaptation opened today, and it includes a new work by ARTV 24103, a collective that includes current MAPHers Laura Heldt and Natasha Long. The work grew out of a practicum taught by Catherine Sullivan — Natasha writes about the project over on the Adaptation blog-cum-catalogue.

The other works in Adaptation — by Guy Ben-Ner, Arturo Herrera, Catherine Sullivan, and Eve Sussman & The Rufus Corporation — re-envision classic literature, painting, film, ballet, and even e-mail for new video installations. You can check out clips of all the works on the online catalogue. Or, better yet, brave the snow tonight and come out for free food, refreshments, and art at the opening reception and panel discussion, from 5:30-7:30 pm.

No Halfsteppin’: Broadcast Premiere of a Documentary Film by MAPH alums

mlfink — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:33:17 +0000

MAPH alums Tom Bailey and Brendan Kredell’s documentary film, No Halfsteppin’,
will air on WTTW-11 for its first broadcast on Thursday, January 31 (10:30pm CST), and on Sunday, February 3 (12midnight, CST [note that this is technically Monday, February 4]).

The film is a 17-minute minidoc that portrays Brian Wharton, a.k.a. Sharkula, an aspiring rapper who dreams of fame while selling his self-produced CDs on the streets and trains of Chicago. As MAPH students in 2004, Bailey and Kredell developed the idea for this film in a documentary class here at the U of C. In 2007, the film first aired as the finale to a 60-minute series of minidocs–each capturing some facet of the City of the Big Shoulders– titled Chicago 360 v.2. Chicago 360 v.2 is the second installment in a documentary project being launched by nonprofit film production company, Split Pillow. The Chicago 360 project recruits filmmakers and grants them $360 to produce a minidocumentary that captures some aspect of Chicago’s narratives, landscapes, and subcultures. The project’s end goal is 10 hours of documentary film, produced over a decade, that will constitute a mosaic portrait of the city.

No Halfsteppin’ has been called “disconcerting but affecting” and has been praised for doing “a nice job of capturing Sharkula’s charms and torments.” In an interview with Time Out Chicago, Kredell has reflected on the process of creating such a portrait: “We [he and Bailey] were very conscious of our status as filmmakers who go home to warm beds. With a project like this, you want to maintain respect for your subject without papering over the realities of his situation. But whenever we defined Brian by his problems, we’d hear about people in, say, Kentucky, who really love his music or meet people who buy all his CDs. The ethical pitfalls are the same ones you’d encounter with any outsider artist, and I hope our efforts to get the right tone have paid off.”

Judge for yourself– tune in to channel 11 on Thursday or Sunday!

To check out Split Pillow and the Chicago 360 project, go to www.splitpillow.com.

More from MAPH Alums at the Caffeine Theatre

Linda — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:27:11 +0000

Two University of Chicago Alums team up for a “darkly fascinating,” “ambitious”* theatre piece:

Caffeine Theatre presents:
Like the Moon Behind the Clouds
by Donald Gecewicz (AB ‘76)
directed by Jennifer Shook (MAPH ‘05)

And this week, Caffeine brings you two special events with these U of C artists:

Wednesday, January 30: A free reading of poetry and Donald Gecewicz’s translation of Carla Vasio’s inspiring Italian memoir of her trip to Japan, where her heart “opened like an eggshell”– at the BookCellar in Lincoln Square. 7:00 pm. See http://www.bookcellarinc.com/ for more information.

Thursday, January 31: Theatre Thursday dinner package includes a pre-fixe dinner at Bella Bacino’s Italian Bistro and Pizzeria, a ticket to the 7:30pm performance of Like the Moon Behind the Clouds, and a post-show conversation with the playwright and director. $25. Tickets at 312-742-TIXS (8497). Studio Theater in the Chicago Cultural Center 77 E. Randolph St.

…or skip dinner and you can still see the play and discussion for the low price of $20 ($18 for seniors, $16 for students, $14 for groups of 10 or more). Tickets at 312-742-TIXS (8497).

“It’s easy to dehumanize people and cover it up by saying it’s a small world after all,” said Gecewicz. “But it’s much harder to open up our hearts to the whole world.”
(For an interview with Gecewicz and Shook, see:
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=74847)

Caffeine Theatre presents the world premiere of Like the Moon Behind the Clouds, by Donald Gecewicz. Follow Italian writer Carla Vasio to Tokyo and into the worlds of Japanese poets. Like the Moon Behind the Clouds fuses film, music, and puppetry in Caffeine Theatre’s acclaimed poetic style. As Carla’s story unfolds like a Japanese printmaker’s album of views, the question remains: Is it a small world after all?

Through February 24, 2008
Studio Theater in the Chicago Cultural Center 77 E. Randolph St

Thurs-Sat at 7:30;
Sundays at 3pm;
Saturday matinees on Feb 9, 16 and 23 at 3:00

$20 Regular price
$18 Seniors
$16 Students
$14 Groups of 10 or more

* Quotations from Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City Times