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FEATURES
8
This weekend in movies
Waalkes: Center will be a ‘catalyst’ for the arts in the ‘burg
MATTHEW ARTZ
features editor
from page four
“District 9” Aliens have been portrayed in film as either monstrous conquerors or peaceful allies for decades. They attack Earth in the hope of taking its resources and destroying humanity, or they visit with the intent to bring peace and prosperity to the planet. “District 9” looks to change all that with a fresh take on how the first contact with aliens might happen. In the film, aliens contact our planet several decades before they arrive. The world wonders how our first meeting will transpire, but no one predicts what actually happens. The aliens arrive as refugees from their planet looking for a place to rest before they venture further into space. The world governments quarantine the aliens in District 9, a small area near Johannesburg, South Africa. There, the aliens are kept segregated from humans and are forced to live in shacks like poor refugees. Control over District 9 is eventually contracted out to a private corporation when the aliens refuse to provide information to the world governments on their technologies.
Creative Technologies Lab, and support space for the performance hall. The university hopes to begin construction in 2010. The CT caught up with Waalkes while she was in town for several meetings earlier this month. CT: When the interview was set up, you said that you would be in town for meetings. Who all did you meet with and how did it go?
MCT
“District 9” opens in theaters this Friday, August 14. “The Time Traveler’s Wife” In this romance film, Eric Bana plays a Chicago librarian with an interesting genetic disorder. Every time he experiences extreme situations of stress his body vanishes into thin air and he ends up at a different period in time. Despite his inability to stay at any
point in time for long, he meets a young girl (Rachel McAdams) and becomes her friend before vanishing. He meets her again later when she is older and they fall in love. The film follows their life together as he reappears intermittently and explores the hardships of falling in love with someone that is rarely around.
Ruth Waalkes (RW): Yesterday, we had a series, all day long, of meetings. This included the primary architect who is working on the Center for the Arts’ design, and consultants who are working on the interior of the center. So the theatre consultants are the folks who actually look at the design of the large performance hall itself, what will go in there, the types of staging, equipment, and access, and all of those considerations that we’ll need. Then there are acousticians, who are looking very specifically at the hall in terms of sound: how sound moves in there, what the experience will be for audience members in any area of the hall.
collegiatetimes.com august 13, 2009
CT: What role will you play while the center is being planned and built? Will you be working with Snohetta on construction and planning? RW: I will very much be an active part of the conversations about the building’s design and use; working with Snohetta, working with theatre projects, the acousticians, as we start to more clearly define the types of programming we envision and what the implications are then for the needs of the hall. CT: When were you originally approached for the position as Executive Director of the Center for the Arts? What led you to accept the position? RW: I actually heard that Virginia Tech was going to be building a center and there was an interesting project bubbling up here. Sometime later in the fall there was a search firm that was looking for candidates and they contacted me. I think the first conversation I had was with the search people at the end of January. Then I made two visits down to Blacksburg, at the end of March and then again at the end of April. They even put together a group of undergraduate students that I got to meet with which was really wonderful to hear. To hear their questions and their experiences here on campus, all the students involved with the arts to some degree. CT: What have you taken from your work at the University of
Maryland’s Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, or past work, that you plan to apply to your post here? RW: It’s a very different place and a very different center. That’s part of what’s exciting about coming in and discovering fresh opportunities. One of the real key successes there has been the love of collaboration that we have been able to build, through my work directly with programming at the center, the collaborations we have with our performing arts departments there certainly. But in the past couple of years we’ve also been able to expand that to other parts of the campus. Just as an example this past spring we did a series of events in April, a couple of them ticketed performances with visiting artists. We were talking about how artists impact or advocate on behalf of environmental issues. It was so nice to be able to reach in process of developing that whole series. I actually went out to faculty members to see what kinds of issues they were working on, what might be interesting, who should we reach out to if we wanted to use the Arts as a catalyst for a larger conversation, in this case about the environment. I’m hopeful that we can create those kinds of connections, get people thinking as much about the ideas as the art here. CT: What do you hope to achieve in Blacksburg in respect to the community as a whole? What sort of impact do you wish this new center to have? RW: In one of the meetings yesterday, it was with the building committee and the architect, and he was walking through how they’ve approached their process here. He had a diagram of the campus and showing the drill field and the green space and where the Center for the Arts will be. As he was talking about the drill field, he said “Well now here, this isn’t a building, it’s actually a place, but it’s a very iconic image for this campus.” I jotted that down because ultimately, the Center for the Arts also won’t just be a building, but I want it to be a place too for the community, where ... people feel comfortable there, feel at home there. It would be great if it’s an anchor for other activity on campus, in the town. I think that’s the beauty of the location for the Center, is that it’s right on the edge of town. It’s close to the new Black Box Theatre and the Lyric. You have such a nice set of complimentary places for people to hang out and be. I hope the Center for the Arts can be a focal point for that, maybe a catalyst for other arts and festivals that we can all do together. I hope it’s a hub for that sort of continuing Arts Initiative.