B2 Arts & Entertainment
The Chronicle
‘West Side Story’ Cast List The Jets Tony Riff Action A-Rab Baby John Snowboy Big Deal Diesel Gee-Tar Anybodys Velma Graziella Jet Girls
Oct. 7, 2015 Students will perform ‘West Side Story’ in Rugby Auditorium Nov. 8-10.
The Sharks
Adam Yaron ’16 McCabe Slye ‘16 Casey Giolito ’17 Ari Yaron ’18 Russell Davis ’17 Eli Timoner ’18 Henry Platt ’17 Gabe Jenkinson ’16 Brandon Lim ’16 Carmen Levine ’17 Lily Beckinsale-Sheen ’17 Tiana Coles ’16 Maddy Harbert ’17 Lauralee Harper ’16 Emma Kofman ’16 Jenny Lange ’17 Genevieve Thomas ’16 Jessica Wolf ’16
Bernardo Chino Pepe Indio Luis Anxious Juano Toro Moose Maria Anita Rosalia Consuelo Shark Girls
Carlos Guanche ’16 Ryan Ruiz ’16 Michael Kellman ’16 Jared Gentile ’16 Paul Giacomazzi ’16 Erick Gredonia ’17 Jonah Goldman ’16 Adam Hirschhorn ’16 Andreas Werner ’16 Elizabeth Edel ’16 Kayla Darini ’16 Maya Hinkin ’18 Charlotte Weinman ’18 Anya Andrews ’17 Ava Gordon ’16 Aurora Huiza ’17 Natalie Kroh ’18 Natalie Musicant ’17 Laurel Rand-Lewis ’16 Cate Wolfen ’17
The Adults Doc Schran Krupke Glad Hand Somewhere Girl
James Hansen ’16 Jake Suddleson ’16 Ben Pimstone ’18 Henry Zumbrunnen ’16 Elizabeth Gaba ’17
Description “WEST SIDE STORY tells a Romeo-and-Juliet story of gang warfare in New York,” co-director Christopher Moore said. “The dancing is high energy and very athletic. But everything about WEST SIDE STORY demands the best. The music is extremely demanding for singers and instrumentalists alike. The show is a true workout for all the cast – dancers, singers, musicians, and crew -- male and female alike.”
SOURCE: TED WALCH GRAPHIC BY TIFFANY KIM
Film festival holds renaming contest By Jesse Nadel
Film festival organizers are holding a contest to rename the festival to improve branding. The contest will close Friday when the faculty and student leaders of the festival begin to determine the name that they believe best rebrands the event. “Many people both in and out of the school thought the festival was only for HarvardWestlake films, but clearly we
ELLIS BECKER/CHRONICLE
BRAIN GAMES: Justyn Chang ’18 and Henry Zumbrunnen ’16
work on writing exercises for a playwrights workshop after school.
Alum hosts playwrights workshops after school By Ellis Becker Alex Lewin ’94 hosted afternoon playwriting workshops for students Sept. 24-26. The Perry S. Goldman Playwriting Workshop taught students playwriting skills as a part of preparing for the Harvard-Westlake Playwrights Festival. Later in the year, the festival will feature student-written plays, and one of the goals of the workshop was to help students prepare to submit plays for that purpose. “My main goal for this workshop is just to jog these student’s creativity, and get them to understand that they can actually write a play. It’s not a foreign language,” Lewin said. “Through these workshops, I also want to help students shut off the part of their mind that makes them calcu-
late, and allow them to just create.” Lewin has been writing plays since he was a student at Harvard-Westlake, and has completed eight full-length plays, including “The Envelope” and “The Near East.” He has also written five one-act plays and two screenplays. Some of his work has been performed in theaters such as the La Jolla Playhouse and the Alliance Theatre. Besides writing, Lewin has taught four similar workshops and spoken at multiple seminars throughout his career. “I actually wrote my very first play here at HarvardWestlake, and my teacher Ted Walch was a huge contributor to my decision to become a playwright,” Lewin said, “It really is an honor and privilege to be able to teach here.”
are so much more than that,” festival director Tiana Coles ’16 said. “By having a different name, we’re hoping to open ourselves up to the community, allowing the festival itself and the people involved to be a part of something so much larger than just another high school film festival.” The film festival committee made a decision to include students in the renaming process, dubbed the “(Re) Name Game,” in order promote
the festival and get students involved during the early stages of the planning process, Coles said. The winner of the contest will receive a $100 cash prize. He or she will receive a free dinner before the festival at the Hollywood Arclight Theaters, where the event is held, and a copy of the night’s program autographed by the guest speaker. Ideas can be emailed to filmfestival@hw.com.
Get Lit Players slam poetry group performs for sophomores during class meeting
By Adam Yu
The Get Lit Players, a slam poetry team in Los Angeles, performed during sophomore class meeting Sept. 28. The Get Lit players hoped to spark student interest in slam poetry. They also wanted to recruit new members for the HarvardWestlake slam poetry team. Additionally, students who are interested in pursuing slam poetry outside of school can audition to become a Get Lit Player.
Hannah Dains ’16, one of the Get Lit Players, opened the assembly with one of her slam poems. Students can audition to become a Get Lit Player Oct. 10 at the Get Lit headquarters while auditions for the Harvard-Westlake slam poetry team are in November. No prior experience is necessary to audition. “I myself had only been doing slam for three months before I auditioned,” Dains said. “When I was a sophomore, I auditioned for the school slam
team, and we performed at the Classic Slam, which is hosted by Get Lit. The founder of Get Lit asked me to audition to be a Get Lit player.” As a result of the slam poetry performance, some sophomores are considering slam poetry as an extracurricular activity. “I thought it was awesome,” Chase Rosenblatt ’18. “Potentially, I would like to join the team. I didn’t know what it was before, and I would definitely think of it as an option now.”
Student films receive CINE Golden Eagle Awards By Sarah Lee
A suite of films made after the 2014 Rwanda trip and a film made during the 2014 Righteous Conversations Project received special recognition in the 2015 CINE Golden Eagle Awards. The Rwanda suite won in the Youth Documentary Short category, and the Righteous Conversations Project film was a finalist. Recipients of these honors were announced Sept. 8.
The Rwanda suite consisted of three films. They were “Reweaving: Rwanda After Rape,” written, directed and edited by Katherine Calvert ’15; “The Rhythm of Healing,” directed and written by Imani Cook-Gist ’15 and edited by Danielle Stolz ’15; and “Cut the Tall Trees: The Killing Power of Words,” directed by Noah Bennet ’15 and Max Cho ’15, edited by Cho and written by Bennet. The other film made during the Righteous Conversations
Project was titled “Curt Lowens: A Life of Changes,” directed by Justin Binder, August Blum, Robert Carslon, Levi Glaser, George Khabbaz, Kayla Mossanen and Tammy Shine. It told the story of a man’s life during the Holocaust. “All those films are about social issues, genocide and Holocaust awareness, so I think it distinguishes us as a school that cares about larger issues, that cares about history,” Visual Arts Department Head Cheri Gaulke said.