ROCKET, Spring 2014: The Modern Issue

ROCKET

THE MODERN ISSUE CONTENTS

Cover Photo: Photographed by Danny Rosenberg Model: Joe Laresca

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Masthead

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From the Editor

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On Modernity

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Clybourne Park Cast

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For The Record

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The Lost Boys The Found Vixens Tunes of the Town

ROCKET Editor-in-Chief Gianna BaigĂŠs Parilla Managing Editor Tara Oladimeji Photo Chief Editor Danny Rosenberg Production Director Kelsey Rook Features Editor Katie Sharp Marketing Director Diba Ghanei Beauty Editor Francesca Rizzo Video Editor Daniel Arsura Text Rob Arcand, Natalie Scavuzzo, Kat Turk Photography Allison Shomaker

Beauty Bella Kron, Gladys Shaw

Style Brenner Brinkley

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FROM THE EDITOR

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ut with the new, in with the old. Modernity is represented—perhaps too generally—by what society considers novel and unconventional. However, modernity is a carefully crafted force that draws upon revolutionary sentiments of past times. ROCKET portrays exactly this. The Mod (a.k.a. “modern”) Era of the sixties constructed a notion of modernity that revolutionized the world of fashion, music, and art, as well as societal norms. Though many years have passed since the Mod Era, today’s notion of modernity incorporates much of the revolutionary sentiments introduced at the time. ROCKET does its best to interpret the Mod Era and juxtapose its characteristics with the modern qualities of fashion, music, art and societal norms today.

The Twiggy-inspired “For The Record” pays tribute to the Mod fashion scene, channeling the icon’s signature style and attitude. It parallels Twiggy’s unconventional look and daring personality with today’s fashion and attitudes of self-discovery. The two-spread editorial “The Lost Boys”/”The Found Vixens” tells a story of the power shift in gender roles between men and women catalyzed during the sixties. The sixties acted as the foundation for women to establish their roots in more powerful grounds; a change that is very much still going on today. On a different note, “Tunes of the Town” embodies the positive and carefree attitudes popular in the Mod Era and prominent in today’s youth. With insight from the cast of W&M Theater Department’s production of Clybourne Park, ROCKET takes on the meaning of modernity as cast members compare and contrast the play’s two acts set in 1959 and 2009.

By and large, this issue of ROCKET marks a new direction for the magazine. Inspired by Andy Warhol’s well-known Elvis print, the magazine features a male on the cover for the first time in its history. Three years after its initial launch, ROCKET is publishing the last issue designed by visionaries involved in the publication’s founding. The magazine has soared throughout its four volumes, and now a new group of creatives will carry on its legacy. With its themes of modernity, ROCKET embraces the old and the new, sending off some members and welcoming a new perspective. What better way to declare the end of an era?

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They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

- Andy Warhol

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CLYBOURNE PARK

By Katie Sharp and Natalie Scavuzzo Photographed by Danny Rosenberg

A conversation about modernity

with a cast performing in two eras...

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modern meditation on Hansberry’s classic A Raisin in the Sun, Bruce Norris’ award-winning play explores and provokes, re-conceptualizing earlier issues of racism to fit our own present-day understandings.

Act I takes place in the heart of a white, middle-class 1950s neighborhood, where a black family struggles to buy a house. Act II involves the same house fifty years later. But now, it is the white family that struggles to buy in the process of the neighborhood’s gentrification.

Two acts. An eight-person cast.

Over fifteen different characters.

Identities are blurred and time periods merge as a neighborhood changes. Suddenly, do fifty unspoken and unseen years make a difference?

William and Mary’s Theatre Department performed Clybourne Park on-stage early this April. We interviewed four cast members— Alivia Long, Tess Higgins, Joseph Biagini, and Aidan Smith (left to right in cover page)—on their involvement and interaction with the play’s modernized themes.

ROCKET: What are your characters’ major conflicts in Act I?

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Long: I’m Russ and Bev’s African-American maid … and this is a time of segregation, so there are things that I can’t express, since I’m in their home. In the first act, it’s really just about … the fact that I can’t say what I want to say.

CDaS Biagini: Russ’ big conflict in the play is getting people off of his back about his mourning process.

He’s mourning his son who killed himself and no one else can really understand his plight. He doesn’t want anyone else’s help, but they want to help.

Smith: The main conflict for Karl is that he’s looking out for the community; he has a community association that he attends every Tuesday of each month. The house that the play takes place in is being sold to a black family, and Karl doesn’t think that that’s in the best interest of the community’s health and stability. He’s trying to persuade the [white] family living in the house to not sell it to the black family. His conflict is that they already sold it, but he’s trying to sell it to someone else.

ROCKET: Do you think your character’s agenda is associated with more conservative values then?

Smith: [These are] conservative

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values, but [they’re also] values of that age, in a way—where people aren’t too comfortable with having a black family in a neighborhood that’s predominantly white.

In a way, Karl is conservative, but he says he’s not looking out for his own selfish interests; he’s looking out for the community.

He holds himself responsible for how the community acts and responds to what’s going on.

Smith: I can sit in a classroom and learn about what happened in the 1950s … But to be a character on a stage, acting in a play that is historically relevant, [it] just puts a whole different spin on what I’m doing and how I’m seeing what I’m doing … I have to think like a person would in the 1950s, where I’m not generally accepting, nor am I comfortable with what’s happening in the real world.

ROCKET: How do you think being in this play has shifted your view of what modern is?

Higgins: This play turns things on its head … We’re seeing it from the point of view of the privileged. No one really tells that story because it makes people uncomfortable—people think, “Oh, we would never do that.”

But when you spotlight everyone else, then I think people will have a more critical view.

Long: I think that we think about the issues in the play, but we don’t realize how relevant they are to today’s society. The [things] in the first act happen in the second act, and I think our director helps us understand that; he tells us stories about the issues going on.

That’s helped me to realize just how much I’ve not been realizing.

Biagini: I agree. You know, in the first act, you see it as [it] happened fifty years ago and we’re so separated from it—this kind of racism doesn’t happen anymore.

And then you see the second act and you kind of take a step back and think about it a little bit. But it’s hard to do that because it’s happening now. But you can, and then realize, “Oh wait, people are still racist.”

ROCKET: What do you think you have most in common with your character? Where do you sympathize or empathize with them most?

Long: I feel that my character in the second act [Lena] is very good at speaking her mind, which is very different from Francine in the first act, who can’t say what she wants to say. In the second act, Lena gets the opportunity to say what she wants to say because times have changed.

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Biagini: I sympathize a lot with Russ in his grieving process. And the way I personally solve my problems in my life, I like to work through them by myself. So does Russ.

Smith: My characters are so different from myself. It’s easy because I realized those differences pretty early on in the process …

Karl’s smart, but he just doesn’t understand certain areas of society that he should in order to be a well-rounded citizen… But I think my other character, Steve, is very open. I don’t think he’s comfortable with the idea of people hiding how they feel … I would say that I do sympathize with Steve in some points, because I can definitely see a person like him existing right now.

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Higgins: As an optimist—I mean, I’m like that—[Bev] wants everyone to be happy. She doesn’t like it when things turn hostile. [She avoids] confrontation and conflict; acknowledging more of the dangerous or unhappy thoughts isn’t something she wants to do.

I tend to do that sometimes. I’m generally a very positive person.

But, [Bev’s] got a big pink fairy mask on and doesn’t want people to see what she’s really going through. If she puts up this front of “Everything is Perfect,” then maybe everything will be fine.

ROCKET: How does Clybourne Park exemplify modernity? Do you think any of your characters’ traits embody that aspect?

Higgins: We’re in a culture of

over-sharing with all the different kinds of social media—we can tell anyone anything we want to. Cathy—it doesn’t matter what they’re talking about. Somehow, she makes it come back to her.

“Well, I was in Spain!” “Oh, well I can’t ski.” It’s a look-at-me kind of game, like who can get the most attention...

I heard this interview with Bruce Norris on NPR where he said that everyone thinks this play is about race, but it’s really about territorialism. [The character] Steve has this speech where he says, “Humans are territorial. This is why we have wars. One group has this, and you try to take our power and you can’t have what you want.” I think that’s really what the second act is all about, people just fighting over having

control...

Smith: I think in Act I, people are polite because that’s how that happens; that’s how the scene flows. … And in the second act, everyone is opinionated and outspoken. Act II is much more exhaustive on us because we’re talking so much and everyone says so many important facts to the plot.

Biagini: I think Aidan hit a nice point when he said that today everyone is trained to speak their mind, no matter what it is. And Dan, in the second act, barges in and starts telling a story at a completely inappropriate time. To me, that’s very modern. Just doing what the hell you want.

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For The Record In collaboration with WCWM Radio Photographed by Danny Rosenberg Model: Emmaleah Jones

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the lost boys Photographed by Danny Rosenberg Models: Benjamin Reynolds, Kieran Ryan, Bradley Beauchler, Kristen Hill-Clemmons, and Octavia Goodman

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THE FOUND VIXENS Photographed by Danny Rosenberg Models: Benjamin Reynolds, Kieran Ryan, Bradley Beauchler, Kristen Hill-Clemmons, and Octavia Goodman

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TUNES OF THE TOWN Photographed by Danny Rosenberg and Allison Shomaker Models: Sarah Lohmann, Morgan Fletcher, and Drew Lazanfama

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Spring 2014 Vol.IV, Issue 2 The College of William and Mary facebook.com/wmrocketmagazine magazine.rocket@gmail.com