I n d ep en d en t
Issue no.
S t u de nt
V oic e
o f
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1933
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February 2013
Volume 25
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Boise, Idaho
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Wear it right
Ski club perseveres despite lack of snow Ryan Thorne Staff Writer
How you dress could predict your performance.
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Serve it up
Alan Moore has spent many winter nights hoping and praying for snow this year, and so far, it hasn't helped much. Moore is the president and directing manager of Bogus Basin Ski Area. “People know the conditions up at Bogus Basin pretty well, and they know it’s been kind of limited with regards to snow,” Moore said. Little snow means Boise State Ski and Snowboard Club members are forced to look elsewhere to enjoy the outdoors. Moore explained there
are many factors that limit precipitation from reaching the Bogus Basin area, and weather reports can be misleading. “The statisticians of the world call them independent variables, and there are just too many,” Moore said. “Including the jet stream, including the fact that we are up against a mountain in the valley, including the highs that sit just off the coast sometimes that keeps any weather from coming in." Ski and Snowboard Club members plan a once yearly excursion to a bigger resort but rely heavily on snow at Bogus Basin to have an active season.
“We have our annual trip to Jackson Hole, so that gives everyone a chance to get four days in,” said Ski and Snowboard Club President David Redinger. “But other than that, it’s hard to arrange car pools up to Bogus when nobody has the interest to go.” Redinger said he and club members have made few trips to the Bogus Basin due to lack of snow. Ski Club member and Bogus Basin employee Johnny Whittemore has been witness to the low snow levels this year, but claims that despite poor conditions, entertainment can still be found. “The snow hasn't been
great, but the addition of the Mountain Dew terrain park helps a lot,” Whittemore said. The 50 acre terrain park opened this year, and has provided relief to enthusiasts who are unhappy with snow conditions, but Redinger, Whittemore and club members have decided to spend more time and money at Brundage Resort. Brundage Ski Resort is located two hours north of Boise. “Right now I am in the process of planning at least two or three trips to Brundage before the semester is over,” Redinger said. “Their snow is better up there. We have some-
one who has a cabin up there, so as long as we can get the right dates to go up and get the interest, we will be taking ten to twelve people up each time.” Redinger says despite the lack of snow both this year and last, Ski and Snowboard Club membership has risen. “We at least doubled, if not more, this year in membership compared to last year,” Redinger said. “Our Jackson Hole trip last year only had 18 members go, and this year we had 31."
Men’s club volleyball has presence on and off the court.
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8 Photo Courtesy Kevin McCullough
Boise State professors design monsters
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Zoe Colburn Staff Writer
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The Arbiter
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“It’s in the house,” Verne whispers, in terror, into the phone held tight in his hand. A green, web-footed monster jumps on the stage; splashing sounds come from the speakers. The arrival of the monster has been long anticipated with much of the first act of "A Nighttime Survival Guide" seemingly leading up to this point. It's the story of a preteen boy living in Arco, Idaho and his penpal Aki, a girl in Japan learning to survive the night and how to get rid of monsters that might be real. Three performers handle the limbs and head with rods connected to the puppet's appendages. They are dressed in black—meant to blend into the background, but too present to be ignored. Verne bows to the monster puppet—a Kappa— and it bows back. “Bow again, a little lower this time,” says Aki over the phone. He does. The monster bows again. They repeat the process once more and water, which gives him power, spills from a dip in the kappa’s head, leaving him comatose. A sense of relief waves over the audience. The kappa puppet, along with the two other puppets which make an appearance later in the play, an akiname and tsukumogami, are built in a style meant to emulate the traditional Japanese Bunraku. This type of puppet theater relies heav-
ily upon the performer handling the puppet. “People who do bunraku, they study all their lives just to do simple movement. It takes a lot of work and it’s physically really demanding. You have three people crowded around a puppet and they’re crawling all over the place,” said Theater Arts Professor Michael Baltzell, who designed and built the puppets. He based the puppets on monster designs by illustration and drawing professor Bill Carman. “Because it was Japanese-based in the story, we decided to try to embrace the bunraku style, the Japanese puppet theater, so there is anywhere from a single individual to up to three people manipulating
one puppet at one time,” Baltzell said. Creating the puppets was an involved process, and one which was different in many ways—partly due to the collaboration, Baltzell said, but also because the use of traditional Japanese monsters demanded a certain amount of adhesion to the traditional image. While Carman adapted the monsters to his vision, it was not the be-all-end-all of what the puppets had to look like. “What I didn’t want to do was describe the monsters too specifically,” Carman said. “Because I’ve been in situations where the art directors or editors want you to just execute their ideas, and no artist wants
Illustration Courtesy Bill Carmen
to do that.” Because Carman took this approach, it made the collaborative element of the puppets somewhat more intuitive. “None of it was a strict reproduction of any one part of the design,” Baltzell said. “So it all turned out sort of collaborative.” The puppets couldn’t be direct copies of any one part of the design; Carman made decisions in his designs based on the play and he didn’t want the exact traditional design primarily because the monsters were being seen by a western boy. Creating puppets, though, is more than just taking a design and bringing it into the 3-dimensional world. Professor Baltzell also had to consider all the details
of the puppets, from the material they were made of to how the monsters would move. “I started with the tsukumogami,” Baltzell said. “So I started with the watch, actually the first watch that comes out. And that I did research on how to do that manipulation. Because, you know, it wants to be mechanical because it’s a mechanical thing that’s come alive.” To get the mechanically organic feel of the movements, Baltzell researched robotic hands. “I found a couple of sources of how people were making sort of do-it-yourself robotic hands. And that was what it
See Monsters I page 6
Courtesy Boise Contemporary Theater
“A Nighttime Survival Guide” puppets were designed and created by Boise State Professors.
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