End-of-Semester Shows!

20 Apr 2018
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Thursday: Artistic Gnomies

Yale Ballroom Dance Team Presents: Spring Spectacular!

Featured Gnomies: Rich Baker ’18, Kat Tan ‘18

Yale Ballrom Dance Team Presents: Spring Spectacular, their annual Spring Show. Elegant waltzes, sexy sambas, and jumping jives – come join them for the best partner dancing at Yale. Featuring the music of artists like Beyoncé, Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, Elvis, and Queen, and selections from Greatest Showman, Moulin Rogue, and Legend of Zelda!

See them perform: April 21 at 6:30pm and 9:30pm in the Off-Broadway Theater

The Taming of the Shrew

Featured Gnomies: Anelisa Fergus ‘19, Lydia Buonomano ‘20, ECR Chen ’20, Jack McAuliffe ’20, Soledad Tejada ‘20, Sarah Young ’20

“I see a woman may be made a fool If she had not a spirit to resist”  But what happens when a man makes it his mission to break–or tame–that spirit? Katherine Minola lives in a world controlled by men. Married off by a father desperate to preserve his family’s reputation and open his younger, sweeter daughter Bianca up to the possibility of marriage, Kate finds herself subject to the will of a husband bent on taming her by any means. And tame her Petruchio does, beating, starving, gaslighting, and mocking Kate until she obeys his every whim. The production will explore the tragedy of Shakespeare’s famous battle of the sexes, asking how and if a woman can be expected to live in an environment as suffocating as Kate’s.

See them perform: April 20 and 21 at 8:00pm and April 21 at 2:00pm in the Morse/Stiles Crescent.

Contemporaries by Erica Wachs

Featured Gnomies: Erin Dowling ’20, Eren Kafadar ‘20, Emma Levine ’20, Tarek Ziad ‘20

Contemporaries follows four professors–Sarah, Jill, Merve, and Katherine–writing to get tenure, who fall in love with Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, and find themselves within her characters. As they struggle to survive in academia, they must deal with the consequences of the charade they play, blurring the lines between their realities and fiction. On female friendship, sexism in academia, motherhood, spaghetti-cooking, and dog-sitting (those who read the event description for the staged reading weren’t expecting those last two, were they?)

See them perform: April 20 and 21 at 8:00pm and April 21 at 2:00pm in the Saybrook Underbrook.

The Duke’s Men of Yale present: SpongeBob JamPants!

Featured Gnomies: Francis Kigawa ’21, Noah Parnes ‘21

Arrrrre you ready kids??? The Duke’s Men are getting into some nautical nonsense, bringing you bubbly tunes and melodies (lotsa new arrangements, baby!!!)—and NONE of Squidward’s clarinet. If you love fiber, dip(s), money, pineapples, goop, Shades of Yale, Stefani Germanotta, wumbology (the study of wumbo), Danny Germino-Watnick in drag, Nathan Murphy in drag, The Gradient, jazz, brackets, striped sweaters, chocolate with nuts, or the irresistible taste of Krabby Patties (and that’s a given), then drop on the deck and flop like a fish, because YOU’RE READY for Doox Jam!

See them perform: April 20 at 8:30pm in Sudler Hall (Room 201 in William L. Harkness Hall, 100 Wall St). Tickets are free with a Yale ID!

Psychopsychotic

Featured Gnomies: Epongue Ekille ’21, Anna Gumberg ‘21

Something is amiss at Yale University. Female students are disappearing at alarming rates, only to be later found stuffed in discount mini-fridges and hacked to pieces. Meanwhile, a new freshman is pretty sure there’s something up with the guy she met at Woads last night – surely there’s no chance that he’s a misogynistic murderer with a sharp-tongued Yale senior held captive in his closet, right? Come make radical feminist theatre with them.

See them perform: April 20 and 21 at 8:00pm in the Nick Chapel Theater.

Magevet on the Roof: A Fiddler 25th Anniversary Jam

Featured Gnomie: Ed Gelernt ‘20

Tradition, tradition!
Join Magevet for their 25th Anniversary Concert, Fiddler-style! They hope to see you there to celebrate 25 years of Jewish music with them and to munch on delicious kosher snacks!

See them perform: April 22 at 6:00pm in the Slifka Center

Lux Improvitas

Featured Gnomie: Tully Goldrick ‘21

Lux Improvitas is taking their talents to local coffee shop, Koffee? See them perform in the back room.

See them perform: April 21 at 8:00pm in Koffee?

Tybalt and Mercutio Are Dead

Featured Gnomie: Tully Goldrick ‘21

Are you concerned that Romeo and Juliet is too straight? Do you ever wonder why there’s so much sexual tension in Act 3 Scene 1? Do you wish Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was gayer? You’ve come to the right place.
Swords! Shakespeare! Queer romance! Tybalt and Mercutio Are Dead, a new play by Lulu Klebanoff, explores the titular characters’ hidden romance as it unfolds offstage during Romeo and Juliet. On the outskirts of the most iconic love story of all time, Tybalt and Mercutio grapple with a love so potent and so forbidden it can only end in a tragic duel. They fence. They flirt. They rebel against traditional narratives of love, tragedy, and queerness. And along the way, they find their place in a play that wants them dead.

See them perform: April 20 and 21 at 8:00pm and April 21 at 1:00pm in the Hopper Cabaret.

 

 

Acting and Dancing and Singing, Oh My!

13 Apr 2018
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Thursday: Artistic Gnomies

Pitches Jam 2018: Harry Pitches & the Sorcerer’s Tones

Featured Gnomies: Rachel Regan ‘18, Anisa Iqbal ‘19, Aditi Kodipady ‘20

come experience the ~magic~ of music
their ~sonorus~ voices will
~lumos~ your evening
~alohomora~ your heart
~wingardium leviosa~ your soul
yer in pitches harry

See them perform: Saturday, April 14 at 8:30p in the Stiles Dining Hall

RB Presents: Impulse

Featured Gnomies: Kacey Jezewski ‘18, Allie Bensinger ‘20, Kesi Wilson ‘21

Come check out Rhythmic Blue, Yale’s first and only hip hop and contemporary dance group, at our Spring 2018 semester show: Impulse. You surely won’t want to miss this epic evening adventure.

See them perform: April 12th at 6:30pm, April 14th at 5:00pm and 8:00pm in the Off-Broadway Theater

Mother Courage and her Children: A Senior Project in Theater Studies for Erin Krebs

Featured Gnomies: Tarek Ziad ‘20, Samantha White ‘21

In life the pathos of war, the horror of war, its death and ruin are as close to hell as we can imagine. In theater, the depiction of war is shaped into something that seems to mean. But what does that mean? Is it the sheer vitality of live actors connecting with live audiences? How do irony, spectacle, comedy, poetry, and music interweave with, intensify, and undercut pathos to hold the audience? And we’ll consider another another question central to Brecht’s theory and practice: What is political theater, and how does it – or doesn’t it – work?

See them perform: April 12, 13, 14 at 8:00pm and April 14 at 2:00pm in the Whitney Theater

Bunny, Godmother of Title IX

Featured Gnomie: Nurit Chinn ‘20

One woman. One hour. 50 Years of History. Come see Rora Brodwin tell the story of her great aunt Bunny – who just so happens to be the Godmother of Title IX.

See them perform: April 12, 13, 14 at 8:00pm in the Hopper Cabaret

Lux Improvitas presents: “Lux Gets Lit (the tech show)”

Featured Gnomie: Tully Goldbrick ‘21

LUX! 💡 SOUND! 🔉 MORE LUX!!! 👭👬
Ever wonder what would happen if you put a handful of improvisers onstage and play with some special effects???
FIND OUT this Friday night at 8pm in the JE Theater! Join them for a night of laughter that will ~light~ up your life. ✨

See them perform: April 13 at 8:00pm in the JE Theater

Carlos Cohen ’19: a “GOAT” of a gnomie

11 Apr 2018
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Posts! / Tuesday: A Gnotable Gnomie!

Carlos Cohen is a junior studying political science.  And he is this week’s gnotable gnomie, nominated not by this DPort employee but by members of the college community.  According to his nominator, Carlos is “really just the GOAT. I really respect his commitment to serving our country as an officer in the United States Marine Corps and having him back on campus this semester (and having class with him) is really cool. I love our conversations and I think he really deserves the honor of this award! Thanks for always being you, Carlos!”

Politics at the Center of Davenport Teas

10 Apr 2018
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Friday: What's Going On in Dport / Posts! / Uncategorized

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Tea & Dinner with Reihan Salam

On Monday, Davenport welcomed Reihan Salam, executive editor of the National Review and a columnist for Slate, to discuss “Color, Class, and the Conservative Future.” Some of the topics he covered included immigration, social security, climate change, and multi-generational politics.

“I thought he was articulate and thoughtful. He definitely knew how to strike a conciliatory tone on these contentious issues. My only small criticism is that he was too vague. For example, he never mentioned Trump once which is remarkable.” — Grant Richardson ’19

“It was a pleasure to sit down in conversation with someone so well-versed in political philosophy, contemporary issues, and political history. In a time of extreme political polarization, it was interesting to hear Mr. Salam’s well-defended positions about how conservatives can continue to prosper in America, as well as his opinions on identity politics and the intrinsically emotional nature of politics.” — Chloe Heller ’21

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Fellows Dinner & Talk with Amy Chua

On Wednesday night, fellows, graduate students, and seniors in the college attended the last Fellows Dinner of the year. The dinner was followed by a talk by Professor Amy Chua, the original Tiger Mother and the John M. Duff, Jr. Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Amy presented on her much-discussed new book, POLITICAL TRIBES: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations.  She began her talk by describing three different case studies (Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq) that provided examples of US foreign policy mistakes. She discussed that at the root of these mistakes lay US blindness to group identities.

The second half of her talk focused on the ways in which group identities are now shaping American politics. She believes there are two reasons for this: (1) a demographic shift that has resulted in every group feeling threatened and (2) the emergence of a market dominant minority: coastal elites. She says that class has split the white majority. She describes the solution to dealing with group identities as a super group, an overarching collective identity that doesn’t suppress subgroup identities. For the full Yale Daily news article, click here.

Karen Narasaki: Civil and Human Rights Leader and Davenport Alum

9 Apr 2018
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Monday: Alums / Posts!

This week, our featured alum is Karen Narasaki, class of 1980!

Having been influenced as a child by the impact of racial covenants on her family, Narasaki’s passion for civil rights has been evident in her lifelong work as a civil rights leader, human rights activist, and independent consultant.

After graduating from Yale College magna cum laude, Narasaki received a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. Narasaki then moved from her attorney position at Perkins Cole to serve as the Washington Representative for the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Later, under her leadership as president and executive director, Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) helped to provide African American, Latino, Native American, and other communities with research, training, and education on discrimination in the voting system.

Narasaki also serves leadership roles in a variety of civil rights coalitions, such as serving as vice chair to the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, vice president of the Coalition for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, and as chair of the Rights Working Group. Narasaki also serves to promote adult literacy as a member of the National Commission on Adult Literacy.

After advising President Bill Clinton on civil rights issues, Narasaki became a member of the Advisory Committee on Diversity for Communications in the Digital Age of FCC. In 2014, Narasaki was appointed as a Commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights by President Barack Obama, and continues her work in impacting positive and integral change for civil and immigrant rights.

6 Apr 2018
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Thursday: Artistic Gnomies

New Blue Presents: The Adventures of Jamcy Drew
Gnomies: Anelisa Fergus ’19, Amrita Iyer ’20

Calling all amateur sleuths! Come join The New Blue as they solve the mystery of their 49th annual Spring Jam: The Adventures of Jamcy Drew! Don’t forget your check list and magnifying glass!

See them perform: Friday at 8:00pm in Center Church on the Green

Ménage à Trois
Gnomie: Charlie Lee ’20

Bear witness to Yale’s first ever coast-to-coast comedy ménage à trois. Join The Fifth Humour and Red Hot Poker as they perform alongside Fourth Quarter All-Stars, a sketch comedy group from USC! Whether you speak the language of comedy, the language of love, or the language of French, you’re sure to have a great time!

See them perform: Friday at 8:00pm in the Hopper Cabaret

Quake
Gnomie: Noah Parnes ’21

In Melanie Marnich’s play Quake, time and emotion pass in a warped instant. Lucy crosses state lines and fault lines, exploring the geography of the human heart on a quest for the ‘big love’. Her journey is intertwined with that of an astrophysicist turned serial killer. This play evokes questions about self-exploration, toxic masculinity, sexuality, intimacy, platonic relationships, and the dangers of idyllic love.

See them perform: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday at 8:00pm in the Yale Repertory Theater

 

 

Davenport Seniors Display a Wide Range of Interests in their Mellon Forums

5 Apr 2018
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Friday: What's Going On in Dport / Posts! / Uncategorized

Mellon Forum: Cara Washington & Kyle Deakins

Davenport seniors Cara Washington and Kyle Deakins presented on their senior projects last week. Cara, a Film & Media Studies major, applied aspects of black film theory to the TV shows Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and Insecure. She fielded questions of racial representation as a solution to TV’s various structural problems and about how well those problems can be solved within a market where producers have to attract subscribers and advertisers. Kyle, a Political Science major, discussed voting behavior in Appalachia. He himself he grew up in rural Pennsylvania. He explained to what extent the “culture explains it better than class” idea is correct and how that idea is getting more correct in the Trump era. He fielded questions about what the Democrats did to lose rural areas and how to maybe get them back.

Mellon Forum: Alex Thomas and Eva Branson

Davenport seniors Alex Thomas and Eva Branson presented at this week’s Mellon Forum. Alex Thomas, an Astrophysics major, taught us a bit of astronomy and walked us through his thesis research, which he started this past summer with Dr. Gallagher. He has been researching his hypothesis that Nereid and Triton, two of Neptune’s moons, formed by a Pluto-like system colliding with Neptune. To explore this hypothesis, he has used Fortran to produce 3-D orbit trajectories models. He will attend Notre Dame next year for a Ph.D. program in physics, during which he will continue his research in astrophysics. He hopes to make the subject he loves so much more accessible to people through teaching. Eva Branson, a History major, discussed her thesis which looks into the trial of Margaret Garner. Margaret Garner was slave whose story inspired Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved. Her story brings up dark questions about the horrors of slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, and sexual violence. Eva’s talk centered around the concept of being forgotten, a theme in Beloved and an important concept in Garner’s story as her trial was forgotten for over 100 years.