arts - The McKendree Review

4Mar

By Catalyst TeamNo Comments

Academics, Arts, Campus Events

Catalyst: Calling All Creatives!

By Catalyst Team Cover photo of Catalyst student editors (not pictured: Elizabeth Bocock) by Dr. Jenny Mueller. It’s that time of year again: the editors for Catalyst are looking for submissions! Catalyst is McKendree University's student-run arts and literature magazine that gives students a chance to have their work seen by the public. Every spring a small group of student editors compile short stories, poetry, art, and creative nonfiction from students like you! “The first version of the magazine appeared in print in 1991,” said Dr. Jenny Mueller, professor of English and faculty advisor to Catalyst. “It’s run continuously since then and has been a website since 2016.” The website format has allowed the editors to publish more student art than ever before. Scarlett ...

We Were Shining: McKendree Theatre Tells Story of Women Who Sued Radium Dial

28Feb

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News, Community Events, Entertainment

We Were Shining: McKendree Theatre Tells Story of Women Who Sued Radium Dial

By Madison Rohn, Lead Editor Photography by Michelle Magnussen “This isn’t a fairy tale, though it starts like one. It’s not a tragedy, though it ends like one.” This line begins the play These Shining Lives, which McKendree Theatre will perform from February 29th to March 3rd. The play, written by Melanie Marnich, tells the compelling true story of Catherine Wolfe Donohue, one of the thousands of women hired by the Radium Dial Company in Ottawa, Illinois, during the 1920s to paint watch faces with radium. As told in the play, Radium Dial ensured their watch painters that radium was safe, even though the company knew otherwise. After Catherine and her co-workers contracted radium poisoning, they sued the company. Catherine’s eventual legal victory changed worker safety laws in Am...

McKendree Theatre Puts Hilarious Spin on Classic Tale

1Nov

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News, Entertainment

McKendree Theatre Puts Hilarious Spin on Classic Tale

By Madison Rohn, Lead Editor Photos by Michelle Magnussen McKendree theatre’s fall play, Cinderella Waltz by Don Nigro, is a comedic and insightful retelling of the Cinderella fairy tale that will take the stage this weekend. The play breaks down the archetypes of the original fairy tale and shows them in a new way with plot twists and humor for adults. Cinderella Waltz focuses on Rosey Snow as she tries to make sense of her fairy tale world while putting up with her crazy stepmother, stepsisters, and father. All this happens as she encounters a prince, a troll, a possibly homicidal village idiot, and a fairy godmother who sings sailor songs. Left to right: Mrs. Snow (Marin Jalinsky), Regan (Denaysha Jackson), and Goneril (Madison Rohn) make up Rosey's stepfamily. The cas...

22Sep

By Megan MeloneNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News

Spirit of Mckendree Plays Quad Tunes

By Megan Melone, writer Photography by Grace Gross and Jonathan Zarr If you passed by the library on September 19, at about 2:45 p.m., you probably heard the Spirit of McKendree blasting “September” by Earth, Wind, and Fire. The band serenaded campus with a surprise pop-up performance behind the bearcat statue on Tuesday afternoon. Along with “September,” the band’s set list included “Take on Me” by a-ha, “Back in Black” by AC/DC, and many more. The band ended their performance with the McKendree fight song, which they also played later that day at the town hall meeting in the Hettenhausen Center for the Arts. The Spirit of McKendree ensemble performs at tailgate events and football games. They play a variety of student-selected music and feature student conductors. I interviewed...

McKendree Theatre Shines Starlight on Untold History

20Mar

By Madison RohnNo Comments

Arts, Campus Events, Campus News, Community Events

McKendree Theatre Shines Starlight on Untold History

McKendree theatre’s spring play, Silent Sky, tells the story of real-life astronomer Henrietta Leavitt. The play, written by Lauren Gunderson, focuses on Henrietta’s time working at Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s as one of their female “computers” – a person who did the math for (mostly male) astronomers – and her efforts to balance her relationships with her quest to understand the universe. Picture of Henrietta Leavitt retrieved from aavso.org. As the play highlights, in real life, Henrietta discovered over 2,000 Cepheid variable stars, which are stars that go through periods of brightness and dimness. Her biggest achievement was the discovery of how to calculate Cepheid stars’ distance based on their brightness cycles.1 This discovery made it possible to determine how far...