Newsmakers

Gaby Hoffmann '04 lived in the famous Chelsea Hotel in New York City as a child, setting the stage for her acting career.

Bardians Liza Birnbaum '10, Molly Schaeffer '10, and Paul Cavanagh '11 started a new literary journal in Portland, Oregon, in memory of Bill Cranshaw '10, their friend who passed away after graduation.

Mohammed Adawulai came to Simon's Rock from Ghana in 2005 as an exchange student. This May, he graduated magna cum laude, sharing the commencement stage with Ben Bernanke, and calling attention to the wealth gap between nations in the global north and south.

Bard artist, alumnus, and longtime faculty member Harvey Fite crafted the massive Opus 40 sculpture park, "one of the most extraordinary pieces of sculpture ever created by a single man."

A Rite opens this weekend at the Fisher Center. Co-creators Anne Bogart '74 and Janet Wong discuss the innovative dance-theater piece.

Bard Conservatory Vocal Arts Program graduate Julia Bullock receives a rave review for her "full-voiced, stunningly paced account of 'Somewhere,'" in the San Francisco Symphony's concert performance of West Side Story.

Bard lands at number 15 on the Forbes list of top 50 colleges for return on investment.

Bard alumnus Ben Rubenstein '04 MAT '06, a member of the mathematics faculty at BHSEC Manhattan, has received a 2013 Blackboard Teaching Award. Presented by Manhattan Media, the United Federation of Teachers, Columbia Teachers College, and the New School, the Blackboard Awards honor outstanding educators from all grade levels and education communities.

The New York Times calls Corps Exquis, by Daniel Wohl '03, a "deliciously lovely new album." Bard percussion faculty members, who compose the group So Percussion, perform on the album.

Sara Wintz's first full-length collection of poetry, Walking Across A Field We Are Focused On At This Time Now, "takes the twentieth century and gives it a new haircut," writes Claire Wilcox.

Writer Sherman Yellen '53 pens "Screenplay for a 60th Wedding Anniversary" for his wife, designer Joan Yellen '55.

Several Bard alumni from the mid-90s have reunited Challenge of the Future, the band they started at Bard, for concerts and recordings to benefit the daughter of their late classmate Sebastian Quezada '96. Band members include Nick Zinner '96, Aaron Diskin '95, Mike Guy '96, Seth Prouty '96, and Simon Marcus.

Bard alumnus Adam Goldman '08, creator of the hit Web TV series The Outs, gives the New York Times a tour of his Brooklyn home.

Bard alumnus Jordan Bridges '96 continues a family legacy of acting, following in the footsteps of his father Beau Bridges, grandfather Lloyd “Sea Hunt” Bridges, and uncle Jeff Bridges (of Big Lebowski fame).

Actor, comedian, and Bard alumnus Chevy Chase '68 and his wife, Jayni, will be in Woodstock this weekend to be recognized by the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental organization and to raise funds for the Opus 40 sculpture park and museum.

Bard Graduate Center alumna and MFA Boston fashion arts curator Michelle Tolini Finamore Ph.D. '10 explores the intersection of couture and cooking in a recent event at the museum, using her own personal collection of cookbooks by fashion designers.

Deirdre Faughey '00 interviews Bard Prison Initiative director Max Kenner '01, who founded BPI while still an undergraduate at Bard.

in the Bardian

Only 10 playwrights—out of nearly 600—have been accepted into the Public Theater’s prestigious 2013 Emerging Writers Group (EWG), a selective program created to nurture the work of new playwrights. Manuel Borras Oliveras ’08 is one of them. “Being accepted into the program was one of the most satisfying experiences, in terms of being acknowledged for my writing,” says Oliveras, who takes nothing for granted, having come to playwriting via an unconventional route: while incarcerated, as a student in the Bard Prison Initiative.

With EWG, Oliveras has attended writing retreats; participated in “speed-dating sessions” with agents, directors, and actors; and met established playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks (Venus; Topdog/Underdog) and David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly). “It’s the environment you want to be in,” says Oliveras. “It’s school for me. I tackle it like I tackled Bard College, soaking up as much knowledge and education as I can.”

Oliveras grew up in the Bronx. Conditions in his neighborhood were harsh. He made it to 11th grade before he dropped out of school. At 17, Oliveras ended up in prison. “My life drastically turned at that point. I did not really know anything about my future, other than the fact that I was going to do a lot of time,” he says.

Awaiting sentencing in the city’s detention center, Oliveras’s head raced. He realized that his only option was to make the most of his time—17 years. Once in prison, he immediately enrolled in a GED class and threw himself into the schoolwork. “I felt like I could redeem myself a little bit, instead of only bringing tears to my mother’s and family’s eyes,” he says. “When I obtained my GED, it felt monumental. I knew then that I wanted to pursue education as far as possible.”

Oliveras began applying to college-in-prison programs. Unfortunately, the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act repealed federal Pell Grant funding for incarcerated students. Within months, New York State’s thriving network of postsecondary correctional higher education programs collapsed. So Oliveras began a journey of voracious independent study through books in prison libraries. “I was reading philosophy, history; I read a lot about my culture. I read Puerto Rican writers: Miguel Piñero and Julia de Burgos. My mind started expanding. I read about Pedro Albizu Campos, Che Guevara, the Black Panthers, and other influential people who had been through struggles like me.” He built friendships with older prisoners who were motivated to make the most of their time—starting and running community and educational programs on the inside.

When he was moved to Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, Oliveras enrolled in a theology program for college credit run by Mercy College. After he completed the program, he had no further opportunities for higher education until being transferred to Woodbourne Correctional Facility. “At Woodbourne, I saw a flyer for the Bard College program [the Bard Prison Initiative]. I immediately signed up. I wrote an entrance essay. Close to 200 guys applied. I thought, ‘Thank God I went through the theology program, because it taught me how to structure an essay.’ My essay got me an interview with Max Kenner ’01 [BPI executive director] and Daniel Karpowitz [BPI director of policy and academics, and lecturer in law and the humanities]. Only 11 of us were chosen. I felt so honored,” says Oliveras. “Bard came in at a time when other programs were leaving. I’m eternally grateful to Bard.”

Oliveras appreciates the quality of his Bard education, especially the focus on exploring ideas through writing. “It opened up my worldview,” he says. “It introduced me to writers like John Dewey, Plato, Shakespeare. I met professors who had written books, and I could sit down and talk to them. At those moments I felt totally free.” He was awarded an associate’s degree in 2006 and a bachelor’s degree in 2008.

During this period, Oliveras found himself taking writing very seriously. He cofounded Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Woodbourne, a program that uses theater as a transformative tool, and applied what he was learning at Bard to his drama projects. “I kept reading plays and seeing what others had done,” he remembers. “I mimicked what they wrote, then I eventually started telling my own unique story.” He was the lead writer for Starting Over, a group-written play that was performed at Woodbourne and Sing Sing, and is being turned into a film as well as slated for production in New York City. Through RTA, Oliveras met Arin Arbus, associate artistic director of Theater for a New Audience in New York City. She read his work and encouraged him to submit it to theaters on the outside. Arbus showed a writing sample—“Dear Friend,” which is a letter to a man being incarcerated for the first time—to Mark Plesent, producing artistic director of the Working Theater in New York City; based on that, Plesent commissioned Oliveras’s full-length play, Song to a Child Like Me. The play’s first public reading, attended by his sister and other family members, was held at the Working Theater while Oliveras was still on the inside.

In September 2010, Oliveras was released. Balancing a full-time job as a housing advocate for Common Ground (a nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness in New York City), he still writes every day. “In prison, I led a monastic life fully immersed in writing and studies. Out here, I need to work, pay bills, cook,” he says. “I had to relearn all this. It takes time. But I separate at least two hours a day to write. Never neglect your writing, or the work suffers.”

EWG provides playwrights with a stipend, master classes with established playwrights, a biweekly writers’ group led by members of the Public’s Literary Department, opportunities to attend rehearsals and productions at the Public, tickets to shows at other theaters, artistic and professional support, and at least one public reading of their work. Oliveras marvels at meeting with playwrights he once read in A-block. He’s aiming for a full production of one of his plays, and hopes to be able to write full time. “It takes a lot of courage sometimes, using what I’ve learned,” he says emphatically. “There were moments that were really tough. The change wasn’t overnight. It took a lot of things. I had to grow up to be a man in prison."

Read the spring 2013 issue of the Bardian:

Since graduating from the Bard Prison Initiative, the writing career of Manuel Borras Oliveras ’08 has blossomed. He has been accepted to the Public Theater's prestigious 2013 Emerging Writers Group, a selective program created to nurture the work of new playwrights. Of his Bard education behind bars, Oliveras says, “It opened up my worldview. It introduced me to writers like John Dewey, Plato, Shakespeare. I met professors who had written books, and I could sit down and talk to them. At those moments I felt totally free.”

Mentored by CCS Bard director Tom Eccles, Gabi Ngcobo M.A. '10 has become the first curatorial fellow of POOL, a new, Zurich-based program to develop and encourage emerging curatorial talent. She will curate their first exhibit this summer.

Diplomat, lawyer, and writer Ronan Farrow '04 examines the Benghazi hearings. "Congress isn't just wasting America's time—it's squandering a chance to save lives in the future."

Depending on one’s viewpoint, it would seem either incongruous or quite likely that twins would study the same subjects at the same college. But for Alina and Janeta Marinova ’06, a double major in economics and mathematics at Bard was simply something both of them wanted to pursue. Here, they talk about their time at Bard and where their careers have taken them since then.

Fashion photographer, designer, and Bard alumnus Tapu Javeri speaks with Pakistan's Friday Times about national style, working with models under water, and photographing Aung San Suu Kyi.

Macalester College professor and Bard alumna Karen Saxe '82 has been named a Congressional fellow of the American Mathematical Society and elected as second vice president of the Mathematics Association of America.

The Bard SummerScape festival opens on Saturday, July 6 at 8pm, with A Rite, a major new dance-theater piece by the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company and SITI Company. Co-commissioned by SummerScape and created by Bill T. Jones and Anne Bogart '74, two titans of American performing arts, A Rite commemorates the centenary of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring and its notorious, game-changing Paris premiere.

A playground where Adam Yauch '86 played as a child has been renamed in his honor. The Beastie Boys member known as MCA died last year after a battle with cancer.

The New York Times praised Julia Bullock's "rosy, agile voice" as Vixen in a production of "The Cunning Little Vixen" at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater in New York City.

New York–based artist John Jurayj's exhibition What's Left is on view at the Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles through May 25.

Alumnus and ICP-Bard faculty member Joshua Lutz '97, MFA '05 (ICP) blends fact and fiction in his new photography book and solo show Hesitating Beauty.

Photographer and Bard alumnus Paul Salveson '06 has won the National Media Museum's 2013 First Book Award for his collection Between the Shell.

Valerie Doescher '11 was an all-star activist for global human rights while a student at Bard. She is the recipient of the Cooky Heiferman Signet Award and the Clinton R. and Harriette M. Jones Award from the College. These days her work continues as a programs associate at the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

Alexis Gambis '03 will be shooting key scenes for his film The Fly Room at Bard in June. Gambis is seeking extras and actors for speaking roles. Auditions will be held on April 25 and 26.

Four Bard alumni/ae have been recognized by the Fulbright Commission and the Center for Arabic Study Abroad (CASA) for the 2013–2014 award year. Matthew Christian '11 (Simons Rock '07) has won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Senegal. Amith Gupta '12 and Amber Winick BGC '12 have been named as alternates for research awards to Jordan and Hungary, respectively. Bardian Ada Petiwala '12 has won a language fellowship from CASA for the 2013–2014 academic year. She will spend the year in Cairo, where she will hone her language skills and continue her study of Middle Eastern politics and culture.

Bard alumnus Nsikan Akpan '06 made the jump from biomedical research to science journalism, and gives advice to his fellow science writers on how to do the same.

Miss Lovely, a film directed by Ashim Ahluwalia '95, won the award for best feature at Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.

Two graduates of the Bard MFA program, Carrie Moyer MFA '02 in Painting and Chris Sollars MFA '07 in Sculpture, have been announced as 2013 Guggenheim Fellows.

In a career spanning five decades, Bard alumnus Steve Schapiro '55 has made his mark as a celebrity and documentary photographer, particularly known for his many iconic portraits of musicians, actors, and artists in the 1960s and 1970s.

Bard alumnus Richard Frank '74 is a Harvard economics professor and adviser to President Obama on healthcare reform.

The celebration on April 14 will include an open house with chamber music performances, followed by a celebration in the performance hall at 4 p.m., with Conservatory director Robert Martin; musical performances by students of the Conservatory and Bard’s Music Program; a reading by acclaimed poet Robert Kelly, Asher B. Edelman Professor of Literature; and remarks by László Z. Bitó ’60 and Bard College president Leon Botstein.

Elyse Foladare '12 got involved in AmeriCorps while studying at Bard. These days she's working with the organization as a watershed ambassador, taking care of the habitat in her native New Jersey.

Acclaimed dancer and choreographer Arthur Aviles '87 reprises the role created for him 25 years ago, performing D-Man in the Waters on March 30 and April 5 at the Joyce Theater in New York City.

Lindsey Shute CEP '07 participated in a recent Tedx Manhattan talk titled "Changing the Way We Eat," in which she talks about farming as a career path for young people. (Her segment begins at minute 26.)

Bard alumna and Oberlin professor Julia Christensen '00 has received a prestigious Creative Capital grant to build DIY video projectors out of reclaimed electronic waste.

Bard College and Simon's Rock alumnus Ronan Farrow has been awarded a 21st Century Leadership Award from the National Committee on American Foreign Policy.

Hesitating Beauty, a new book of photography by Joshua Lutz '97, MFA '05 (ICP), is a meditation on his mother's mental illness. His work will be on display at New York’s ClampArt Gallery from April 11th to May 18th.

Roberta Smith for the New York Times calls the paintings of recent Bard graduate Lucy Dodd MFA '12 "as wry as they are beautiful."