Connecticut College Digital Commons @ Connecticut College Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Alumni News Archives Spring 1983 Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1983 Connecticut College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews Recommended Citation Connecticut College, "Connecticut College Alumni Magazine, Spring 1983" (1983). Alumni News. 226. https://digitalcommons.conncoll.edu/alumnews/226 This Magazine is brought to you for free and open access by the Linda Lear Center for Special Collections & Archives at Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Alumni News by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ Connecticut College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author. I'"------~---------- r 1 L j o . r 1 0 J Editorial Board: Vivian Segall '73, Editor (13 New London, CT, four times a year in Winter, Main Street, Noank, CT 06340) / Katherine Faigle '63, Directors / Committee Chai~me~: Spring, Summer, Fall. Second-class postage Gould '8 J/ Sarah Hargrove Harris '57 / Jeanne Caldwell Raudenbush '69 (Nominating) paid at New London, CT 06320. Send form Wayne Swanson Marilyn Ellman Frankel '64 / Mary Ann Garvin Seigel '66 (Alumni Giving) I 3579 to Sykes Alumni Center, Connecticut / Roberta Finley '71, Class Notes Editor / / Carole A. Filice '74 (Clubs) / Lee White College, New London, CT 06320. CASE Graham '61 (Classes and Finance) / Warren Elizabeth Damerel Gongaware '26, Assistant member. Editor / Helene Zimmer Loew '57 and Louise Erickson '74 (Programs) / David V. Ives '80 Alumni Association Executive Board: Stevenson Andersen '41, ex officio (Undergraduate/Young Alumni Relatio.lls I Helene Zimmer Loew '57, President / Mary Louise Stevenson Andersen '41 (Executive The Connecticut College Alumni Magazine Ann Garvin Siegel '66, Vice President / (USPS 129-140). Official publication of the Director) and Vivian Segall '73 (Alumni Warren Erickson '74, Secretary / Lee White Connecticut College Alumni Association. All Magazine Editor), ex officio. Graham '61, Treasurer / Joann Walton publication rights reserved. Contents reprinted Above, Adrienne Hawkins, MFA '76, Leavenworth '56, Jane Muddle Funkhouser '53 only by permission of the editor. Published by dances in the East Studio. and Edith Gaberman Sudarsky '43, Alumni Communications to any of the above may be the Connecticut College Alumni Association at Trustees. Sykes Alumni Center, Connecticut College, addressed in care of the Alumni Office, George F. Hulme '77 and Susan Bohman Connecticut College, New London, CT 06320. The Connecticut College Alumnl Magazine Volume 60, No.3, Spring 1983 Page 2 Page 12 Page 18 Morris Carnovsky An Attitude Dance for Joy at Connecticut Toward Life By Vivian Segall '73 By Joanne Furtak '84 By Marilyn J. Comrie '74 Celebrating a decade of dance Studying Advanced Shakespearean The extraordinary accomplish- at Connecticut. Acting with one of the greatest ments of Willa T. Schuster, who Shakespearean actors of our time. believes there's an answer to every Page 20 problem. Round & About Jorge Luis Borges comes to Con- necticut. Scientists from Pfizer teach a seminar. The Web makes theater history. Eclipse weekend, and more. Page 23 Books Professor Jane Torrey reviews The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. Page 8 Page 24 Kevin Wade's Key Exchange Class Notes By Roldah Northup Cameron '51 And more, including a computer- Mr. Wade says, "God Bless Us assisted look at the eighteenth All, it should happen to everyone." century. Page 15 Preserve and Protect By Mari Smultea '85 Susannah Johnson Convery logged over 10,000 hours as a Deputy District Attorney. There are very few cases she doesn't win. MORRIS CAR NOVSKY AT CONNECTICUT THE GIFTED ACTOR IS ALSO A GIFTED TEACHER HERE THE MAN WHO PLAYEO LEAR, PROSPERO AND SHYLOCK IS KNOWN AS "MORRIS, BY JOANNE FURTAK '84 Morris Carnovsky, a Shakespearean actor it from there, so impressing him at a post- he speaks as frequently of his students as he of national renown, teaches his craft at performance party that he readily agreed to does of days gone by. Although he has the Connecticut College on Tuesdays and Professor Peter Seng's suggestion that Mr. presence and the poise of a leading man, it Thursdays. On this particular Thursday he Carnovsky come to teach at Connecticut is the tools of the character actor that one has agreed, albeit reluctantly, to an inter- College. Professors from the English and notices-the voice, the hands, even the eye- view before his class in Advanced Shake- the theater departments joined forces to brows are expressive. It's been 20 years spearean Acting. We meet in Palmer 202- secure a Mellon Foundation grant, and in since a New York Times theater critic said a dark room, barren but for a cluster of 1978 Mr. Carnovsky became a visiting pro- "his handling of Lear's last moments as he metal folding chairs, and a far cry from the fessor of theater. kneels over Cordelia's limp body has the customary plush velvet chairs of the theater. No one is more aware of how fortunate other-worldly purity of a man arrived at What is this man, who has acted with Connecticut College is to have him than ultimate, sorrowing self-knowledge." Now stars ranging from Katharine Hepburn to Linda Herr, the chairman of the theater 84 years old, Mr. Carnovsky admits that he Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg, doing at department. She uses words like "gift" and sometimes tires of the task before him. Connecticut College? Why is a recently "treasure" to describe the different facets of "Y ou know, one of the most demanding elected member of the Theatre Hall of Mr. Carnovsky's contribution to Connec- things about it is the repetition of funda- Fame teaching acting at a small liberal arts ticut College. "First of all, because he was a mental principles. You pronounce them college, whose theater department has only member of the Group," she begins, refer- once and you think that's the end of it, two full-time faculty members? Mr. Car- ring to the famous production company of there it is like the Parthenon," Mr. Car- novsky first came to Connecticut College which Mr. Carnovsky was a co-founder novsky explains in his deep, rich voice, in the spring of 1977, when the English and the senior member, "just in terms of his chuckling at the absurdity of the analogy. department sponsored a Shakespeare fes- historical presence, that whole fund of "But it goes on and on, and you repeat and tival in which he starred. The students took knowledge is irreplaceable. He also brings repeat, and at times you're saying the same with him an absolute dedication to acting thing again and again." Scarcely has he Shakespeare and the classics. In addition, articulated this monotony, however, when Joanne Furtak '84, an English major from he brings to our upper-level acting students he launches eagerly into a discourse on Hamden, Connecticut, has been chosen as a richness and complexity of analytical what is clearly the focus and most often an intern with the Alumni Magazinefor the skills. I would say there is a fourth level- repeated part of his acting p.hilosophy. 1983-84 academic year. Her profile of his indomitable spirit, his fondness and "I reduced the whole of Stanislavsky's Morris Carnovsky was originaJJyan assign- appreciation for the students." She pauses approach and method to a simple state- mentfor Journalism 200, a magazine writ- here, but one gets the impression Linda ment of each moment, which consists of ing course taught by Vivian SegaJJ 73, edi- Herr could continue praising Mr. Carnov- three parts: the object, the self, and the tor of the Alumni Magazine. sky indefinitely. action." Mr. Carnovsky considers this his AI left, Morris Carnovsk y as Shylock at Praising himself is not Mr. Carnovsky's personal contribution to Method Acting, a the Strarford Shakespeare Theatre. style. While we sit in the empty classroom, technique developed by the Russian actor 3 and teacher Constantin Stanislavsky. "The Method" takes an internal, realistic ap- MORRIS CARNOVSKY proach to acting, and has spawned such stars as Jane Fonda, Robert DeNiro, and Dustin Hoffman. ON ACTING Though "The Method" is now the most pervasive influence in acting, Mr. Carnov- sky was witness to and a central figure in its How does an actor transform him- "For to play Shakespeare is to be in development in the 19205 and 30s. He self?MorrisCarnovsky's talents as trouble from the start. It isto be remembers vividly his introduction to an actor are legendary, and he is snared in a web of extraordinary Shakespeare, and the completely differ,ent also an eloquent analyst of the complexity, involving not only the approach actors then took to the claSSICS. actors art. Mr. Carnovsky probed toughest and tenderest fibres of "I was asked by John Houseman to do a the mystical amalgam between the play's existence, but our own part in King John. I played Salisbury. Of actor and character in a talk at measure of our Selves,in the course, I was dying to do Shakespeare, but Connecticut College's Summer- degree to which we can and will nobody had ever asked me to." scene several years ago. These allow our being to interpenetrate "I went to the first rehearsal, and I sat excerpts are from his talk, entitled that of the play. out in the lobby listening to what was going Collision. Thisis possibly true of all plovs, on. I was wondering what style, what kind but eminently of Shakespeare's. of a response I would bring to the material, "What I'd like to advocate here isa The reality that pervades his world and I heard them in the room, carrying on different kind of scholarship, the is compounded of all the known in that old-fashioned way I couldn't bear," Actors scholarship, which ismuch elements of life, all its conflicting he raises his voice, mimicking the preten- more difficult to nail down, opposites-foolish and wise, shal- tious, artificial style.