The USG Performing Arts Committee hosted a night of intercultural performances.
Alumni Park, nestled in the center of campus between Doheny Memorial Library and Bovard Auditorium, was home to a spectacular breadth of student expression, faculty insights, song, lights and dance Friday evening.
“Artscape: Arts Around The World,” a new event from the Undergraduate Student Government’s Performing Arts Committee in special collaboration with Visions and Voices, the Speakers Committee, Thornton School of Music, Kaufman School of Dance, the School of Dramatic Arts, the School of Cinematic Arts and six other organizations aimed high with the goal of representing “arts around the world.”
The night began with a keynote panel delivered by Stevie Johnson, an assistant professor of theater practice in performance, and Luciana Souza, an adjunct associate professor of jazz studies, titled “Storytelling Across Mediums: Art as an Universal Language.”
“Be patient with the craft that you’re learning … which means trust the process,” Souza said. “A lot of what I teach with voice doesn’t happen immediately.”
Johnson spoke on motivations for narrative, exploring how to better make a difference with one’s art by occupying spaces more fully. Such conversation may strike a familiar chord for young creatives as notions of authenticity or “realness” come to the fore, setting the stage for a night of expression to come.
“The truth of you is already with you,” Johnson said.
Throughout the night, there were over 30 showcases, activities and panels found in six distinct exhibitions. The main stage, situated in the rear of the event, implored attendees to meander and sample from swaths of dancers, instrumentalists and speakers of all kinds before being seated for events like taiko drumming and stunt choreography.
In the spirit of showcasing “arts around the world,” “Artscape” featured several international art forms, including Irish, Indian and Hawaiian traditional dances, along with film screenings from the Latine Film and Media Association and the Asian Pacific Cinema Association. It also featured a number of interdisciplinary workshops and activities including those focused on game design, DJing and special effects makeup.
“I loved the fact that so many different types of art were represented. Normally, theater, art, dance — all these different mediums are separate,” said Hannah Wiser, a junior majoring in communication and a student coordinator at Visions and Voices. “‘Artscape’ had such an interdisciplinary approach and to have everyone in one space allowed everyone to kind of dip their foot in and experience all the magic.”
Scott Weinstein, a junior majoring in theater and the director of USG’s Performing Arts Committee, started organizing “Artscape” last semester, coordinating with various subcommittees of PAC to arrange the impressive artistic feat.
“This event came about because my whole mission with the Performing Arts Committee, and with all the events that we do, is to create a space for artists from different disciplines to collaborate,” Weinstein said. “‘Artscape’ is an all-day, outdoor exhibition of cinema, dance, music, fine arts and drama, including workshops, performances, activities and featured speaking engagements.”
The combination animation-and-dance “heartbeat humor” was born from this philosophy, resulting from a connection he’d facilitated between friends of his in Kaufman and a student animator. The result of this collaboration was enrapturing, with sections choreographed using the animation as reference material and vice versa.
On top of his roles as PAC’s executive director and the artistic director for “Artscape,” Weinstein moderated a conversation with featured speakers and alumni Patrick J. Adams and Troian Bellisario at the end of the night.
Weinstein described the choice behind the featured speakers as a result of the breadth of their experiences; the two started their careers at USC and spoke about the paths they took as actors in film, television and onstage in addition to writing, directing and parenting together — the duo is happily married with two young daughters.
Adams, known most prominently for his role as Mike Ross in “Suits,” spoke to the struggles of an actor early in his career and his headstrong attitude derived from a fear of losing his “one shot.” This would come when he least expected it, returning from winter break in Canada to a slew of missed calls on his American cell phone. He’d been cast in the 2003 film “Old School” and saw no other choice than to make it work despite legal complications as an international student from Toronto.
“‘You’re not allowed to work,’” he remembered being told. “I didn’t know how any of this works.”
Thanks to help from USC’s Office of International Services, however, Adams was able to accept the role as an unpaid intern on the condition he attended a related course and reported his experiences to a cohort of fellow students “doing internships at banks and law firms.”
Bellisario expressed a similar eagerness in her early career before starring as Spencer Hastings in “Pretty Little Liars.”
“I was like, ‘Just put me in the ring,’” Bellisario said.
Despite insecurities over her appearance — in the novels, Spencer was a “blonde, blue-eyed, all-American kind of girl” — Bellisario showed up, auditioned, and was granted the role as a result of some ineffable quality that caught the casting director’s eye.
Adams and Bellisario wrapped up the night perfectly, proving to the young student creatives in the crowd that being excited about and dedicated to your art can take you far.
“It’s so special that we get to not only highlight incredible student artists but also provide a space for … audience members who just love experiencing art and getting to connect with other art lovers and people in our community,” Wiser said. “I know art is one of the most powerful things to connect us as human beings, and I think we need that now more than ever.”
