Theatre Review – Trav’lin – The 1930 Harlem Musical

Photo Source // Allison UpChurch

By: Allison UpChurch, Staff Writer

Trav’lin – The 1930’s Harlem Musical is a production that has never seen the lights of Broadway but is slowly getting around to theatres across the United States in the hopes of making it to New York City one day. It tells the story of three couples living, working, and loving during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930’s. The show showcases these couples at different stages of their relationship – one is newly found lovers, the other growing steady, and the last is a pair of long-lost lovers rekindling what was left behind.

In a post-show discussion, cast members shared that all of the music and songs of Trav’lin are all written by the famous African-American songwriter J.C. Johnson, who lived for a significant amount of time in Harlem in the 1920’s and 30’s and later worked with famous jazz and blues performers like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong.

“This is my era of music,” actor Milton Craig Nealy, who plays the character of George, shared with audience members. “I just love it. It’s a joy to hear and obviously we don’t hear much of this music now a days.”

The show came to fruition because the show’s playwright, Gary Holmes, was a young protégé of Johnson when they were neighbors in Wurtsboro, New York. Johnson expressed interest in Holmes creating a show that incorporated his songs into the story, so when Johnson passed in 1981, Holmes set out to work on that show, which eventually turned into Trav’lin. While the show has had its premiere at the New York Musical Festival in 2010, Trav’lin is still a relatively new piece that is not well known.

“Having the opportunity to feel like you’re putting a particular stamp on new work is just extraordinarily exciting,” actress Natalie Oliver-Atherton, who plays the character of Billie, said. “If I never get to do it again, Billie has been done for me. And it’s always just an extraordinary gift from on high for me.”

As a show, Trav’lin brings fun characters and positive energy to its audience. The story, though it can be predictable at times, is easy to follow and represents they dynamic and complex experiences of love that every human will face sometime in life. The songs blend seamlessly into the plot as the actors will play off each other cheerfully and bring a soulful and spirited sound to Johnson’s repertoire as “Somebody Loses, Somebody Wins” and “Basin Street Lover.”

Trav’lin – The 1930’s Harlem Musical played April 9 - 28 at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities.

Ranger Day 2019

Photo Source // Amy Reglin

By: Allison UpChurch

All last week, April 8-13, RUSGA and the Office of Student Activities hosted the annual Ranger Week, where activities from the Regis Talent and Drag Show to the Silent Disco were put on every night to give the students of Regis a chance to unwind and celebrate their accomplishments throughout the year. All of these events led up to the biggest event that RUSGA puts on and that is Ranger Day.

Despite some wet and snowy weather in the morning, the Regis community came out in droves as food trucks and outdoor activities took over Lot 5 and the Beach. As students got to choose from a variety of food trucks serving tacos to Cajun food to ice cream, there were a plethora of activities set up on the Beach, from a zipline to an inflatable obstacle course, to henna and a photo booth. Some lucky Rangers were even treated to free T-shirts and draw string backpacks commemorating the day.

This year’s Ranger Day was also the beginning for Regis’ new mascot. After a poll went around the Regis community to help name the new fox mascot, the winner was Regi, and Regi was out and about taking pictures with students and giving out little fox plushies.

As afternoon turned into night, Ranger Day concluded with a concert in the Fieldhouse that was put on by Grammy-nominated rap artist Jidenna. All in all, Ranger Week was themed around “UR,” representing the statement that Regis can come together to celebrate what makes every person in this community unique and open to hearing the diverse stories of where everyone in our community has been and where they will be going in the future.

Movie Review – Dumbo (2019)

By: Allison UpChurch, Staff Reporter

There’s the age-old question of “if a tree falls in a forest, and there’s no one around, does it make a sound?” Today, that question can be turned into “if a baby elephant has big ears, and there’s no mother to help him grow, can he fly?” While this might seem like a weird question to ask, the latest live-action remake from the Walt Disney Company lets audiences reexperience the story of Dumbo told through the lens of filmmaker Tim Burton.

This version of Dumbo diverges significantly from its original 1941 production. In terms of Dumbo’s story arc, it stays genuinely the same as Dumbo is born to an elephant named Mrs. Jumbo who lives and performs in a circus. Then, Mrs. Jumbo and Dumbo are separated after Mrs. Jumbo causes trouble for the circus while trying to protect Dumbo from the ridicule he faces because of his big ears.

Where the overall story diverges in this new version is that Mrs. Jumbo is sold off to another circus production, and Dumbo is left behind in the care of the circus’ new elephant caretakers, Holt (played by Colin Farrell) and his two kids Milly (played by Nico Parker) and Joe (played by Finley Hobbins). It is Milly and Joe who discover that Dumbo can fly when he is given a feather, and who give Dumbo the opportunity to show his talent off to the rest of the circus. They also work to keep a promise they made to Dumbo that performing will help raise the money to buy back Mrs. Jumbo.

This movie makes a clear balance of telling a new story about Dumbo and harking back to the original through references in the songs, visuals, and dialogue. Some of these references are framed in a way so that anyone who knows the original very well can point them out, and someone who does not know the original well will not get lost all of a sudden. Some notable references include the Casey Junior train theme song playing throughout the score, pink elephants conjured up in a bubble showcase, and one particular mouse that is always dressed up in a ringmaster’s hat and red suit that harkens back to Dumbo’s original friend of Timothy Q. Mouse.

The human characters that are featured in this movie sometimes get more screen time than Dumbo himself. Characters range from zany and over the top to mellow and unexpressive - even though the sight of a flying elephant would garner some wonderous reactions from anyone. All the animal themselves and most of the landscapes and locations are constructed through CGI that sometimes blends with the practical sets; most notably in close-ups of the characters. Other times it becomes a distraction, especially in group shots or wide-angle shots where the line between real and make-believe becomes more obvious.

In trying to answer the question posed at the beginning of this article, Dumbo as a movie may not be ready to fly yet, but he is in the process of getting his feet off the ground and staying up for as long as he can.

The Wedding Singer

Photo Source // Allison Upchurch

By: Allison UpChurch, Staff Reporter

Last weekend, the Regis Ramblers, the musical theatre club here at Regis, put on their spring production of the musical “The Wedding Singer.” The show is based off the 1998 movie starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, but now the Regis Ramblers have taken hold of the story and put it to life onstage.

This production marks a new beginning for the Regis Ramblers as it was explained by the director of the show, Tanner Kelly, that the club has now been incorporated into an official class in the Regis Music Department. With this, current and future students may receive academic credit up to 3 credit hours for performing or helping out with the stage crew throughout the spring semester.

Thestory of “The Wedding Singer” takes place in 1985 and is about the lead singer of a wedding band, Robbie (played by Alex Gallegos), who unexpectedly gets left at the altar by his fiancé Linda (played by Megan Bandeira). As Robbie wants to wallow in his broken heart, his new friend Julia (played by Noelle Norris) pulls him out of his misery and the two start to form feelings for each other, but face the reality that Julia is already engaged to her boyfriend Glen (played by Luis Valle).  

It’s a typical love story that is set to the loud and proud sound and style of the 80’s as characters make references to figures and trends of the decade. These callbacks bring the story to life and offer a comedic throwback to audiences members who lived during that time. The music was live performed by a four person band that Kelly has worked with multiple times in the past. They brought the sound of the 80’s into the show in songs like “Not That Kind of Thing” and “Saturday Night in the City” and then slowed it down for the tenderer, reflective moments like in “If I Told You.”

While not everyone in Regis Ramblers is a performer or music major, everyone does have a passion for creating a show and having fun doing it, and that came through clearly as performance danced through the aisles and joked around with each other onstage. It was just as entertaining to watch the background characters as it was to watch the main characters.

With a new beginning for the Regis Ramblers and the Music Department, students will continue on just like they did with “The Wedding Singer” to bring live musical theatre to the Regis community, all culminating in expression the Jesuit value of “unity of mind and heart.”

To receive more information about the Regis Ramblers, email the group at regisramblers@gmail.com and find them on the Regis University website.

Movie Review – Captain Marvel

By: Allison UpChurch, Staff Reporter

Captain Marvel, the latest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe lineup, bridges together introductions of new characters while also showcasing old characters and reliving a nostalgic time period of the early 90’s. Captain Marvel herself is only the second female Marvel character to have a title movie (the first was The Wasp in Ant-Man and the Wasp last year), but she and her fellow companions and rivals bring another superhero adventure to the big screen.

At the movie’s start, Captain Marvel is introduced as Vers (played by Brie Larson). She is a soldier for the militia of an alien species called the Kree, and she has no memory of her past. During a mission to stop a species of shapeshifters called the Skrulls, Vers ends up stranded on Earth in 1995 and realizes that a team of Skrulls has extracted a memory from her past that will lead them to a hyperspace weapon. To stop them, Vers teams up with SHIELD agent Nick Fury (played by Samuel L. Jackson) to get to the weapon before the Skrulls do.

The storytelling of this movie mostly gets lost in the great big mix of already established Marvel canon. Without some prior knowledge of the Kree alien species (look first into Guardians of the Galaxy) or a general familiarity to Fury, then a moviegoer can easily be confused for most of this movie. However, there is no need to be alone in that confusion as Vers herself does not know who she truly is either, so moviegoers get to go and uncover her identity in the same sympathetic manner that she does.

If a person is up to relieve the past, then there are plenty of nostalgic nods to lifestyles and brands of the 90’s that can be sure to bring delight. This movie is also not shy of taking both expected and unexpected turns with the characters and adds in that comic relief that Marvel movies are known to include. The action scenes in this movie tend to be a little too well choreographed, making the impression that the steaks are not as high as they should be, but overall those scenes are cool as Vers takes on most of those scenes by herself.

In connecting this movie with a Jesuit values that is exemplified here at Regis, Captain Marvel would be labeled under “Cura Personalis” – the care of the whole person. Vers shows the audience that it takes time to develop a true sense of identity, and that it only comes from realizing that every living thing on Earth deserves dignity with regard to mind, body, and spirit. She also goes through both supportive and deceitful relationships that lead her to the values of dignity she wants to exemplify which shows how her spirit has grown and how she turns those values into real life actions.  

The Black History 101 Mobile Museum at Regis

Students observing the Black History 101 Mobile Museum in the Mountain View Room // Allison Upchurch

By: Allison Upchurch, Staff Reporter

Last Monday, February 18, the Office of Diversity and Inclusive Excellence along with the Social Justice and Diversity committee of RUSGA hosted a day-long exhibition in the Mountain View Room of the Black History 101 Mobile Museum. This award-winning mobile museum displayed a selection of the over 7,000 original artifacts of black memorabilia starting from the Trans-Atlantic slave trading era to current hip hop culture.

Some of the artifacts specifically on display on Monday were authentic chains used in the slave trade, original vinyl records of famous speeches by black activists, and signed pictures from famous black performers and athletes.

The collection was founded by Khalid el-Hakim, who has been collecting these artifacts for the last 28 years and decided to go public with his collection after attending the Million Man March on Washington D.C. on October 16, 1995.  “I wanted to start sharing this material in public spaces to get us to start thinking about history in a different type of way because we haven’t been taught history honestly,” el-Hakim shared during the lecture portion of the exhibition. “So this was my way of addressing that.”

His lecture, entitled The Truth Hurts: Black History, Honesty, and Healing the Racial Divide, served as an overlook about why the specific artifacts in his collection came to be created and think about how socialization and normalization has caused the racial divide in our country to persist.

“I want to just set a foundation to get us started in thinking about what this all means,” el-Hakim said to introduce his lecture. “It’s a very heavy subject, but I think that we need to be honest about what we see here on display.”

The lecture went into showing how all of the objects on display, as well as other artifacts in his collection but not on display, contribute to the history of separating by race. el-Hakim explained that most of these artifacts were created to create “disconnect” and “disassociation”, especially in objects from the late 1800’s and mid 1900’s that were created to show blacks as inferior or unwelcomed, such as soap advertisements and phrases of speech adopted by the KKK.  

Other objects in this collection told a more positive side to this narrative – one of pride and activism that even drew a connection to el-Hakim’s family. He told the story of how he came across a document from 1938 signed by Carter G. Woodson that included a list of supporters for Woodson’s scholarship research in Detroit at that time. “As I am going down this list of patrons listed, I see my grandparents listed,” el-Hakim shared. “That’s a reminder of what the greater work is.”

To learn more about the Black History 101 Mobile Museum, visit their official website or email Khalid el-Hakim at bhistory101@yahoo.com.