A flurry of creative experimentation: performances, curated experiences, class showings, popup exhibits…any and every artistic and cultural engagement you can imagine taking place between April 18 – 30, 2022.

fringe invites the spirit of experimentation, risk-taking, innovation, collaboration, and community. Scroll through this year’s line-up and be sure to grab some fringe swag featuring the winning logo designed by Colby first-year Kate Spence.

Week 1 – April 18 – 24, 2022

Critical Race Feminisms and Tap Dance Course Showing

(date and time TBD) – Head of Falls

Students in the course Critical Race Feminisms and Tap Dance will perform the “shim sham shimmy” to the jazz standard “Lester Leaps In” and a dance to the song “Cups (When I’m Gone).”

Trump Studio Recital

Tuesday, April 19, 5 pm – Given Auditorium

Trumpet students will perform their works from this semester.

Art Break

Thursday, April 21, 12 pm – Colby College Museum of Art

Each Thursday, join us to spend time with a work of art on view in the galleries at the Colby Museum. This week, Robert Nicholson, museum docent, will lead the program, focusing on Ship of Zion by Theaster Gates, located in the Sally and Michael Gordon Gallery.

Senior Voice Recitals

Thursday, April 21

Muxi Li ‘ – 12 pm at Lorimer Chapel

Brian Riley – 7 pm at Mary Low Coffee House

Ben Lawlor – 8:30 pm at Mary Low Coffee House

ReWritten (works in progress showing) – Matthew Cumbie, Tom Truss, and team

Friday, April 22, 6:30 pm – Strider Theater (Runnals)

ReWritten reflects on the often-overlooked intimate relationship between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne as a way to explore queerness, history, and intimacy. The relationship between Hawthorne and Melville has been characterized as one of the most mysterious and fruitful friendships in American letters, yet the letters from Hawthorne to Melville are missing. ReWritten springboards from this historic gap and time-hops between then and now as an attempt to expand how we see ourselves in these stories.

Prior to the show will be the student performance of Bloom.

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind – presented by Powder and Wig

Friday and Saturday, April 22 and 23, 7:30 pm – Page Commons

Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind is a production in which an acting ensemble attempts to perform thirty short plays in sixty minutes. The show is based in the theatrical methods of Neofuturism, and the plays range widely in content.

Campus + Community Film Series: Women in Art – The Kingmaker

Saturday, April 23, 10 am – Railroad Square Cinema

As part of our April film series on Women in Art, the Maine Film Center and the Colby College Museum of Art present The Kingmaker (2019, 1:41). Written and directed by Lauren Greenfield, this documentary profiles Imelda Marcos, the former first lady of the Philippines, a powerful female leader whose questionable sense of reality divided a nation. Lauren Greenfield is an award-winning photographer and documentary filmmaker who is known for her critical explorations of youth culture, consumerism, and the lives of women and girls. Her photography is currently on view in the Colby College Museum of Art’s exhibition, Act of Sight: The Tsiaras Family Photography Collection.

[Switch~] Plays Martínez, Sheehan, Graham, & Romitelli

Saturday, April 23, 7:30 pm – Greene Block + Studios

A new music ensemble for the 21st Century, the [Switch~ Ensemble] is dedicated to the creation of new acoustic, electroacoustic, and multimedia musical works. Comprised of 7 instrumentalists and 3 music technologists, [Switch~] has performed in festivals and residencies throughout the world. They join Colby in a residency of teaching and performing, making their Maine debut with a portrait concert celebrating the appointment of Assistant Professor José G. Martínez to the music department faculty.

Week 2 – April 25 – 30, 2022

Art Bar

Monday, April 25, 11 am – Spa in Cotter Union

Stop by the Spa in Cotter Union from 11 am to 1 pm to make art with the Colby Museum student guides. Fill up your tray with materials, and take some time for creativity. No art expertise is required. Complementary sweets, while supplies last.

You Want to Talk About Periods? A Collection of Period Stories

Monday, April 25, 4:30 pm – Cellar Theater (Runnals)

Chloe Shader and Terra Gallo created a short video that can be shown to fifth-grade students during their puberty education unit. This video is made up of interviews with Colby community members talking about their experiences with menstruation. The goal of our video is to highlight the different experiences that folks can have regarding their periods, and to make learning about and getting your first period more of a positive experience. We have also interviewed men who do not menstruate to show that everyone talks about periods, and to create a positive model of how boys can support girls with periods.

Art& Dread Scott and Maria Gaspar: Art, Ethics, and Process

Tuesday, April 26, 5 pm – Livestream

The Colby College Museum of Art and its Lunder Institute for American Art are pleased to present a virtual conversation between Dread Scott, Lunder Institute Senior Fellow, and artist Maria Gaspar, moderated by Gabriel Chalfin-Piney, Lunder Institute manager of programs.

Art, Ethics, and Process focuses on the community performance works of Dread Scott and Maria Gaspar, exploring the ethics and material qualities of their collaborative making. What are the ethics of bringing work with communities into the art world? How does each build and literally make their work into something that can be seen, experienced, or felt? What does art do that political activism and community organizing do not?

This conversation takes place on the occasion of Dread Scott’s year-long fellowship with the Lunder Institute for American Art. Join the program virtually via our livestream link.

Senior Piano Recitals

Tuesday, April 26 – Thursday, April 28

Steve Li – April 26, 4:30 pm – Lorimer Chapel

Cheshta Prasad – April 27, 5 pm – Lorimer Chapel

Katerina Tanasijevic – April 28, 4:30 pm – Lorimer Chapel

Karl Lackner (piano and trumpet) – April 28, 6 pm – Lorimer Chapel

“In the Mirror of Maya Deren,” shown with “Meshes of the Afternoon”

Wednesday, April 27, 7 pm – Railroad Square Cinema

Ukrainian-born filmmaker Maya Deren is often cited as one of the most influential voices in experimental cinema. “In the Mirror of Maya Deren” offers an accessible portrait of its subject and “not only celebrates Deren’s cinematic legacy but also reveals a gifted talent whose explosive temperament was at odds with the lyrical, dreamlike imagery she put on screen” –San Francisco Chronicle. Deren’s masterful short film “Meshes of the Afternoon,” accompanying the documentary, portrays a woman who falls asleep and enters a convoluted perception of reality, with her internal conflict portrayed in a way that could only be shown through the medium of film.

Art Break

Thursday, April 28, 12 pm – Colby College Museum of Art

Each Thursday, join us to spend time with a work of art on view in the galleries at the Colby Museum. This week, Stella Gonzalez will lead the program, focusing on Chamrousse by Joan Mitchell, located in the Sally and Michael Gordon Gallery.

Beets and Letters performance

Part of the ongoing Social Nourishment project by Golaleh Yazdani

Friday, April 29, 4:30 pm – On the lawn outside Runnals

Beets and Letters is a performance centered around food, grief, and community. During the performance, the artist will offer freshly steamed beets, homemade halva, fresh hot tea, and letters from a wheeled cart for guests’ consumption.

The letters will be performed for any individual who orders food.

These letters were written for lost loved ones by Iranian authors.

Authors:
Golaleh Yazdani
Negin Rahbar
Delaram Mesgaran
Ali Khalili

A Partial Reading of Caesar and Discussion of Shakespeare in Canon

Friday, April 29, 5 pm – Miller Library

A reading of a part of Caesar from Shakespeare expanded into a short conversation about Caesar and Shakespeare’s place in the canon.

The Men’s Story Project at Colby

Friday, April 29, 7 pm – Ostrove Auditorium

The Men’s Story Project is a storytelling and dialogue project that brings critical dialogue on social ideas about masculinity into public forums – via men’s own stories… In the Men’s Story Project, men, boys, and folks who identify in any way with masculinity publicly share personal stories that help transform social ideas about masculinity – so as to support health and equality for all people.” https://www.mensstoryproject.org/

Dominos by Eshani Chakrabarti

Saturday, April 30, 4 pm – Tune info WMHB 89.7 FM

A radio adaptation of a short play called Dominos, a story about signs, salmon, and a boy who was struck by lightning. It is based on a true story of a boy who was struck by lighting at the Colby Hume Center in 2008 and died at the age of 22. This is a short selection of monologues of all the characters that Dhani encounters throughout the day that try and dissuade him from his fate. They are knitted together with a song by the same title culminating in a rock monologue radio rendition of the play.

Black Powers: I Got Black Girl Magic, And You Don’t Exhibition Opening

Saturday, April 30, 6 pm – Greene Block + Studios

Through the spring semester, conceptual artist, Natasha Marin worked with a cohort of artists, Terri Nwanma, Jess Xing, Maimouna Cherif, Kay Wesley, Anosacha Peete-Meyers, and, Samah Mohamedzein, to collaboratively create an exhibition engaging the questions that shape her project, Black Imagination: What is your origin story? How do you heal yourself? Describe/imagine a world where you are loved, safe, and valued? Celebrate the opening of this exhibition with the artists.

Choral MasterWork Colby Symphony Orchestra

Saturday, April 30, 7:30 pm – Lorimer Chapel

Our final concerts of the season will be a celebratory event, with Jonathan Hallstrom (conductor of the Colby Orchestra from 1984-2012) making a farewell guest appearance after 38 years of service at Colby College, conducting Pelléas et Mélisande Suite by Gabriel Fauré. The concert will also feature the winner of the 2022 Annual Concerto Competition, Ashley Ren ’24, performing the third movement from Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. The program will conclude with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture, and with two of G.F. Handel’s triumphant Coronation Anthems: Zadok the Priest and The King Shall Rejoice, with the combined forces of Choirs at Colby and the CSO, conducted by Director of Choral and Vocal Activities, Eric Christopher Perry.