Joy of Regathering

People

Cast

My name is Jon Faw and I am an Ensemble member. Outside of the production I am a COVID-19 testing site supervisor for the University of Illinois, an actor, a musician, a dancer, and a cat dad. I find joy in gathering with friends for D&D, video games, and watching sports/movies/tv shows. I also like spending time with my family.  

My name is Ash Goodly. I currently work for the English Department. I am a former Theatre student at UIUC. I've experienced the most fruitful joy reconnecting with my family post Covid. 

My name is Daniel Inafuku. I am a PhD student in the physics department at UIUC, and I am part of the cast of "Joy of Regathering." Beyond my work in physics and mathematics, I am also a science writer and science video maker.

My name is Surkhab Kaur. I am a PhD student in physics at UIUC and I am one of the ensemble members in Joy of Regathering. Outside of my program, I like to read works of fiction, write poetry, and dance. This is why when presented with the opportunity to join the cast (thanks to Dr. Vishveshwara’s email), I could not resist it. In fact, being an introverted and private person in general, especially during COVID isolation, this was a major avenue through which I found community this semester. I had the pleasure of meeting some wonderful people and it has been a delight and an honor being a part of this amazing production. 

As the title suggests, the production ties in with the current period of re-entering society after two long years. The energy permeating the rehearsal space has perfectly embodied this theme, which adds to the overall piece. The play portrays this by showing in a beautifully artistic manner the scientific and technical understanding of our universe as the parts divide and recollect in all sorts of ways, from the microscopic to the macroscopic scale. It makes me think how our collective human experience during COVID, albeit painful and heartbreaking for too many, is recognized by the universal order. Overall, it truly has been a special experience, thanks to the amazing staff and cast. 

Tiphaine Kouadou (She/Her), I am a performer in the Joy of Regathering. I work as a postdoctoral research associate at UIUC physics department. My favorite way of regathering over a good meal with family and friends.

Melih Sener (he/him), I am a theoretical biophysicist studying photosynthesis. How life grows from light is perhaps the oldest story of humanity; today understood at last in atomistic detail, it teaches us innovations to address our current energy crisis. Telling this story in formats accessible to everyone is a passion for me. 'Joy of Regathering' represents to me, therefore, a two-fold gift: first, a celebration of being among of moving, laughing, bright humans again after these desolate years of separation; second, the collective trust to tell again with them this oldest story of light and life, which itself is an allegory for sharing and growth. Yes, there is indeed joy in gathering together, apparently.

Dancers

My name is Laura Chiaramonte. I am an Assistant Teaching Professor of Dance at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and I am a dancer in Joy of Regathering. Outside of teaching, I enjoy hanging out with my friends and family, spending time outdoors, and taking long walks with my dogs.

My name is Anna Peretz Rogovoy and my pronouns are she/her.

I am an MFA candidate and teaching assistant in the Dance department at UIUC, and one of the dancers in Joy of Regathering.

I find joy in being able to touch my friends and collaborators in the dance studio again, in being able to transmit warmth and solidarity through fleshy contact, in being able to provide physical support as a model for emotional and spiritual support. 

My name is Alex Tecza. 

I am a first year MFA student in the Department of Dance. I am one of the dancers for the Joy of Regathering. 

Outside of school, I am a professional ballroom dancer and teacher. I find my joy (and livelihood) in teaching and dancing with my students. I also enjoy hiking in the Rockies and Appalachians.

Musicians

Jake Metz is a sound engineer, musician, video artist, educator, and multimedia technologist. Since 2013, he has acted as Media Commons Technology Specialist at the University of Illinois while also running a freelance audio/video production and consultation business.  As part of the University, he has designed several multimedia studios, consulted with departments across campus on studio design, multimedia production and emerging technology, served on the VR @ Illinois steering committee, guest lectured on multimedia topics and taught multimedia production within the school of Media and Cinema Studies. Outside of his academic work, over the past 7 years Jake has pursued spatial sound design, beginning with many years of quadraphonic events which led to the founding of the Immersion Festival in 2019 (for which he designed/constructed a 18.2 channel spatial sound dome) with follow ups focused on immersive sound and video in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, he designed and deployed a 15.3 channel, outdoor spatial sound dome and established a Spatial Computing and Immersive Multimedia Production studio at Grainger Engineering Library with a 22.2 channel sound system. He has also acted as Technical Director for increasingly complex live video art performances/exhibitions (most recently, Knobcon 2017 & 2018, and VIDICON 2019). Over the course of the COVID pandemic, Jake leveraged his experience with live video production and internet streaming to enable the transition of several events and venues for remote broadcast. Directing the 2020 & 2021 editions of the CU Folk and Roots festival and VIDICON, he successfully brought large, traditionally in-person events into a virtual, online space. This work led to the pursuit and award of CO+RE Arts Grants in 2021 and 2022 to establish a local, live streaming and arts capture portal: Urbanalogue. As of Fall 2021, Jake is a PhD Candidate at UIUC in the School of Informatics with a focus on Arts & Cultural applications of immersive multimedia, remote telepresence, and spatial computing technologies.

My name is Arjun Raghavan, and I have learned Mridangam, a South Indian percussion instrument from Mastero T.H. Subash Chandran. I am a PhD student in the Dept. of Physics. By collaborating with peers in Physics and Music, I am able to explore new perspectives and dimensions both academically and artistically.

Stephen Andrew Taylor composes music that explores boundaries between art and science. His first orchestra commission, Unapproachable Light, inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Testament, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in 1996 in Carnegie Hall. Other works include the chamber quartet Quark Shadows, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony and premiered in 2001; and Seven Memorials, a half-hour cycle for piano inspired by the work of Maya Lin, featured at Tanglewood in 2006 with pianist Gloria Cheng. The Machine Awakes, a CD of his orchestra, chamber and electronic music was released in 2010 on Albany Records. Paradises Lost, an opera based on a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, received its Canadian premiere in 2013, conducted by the composer. In 2015 the New York Times called his piano work Variations Ascending, premiered by Ian Hobson, “persuasive and powerful.”

Taylor also works with live electronics in pieces such as Inspiral for contraforte and 4-channel surround sound, premiered by Henry Skolnick in South Korea in 2019; and Ocean of Air (2017) for Detroit Symphony principal trombonist Kenneth Thompkins. He conducts the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and has also appeared as conductor with Sinfonia da Camera, the Nouveau Classical Project, and the Arizona Chamber Music Festival. As a theorist, he has written and lectured on data sonification, György Ligeti, African rhythm, Björk and Radiohead. In popular music he has collaborated on concerts and albums with Pink Martini, Lang Lang, Jimmie Herrod, rock singer Storm Large, The Von Trapps, and cabaret/performance artist Meow Meow; his arrangements have been performed by orchestras worldwide, including the Oregon Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony (Kennedy Center), the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony.

Born in 1965, he grew up in Illinois and studied at Northwestern and Cornell Universities, and the California Institute of the Arts; his teachers include Steven Stucky, Karel Husa, Mel Powell, Bill Karlins and Alan Stout. His music has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, Composers, Inc., the Debussy Trio, the Howard Foundation, the College Band Directors National Association, the New York State Federation of Music Clubs, the Illinois Arts Council, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. Among his commissions are works for Northwestern University, University of Illinois, the Syracuse Society for New Music, the Jupiter Quartet, the Spoleto Festival, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony, the Quad City Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, Quartet New Generation, Piano Spheres, and the American Composers Orchestra. Taylor is Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he lives with his spouse, artist Hua Nian.

My name is Joy Yang and I play the piano and theremin. I am in my 3rd year of the DMA in Jazz Piano Performance (Classical Piano Performance and Literature cognate). My doctoral research explores the process of piano improvisation in interdisciplinary collaboration through an autoethnographic lens. I find joy in creating greater understanding through expression (particularly through sound). Outside of the performance space, I enjoy dancing for fun, hiking, swimming and exploring nature, reading, writing poetry and raps, cooking, and interior design. Some of my hobbies include vermicomposting for my plants and doing other things that scare me. I find joy in regathering when cooking and sharing a meal with friends, or making a really thoughtful hand-crafted gift together and then giving the love and care to someone (such as scented soy candles and banana bread). I also enjoy learning about different cultures, cuisines, travelling and improvising telematically with others.

Jupiter String Quartet 

My name is Meg Freivogel and I am the second violinist in the Jupiter Quartet. I perform and teach violin and chamber music at the University of Illinois, as well as concertize around the world with the Jupiters. I am also the mother of three children, Lillian, Felix and Oliver, and love spending time with family and friends. We have spent more time outside during the pandemic than ever before and share a new connection with our native birds and plants and surroundings. 

I feel grateful that we are looking forward in a positive and joyous way to the future in which we can reconnect after a difficult few years. For me this is especially meaningful because my family (including Daniel McDonough and Liz Freivogel, also in the quartet) made the decision to move to Champaign-Urbana 10 years ago because of our desire to be part of a community that values the arts and music. We hold the audience, our students, our colleagues and our friends in the Champaign-Urbana community very close to our hearts and can’t wait to celebrate a regeneration of this connection with this performance

My name is Daniel McDonough and I’m the cellist of the Jupiter String Quartet.  I also teach cello and coach chamber music at the U of I.  When I’m not teaching and making music I enjoy playing tennis, cooking, and spending time with my wife, Meg Freivogel, and our three children, Oliver (4), Felix (8) and Lillian (10).  I’m excited to regather in communal spaces with live music!

Production Team

Latrelle Bright is theatre maker, arts advocate and serves as a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Theatre Studies program within the Department of Theatre.  Creating new theatre pieces helps deepen her understanding of the planet and all its inhabitants - this is her happy place.

I am KT Burke (Assistant Director) – a theatre and visual artist active in the Champaign-Urbana art community. My art is gathering bodies in a space to create pictures and stories, finding meaning within the shapes I sculpt. Outside of the rehearsal space, I like to gather with others in a variety of places: basements, bars, cafes, beaches, parks; anywhere I can be together with the ones I cherish.

Angela Harrington is thrilled to be the Stage Manager for the Joy of Regathering. Angela is a 2nd year MFA Stage Manager in the Production Management track. She graduated in 2018 from Bridgewater State University and she served as the Associate Managing Director for Brown Box Theatre Project, a touring theatre company based in Boston. Her recent Stage Management credits include February Dance, Spring Studio Dance, Hogwash Hog Ranch or Putting Lipstick on a Pig, Urbanites (University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign)  Antigone Ablaze, The Totalitarians, The Bald Soprano (Bridgewater State University) Much Ado About Nothing, Jukebox 2.0, As You Like It (Brown Box Theatre Project), We are Proud to Present... (Brandeis University), Bare Stage (Boston Center for the Arts.) She worked as an Assistant Stage Manager for Fun Home (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and The Murder on the Orient Express (The Lyric Stage Company.) She’d like to thank Will and her family for their love and support.

Anne Kolaczkowski Magee (Assistant Director) is pursuing an MA in Theatre Studies at the University of Illinois.  She was the Assistant Dramaturg for Illinois Theatre's production of Varslaaren and is the lead Dramaturg for this season's production of The Revolutionists. She also served as the Assistant Director for Bad F-ing Hamlet at the Armory Free Theatre.  Anne is a 35 year veteran of high school teaching and directing who is now relishing the comparatively easier life of a graduate student.

Hi! My name is Landon (they/he), and I am the Production Dramaturg for the Joy of Regathering. I am a PhD student in Theatre Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a focus in performing trauma and violence in digital (and live!) performance. Outside of this production, I am a new play dramaturg and fight choreographer. I find joy in cooking feasts with friends and playing hours-long sessions of Dungeons & Dragons.

Jake Metz is a sound engineer, musician, video artist, educator, and multimedia technologist. Since 2013, he has acted as Media Commons Technology Specialist at the University of Illinois while also running a freelance audio/video production and consultation business.  As part of the University, he has designed several multimedia studios, consulted with departments across campus on studio design, multimedia production and emerging technology, served on the VR @ Illinois steering committee, guest lectured on multimedia topics and taught multimedia production within the school of Media and Cinema Studies. Outside of his academic work, over the past 7 years Jake has pursued spatial sound design, beginning with many years of quadraphonic events which led to the founding of the Immersion Festival in 2019 (for which he designed/constructed a 18.2 channel spatial sound dome) with follow ups focused on immersive sound and video in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, he designed and deployed a 15.3 channel, outdoor spatial sound dome and established a Spatial Computing and Immersive Multimedia Production studio at Grainger Engineering Library with a 22.2 channel sound system. He has also acted as Technical Director for increasingly complex live video art performances/exhibitions (most recently, Knobcon 2017 & 2018, and VIDICON 2019). Over the course of the COVID pandemic, Jake leveraged his experience with live video production and internet streaming to enable the transition of several events and venues for remote broadcast. Directing the 2020 & 2021 editions of the CU Folk and Roots festival and VIDICON, he successfully brought large, traditionally in-person events into a virtual, online space. This work led to the pursuit and award of CO+RE Arts Grants in 2021 and 2022 to establish a local, live streaming and arts capture portal: Urbanalogue. As of Fall 2021, Jake is a PhD Candidate at UIUC in the School of Informatics with a focus on Arts & Cultural applications of immersive multimedia, remote telepresence, and spatial computing technologies.

My name is Brant Thomas Murray. I am the Lighting Designer for this production and Teaching Assistant Professor and Chair of Lighting Design & Technology for the Department of Theatre. Personal joy of regathering: Sacred holidays and family vacations…quite simply, coming home. Professional joy of regathering: coming together with my dance companies and beginning the academic year with each variation of students, faculty, and staff. 

 

My name is Ethan Smith (he/him) and I have been the Assistant Dramaturg for The
Joy of Regathering. I am in my final semester of undergrad where I am pursuing a
BFA in Theatre Studies with a Directing Concentration here at the University of
Illinois Urbana-Champaign. When I am not in class or working in theatre, I enjoy
diving headfirst into huge manga series, baking overly complicated recipes, and
dissecting movies all with my friends who have become family.

Stephen Andrew Taylor composes music that explores boundaries between art and science. His first orchestra commission, Unapproachable Light, inspired by images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the New Testament, was premiered by the American Composers Orchestra in 1996 in Carnegie Hall. Other works include the chamber quartet Quark Shadows, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony and premiered in 2001; and Seven Memorials, a half-hour cycle for piano inspired by the work of Maya Lin, featured at Tanglewood in 2006 with pianist Gloria Cheng. The Machine Awakes, a CD of his orchestra, chamber and electronic music was released in 2010 on Albany Records. Paradises Lost, an opera based on a novella by Ursula K. Le Guin, received its Canadian premiere in 2013, conducted by the composer. In 2015 the New York Times called his piano work Variations Ascending, premiered by Ian Hobson, “persuasive and powerful.”

Taylor also works with live electronics in pieces such as Inspiral for contraforte and 4-channel surround sound, premiered by Henry Skolnick in South Korea in 2019; and Ocean of Air (2017) for Detroit Symphony principal trombonist Kenneth Thompkins. He conducts the Illinois Modern Ensemble, and has also appeared as conductor with Sinfonia da Camera, the Nouveau Classical Project, and the Arizona Chamber Music Festival. As a theorist, he has written and lectured on data sonification, György Ligeti, African rhythm, Björk and Radiohead. In popular music he has collaborated on concerts and albums with Pink Martini, Lang Lang, Jimmie Herrod, rock singer Storm Large, The Von Trapps, and cabaret/performance artist Meow Meow; his arrangements have been performed by orchestras worldwide, including the Oregon Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Symphony (Kennedy Center), the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC Concert Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony.

Born in 1965, he grew up in Illinois and studied at Northwestern and Cornell Universities, and the California Institute of the Arts; his teachers include Steven Stucky, Karel Husa, Mel Powell, Bill Karlins and Alan Stout. His music has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Howard Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Conservatoire Américain de Fontainebleau, Composers, Inc., the Debussy Trio, the Howard Foundation, the College Band Directors National Association, the New York State Federation of Music Clubs, the Illinois Arts Council, the American Music Center, and ASCAP. Among his commissions are works for Northwestern University, University of Illinois, the Syracuse Society for New Music, the Jupiter Quartet, the Spoleto Festival, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony, the Quad City Symphony, the Chicago Symphony, Quartet New Generation, Piano Spheres, and the American Composers Orchestra. Taylor is Professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he lives with his spouse, artist Hua Nian.

Smitha Vishveshwara is a professor of physics, a science-artist, a nature-lover, a mother, and a child who studies the wonders of the quantum world; steeps in an awe for the cosmos through science, writing, movement, music, and just being; relishes ocean swims; and treasures going on Life’s journey with fellow explorers. As the Creative and Scientific Director of The Joy of Regathering, Smitha is grateful and moved to be working with the incredible team, from conception to culmination. She eagerly awaits the premiere of this labor of love, where we will come together as voices, travelers across the globe, life’s molecules, black holes, and galaxies. 

Collaborators

New Press Release: https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/1338472145 

Undergraduate "Meet Bruce Fouke" video: https://youtu.be/NOQJXzyArLc 

My name is Martin, and I participated in the Joy of Regathering as a consultant on proteins and biological motion. When I’m not in the lab working on protein, quantum mechanics, or nanoparticles, I enjoy ultra-endurance racing, building tiny models, and playing and writing for keyboard.

Melih Sener (he/him), I am a theoretical biophysicist studying photosynthesis. How life grows from light is perhaps the oldest story of humanity; today understood at last in atomistic detail, it teaches us innovations to address our current energy crisis. Telling this story in formats accessible to everyone is a passion for me. 'Joy of Regathering' represents to me, therefore, a two-fold gift: first, a celebration of being among of moving, laughing, bright humans again after these desolate years of separation; second, the collective trust to tell again with them this oldest story of light and life, which itself is an allegory for sharing and growth. Yes, there is indeed joy in gathering together, apparently.