Listening becomes difficult once campus life resumes and the adjective ‘college student’ overpowers any other words that can begin to describe who I am during ¾ of the year.  What I mean to say is when the fall classes start, so do the complaints, and I can stand to listen to the complaining for maybe a second.  Then my head explodes.

A complaint is not a criticism.  It offers no potential solution from the complainer to adjust any displeasure.  It does not incite a second party to discuss and formulate a solution to a problem.  Instead, complaints are abruptly presented, sometimes vulgar or harsh, and responses either further the depth of the complaint, or shoot it down completely with a mix of humor and annoyance.  And that is something college students love to do (or so I’ve come to understand).

College students love, love, love to complain.  They enjoy expressing their woes of vigilantly working late into the night, ignoring drooping eyelids and feigning consciousness.  They love to complain about their struggles with the faculty.  They complain about a ‘B’ average or a weekend with nothing to do but drink and play videogames.  “I’ve got three exams this week and a ten page paper due tomorrow morning.  I haven’t studied at all and I got as far as the second page of the paper last night with the help of Red Bull and Adderall.  Life sucks.”  Well, yes it does, for someone who can afford to attend college, live with peers you call friends, keep busy, and prepare for a money-making career (if the economy isn’t in the toilet by graduation).

Now I realize I sound like I’m complaining.  Maybe I am.  In fact, I’m complaining about complaining and I apologize.  But everyone complains from time to time, and it’s OK to take in small doses.  I guess it can be seen as a way to commiserate with others who may feel similar woes.

So let me bring to light a complaint I’ve had that I’m sure most students and ex-students have shared.  I hate the question, “What are you doing this summer?”

Everyone asks this question with positive or caring sentiments.  Friends and family are curious with the life of a budding student and they wish to stay abreast of all the classes, internships, and beer pong the student experiences.  For those sentiments, I am grateful knowing, at the very least, someone is interested in my life.

But it’s a hard question to respond to.  Besides the repetition of reciting the same few answers again and again, there exists some unspoken pressure to sound interesting.  If your summer isn’t up to par with the rest of the students’, you’re S.O.L.  No internship?  No summer job?  No exotic vacation?  Sorry dude.  Good luck finding a job!

As I sit here writing this article, with no obvious prospect of summer employment or an extravagant way to occupy my time, I realize it’s not so bad.  Why should I get a sympathetic ‘sorry’ for an open summer?  Do I constantly need a rapid intake of work to feel productive?  Of course not!

Though I’m not getting paid, I still work for myself.  I write, play music, attempt to cook, mow a lawn here or there, keep busy with friends, attend weddings; the list goes on.  It’s not obvious experience for career building like an internship or a job with a steady income, but it keeps my mind healthy.  I get to tune the skills that keep me excited and open to other possibilities.  I’m only bored if I choose to be.  Not all work consists of text books and pay checks.  If I view any work as worthy of my time, it is worthy of my time.

At work in the costume shop, my boss tells me, “I need you to sew these pants.”

The true costumer knows it really means, “I need you to pin these pieces, sew at half an inch, measure the waistband three inches short of original size, make a casing for the elastic, make sure it aligns with other side, do the same for the legs, sew three button holes on each side, fit them with the buttons, and hand sew those on, too. And put a few hooks and eyes on the top.”

Putting together a garment is harder than it looks. Sewing is a complicated process that requires specific tools, a steady eye, and plenty of patience. Anyone can do it, but to be good at it, you need to speak to an expert. This is why Elaine Kauffman lives in the Light Fine Art Building (FAB) costume shop three times a week, dedicated to the integrity of uniquely local art.

Elaine, a highly renowned artist in the Kalamazoo area, distributes her time between costuming the shows in our own theatre, working with personal clients, and making feature pieces for Kalamazoo fashion shows and Art Hops. Her commitment to creating period fashion, depending on the atmosphere of the show, is displayed onstage three-fold.

Take last year’s show, Return to the Forbidden Planet, where Kauffman combined textured materials and metallic finishes to create the galactic, futuristic fashion. Her signature style relies on small details, such as the belts worn by the officers, composed of old-school Nintendo game controller belt buckles and black elastic straps. The key is to think outside the box, placing forgotten elements in unexpected places.

It turns out that Shakespeare has a signature style of his own: creating timeless pieces that can go in any direction. This year’s Balch Festival Playhouse show is The Tempest, and Kauffman chose the direction of 19^th century colonial New England. While these pieces carry a prim bone structure, Kauffman’s modern updates give them new life. She combines the conservative and unorthodox, taking small twists like mid 20^th century accessories, such as Emilia LaPenta’s mod caplet for her role as Prospera. The contemporary updates tie together on stage to create the ethereal backdrop met with stoicism.

Pilgrims with brass buttons and tie-on sleeves are dropped ashore a glistening island of amazement, mostly because of the clash of the color palette. The nymphs’ tie-dye sleepers pair with Todd Espeland’s masks and puppetry in a mischievous whirlwind, confusing the pedantic newcomers. Ariel (Grace McGookey) and Caliban (Cooper Wilson) are an exotic bird and a rainbow fish, respectively, waiting to be tamed in their gauze-covered reserve.

Costumes may be only a small part of creating a distinct world from reality, but it is a large one. Being a fashion designer requires working both the left and the right side of the brain—choosing a time period and keeping all costumes contained within it—including the type of fabric and its construction. Transferring the idea from 2D to 3D is the tricky part, requiring an understanding of conceptualizing the physical from a simple drawing on paper. Being familiar with patterns is the only way to ensure creating quality items, a skill that comes with patience and loads of practice.

Working for four hours in a row may seem like a short day in the real world, but studying and dedication to other activities causes an impossible balance between tranquility and ennui. Hand-sewing snaps, hooks and eyes, and buttons becomes a monotonous task, especially when it is the subject of concentration for several hours. Measure, pin-mark, thread needle, sew, cut string, again. And again, and once more. No talking, no distractions, unless you count listening to Creed on 103.3 fm. Torture ensues.

Yet, in the seclusion of the artificial FAB basement lighting, one discovers holistic solitude. For the dedicated designer, the amount of concentration required for a job like this eventually reaches enlightenment only known by that of Henry David Thoreau. Torture, meet transcendentalism.

Creating a show like The Tempest is seeing the panel of fabric and creating that brave new world—dyes, thread, buttons and all. If your idea of the ideal workspace is speaking less than ten words in an hour while NPR drones in the background, this job is for you. But it also means working your fingers like a prepubescent Malaysian and keeping the blasphemy to a minimum when you screw up. Either way, here’s some advice from one costumer to another: Epsom salts and warm water are your best friend.

Kelly Campbell, Emilia LaPenta, and Cooper Wilson in "The Tempest"

What is interesting about this year’s iteration of The Tempest is that female characters of power have replaced male characters of power.  Prospero is now Prospera, the marooned rightful Dutchess of Milan. Antonio is now Antonia, the bitch sister who stole the throne.  Gonzalo is now Gonzalia, one of the court. Ariel, the sprite who carries out the magical wishes of Prospera, is, too, revealed to be a woman.  Penis has been replaced with vagina, scrotum with ovary, chest with bosom.  Vasa deferentia will not be needed.

The gender swapping of characters is the key to the performance, according to Dramaturg Laura Fox’s program liner notes.  This invites a feminist reading of the play, placing a particular emphasis on the performance’s depiction of the relationship between gender and power.  The play is presented as a direct rejection of the patriarchal notions present in productions of the play applying the original script.  Women playing originally male roles, however, is nothing new at Festival Playhouse.  The company’s presentation of Hamlet two seasons ago featured an all-female cast.  Yet while in that production, women played to stereotypical notions of men, lowering their voices and drawing their swords on crusades to avenge slain fathers, in The Tempest, the women of power are portrayed out of the shadow of perceived notions of masculinity.

Emilia LaPenta’s Prospera is the starkest example of this rejection of traditional masculine-sourced power on stage.  While the scripted lines remain unchanged from those of Prospero, Fox writes that “Miranda’s one parent is no longer a tyrant father, but a matriarch who wields her power over everything and everyone on the island, including Caliban.” How does one wield power “over everything and everyone, including Caliban” without being a tyrant?  By being really passive-aggressive and relatively nice about it.  While she may not shriek or bellow as a tyrant may suggest, Prospera still partakes in all the tyranny of Prospero, fucking with everybody on a whim, exercising control over her daughter Miranda’s (the wonderfully deranged Arkham-worthy Kelly Campbell) prospective love life, and making Caliban feel as small and pathetic as a partially-human being can feel.

Prospera maintains the entirety Prospero’s masculine power, but adds a touch of hostess charm and femininity without ever compromising the Dutchess’s political virility.  This suggests the application of a new lens through which to claim notions of power and control.  Her character is the very opposite of Michael Chodos’ wonderfully power-mad Prospero in last year’s Return to the Forbidden Planet.  While Chodos is nearly six feet tall and appears much larger than in life on the stage, Lapenta is not physically imposing by any means, dwarfed, in fact, by her giant phallus of a staff.  While Forbidden Planet‘s over the top Prospero was costumed in flowing black and gold robes inciting notions of radioactive metal, Prospera is dressed in pink, and wears an Amish-looking bonnet that covers her head.  Furthermore, LaPenta’s delivery is in contrast to Chodos channelling his sonority through his imposing stage presence in order to coerce his minions.  While stern and calculated, Prospera foregoes the overbearing volume and projection one might assume would accompany an all-powerful ruler hell bent on returning to their rightful throne.

LaPenta stands not only as a rejection of Chodos’ tirading patriarchal sorcerer, but also to Michelle Myer’s taciturn, darkly clad dominatrix of a Queen Gertrude in the aforementioned all-women production of Hamlet.  Simply stated, traditional assumptions and projections of power have been left out of The Tempest, intentionally so, and with great affect.

As for the other half, the men of the island are all hopeless fools–and thankfully so.  The prolonged boredom of writer William Shakespeare’s long-winded scene-setting dialogue is not aided in its tediousness by Director Karen’s Berthel’s decision to block Prospera and Miranda upstage, at almost the farthest point from the audience.  They never really move throughout the entirety of their lengthy initial scene, and at times it is difficult to hear them.

Theater is added to the play as in stumbles Stephano, (a convincingly drunk Chodos) and Trinculo, a Fool, played with fantastic jest by the slick and quick-witted Sam Bertken. Trinculo unwittingly couples with a recumbent Caliban, who, upon being discovered and given wine by Stephano, worships the drunk as a god.  The three stumble about their newfound kingdom of an island, and they and their source of power are ultimately and understandably mocked by the rest of the cast.

The only male character with any real claim to power is Alonso, King of Naples, and he is mainly a sap.  Played by Stephano Cagnato, who was absolutely brilliant in this Winter’s Tragedy: A Tragedy, Alonso delivers his lines like giving a satirical news report, and is about as imposing of a ruler in his Thanksgiving dress up like a pilgrim hat as wet cardboard.

Other male characters include Calder Burgam’s Sebastian, who steals all scenes with confidence and acting chops, but who wets his hubris at the tricks of Grace McGookey’s bothersome Ariel, the Airy Spirit.  Rounding out the men is the Dwight Trice’s effeminate Ferdinand.  Trice, however, is far too caught up in preserving some unwanted vestige of presumed masculinity to notice that he’s just a little kid all wrapped up in puppy love.

All in all for a night of Theatre, The Tempest is a lot of bang for your buck. It effectively presents the opportunity to redefine what it means to have power, and what it means for power to be in relationship with gender.  Another impressively intricate display by Festival Playhouse, Shakespeare’s classic work will wow you into a world of mystery and ambition.

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The Tempest continues as part of the Festival Playhouse at Kalamazoo College, Friday and Saturday, May 21 and 22, at 8:00 pm at the Nelda K. Balch Playhouse and on Sunday May 23 at 2:00 pm.  Tickets, $5.00 for students.

Editor’s Note:

The Kosmopolitan Online would like to formally apologize to master builder and Production Design chief Jon Reeves for spelling his name on what might be upwards of seven instances with an “h”. “He might not even be a Jonathan,” we are told.  In a token of repentance, the extraordinary Mr. Reeves will receive a commemorative replica of the one millionth dollar bill donated to the Kosmopolitan Online Charity Foundation.