Seduction, deceit, wild living, death. No, not the latest HBO Drama–these themes are just a few that the 11 student illustrators from BYU’s Senior Studio Design class attempted to capture for BYU’s upcoming performance of Manon, an opera about how the desire for fleeting pleasures results in one young woman’s regretful choices. Guiding the students through the process of creating the concert poster is Professor Robert Barrett. Barrett explained that his class is one of the last chances students will have before graduation to create commissioned pieces with a mentor. “It raises the level of expectation for the students. They work pretty hard on it,” said Barrett. “I think they put their best foot forward.” While not exactly a professional commission, the project gives students the experience of meeting a client’s expectations. Students consulted with opera director Lawrence Vincent and then researched the opera more themselves to best understand and portray its essence. More>>>>

The BYU Department of Theatre and Media Arts and the BYU Student Film Association present the Fall 2015 Final Cut Film Festival in the Pardoe Theater, Harris Fine Arts Center, on Oct. 22 and Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Tickets are $5,with discounts available for students, and can be purchased in person at the BYU Ticket Office in the Harris Fine Arts Center or Marriott Center, by phone at 801-422-2981 or online at byuarts.com. The BYU Final Cut Film Festival is a student-produced, student-created film festival. The festival will screen a collection of the best student-made fiction films, documentaries, commercials, animations and more. The purpose of this festival is to encourage students to create and watch meaningful and creative media. Festival submissions are open to all current BYU students. Two programs, each about 75 minutes long, will be screened each night, with an awards ceremony after the last screening on Friday. Program A: Thursday, Oct. 22, 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, 9 p.m. Program B: Thursday, Oct. 22, 9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, 7 p.m.

How do we make our life more artistic? How does our life influence our art? To answer and interpret these questions, Professor Daniel Barney’s art classes, Theory, Method and Practice and Issues in Contemporary Art, created this piece inspired by Oliver Herring’s TASK Area for Action concept. A TASK party is an improvisational event with few rules. For this TASK, the students were told they had to keep a three-foot boundary around the piece and only add to the artwork, no subtracting. Barney’s two classes each had a different role with the TASK. The first class was instructed to create the piece starting with a few students standing as statues and then adding any material they could find. Papers, tape and foil were draped around the students and tied up the staircases and walls. “It became not just artist-object, something pristine and curated, but to improvisation galore,” Barney said. The second class was charged with repurposing the materials already used and adding to the creation even further. “Everyone might not be an artist but everyone is a creative agent,” Barney said. “How we interpret the world is based off our own agency.” PHOTOS: Hailey Stevens For more information on Oliver Herring and TASK visit: https://oliverherringtask.wordpress.com/

After hours of interrogation, Kayla Peel, one of Divine Comedy’s newest members, finally reveals her secret to landing a spot on BYU’s favorite sketch show: “I brought a birth certificate that said my middle name was comedy.” Peel is one of four people who made Divine Comedy’s final cut this year. She is joined by Alena Helzer, Addison Jenkins and Dalton Johnson. “I was in the Tanner building from 9:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M.” Helzer said. “I missed a family vacation for it so I hoped it paid off – bailing on my family to do it!” The four new members competed with over one hundred other Divine Comedy hopefuls to secure their spot. Tryouts spanned two days and were broken up into three rounds. Entry-level auditions required each contestant to write and perform a ninety-second skit. Twenty people of the initial hundred were chosen to progress to the second round beginning the next morning. “I was dazed really, because I wasn’t expecting to even get callbacks.” Peel admitted. “The whole day I kept thinking, ‘This isn’t happening! This isn’t real life!’” The remaining contestants were split into groups and given twenty minutes to write three to five minute sketches. After performing their sketches and playing more improv games, contestants had to memorize and perform previous divine comedy sketches. “That was actually the hardest part of the day – in just a few hours having to memorize the whole thing and then performing a show,” Johnson said. That evening, ten out of the twenty progressed to the final round, when the finalists performed their original sketches live in a Divine Comedy show. After more than 12 hours of skits, games and shows, the victorious four were chosen. The new members are already excited to make a positive impact on the troupe. “People in the back never get candy or glow sticks.” Jenkins said. “I’m a populist. I will please the masses at the back of our venues. That is my mission.” For the masses in the back and everybody else, these outstanding newcomers are bringing fresh ideas and personalities guaranteed to harness more laugh energy than the entire Monsters Inc. factory. Catch the new cast members in the upcoming show, “The Hunchback of BYU,” at 7:00 and 9:00 P.M. on Oct. 9 and 10 in room 151 of the Tanner building.

BYU Alumnus Shaun Parry not only gives back to the community, but shows students how they can as well. Dance Education student, Kyla Threlfall, had the opportunity to work with Shaun Parry in India as she volunteered for Promethean Spark International, the organization Parry founded. She spent the winter semester of 2014 teaching dance, using methodology Parry taught her. Threlfall first heard of Parry’s India program because her sister was in Parry’s ward in New York City. She shared the information with Threlfall, knowing her interest in dance education, and Threlfall jumped on the opportunity to volunteer. Threlfall’s experience led her to teaching classes at a boarding school in Tamul Nadu for kids from kindergarten to ninth grade. She was the only one teaching the dance classes while other volunteers focused on medical assistance and other service projects. She worked closely with Parry on implementing life skills into dance lessons. “We would try role plays of figuring out how I would add in a life skill to a simple movement,” Threlfall said. From this experience Threlfall learned how to be vocal about what the students were learning. She explained that if an exercise required teamwork, she would make sure the students knew that what they were doing was exhibiting teamwork. She used this to have them think of ways to use teamwork in their everyday lives. “The performing arts inherently teaches life skills, sometimes they just needed help recognizing it,” she said. In India, society tells people with leprosy that they cannot do anything worthwhile in their life because they are “untouchable,” Threllfall said. Parry showed her the importance of changing that perception. “He taught me that a major part of my job was ... to let them know that with hard work they can accomplish their dreams,” Threllfall said. As a Dance Education major, Threlfall hopes to implement the teachings from this experience in her future career. Her philosophy goes beyond creating good dancers, but creating good people. “After learning from Shaun, I now have a foundation to use with my future students,” she said. FEATURE PHOTO: Kyla Threlfall and the LifeDance Company.

Brigham Young University’s nine-man a cappella group, BYU Vocal Point, will be releasing an album dedicated to Christmas songs on Friday, Oct. 9 during the BYU homecoming festivities. Members of Vocal Point will be at the BYU Store for CD signings from 2-3 p.m. that day.

Brigham Young University’s Department of Theatre and Media Arts is presenting an adaptation of the poetry of Kate Coombs from her award-winning children’s book, Water Sings Blue. The production started last week and continues Oct. 7-9 at 7 p.m., in the Margetts Theatre of the Harris Fine Arts Center. Matinees will be on Oct. 10 at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. The ASL performance will be this Thursday, Oct. 8. Tickets are $6-7, with discounts available for alumni, seniors, employees and students. Tickets can be purchased in person at the BYU Ticket Office in the Harris Fine Arts Center or Marriott Center, by phone at 801-422-2981 or online at byuarts.com. This charming play celebrates the ocean through pantomime and poetry. Teresa Dayley Love directs this play her imaginative adaptation using in-the-round staging that promises to be playfully interactive for the audiences of all ages. “I often think that the artist's job is to make people pay attention to the world around us,” said Love. “Through their work they shout, ‘Look! Do you see that? What do you think about that?’” The cast includes Haley Flanders, Danny Brown, Sierra Docken, Logan Ruesch, Michael Comp, Arianna Krenk, Oksana Poliakova and Britney Miles. The design and technical crew includes Teresa Dayley Love as director, Jennifer Reed as production manager/scenic designer, Britney Miles as stage manager, Jake Fullmer as assistant stage manager, Scott Jackson as props designer, Travis Coyne as technical director, Michael Kraczek as faculty design advisor, Michael Handley as lighting designer, Donnette Perkins as costume/makeup shot manager, Sarah Stewart as costume designer, Celia Rivera as makeup designer, Eric Kopp as house audio engineer, Jacey Gardiner as sound designer, Janine Sobeck as dramaturge advisor, Spencer Duncan as dramaturge, Mary Jane Wadley as cutter/draper, and Becky Wallin as outreach coordinator.

Mary Lou Fulton, educator and philanthropist, passed away on Thursday, Oct. 1. She and her husband, Ira, were extremely generous donors to BYU and to TMA in particular. In 2004, the Fultons established the five million dollar Mary Lou Fulton Chair in Theatre and Media Arts. The chair has funded hundreds of student projects and scholarships, provided support for outside artists and guests, and supported faculty in numerous ways.

Shaun Parry will be presented with a BYU Alumni Achievement Award on Thursday, Oct. 8. Prior to the award reception, Parry will give a lecture entitled “Impossible Dreams I Didn’t Know Enough To Dream.” The lecture will be held in the Madsen Recital Hall at 11 a.m. Admission is free and the lecture is open to the public.

BYU students often have problems during the wintertime, but soon, for a lucky few, the cold will not be one of them. Next winter semester, during the summer months of the southern hemisphere, about 20 students will travel throughout New Zealand in a new study abroad program that focuses on media and culture, entitled “New Zealand: Global Mass Communication.” In addition to shadowing professionals from several New Zealand media outlets, students will create and publish content that investigates the issues surrounding the Maori, Pasifika and other minority communities in New Zealand. Dr. Clark Callahan, co-faculty director of the program, hopes that students will seize not only the opportunity to grow their portfolios but also to develop an empathetic worldview as they explore different cultures. “My area of interest is how social media affects cultures, so we’ll have a couple of research projects going on. We’ll be interviewing minority populations about how they use social media and what they get out of it. We’ll ask, ‘Does it strengthen or weaken their culture and their cultural perspectives?’” Dr. Callahan said. As part of their research, students will be paired with and embedded in Samoan families for a week. Students will record their experiences in video diaries that will be used to produce a documentary film highlighting the efforts of different organizations to preserve the Maori, Pasifika, and Samoan languages and culture. Steve Thomsen, co-faculty director, believes that New Zealand offers a diverse setting for students to study and create media. “We wanted to create an experience that would be as diverse as possible for students,” said Thomsen. “The objective of the study abroad will be to focus a lot of our efforts on the Pacifica and Maori peoples through the lens of media and the perspective that it if offers,” said Thomsen. The media that students create will be used as programming for the Pacific Media Network and will be published on the student-run website, fightforthefew.org. The latter outlet is currently being developed by the Media Advocacy and Social Change class, which is taught by Dr. Callahan. Hannah Lunt, a senior public relations student in the class, hopes that all these efforts–the class, the website, the study abroad–will help others increase their awareness about minority issues. “I have already seen a difference in how much more aware I am,” said Lunt. “I hope the blog will grow and be a voice to change.” Applications are available through the Kennedy Center’s International Study Programs website, kennedy.byu.edu, and are due Oct. 9 at 5 p.m.

The Brigham Young University BRAVO! series presents the National Dance Company of Siberia, in the de Jong Concert Hall, on Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 - $30, with discounts available for alumni, students, employees and senior citizens. Tickets can be purchased in person at the BYU Ticket Office in the Harris Fine Arts Center or Marriott Center, by phone at 801-422-2981, or online at byuarts.com. Hailing from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, the National Dance Company of Siberia has enthralled audiences worldwide since 1960. Coordinating more than fifty dancers in striking costumes, the artistic director, Vladmir Moisevev, leads the company as they exhibit the rich traditions and folklore of Siberia. Their performances captures the heart of the Siberian soul with original melodies from Vladimir Kornev, the company’s music director, and choreography by the company’s founder, Mikhail Godenko. 'Our community stands uniquely prepared to appreciate the talents of this company of dancers because we value cultural exploration and discovery,' said Jeffrey Martin, producer of performing arts for the College of Fine Arts and Communications and presenter of the BRAVO! series. 'Many of us learn foreign languages, participate in international study abroad programs, and, of course, spend time overseas in missionary service.' This performance is sponsored by BRAVO! Professional Performing Arts at BYU, the university’s concert series that hosts world-renowned guest artists from across the globe. Performance Date: Thurs, Oct. 1, 2015 Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: de Jong Concert Hall, Harris Fine Arts Center, BYU Price: $20 (with discounts for senior citizens, BYU students, employees and alumni) Tickets: Available in person at the BYU Ticket Office in the Harris Fine Arts Center or Marriott Center, by phone at 801-422-2981 or online at byuarts.com

'Peace Officer,' a new documentary directed and produced by BYU faculty Brad Barber and Scott Christopherson, received a 3.5/4 star review by Sean P. Means of the Salt Lake Tribune this weekend. Read the review here. According to TMA's The Sound and the Fury: TMA faculty Brad Barber and Scott Christopherson's documentary, Peace Officer premiered in Utah on Friday at the Tower Theatre. Christopherson reported that the theatre was sold out for the premiere, with about 300 people attending. Because the story takes place in Utah, Christopherson felt like this was one of the most responsive crowd he’s experienced. On Saturday, the Provo police chief came to see the film. After the premiere, media arts alums Julian Acosta, Cole Webley, and Jared Harris (St. Cloud’s) threw an after-party. The film will screen at the Tower Theatre, 876 E 900 S, Salt Lake City, this week at 4:15 pm and 7 pm. The film will also show in Salt Lake’s Megaplex this weekend.