Anita Charles

�ֲ���ý education expert talks about ‘screen time’ with Diane Sawyer for TV special — Sun Journal

A two-hour ABC News special looking at Americans’ relationships with screens included an interview with Lecturer in Education Anita Charles, who has studied the effects of cellphones on classrooms.

The special, ScreenTime, aired May 3.

Anita Charles teaches a course on basic concepts in special education in March 2018. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Speaking to the Lewiston Sun Journal about the interview, Charles said, “We need to just be mindful and aware. We are trying to figure out things together.”

What’s more important than setting hard limits on screen time is that parents, schools, and communities provide a sense of balance and listen to their kids.

“Professor Charles says we know American kids are very resilient,” Diane Sawyer narrated. “It’s possible they’ll teach us about balancing life in the future.”

• Read the Sun Journal report: “

Matt Bazirgan ’00

Triton alum Matt Bazirgan climbing front office ranks with Houston Texans — The Daily News

Mac Cerullo of The Daily News in Newburyport, Mass., profiled Matt Bazirgan ’00, who as director of player personnel for the Houston Texans ran the team’s scouting ahead of the NFL draft.

In the recent draft, Bazirgan looked not only for talent to improve certain aspects of the Texans’ game, but for people who would fit well among the players already on the team.

“I think it’s always a match for your team,” he told Cerullo. “There’s always intriguing guys on the board that you may have been really excited about watching on tape, but it’s like OK, with our current roster if we draft this guy and put a high-end asset for a second- or third-round pick, but it’s a luxury, how are you helping the locker room? How are you helping the current team?”

• Read the story: “,” The Daily News, May 8, 2019

Sarah Rothmann ’19

Balancing act: Andover’s Rothmann finds it at �ֲ���ý — The Eagle Tribune

Sarah Rothmann ’19 of Andover, Mass., was profiled by The Eagle Tribune, which chronicled the athlete, educator, and journalist’s personal and athletic journey through �ֲ���ý.

Rothmann, a standout high school runner, arrived at �ֲ���ý shortly after the death of her father, and as a result considered quitting cross country and track. Over the next several years, however, she learned to focus less on times and more on health, teamwork, and relationships.

On the 2018 Great Day to Be a Bobcat broadcast, Sarah Rothmann ’19 talks to Assistant Sports Information Director Aaron Morse about her work on The �ֲ���ý Student. (Theophil Syslo/�ֲ���ý College)

“I realized that I had to be more balanced in my life, that there is more to it than running and I had to take advantage of the opportunities I had at �ֲ���ý,” she told reporter Dave Dyer.

Rothmann majored in English and became sports editor and then editor-in-chief of The �ֲ���ý Student. Next year, she’s off to the Czech Republic on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grant.

• Read the story: “

�ֲ���ý rowing

�ֲ���ý hosts, wins Presidents Cup Regatta — Sun Journal

Photographer Andree Kehn of the Lewiston Sun Journal documented the President’s Cup, an annual �ֲ���ý-hosted regatta that saw competition from Bowdoin, Colby, and the University of Maine.

�ֲ���ý won the regatta handily, with the women’s rowing team winning all six of its races and the men winning four.

• Read the story: “,” Sun Journal, April 28, 2019

Chomba Kaluba ’11

Experiencing Difference panel comes to SMCC — News Center Maine, WCSH-TV

The local NBC affiliate’s News Center Maine covered Experiencing Difference, a panel and discussion at Southern Maine Community College created by Chomba Kaluba ’11 that encourages people to talk frankly about their differences.

“When people are different, sometimes people have the discomfort, sometimes people have fear — but I look at the positive aspect of that,” Kaluba said. “How can we look at the positives in each one of us? How can we look at the good in each one of us?”

• Read the story: “,” News Center Maine, April 5, 2019

Daniel Hoffman ’85

Daniel Hoffman swaps foreign intelligence for elite-level swimming gig — WashingtonExec

Rachel Kirkland of WashingtonExec reported that Daniel Hoffman ’85, who recently retired after 30 years in the intelligence community, is giving back to a mainstay of his college career and life beyond: swimming.

He’s now a senior adviser for the International Swimming League, comprising swim teams from the United States and several European countries. A swimmer at �ֲ���ý and a coach for many years afterward, he wants to raise the profile of elite swimming between Olympics.

“There is a supply of elite swimmers who frankly aren’t receiving any of the financial compensation that they should be receiving because there aren’t opportunities to continue swimming during those four years (between Olympics) unless you’re in a college program,” he told Kirkland.

• Read the story: “,” WashingtonExec, April 15, 2019

Robin Leventhal ’88

In her Walla Walla pottery studio, chef Robin Leventhal connects food and art — Pacific NW Magazine

Providence Cicero of Pacific NW Magazine profiled Robin Leventhal ’88, an artist and chef who rose to the top of Seattle’s restaurant scene before making her way to Walla Walla, Wash.

Leventhal studied art at �ֲ���ý but developed an interest in cooking. She opened a respected restaurant on Capitol Hill and even competed on Top Chef, but health and other issues forced her to close the restaurant.

Robin Leventhal ’88 combined her talent for food and art by creating ceramic oyster plates. (Courtesy of Robin Leventhal)

Leventhal found a culinary school job — and, she told Cicero, contentment — in Walla Walla. In addition to cooking, she maintains a ceramics studio, creating, among other, things a line of oyster plates.

Both pottery and cooking, Leventhal said, are “craft-driven. It’s mastering a craft, then elevating it.”

• Read the story: “,” Pacific NW Magazine, April 30, 2019

Bill Sweat ’79

Oregon’s ‘Pinot in the City’ comes to Boston — Boston Herald

When “Pinot in the City” comes to Boston, the touring display of pinot noir wines from Oregon’s Willamette Valley will include two produced by Bill Sweat ’79 and his wife, Donna Morris.

Sweat told Boston Herald reporter Jim Campanini that he and Morris were working in financial services in Boston when their adventures in the city’s burgeoning restaurant scene inspired them to open a winery in Oregon. The pinot makers travel together to introduce laypeople to Oregon wine.

“The collegiality and collaboration of winery owners is incredible,” Sweat said. “We realize that if a Willamette Valley wine achieves success, we can all benefit from it.”

• Read the story: “,” Boston Herald, April 24, 2019

Kate Allen ’99

In ‘The Line Tender,’ great white sharks make great reading for the younger set — Pioneer Press

Mary Ann Grossman of the Twin Cities Pioneer Press interviewed Kate Allen ’99 about her debut young adult novel, The Line Tender.

Inspired by the sight of a great white shark Allen saw as a teenager, The Line Tender tells the story of a young girl who, in the midst of grief, must become a metaphorical “line tender,” holding the line that guides her loved ones through murky waters.

Allen told Grossman she hopes the book will help young people understand that “difficult things are going to happen in life. Hard, hard times are inevitable.

“The power of the story is that we can adjust, adapt, find a way to move forward.”

• Read the story: “” Pioneer Press, April 28, 2019

Ru Freeman ’94

As Sri Lanka Goes So Goes the World — Literary Hub

In the wake of the devastating Easter Sunday bombings across Sri Lanka, writer and journalist Ru Freeman ’94 and her daughters, Duranya and Hasadri, wrote about their reactions to the terrorist attacks and their Sri Lankan heritage for Literary Hub.

Ru Freeman argued that the violence was not a local problem, but a global one. The world’s response, she said, must be one of solidarity — using as a model the Sri Lankans of all religions who supported each other after the attacks.

“As we consider these attacks, we must dwell on the potential for darkness among us,” Freeman wrote. “It is not something that can be addressed piecemeal, by governments but collectively, as global citizens.”

• Read the story: “,” Literary Hub, April 28, 2019

Arin Arbus ’99

Arin Arbus makes Broadway debut directing revival of ‘Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune’ — WAMC

Director Arin Arbus ’99 spoke with Sarah LaDuke of Albany, N.Y., public radio station WAMC about the first play she’s directing on Broadway, a revival of Terrence McNally’s Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.

Arin Arbus ’99 poses in Times Square during a 2010 �ֲ���ý photo shoot. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Arbus is a longtime off-Broadway director who has worked on the Campfire Project, which staged a theater production at a refugee camp in Greece.

She is currently a resident artist at the nonprofit company Theater for New Audience, which produces Shakespeare and other classic plays. That’s how she met playwright McNally, who asked her to direct the two-character Frankie and Johnny.

Arbus sees many parallels between Frankie and Johnny and Shakespeare’s characters. “The territory is existential,” she told LaDuke. “There are these two middle-aged, world-weary, isolated souls who, in Frankie’s case, no longer believes that her dreams are possible, that she is [never] going to have a serious relationship with a man, who’s at a loss for what has meaning in her life.”

Read the story: “,’” WAMC, May 1, 2019

By Charles Antin ’02

Arin Arbus ’99 and I are about to share a bottle of red wine at Bar Henry, a bistro on West Houston Street in Lower Manhattan. Arbus has just arrived; I, however, have been here 20 minutes, drinking a beer to calm my nerves.

Arbus is, according to critic Charles Isherwood of , the “most gifted” new theater director to emerge in New York in the last year. Her off-Broadway production of Othello, he wrote, handled Shakespeare with the “kind of artistry we always hope for and rarely find.”

At present Arbus is an associate artistic director with, a highly regarded New York City company that focuses on Shakespeare and classic drama. But it’s not her professional stature that has me nervous.

As a writer, I’m just wondering if having this tête-à-tête is an effective way to understand Arin Arbus. I had assumed, perhaps naively, that to know a director you have to see her directing. But she’s between theater projects at the moment.

Such an interim, she tells me, is “the time to try to understand the successes and failures in past productions and to dream about future ones. It’s an essential time for me. A time to recharge.”

With that cue, we talk about her recent volunteer work at Woodbourne Correctional Facility, a medium-security men’s prison in upstate New York. She works for a program called Rehabilitation Through the Arts, leading a theater company of prisoners in a variety of productions, such as Of Mice and Men and, recently, a play the men wrote about maintaining family life while incarcerated.

She points her knuckles together while flexing her biceps, meaning that the prisoners are generally burly. Arbus is slender.

Another recent production began as a modern dance, choreographed by a collaborator and fellow volunteer. Then Arbus gave the prisoners writing prompts, and they performed spoken word during the dance — a sort of hybrid performance piece.

Eighty percent of the Woodbourne prisoners have a violent felony conviction, so I ask Arbus to describe them. She smiles and does one of those muscleman moves, pointing her knuckles together while flexing her biceps, meaning that the prisoners are generally burly. Arbus is slender.

Physical and gender contrasts notwithstanding, I am curious how a director creates a working relationship with actors, whether in prison or on a Manhattan stage.

She answers by comparing working with a theater company — as she does in prison — to working in the style of conventional American theater, where actors come and go from production to production.

“Working with a company is different, and I’ve learned a great deal,” she says. “The group naturally passes through a honeymoon stage and endures periods of frustration — intense disagreements, hurt feelings, and at times people take one another for granted. All of this is, of course, both healthy and difficult to sort out.”

But, she adds, the joys of a company “are immense. A method of working is established, a common theatrical vocabulary develops, a real sense of trust is generated. People get to know one another very deeply — and not necessarily on a personal level.”

The prisoners volunteer for the theater company because it helps them to grow as individuals, she says. I ask if maybe they’re trying to avoid doing something else. She smiles slyly at me, like I just don’t get it, and assures me that’s not the case. Prisoners are busy, she says, and they have to make time for the theater, which they do willingly and with passion. It’s that kind of desire for pure theater, often absent in a professional setting, that brought her to Woodbourne in the first place.

For example, there’s a Department of Correctional Services rule: You don’t exchange personal information with prisoners. “I’ve found that freeing,” Arbus says. “We don’t have the chance to cling to the superficial details that give people the illusion that they ‘know’ each other. We focus on the work at hand, so we encounter each other in a very simple, profound, and almost existential way. Surprisingly, a tremendous feeling of intimacy emerges. I find it humanizing.”

One writer has heard Arbus talk about the liberation of anonymity and concluded that she’s unwilling to share her personal story. But after 45 minutes and half a bottle of wine, I don’t see that quality, and neither does she. “I don’t think of myself that way,” she says. “I don’t have many secrets — no more than your average fellow.”

She says that the spare, intense work with the Woodbourne company “feeds” her off-Broadway work “and vice-versa.”

In prison, the theater productions are, by necessity, text-driven and “without razzmatazz,” she says. And as Arbus and Jeffrey Horowitz, artistic director for Theatre for a New Audience, start to plan one of their productions, they always return to one question: “What are the essentials of this production?” And forcing herself to ask and answer questions about her work’s essential nature, Arbus tells me, “continually helps me to clarify my own theatrical values.”

In his review of Othello, Isherwood of The New York Times alluded to Arbus’ skill at creating eloquence from “trenchant simplicity.” Arbus, he wrote, “gets out of Shakespeare’s way.” Actors arranged on a simple thrust stage become the setting of “rich emotional eloquence.”

Her career shift from visual art to the theater happened because she felt “alone with my ideas” when she painted.

Originally from Los Angeles, she is the daughter of actors (her father is Allan Arbus, familiar to readers as the character Sidney Freedman in M*A*S*H). After graduating from �ֲ���ý as an art major, Arbus considered a career as a visual artist and painter but veered away. She instead embraced the theater after a summer at the Williamstown Theater Festival, where she directed two productions.

Arbus has been with Theatre for a New Audience for six years, and was promoted to associate artistic director after Horowitz saw her Woodbourne adaptation of Of Mice and Men. She directs one TFANA play of several done annually. She followed 2009’s Othello with Measure for Measure last winter.

Her career shift from visual art to the theater happened because she felt “alone with my ideas” when she painted. “I found that isolating.”

It also left her feeling creatively ineffective. “What you can invent together in the theater is going to be far more complex and more interesting than anything I could invent alone. There’s something basic in us that wants to build shared meanings — it’s primal.”

Charles Antin ’02, who lives in Brooklyn, has had essays published in Food & Wine, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The New York Times.