Actor, director, and educator Kevin R. Free carried a binder with the script for The Gravediggers Union around the Gannett Theater stage, reading alongside �ֲ���ý students as he filled in for an absent cast member in a dress rehearsal. 

Like the pro he is, the visiting director skipped nimbly around the cemetery set while reading his lines. He leapt up on a hillside beside makeshift gravestones, bounded across the faux cemetery grass, and, in one scene, hopped into a remarkably realistic grave to lie down. And then, just as he nearly disappeared from view, Free giggled. 

The burst of mirth illustrated what Kevin R. Free is seeking in his artistic work at the moment. “Joy is my activism,” he said.

While his early career as a director and actor mostly focused on social justice, Free now wants to take a different tack in highlighting the cultural, political, and legislated wrongs he sees in society today. He wants to amplify the joy found in life, however small, however he can.

In directing The Gravediggers Union, is the first visiting director at �ֲ���ý who is sponsored by a college grant aimed at positioning the Department of Theater and Dance as a leader in issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion in their artistic endeavors.

As one who brings the perspective and pedagogy of an acclaimed director who is also gay and Black, Free has done this tenfold. But �ֲ���ý faculty members and students say Free brings even more: a windfall of enthusiasm, a frank honesty, and a gregarious energy as he spreads the joy he seeks.

“Kevin is fantastic. The best guest director ever,” said Kati Vecsey, who is chair of the Department of Theater and Dance, a senior lecturer in theater, and vocal director for theatrical productions who invited Free to serve as a guest director. “We are networking to find and bring a more diverse faculty to campus to direct shows because I think it’s good for the program and it’s good for the students to see other ways of directing and pedagogical approaches.”

The play is about six gravediggers who work at a cemetery in rural New Hampshire when their jobs are suddenly threatened by the cemetery version of a big-box store soon to purchase the smaller cemetery and replace the golf course across the street. The blue-collar workers — who uniformly seem to enjoy a slower-paced work life — band together to hatch a plan to raise money to buy their cemetery. They decide staging a play will help. 

Two of the student actors in The Gravedigger Union are theater majors: David Allen ’24 of Dorchester, Mass., and Caroline Cassell ’24 of Woodstock, Vt., both of whom are acting in the production as part of their senior thesis work in theater.

In his senior thesis, Allen looked specifically at the difference in casting white students and a Black student — himself — in the role of the cemetery owner. When asked about the experience of working with Free, Allen put his head back, closed his eyes, and quietly laughed. He said having Free as a mentor was transformative because he said a Black director brings a different layer of understanding of a Black actor, because they share similar lived experiences.

“When it comes to acting, he understands how to attack it from a Black actor’s perspective, which I really didn’t get in �ֲ���ý,” Allen said. “And it’s really interesting to see how he wants me to push certain acting choices and movement choices because he understands what I would have to go through mentally.

“When you’re talking about Black theater or having Black theater classes, it’s different when a Black theater director is talking to you about these things because they can relate to it themselves and explain it from their perspective. If you have a white person teaching Black theater, it’s like they’re giving you the information, but they can’t personally relate to it.”

Free was drawn to ’s script for The Gravediggers Union because it’s a study in life and death, and in finding joy in life, even in the face of death. He also knows the playwright and is interested in producing contemporary plays.

Another reason Free wanted to produce this play: Its characters are not gender- or race-specific. In casting characters and directing actors, Free said: “Humanity should come first.”

“I think young people in general need experiences that are specific to them,” Free added. “And so I was hoping to choose a play from a playwright who said that the roles can be played by the genders that the actors express and by the races that the actors identify with.

“I think before 2020, we weren’t taking people’s humanity into account in the theater. I feel like I’m on the vanguard of those people who say we can’t separate what’s happening outside in the world from what’s happening in the theater on the stage.”

Caroline Cassell ’24 of Woodstock, Vt., plays the role of Mike, a drummer in a local band who lives at home with their mother. A triple major, Cassell’s senior theater thesis explores process, comedy, and gender fluidity within The Gravediggers Union.

“I really love how all the characters in this play don’t have a designated gender,” Cassell said. “There’s also so much possibility to explore humor and clowning, not only with the silliness written into the script, but within my own journey in learning how to drum!”

In this exploratory learning process, Cassell said, Free was an apt guide. They called him an inspiration, open, and naturally collaborative.

“He embodies what being a theater maker in a safe space looks like. He supports and makes room for us as whole human beings. While his direction is focused, it also allows us to explore characters on our own, which I’ve really enjoyed,” Cassell said. “I’ve felt incredibly comfortable and seen and heard in our space. Inviting Free as a guest director, the theater department has created an incredible opportunity to work with a groundbreaking artist in the field. I’m very grateful not only for his skilled direction but for his mentorship and care.”

Most recently, Free has worked as the artistic director of Mile Square Theatre in Hoboken, N.J., and as a director at Portland Stage Company in Portland, Maine, where he’s directed six plays. He also is a notable audiobook narrator.

Free said having a Black gay man serve as a leader, teacher, or role model is valuable for all students — BIPOC, white or LGBTQ — because it is a way to amplify and celebrate our shared experience as human beings.

“You can’t legislate tolerance, as much as we’ve tried. You can’t make people not be prejudiced. But what we can do is create a world where a person like me can be the leader in the room and thereby create an experience for students to be led by someone like me so they can see themselves reflected through my humanity — both white and Black, whatever,” Free said. 

The funding for Free’s residency comes from a $1.2 grant million grant awarded to �ֲ���ý in 2018 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support the faculty’s ongoing work to strengthen the college’s humanities and humanistic social sciences curriculum and teaching while supporting greater equity and inclusion.

Mellon funding supported other changes and new protocols in the department, Vecsey said, including new audition protocols, a more collaborative approach to selecting plays, and stronger community agreements to foster supportive, respectful, and inclusive environments in theater and dance productions. 

At the end of November, ��á�Ծ���� Karsai will travel from his home in Budapest, Hungary, to Strasbourg, France, where he expects to have a few days of great fun.

He will see old friends, watch a soccer match between Strasbourg and Marseilles, and dine on good Alsatian food. 

And while there, Karsai, who is a human rights lawyer, will argue a case before the European Court for Human Rights — with help from a �ֲ���ý faculty member — that is literally about life and death: whether Karsai has the legal right to end his own life. 

Even that part of his trip — arguing the case Karsai v. Hungary for his right to die — will be fun to Karsai, because it means he still can feel alive, still can do what he loves to do.

Karsai has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, an incurable, progressive, and fatal neurological disease that is slowly robbing him of his ability to control his muscles, including his ability to speak. He wants the right to die before he becomes completely incapacitated, stripped of his dignity.

In Hungary, assisted death is a crime, so Karsai is appealing to the ECHR, which will hold a hearing Nov. 27–28. The hearing will be conducted in English, one of the court’s two official languages, French being the other, so Karsai knew he needed help to deliver his personal statement, both with English words that are difficult for a Hungarian to pronounce and help to contend with how the disease is ravaging his speaking ability.

So he turned to a fellow Hungarian who is a �ֲ���ý faculty member: Kati Vecsey, a senior lecturer in theater, vocal director for all �ֲ���ý theater productions, and a noted speech and language pathologist and therapist. 

A member of the �ֲ���ý faculty since 1996 and currently chair of the Department of Theater and Dance, Vecsey earned a doctorate in developmental and educational psychology from Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest. 

At �ֲ���ý, Vecsey teaches courses, has served as vocal director for well over 100 theater productions, was the long-time adviser of the student Robinson Players theater club, and is widely published in her field. Well known in Hungary for her voice work, she was awarded the Farkas Kempelen Plaque Award from the Hungarian Association of Phonetics, Phoniatrics and Logopedics for research and professional contributions to her field.

Sometimes, the goal of Vecsey’s voice teaching is to train someone’s voice toward something different, whether helping a theater student adopt a British accent or helping someone transform their very identity. In the early 2000s, for example, she worked with author and then-Colby professor Jenny Boylan in her transition to becoming a woman by helping Boyle achieve an optimal pitch and varied inflection.

With Karsai, the goal is to help him be the best Daniel Karsai possible, vocally speaking, for as long as possible. “My work with Daniel is not different from what I do during voice coaching with actors,” Vecsey says. “I work to nurture the confidence and self-reliance — so vital to create the optimum conditions for spontaneous, truthful, and healthy expression.”

Karsai is no stranger to the European court, having worked there for four years in the mid-2000s, helping to prepare more than 1,000 draft decisions in English and in French. Since 2011, he has run his own law office in Budapest dealing with constitutional law and human rights issues.

For now, Karsai uses a wheelchair but is still able to go to work at his law firm each day. Before his illness, his English was already quite good, in terms of his vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure. But his speech is now slower and slurred due to an ALS-related condition known as dysarthria that Vecsey studied during her training. 

“The muscles become weak and tight, limiting tongue and/or jaw movement,” she explains. Swallowing is difficult, leading to a build-up of saliva in the mouth, and “he has developed hoarseness and sounds more nasal than before his illness.”

As an example of Karsai’s very good English, here’s a nearly verbatim text of how Karsai describes the first few months after receiving his ALS diagnosis in August 2021.

“After the death sentence, I needed four months to take my s–t together. I’m sorry. Really, the first four months after I received the diagnosis, 25 August last year, I suffer from depression and anxiety, I mean in a medical sense. And with the help of amazing psychiatrist, and the medicines that were necessary, by the end of December, I find back to the light. And then I could restart to live, not just fighting with this situation.”

Neither Vecsey nor Karsai is particularly worried about his accent. “We Hungarians have a terrible accent, even if we are not ill,” he jokes. And, he adds, few people who speak before the ECHR are native English speakers. “You hear many accents. So it’s not strange.”

For Hungarians, difficult sounds to pronounce in English words include the W sound in “what” or the TH sound in “teeth” or “three,” “where you put your tongue between bottom and upper teeth, that’s a lisp in Hungarian, and you get sent to speech therapy.”

Overcoming an accent is a great challenge, she says, because an accent is integral to a person’s physiology. Getting rid of one is not the same as putting one on, like Meryl Streep using a Polish accent in Sophie’s Choice. 

“Your entire mouth develops around the formation of sounds for your primary language,” Vecsey says. “So when you learn a second language, you will have difficulty.”

Knowing Karsai’s voice before ALS is a key concept, says Vecsey. “The knowledge of a ‘healthy voice’ is very important because you are not trying to teach a person something new, but what they know but are having difficulty doing.” 

Appearing on a Hungarian talk show four years ago, looking fit, relaxed, and strong, Karsai speaks in a measured and calm voice with subtle inflections. Now, Vecsey is helping him manage pitch, tone, rhythm, and volume. “You can hear that his voice is already strained.”

Using her theatrical chops, Vecsey is also coaching Karsai on his performance. He has appeared before the court several times, and will be reading from a prepared text. “So it’s not alien for me,” he says.

“Generally it’s much harder to think and speak at the same time in a foreign language in a high-tension situation. This hearing is really like in the movies: full courtroom, big media attention,” including a documentary film team from Hungary that is capturing his story. “And so I would say the psychological part is the most difficult one.”

During our interview, Karsai jokes about wearing his jiu jitsu robe to the hearing. Vecsey ran with it, thinking theatrically: Maybe not the robe, she said, but perhaps he could wear his brown belt around his neck.

��á�Ծ���� Karsai appears on a Hungarian talk show four years ago, prior to his ALS diagnosis.

His approach is “practice, practice, practice. My sensei, my master, always said that if you can do something with 130 percent perfection in practice, in real-life situation that will be 80 or 100 percent. So this is what I try to achieve, practice as much as possible, and then I can perform well.”

And if he makes a mistake, “Who cares? So what? I correct myself and go on. So I should not be afraid of making mistakes. Everybody will think that this is the illness, not my weak English that made the error.” 

To which Vecsey quickly interjects a friendly jab: “You’re telling me that you’re hiding behind your illness now when it comes to English?!” Indeed, the warmth between the two Hungarians comes through. “Daniel is a genuinely fine human being: charismatic, compassionate, and great character and integrity. And a fantastic sense of humor.”

Vecsey and Karsai have been meeting on Zoom weekly since summer. (He is also working with two other speech and language pathologists in Hungary.) “We have fun conversations, and I try to evaluate his speaking skills, ask questions about what he feels when he speaks, and give him feedback and suggestions.”

“This public fight gives me strength because I enjoy it. I enjoy this conversation because we are discussing an issue which intellectually gives me passion and strength.”

��á�Ծ���� Karsai

“Fun” might not be anyone’s idea of what Karsai is having these days, but the word comes up more than a few times during our interview. For Karsai, the capacity to still have fun — to do what he loves doing, to have dignity, to feel purposeful — is what it means to have a life still worth living. The capacity to have fun is one measuring stick for being human.

And for Karsai the human rights lawyer, mounting a major legal battle against what he feels is an unjust law is a blast. “This public fight gives me strength because I enjoy it. I enjoy this conversation because we are discussing an issue which intellectually gives me passion and strength,” he says over Zoom. “I even feel much less tired than one hour ago.”

Published on Nov. 20, 2023, this brief video shows ��á�Ծ���� Karsai two years ago during his jiu-jitsu training and brown belt ceremony, and recently as he tries to get up from the ground.

The European Court for Human Rights hears cases brought against its 46 member states for alleged human rights violations, and its rulings are binding and are considered to have a significant impact on the interpretation and application of human rights law in Europe. 

The case Karsai v. Hungary is not complicated. In Hungary, it is a criminal offense to help someone end their life. (In the U.S., 10 states and the District of Columbia allow assisted death, including Maine.) Karsai is asking the court to consider this a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights, on which the court bases its rulings. (Currently the “right to a death in dignity .)

What is complex is the court’s potential judgment. “A positive judgment could have different levels,” he explains, since the court is looking at three ways Hungarian law might violate the European Convention. “How far the court goes in the very complex issue of end of life decisions, we don’t know. We will see, and then the Hungarian state has to execute it somehow.” (A decision date is not known; however, the court has thus far granted the case priority.)

Speaking for himself, Karsai says that he would “be very happy if we could talk about the concrete measures that the Hungarian state must do after a positive judgment. That would be a huge victory for us. And especially because it is almost sure that there will be other applicants from Hungary, people who are dying but don’t have the time and energy to go to the court because they can barely go to the bathroom.”

Though he will be supported during the hearing by legal colleagues who will help him present the case, Karsai’s participation is much more than ceremonial. 

“And my firm view is that in this situation, flowing from the right to dignity, everybody should have a right to finish their life in a dignified manner.”

��á�Ծ���� Karsai

“Even if I’m terminally ill, I can show up and I can give real context to this question. It won’t be a theoretical issue for the court. It will be a living issue,” he says.

“I always say that this human rights issue concerns 8 billion people on the planet. My personal story shows it very well because two years ago I was a semi-professional sportsman. I did jiu jitsu at a high level; I reached brown belt, which is something, believe me. Now, I can barely go out to the toilet alone, which is five meters from here. 

“It’s everybody’s problem — everybody will pass away one day, and it can happen. It can be the situation that happens after an undignified phase of life, which can last even for years. And my firm view is that in this situation, flowing from the right to dignity, everybody should have a right to finish their life in a dignified manner.”

He is clear that he knows where he is now and where he is headed. “For the time being I have a happy life, but with big f—ing difficulties,” he says. 

“But I have a happy life. But it can disappear. Now I can speak. Maybe in a year I won’t be able to speak at all and I won’t be able to go to a football game because I will be stuck to a bed. I can eat now, but maybe in a year I won’t be able to eat, just through a feeding tube. This is not fun. For the time being, I have a good life and I’m lucky because of that. This is why I say I am not a hero. I receive strength for this and I’m lucky.”

When a delegation from the �ֲ���ý theater department went to a college theater festival in Connecticut last month, their Airbnb lodging turned out to be the erstwhile country getaway for the late king of television variety shows, Ed Sullivan.

The two faculty, one alumnus and four students from �ֲ���ý were open to any supernatural visitations from Sullivan, but he was a no-show. No matter: For the students, all veterans of the 2017 �ֲ���ý production of Diary of a Madman, what counted was the real-world show business contacts and experiences they gained at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival.

Those experiences included two KCACTF awards to students, one for achievement in publicity design and a second for mastery of backstage practices.

Members of �ֲ���ý’ delegation to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival included Rebecca Berger ’19, left, Diary of a Madman stage manager; director Kati Vecsey, holding the award for her adaptation of Gogol’s short story; actor Nate Stephenson ’18; Michael Reidy, production designer, holding the Golden Hammer Award; and Daniel Paseltiner ’16, who assisted with computer programming. Also shown are Eva Goldstein ’18, assistant Madman designer, second from left; and Rachel Forcillo ’18, right, who received a KCACTF award for her poster design. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

A third award went to Senior Lecturer in Theater Katalin Vecsey for her stage adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 19th-century short story.

Students are the focus of the festival, which affords opportunities to present work in myriad aspects of theater to a professional audience. For students considering a stage or screen career, both the KCACTF awards and the sheer experience of attending the event are valuable.

“Students get really good feedback on their work,” Vecsey says, “and also good networking opportunities. And it’s a good opportunity to see who does what, and why, and where to go” in the complex, competitive world of show business.

Rachel Forcillo ’18 took this photo of Madman actor Nate Stephenson and used it as the basis for her “mosaic” poster.

While it’s a student-focused festival, Vecsey does point to professional benefits for the faculty who accompany the students. “It’s good to put yourself into the competition in a way that you can see where you are,” she explains.

“You know, you might be a superstar on your own campus, but as soon as you go to a competition, you realize that, ‘Maybe I really need to do more work.’” (The eight regional festivals send 125 students to compete in the national festival in April in Washington, D.C.)

Stage manager Rebecca Berger ’19 of Bethesda, Md., received the Golden Hammer Award, which recognizes productions that demonstrate exceptional skill in and knowledge of backstage practices, from load-in to load-out.

Requiring three computers, 18 onstage monitors, and more than 1,000 cues, Madman was a bear to build technically — but once built, it was impressively straightforward to stage at the festival, held Jan. 30–Feb. 4 at Western Connecticut State University.

And here’s Forcillo’s finished poster.

“It was high-tech,” says Vecsey, “but despite that, it was just very easy to load it in, set it up, and and load it out.”

For the Golden Hammer, Berger submitted “the stage management handbook that she made and worked from,” says Vecsey. And that book was assessed by so-called respondents — judges, more or less — whom Vescey describes as Broadway stage managers.

The third award went to Rachel Forcillo ’18 of Grosse Pointe, Mich. She received a Merit Award for Publicity for her Madman poster design — a mosaic image that compiles thousands of still photos to depict the face of Nate Stephenson.

For the poster, Vecsey suggested the photo mosaic, which had a counterpart in some of the monitor imagery onstage. For the image that would ultimately be rendered as the mosaic, Forcillo photographed Stephenson on the set, lighting his face from below in classic scary-tales-around-the-campfire fashion.

“The entire time, Kati screamed ‘Be mad! Madder! You are a MADMAN!’ so he’d get into character,” Forcillo says. “I showed her the shot and she was like, ‘That’s the one.’”

Working with photos taken by Grace Link ’19 and edited by Lily Kip ’19, Forcillo painstakingly recolored them to match different regions of the master portrait. Finally, she used an online mosaic generator to match the “tile” photos with the appropriate color regions.

“The entire time, Kati screamed ‘Be mad! Madder! You are a MADMAN!’”

Another student making a strong showing at the KCACTF was the play’s sole onstage performer, Nathaniel Stephenson ’18 of Ellsworth, Maine. Not only did he perform Madman twice, but he also auditioned for the esteemed Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship. (Yes, a scholarship established by the actress who played Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies.) Out of a field of 180, Stephenson made it to the semi-finals, in company with 35 other student actors.

One of the two respondents for Madman was Michelle Bombe, national vice chair of the festival and director of the theater program at Hope College in Michigan. “I was able to talk to her about my work,” says Stephenson.

“The importance of connections in the world of professional theater can’t be understated, and the festival is a great place to make them.”

Michael Reidy works on technical cues on the Diary of a Madman set last November. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

A double major in theater and in French and francophone studies, Stephenson took Vecsey’s Madman adaptation as his project for a six-week summer training at the Moscow Art Theater last year, and it’s the topic of his honors thesis project. He aims to start his professional acting career in Boston after graduation.

The Merit Award for Script Adaptation is the second KCACTF award that Vecsey, who also directed Madman, has received. The first, in 2013, recognized her interdisciplinary collaboration with �ֲ���ý composer Bill Matthews, Alice Swanson Esty Professor of Music, for the �ֲ���ý production of 1000 Airplanes on the Roof. Matthews also wrote music for Madman.

What led Vecsey to adapt the Gogol story for the stage? “Growing up during communism in Hungary,” she says, “I loved the Russian literature.”

The story also intrigued her because it is considered one of the earliest literary treatments of schizophrenia. Finally, the notion of adapting a story from 1835 posed a dramaturgical problem that Vecsey found compelling: “How can you make it relevant today? And would an audience perceive it as, ‘Yes, this person is really mentally ill’?”

Part of the challenge, then, involved finding 21st-century equivalents of 19th-century activities. So the protagonist, Everyman (the character that Gogol called Poprishchin) pours his thoughts into a blog instead of the titular diary, for example.

In addition to Stephenson and Berger, �ֲ���ý students attending the festival were Lila Patinkin ’20, Stephenson’s scene partner in the Irene Ryan Auditions, and Nora Dahlberg ’18, who presented her costume design thesis. They were accompanied by Vescey; Madman production designer Michael Reidy, senior lecturer and managing director of theater and dance; and Daniel Paseltiner ’16, who works in a neuroscience lab at �ֲ���ý but helped Reidy with programming.

Nate Stephenson ’18 as Everyman. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

As part of his honors thesis, Nate Stephenson ’18 of Ellsworth, Maine, plays Everyman, a character from Nikolai Gogol’s 1835 short story “Diary of a Madman.” Senior Lecturer in Theater Katalin Vecsey adapted the play () so that it’s set in the present day.

Everyman could be any one of us, Stephenson says. “But he’s still one person. So you have to find how to play one person who can be anyone.”

Theater students call her “the queen.”

The royal in question is Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater, and because she’s the queen, she naturally has a framed oil portrait of herself looking very queenly hanging in her second-floor office above Schaeffer Theatre.

Painted by Singha Hon ’14, a double major in theater and art and visual culture, the portrait was a surprise birthday gift from the Robinson Players, the student theater troupe that Vecsey advises, which threw in a second present: a sign that reads, “It ain’t easy being queen.”

Vecsey, who is also the vocal director for �ֲ���ý theatrical productions, stashed the painting at home but a friend recently suggested that she frame it and hang it in her office for others to enjoy. That made practical sense. But another sense — modesty — prompted Vecsey to place the artwork behind her office door “so it’s not so obvious to everyone who comes in that I think of myself as a queen.”

The painting includes a fur stole — “I don’t wear fur, but I guess a queen has to” — and a signature Vecsey necklace made of surgical steel, representative of her taste in “crazy” jewelry.

“Every time I look at it, I smile and think of how much I enjoy the work that I do with the Robinson Players,” Vecsey says, noting Hon’s artistic skill to make sure that “the crown doesn’t look like it came from Burger King.”

The admiration is mutual. The acknowledgments in a Robinson Players’ program always include “a very special thanks to Kati Vecsey, our unbelievably dedicated faculty adviser for her unending commitment.”

Each year, the Robinson Players votes in a faculty adviser, and each year the organization’s board of directors and members choose Vecsey. At some point, she says, they changed the ballot to read “Queen of the Robinson Players.” Like any good monarch, Vecsey figures that “I’m going to die out instead of passing it to somebody else.”

Why do they call her the Queen? Perhaps because she sounds the part, with a distinctive Hungarian accent that, thanks to old Hollywood films, tells us she should belong to the aristocracy.

Vecsey’s is a benevolent, yet activist monarchy. She advises the troupe on its play choices, and they turn to her for advice during dress rehearsals. “It’s a very honorable position. The students trust me with my criticism, with my reviews of the play,” she says. “People feel very vulnerable showing their art, and I feel very privileged that they choose me every year to be that special person who provides critical feedback.”

In the end, Vecsey’s portrait occupies very little real estate in the curio shop that is her office, which is filled with books, papers, and objects from years of theater, scholarship, and teaching.

But with a collector’s passion, she concludes, “I come into my office, I look at lots of stuff that I’ve done, and it makes me feel good.” What more could a queen ask for?

�ֲ���ý dance poster for 2014 Parents & Family Weekend Dance Concert 2014.

A great theater poster, says �ֲ���ý theater director Kati Vecsey, “makes me want to rip it off the wall, frame it, and hang it in my house — but it should also make me want to see the show.”

From that perspective, posters created by Khi Kim ’16 of Goyang, South Korea, have fueled larcenous passions while helping to fill �ֲ���ý venues over the last four years.

In 2012, Kim arrived at �ֲ���ý to study biochemistry. He also had a graphic design background, and soon got a campus job designing posters for �ֲ���ý theater and dance productions.

In the four years since then, Kim has created some of the best and best-liked posters that the campus has ever seen.

“His work is sophisticated, evocative, and clever,” says Tammy Caron, senior designer and Kim’s supervisor in the Communications Office.

A Creative Case Study: The poster for Wasteland

Here are two versions of a theater poster for Susan Felder’s play Wasteland. At left is one done by a Chicago-based theater company. At right is Khi Kim’s version for the �ֲ���ý production in fall 2014.

Khi Kim’s poster for Wasteland does what a poster should, says Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in the theater program who directed the fall 2014 production of the Susan Felder play.

“It catches your attention, gives you information that keeps your attention, but does not give the play or the artistic concept totally away.”

As with her other poster project with Kim, Vecsey first asked him to read the play. Then, he reviewed the set design with Vecsey while they talked about her directorial and artistic concept.

She also showed him a Wasteland poster, on left above, that she did not care for.

Vecsey says that she specifically asked for a poster that would not “reveal that there are really two people in the show, and that they communicate with each other over a wall. I wanted to keep it as a surprise for the audience.”

The result, Vecsey says, was one of his best �ֲ���ý posters ever. “By the way, Susan Felder also loved it,” she adds.

Vecsey, a senior lecturer in theater, has gotten used to Kim’s posters “disappearing from campus even before a show opens — students take them for their rooms.”

And if Kim knows what students like, it’s because he works at it; he’s always in conversation with his campus and his fellow students. He calls it getting “inspiration from real life.” All day, he says, “I have conversations” with people around him, all the while thinking about design concepts.

“When I talk with someone, I think to myself, ‘What will this person want to see in the show and in this poster?’”But also, Kim is paying attention to what the poster should say about the show. Emotionally, the two should align, Kim says. “We want people to arrive as emotionally ready as possible.”

�ֲ���ý theater poster for Israel Horovitz's Stage Directions by Khi Kim '16.

�ֲ���ý theater poster for Murder in Manhattan, a murder-mystery game staged by The Robinson Players, by Khi Kim '16.

�ֲ���ý theater poster for Norman Corwin's They Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease by Khi Kim '16.

�ֲ���ý theater poster for Castle of Perseverance by Khi Kim '16.

�ֲ���ý theater poster for Apollinaire's The Breasts of Tiresias by Khi Kim '16.

Born in Korea, Kim was educated in China before coming to �ֲ���ý. Upon arrival, he decided to trim his dual interests in science and art down to just one. “I thought, ‘OK, now’s the time.’” Yet, four years later, “I’m still doing both,” he says, and it’s been a win-win.

For example, his senior thesis on RNA has drawn him into bioinformatics, a field that develops methods and tools to understand biological data. Bioinformatics puts a premium on visualizing information, and that’s exactly what Kim has been training to do while designing posters.

He says that his thinking has become “more visual, and that skill transfers well into science when I try to analyze a graph, imagine a structure in 3D, or use geometric shapes and patterns.”

He does it with an “intuitive understanding of the concept-to-execution process,” says Caron.

Kim, known for his indefatigable charm, might hear from several �ֲ���ý artists involved in publicizing a performance. It’s a rigorous process; Professor of Dance Carol Dilley loves Kim’s work but admits that her team “might reject one out of every three” of his initial concepts for a dance concert poster.

Each time, Dilley says, Kim comes back with either a revision that accurately reflects the client’s feedback or with a completely new concept, whichever was requested.

Kim thought he’d have to trim his dual interests, in science and art, down to just one at �ֲ���ý. Yet he found that he could pursue both. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý Colleg)

He does it with an “intuitive understanding of the concept-to-execution process,” says Caron. With deftness beyond his years, Kim “keeps the client’s needs in mind while offering his own creative interpretation of their ideas.”

It helps that Kim has command of a robust set of skills, from manipulating images, layers, and type to using line, composition, and scale play. He plays with various design elements to create both complex designs — such as the poster for They Fly Through the Air With the Greatest of Ease — and, says Caron, “incredibly powerful, yet simple statements,” such as the Boxing 2000 poster.

Early on, Kim says, he took rejection personally. (Really, who wouldn’t, or doesn’t?) “I had a hard time processing it, thinking, ‘Oh my god. What did I do wrong?’ I felt embarrassed.”

His strategy now is to look at rejection as a difference of understanding, or perhaps just a failure to communicate. “People think differently,” he says. “There can be errors in communicating. Sometimes people just want different things. Rather than taking it personally, I see it as just differences.”

Indeed, Dilley says, “Khi has figured out, very young and very well, how to invest in the work but not invest in his attachment to the work.”

Today, Kim doesn’t see the need to choose art over science, or vice versa. Adds Caron, “I don’t think he’ll ever need to.”

He plans to work in Korea for a few years, then perhaps return to the U.S. for graduate work in informatics, “where science and data visualization and arts all come together.”

We’ll keep you posted.

This story appeared in the the of �ֲ���ý Magazine.

In 2006, Judith Magyar Isaacson ’65 signs her memoir “Seed of Sarah” after a class about the Holocaust taught by former �ֲ���ý professor Steve Hochstadt. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

‘Inextinguishable force of human worth’

To remember vividly, so that none can forget — to say the unspeakable, so that all can hear — takes a voice of courage, power, and eloquence. Your strengths, Judith Isaacson, touch the lives of not only your family and your colleagues but those countless others who read in your personal and professional life the inextinguishable force of human worth.

For preserving, for giving testimony, for helping us to understand, and for the encouragement of conviction, we stand in admiration and resolve.

Judith Isaacson receives the honorary Doctor of Laws degree in 1994. (�ֲ���ý Communications)

‘I fought pretty hard for women’

Isaacson could see that many of the codes of conduct at �ֲ���ý were outdated, and quickly became an advocate for women’s rights at the school. She had children of her own in college at that point, and from their experiences she found that, comparatively, the policies at �ֲ���ý were very different. “Young, 18-year-old women had far more freedoms at home than at �ֲ���ý,” explained Isaacson….

Isaacson resolved other important complaints from students. One concerned the issue of parietals. Previously, men and women did not have permission to enter dorms of the opposite sex, but she changed campus-housing rules to allow visitations. Another problem surrounded sports. “I fought pretty hard for women to have athletic privileges,” she said.

Judith Isaacson talks with members of the Women’s Council in 1970, the start of changes that would make �ֲ���ý social life more equal for women. (Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library)

‘How many times have I started anew?’

….carries his presidential paraphernalia with great dignity, his head held high, his steps springy. I am proud to be following just behind him, but still incredulous of my position. What right have I, the ultimate outsider, to be playing this venerable role?

My mind, that relentless time machine, projects a different image. Instead of stepping along the carpeted aisle in my academic gown, cap and hood, I see myself marching in a mile-long procession, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, stark naked….

This is my next-to-last official function at the College. After tomorrow’s Commencement, I’ll be embarking on a new venture, just like the seniors.

How many times have I started anew? I muse, as my eyes follow the members of the Class of 1977 making their solemn way to the front pews. How many different identities have I had?

Judit Magyar — a family name meaning Hungarian. Jewish teenager under the Nazi regime. Number 561.20578 in concentration camps. Frau Hauptman, American captain’s wife in Germany. Mrs. Irving Isaacson, lawyer’s wife in Lewiston, Maine. Mom, to my children. Judy, to my classmates. Mrs. Isaacson, to my math students. Dean Isaacson for the past eight years. Will Grammi be next? Here is hoping.

Irving Isaacson ’36 and Judith Isaacson met after her liberation by American troops in 1945. Married on Dec. 24, 1945, they were photographed in 2000 by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

‘A warm and humorous optimist’

(Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

‘All who live, rejoice, rejoice’

Kati Vecsey and Judith Isaacson, photographed in 2009 by Phyllis Graber Jensen.

Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater, directs “Closer.” (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý College presents Patrick Marber’s Closer, a British play described by New York Magazine as “a sad, savvy, often funny play that casts a steely, unblinking gaze at the world of relationships,” in performances at 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday, March 27-29, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Admission is free. For more information, please call 207-786-6161.

The director is Kati Vecsey, senior lecturer in the �ֲ���ý theater department. Closer is performed by a rotating cast of 12 students from Vecsey’s Advanced Voice and Speech class. While four students perform, the other eight manage the backstage work, props and lighting.

Premiered in 1997 and perhaps best-known from its 2004 film adaptation, starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman, Closer is set in London and examines human relationships through a raw yet humorous portrayal of a love quadrangle. The play focuses on the complex relationships among four lovers — Dan, Larry, Anna and Alice — as they swap partners over a period of years.

Written during a period in British drama referred to as “in yer face” theater, the play features blunt, explicit language.

As a director, Vecsey says, “I’m interested in the human psyche and personal relationships because that is what life is about. It’s about how we relate to people.”

Vecsey, who is the vocal director for �ֲ���ý theater department productions, picked the play as an exercise for the voice and speech class because the key to the characters lies in the language. She notes how every character has a one-on-one scene with every other character, thereby revealing personalities in depth.

“Each character has his or her own personal background, own demeanor and disposition, own personal rhythm,” says Lydia O’Brien, a senior from Washington, D.C., who is one of the three actors playing Anna. “These are factors that influence voice in unexpected ways.

“During read-throughs, we’ve talked with Kati a lot about characterization and what our characters reveal about themselves through certain lines, and this comes out even more when we work on our character biographies out of class. We think about how our characters’ personal habits and quirks affect voice.”

Here are the three casts:

• Performing on Friday, March 27, are four sophomores: Alex Eaton of Lake Oswego, Ore., as Dan; Brennen Malone of Philadelphia as Larry; Christina Felonis of Athens, Greece, as Anna; and Tara Khanmalek Yazdi of Arlington, Va., as Alice.
• March 28: Gunnar Manchester, a senior from Rehoboth, Mass. (Dan); Colin McIntire, a junior from Darien, Conn. (Larry); O’Brien; Audrey Burns, a sophomore from Topsham, Maine (Alice).
• March 29: Juniors Jonah Greenawalt of Wayland, Mass. (Dan), and Sam Myers of Riverton, Wyo. (Larry); and seniors Abby Zwetchkenbaum of Providence, R.I. (Anna), and Hanna Allerton of New York City (Alice).

An essential part of the learning process for Vecsey’s voice-and-speech students is to narrow in on their characters’ motivations and desires. This begins with a close analysis of the script. Vecsey notes that it’s important that her students approach characterization without passing judgment.

“We always say in theater that acting is reacting,” she says. “So you have to like the character. You have to understand that character’s thoughts and actions. And I think that if you understand that through your own emotions, you will be able to deliver a voice, and express emotions through that voice, that are true.”

O’Brien agrees. “Anna seems to have good values at first, but she goes on to cheat within her relationships and lie about it, as do the others.

“But if you judge your character right off the bat, you’re never going to be able to look past what they’re doing to understand why they’re doing it. You can’t focus on the appearance of what they’re doing — you have to get beneath the surface of their actions so you can embody what they’re really going through.

Incorporating the lovers’ exchanges online as well as face to face, Closer comments on the advent of contemporary communications technology and how it has transformed our interactions. Vecsey believes that the play represents a specific political and economic moment in English society.

At the same time, though, its themes are universal. “There are moments in the play that probably happened to you,” Vecsey explains. “Like when people lie to each other, or betray each other, and how somebody reacts to that, or how someone reacts to kindness, or being cared for, or being loved or not being loved.

“I think it’s very realistic and very relevant still.”

Hannah Allerton '15 of New York City performs the monologue "The Daughter of Iran."

Shana Wallace '15 of Pleasantville, N.Y., performs the monologue "Scheherazade, the Storyteller."

Audrey Burns '17 of Topsham, Maine, performs "The Assassin and the Daughter of the Revolution."

Rebeccah Bassell '16 of Mechanicsville, Va., delivers the monologue "The Veil Thingy."

"The Poets and the Assassin: Daughters of Iran." a play by Reza Jalali and directed by Senior Lecturer in Theater Kati Vecsey, features �ֲ���ý students performing monologues that offer insight into the plight of women in Iran — women hidden by the traditional chador, unseen but seeing, silenced but rebellious, fighting for liberation, democracy and human rights. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý College offers a performance of The Poets and the Assassin, a play by Reza Jalali exploring the lives of women in Iran, at 5 p.m. Friday, March 6, in Gannett Theater, Pettigrew Hall, 305 College St.

Co-sponsored by the theater and dance department and the Office of Intercultural Education at �ֲ���ý, the performance is open to the public at no cost, but tickets are required. Please visit or call 207-786-6161.

The �ֲ���ý production is performed by five students and directed by Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater and vocal director for �ֲ���ý theatrical productions. A Q&A session follows the performance.

The production moves to Portland for a free performance at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 12, at SPACE Gallery, 538 Congress St. For more information, please call 207-828-5600.

The Poets and the Assassin uses five monologues to unveil the strengths and struggles of women in Iran as they strive to define their own identities within the strictures of that deeply conservative society.

“Although women in Iran have historically been in the forefront of the national struggle for liberation, democracy and human rights, and are among the most educated and progressive women in the Middle East, their stories of courage, resistance and survival — as well as the strength and character of the century-old women’s movement in Iran — are unknown to most in the West,” Jalali writes in an introduction to the play.

“Iranian women live contradictory and complex lives in an intensely traditional and patriarchal society,” he continues. “Their search for identity in a society that is ambiguous about the public role of its women speaks to their refusal to conform to subjugation in the name of tradition, culture and religion.”

The Poets and the Assassin, he says, “unveils the complex and contradictory plight of Iranian women caught in the battle between traditionalism and modernity, while challenging our assumptions about women in Iran and Islam.”

A Kurd from Iran, Jalali is a Muslim scholar, writer and educator who has taught at Bangor Theological Seminary and the University of Southern Maine, and who coordinates USM’s Office of Multicultural Student Affairs. His books include New Mainers (Tilbury House, 2009), Moon Watchers (Tilbury, 2010), and the self-published Homesick Mosque and Other Stories (2013).

Vecsey teaches advanced and introductory voice and speech courses, text analysis, stage dialects and voice-over techniques. She has served as a vocal director for academic and professional theater productions in the United States and her native Hungary. Her recent directing credits include Wasteland by Susan Felder, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) by Sarah Ruhl and Collected Stories by Donald Margulies.

The �ֲ���ý student performers are seniors Hanna Allerton of New York City and Shana Wallace of Pleasantville, N.Y.; sophomores Audrey Burns of Topsham, Maine, and Tara Khanmalek Yazdi of Arlington, Va.; and junior Rebeccah Bassell of Mechanicsville, Va. Abigail Zwetchkenbaum, a senior from Providence, R.I., appears instead of Bassell in the SPACE Gallery performance.

During a junior semester in Florence on a Syracuse University program, Sophy Min ’12 won best in show for this oil painting, The Lady and the Ladder.

“I want her to be jubilant.”

Arts & Culture Facts

Giving Voice

Katalin Vecsey, senior lecturer in theater, photographed by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

Easing Up on the Easel

One thing Caroline Sheridan ’12 learned about her art in 2011–12 is that less is sometimes more. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College.

World Facts

Art of the Sale

Sophy Min ’12 teams with Erica Long ’12 for an impromptu art sale in Commons. Photograph by Phyllis Graber Jensen.