Laura Fine Hawkes may be the new head of the Performing Arts Department, but her ties to SFUAD run back to the College of Santa Fe days. A graduate from CSF, Hawkes has worked as a scenic designer and art director in Minnesota, Los Angeles and Houston before returning to SFUAD, officially taking over July 15. She’s also been a guest artist for the past three years and was a contributing faculty member last spring. “I knew the student population and faculty before I came here,” she said. “Although the freshmen and sophomores were newer to me, I knew a number of the juniors and seniors.” This familiarity lends her a distinct advantage over the typical new hire. But, recognizing the foundation the previous PAD chair Victor Talmidge established, Hawkes hopes to continue SFUAD as a school for professional development. “I’ve long known [PAD] to be a strong pre-professional program,” she said. “We can build on that same legacy. My specific passion is design and technology. That would be related to both theater and the greater entertainment industry.” Hawkes’ first step is to make technical upgrades to the Greer Garson Theatre. As a result, all shows will be performed in the round, on stage in Greer Garson, with the audience sitting on stage with the performers. She doesn’t believe the work being done in the theater will disrupt the work in the classroom. “It doesn’t interfere, I would say they interlace,” she said. “Much of our curriculum is geared to what we do that season.” SFUAD’s first show of the season will be The Cave Dwellers, by Samuel French, opening Oct. 3, but the real kickoff will be Greer Garson’s 110 birthday party on Sept. 26. Unfortunately, Mrs. Garson will be unable to attend herself, though a scene from The Cave Dwellers and a stair performance from the Dance Department will entertain. This event is open to the public. After this, shows include Some Girls, Hotline and Den of Thieves, all culminating in new contributing faculty member Alaina Warren Zachery’s Musical Theater Workshop’s showcase, featuring music from Nine. Hoping to extend an olive branch across campus, Hawkes also plans to collaborate with other departments, with film being the obvious suitor. With her improvements on the technical side of PAD, she’s employing a sort of trickle-down eduction that will spread to other aspects in the department. “We’re looking at what partnerships we can have to mutually support each other and to cross collaborate,” said Hawkes. Hawkes began her first year in the chair with a full plate, but if her youth and enthusiasm is any indication, the PAD is in for a fresh start....

SFUAD’s historic barracks receive new life from the TV show “Manhattan,” premiering in July on WGN.

SFUAD Performing Arts presents its end of semester dance recital.

Creative Writing graduate Sara Malinowski ruminates on coming to Santa Fe and finding the kindness in art.

For the past three months, 15 senior graphic design students (including this one) have been working non-stop on their thesis projects. After months of tears and sweat, the graphic design seniors are proud to exhibit their work on a show that will take place this May 9 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Thaw building on SFUAD.

Yes, it’s Nicolas Cage. No, it’s not entertainment. It’s a cinematic story adopted from Larry Brown’s 1991 novel, told in a spirit of blunt realism and within a not-so-fictional atmosphere of the gritty South. Involving gusty performances by actors like Ronnie Gene Blevins, the independent feature Joe, starring Nicolas Cage and directed by David Gordon Green, takes bold moves in character development and throws audience expectation out the window.  As a student filmmaker and two-year-projectionist for The Screen, I honestly believe that  features like Joe are what the cinematic experience is all about. So you think, Nicolas Cage plus David Gordon Green (known for Elf and Pineapple Express) must equal a high budgeted comedy, right? At least that’s what actor Blevins thought when he was offered the role as Willy Russell, the villain. To a small but intrigued audience at The Screen May 2, Blevins shared that it was his assumption of a big budget comedy that led him to sending “a larger than life” audition tape to director Green. Perhaps his performance was “against the type of the film,” but Blevins  heard back from Green all the same, who said that a larger than life villain wasn’t so far from what he had in mind. “My brain was kind of scrambled,” Blevins says, explaining how director Green had requested an audition tape while Blevins was working “these long day in the middle of Appalachia.” Green, who had seen Blevins’ short role in The Dark Knight Rises as a bad guy truck driver, was interested in casting Blevins in the character of a Texas lowlife, but it was only after reading the script that the reality of Blevins’ dark and sadistic role in Joe sunk in. “My resumé includes a lot of bad guys, a lot of evil dudes and episodic [roles],” Blevins says. “This guy straight from the page, there’s just no humanity. So that’s kind of tough.” The challenge, the actor says, then becomes how not to pre-judge Willie and make him one-dimensional but to “find ways, when possible, to put some humor into him…humanity when possible.” It helps, Blevins says, that he’s actually from Texas, where the film was shot and takes place. Though Blevins’ resumé is already filled with impressive credits (including a successful writing career with productions American Cowslip and Eiderdown Goose), he says that working with Nicolas Cage and David Gordon Green has been a highlight of his career. The actor especially liked the role of Willie Russell because it was a role Green allowed him to develop on his own. “Green has a way of inspiring performances which is really quite beautiful and poetic,” Blevins says, “and he’s more inclined to shy away from the technical. He lets us do our thing and sees where it lands.” That atmosphere of improv, Blevins explains, was what kept the mood on set so “light and playful,” despite the darkness of the story. And even if the physical toll was high, like getting whiplash after Joe (Nicolas Cage) beats Willie Russell repeatedly, it was still all about allowing the actors to try anything and everything. Blevins says “there was nothing we could bring up that would be considered wrong.” And if a bar fight sounds too clichéd for a story about the South, it will make sense when the overload of guns, beer, pit bulls, junk yards, and police cars all pause for those moments of true humanity between Joe and Gary, the boy the character Joe takes under his wing. Perhaps more intriguing and certainly saddening, when casting the character of Gary’s abusive father, Green hired a homeless man named Gary Poulter, whose one-time acting role is characterized as “one of the great one-shot performances in the history of cinema,” by Rogerebert.com critic Peter Sobczynski. The term one-shot performance was used, Blevins explains, because two months after the film’s wrap, Poulter was found dead, face down in a river, the same...

After four years of studying the art of photography, four graduating seniors had the opportunity to show off the artwork that they’ve been working on for a year at a BFA senior thesis show. The Marion Center of Photography hosts work by Grace Taylor, C. Alex Clark, Andreas Maestas and Shayla Blatchford through May 18.