Brittany Art and Technology

Growing up, theatre was a large part of my life. It started in middle school when I was in my first musical: The Best Little Theatre in Town . This love of theatre continued into high school, when I saw Wicked during its national tour with my mom and younger sister. This was the first time I'd seen a professional theatre company and I fell in love. For this reason, Wicked  has always been an important show for me. Not only was it the first show I saw in a venue such as this, but the message spoke to me, too. The friendship between Elphaba and Glinda despite their stark differences was inspirational to me as a small-town girl who had always felt a bit left out. As I got more involved in theatre and choral music, other musicals began to be more important to me. One such show was Next to Normal.  I love the tight harmonies, the way the story is told by only four main characters, and the interwoven melodies among different songs. The show flows in a unique way for its tim...

Madama Butterfly  tells a tale that shouldn't need to be told - of a woman ripped from her child by the child's father it never knew. The claymation version is, somehow, even more human than one may assume inanimate storytellers could be. In his art,    Pjotr Sapegin portrays human emotion and makes his viewers feel deeply for his creations. The closing scene, where the child's mother rips herself apart piece by piece, is particularly moving. This is something that would be impossible to fully portray with human actors without some tricky editing, but that is easily done with Sapegin's characters. The scene evokes discomfort and portrays "gore" without being graphic. The character appears to be mechanical, rather than made of flesh and blood, but the viewer has an idea of her as a human and thus empathizes with her as she tears herself apart. With Madama Butterfly , Sapegin fulfills an artist's dream: to make one's art come alive. He makes his viewer...