Stagecraft

This summer, four student fellows—Nitisha Bhandari '22 (computer science), Dorothy Feng '21 (English/computer science), Hanjun Huang ’20 (history of art), and Tina Zhong '20 (theater/history of art)—created Journeyways to the West: Modeling an 18th-Century Stage. The fellows researched, designed, built, and published a 3D environment that depicts a Baroque raked stage with animated flatwings and mechanical scenery. “We learned to not only solve problems with a multidisciplinary approach and gained technical expertise, but also became self-starters and project managers,” says Feng.

The model’s animated demonstration of forced-perspective staging contributes to Shiamin Kwa’s research on the performance of a 14th-century Chinese opera on 18th-century European stages. The stage is not a replication of any single stage, explains Kwa, a professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures. Instead, it is a composite that allows users to think about the experience rather than “get hung up on a single stage that exists simply through an accident of history.”

“I believe very strongly that one of the hallmarks of the liberal arts education is that we are teaching practices as much as we are teaching content,” Kwa says. “Having undergraduates involved in my research projects reinforces this belief that we are engaged in a shared process of looking closely at things and developing a finer response system.”

The fellows shared their work at both the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship (ILiADS) at Wooster College and the Digital Scholarship Summer Symposium at Lafayette College. The program is directed by Alice McGrath (Digital Scholarship Specialist) with assistance from Meg Hankel, M.A. candidate, history of art, and Stella Fritzell, M.A. '19, classics, who provided crucial support in project management, mentorship, and curriculum development for the project.