Connor Mayers
Arts Scholar
Pentathalon Semester 1
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Moonlight
#film // viewed at home 9/20/20
I recently watched Barry Jenkins’ 2016, Best Picture-winning film Moonlight. The film takes places in a poor neighborhood in Miami and tells the story of a young, gay Black man named Chiron, whose coming of age is explored at three different points in his life. The film is beautifully shot, and it really made me reflect on how filmmakers tell stories and set moods through the moments they decide to show on camera. In Moonlight, we don’t see much of Chiron’s life, but we do see does a great job of portraying his struggles. The film also made me reflect a lot on how we deal with our sexualities at a young age. Talking about this can sometimes be a taboo or uncomfortable topic, but Jenkins manages to portray it in an extremely relatable and beautiful way. I loved this movie from front to back and will hopefully doing a deeper dive into Jenkins’ filmography soon.
Pentathalon Semester 1
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
The Bald Soprano
#theater // viewed at home 10/4/20
For my second Pentathlon event, I decided to watch a recording of absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco’s play The Bald Soprano through UMD’s Theatre in Video streaming service. I had read the play before, but I was interested to see it performed live. My viewing experience took a turn though when I found out the recording I was watching was actually an operatic interpretation of the play. At first, I thought the sing-songy way all the characters were speaking was a bit silly, but after more reflection, I found it quite interesting. The play is an absurdist work to begin with, so it is intended to really make you think about all the strange and seemingly unexplainable things happening. Watching this performance actually made the play more absurd in my mind, which really just enhanced the play for me. For a theater director to look at an absurd play and make it even more absurd is an amazing feat in my opinion, and this viewing of the play really made me throw out a lot of conceptions I had about theater in general.
Pentathalon Semester 1
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Kafka On The Shore
#literature // listened to at home 10/24/20
For my third Pentathlon event, I decided to listen to an audiobook of Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore. The novel follows the exploits of a teenage boy known as a Kafka, as he runs away from home. I’m not very far into this novel (it’s quite a long one,) but I am enjoying it a lot so far. Murakami’s prose is very intriguing, and much different from anything else I’ve read. As Murakami writes in Japanese and this book was translated into English, I’m sure a bit of meaning is lost, but the words are very beautiful nonetheless. I’ve also never been a big fan of audiobooks, but the narrator of this book had an incredibly soothing voice that enhanced my listening experience.
Pentathalon Semester 1
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my first semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Parasite
#film // watched at home 11/15/20
For my 4th Pentathlon event, I watched Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 film Parasite. The movie, which is in Korean, is a highly acclaimed film that won both the 2019 Palme d’Or and the 2020 Academy Award for Best Picture. The film follows a poor Korean family, who manage to all work their way to being employed by a rich family. As the movie progresses, the family has to navigate their way without being found out, and the movie all comes to an extreme climax at one of the rich kid’s birthday parties. I thought the movie was excellent, mostly for it’s great commentaries on class within Korean society (and more importantly, the world at large.) The movie was also incredibly engaging and thrilling, making all 2+ hours of this movie fully worth the watch.
Pentathalon Semester 2
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my second semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Uncut Gems
#film // watched at home on Netflix 2/6/21
For my first Pentathlon event of the semester, I decided to watch the Safdie Brothers’ 2019 thriller film Uncut Gems. The film follows Howard Ratner (played by Adam Sandler,) who works as a jeweler in New York City. Howard is a gambling addict who has also started dabbling in smuggling highly precious gems from Africa. Most of the film revolves around a high stakes bet that Howard makes involving basketball star Kevin Garnett, who also appears in the movie. This film, and especially it’s ending, is incredibly stressful. The Safdies excel at doing exactly this, as it was also a big part of their 2017 film Good Time. This movie does seem slightly one-dimensional on the surface, but the more I thought about it the more I was just thoroughly impressed with this movie. The acting, writing, and directing are all fantastic in this film and really make you feel like you are there next to the characters, waiting with baited breath to see what twist will present itself next.
Pentathalon Semester 2
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my second semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
boygenius Live at Brooklyn Steel
#music // watched at home on 2/27/21
For my second Pentathlon event, I watched a live recording of the band boygenius playing their debut EP live at Brooklyn Steel in 2018. boygenius is a supergroup formed by indie musicians Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker. The band’s sound is a great mix of all the styles that these musicians use in their solo careers: indie rock, folk, country, and singer-songwriter. In this show they played the 6 songs from their debut EP, with each track allowing a different member of the band to take center stage. These women all have phenomenal stage presences, which made watching this live performance incredibly enjoyable. The studio versions of all of these songs are amazing, but hearing them performed live allows for a degree of rawness and grandiosity to shine through. The members of the group have great chemistry, and that is even more clear here as you are able to see their interactions on stage. All six tracks here are great, but I think my favorite has to be “Stay Down,” which has a standout performance from Julien Baker. To be completely honest Julien is the boygenius member who I listen to the least, but she absolutely kills it in this performance.
Pentathalon Semester 2
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my second semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
LeVar Burton Reads "Salt"
#litearture // listened to at home on 4/11/21
For the fourth Pentathlon event this semester, I decided to listen to an episode of “LeVar Burton Reads,” in which the famous actor picks a short story and narrates it. The specific episode I listened to was the story “Salt” by Rosemary Melchior. The story itself was not as interesting as I had expected, but it was still a fun story overall. In it, a young girl named Sigga is sent to a penal colony on a cold and icy island. Throughout the story, Sigga explores this fantastical landscape encountering plenty of interesting sights. Fantasy is not generally my favorite genre, but I thought the descriptions were still quite interesting. The best part of this experience though was LaVar Burton’s narration. Burton has a fantastic voice that I remember from my days watching Reading Rainbow as a kid, so listening to this story did make me quite nostalgic. On top of Burton’s incredibly smooth and calming voice, there was also some interesting background music layered throughout at some points. The music reminded me of something I might hear in one of my favorite video games, Skyrim, which takes place in a cold fantasy realm similar to the one in this story. This detail was pretty cool and definitely made me feel pretty immersed in the world that was being described.
Pentathalon Semester 2
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my second semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
TED Talk: "When the world is burning, is art a waste of time?"
#presentation // watched at home 4/25/21
For my final pentathlon event, I decided to watch a TED Talk relating to art. The one I chose is entitled “When the world is burning, is art a waste of time?” and was presented by the graphic novelist R. Alan Brooks. Brooks describes his journey to becoming a graphic novelist professionally, as he initially was working in a much different field: insurance. Brooks describes how he was discouraged from being an artist by his parents, who were worried that their son becoming an artist would attract too much attention to him, and lead to him being attacked by racists. Eventually, Brooks decided he couldn’t sell insurance anymore, and took the plunge into becoming an artist full time. What Brooks realized though, was that even during a time of unprecedented chaos in the world around him, he could create art that makes a difference. This conclusion was really empowering to me. Obviously, Brooks and I have much different life experiences, but I think our desire to create impactful art is pretty similar. Being motivated to stay creative when it feels like the world is crumbling around you is quite difficult, but this TED Talk made me feel like continuing to create is worthwhile.
Pentathalon Semester 3
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my third semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Redveil Concert
#music // Attended live in the Clarice Courtyard on 9/18/21
(Note: I forgot to take a selfie at the actual event, so I included one of me listening to his music later on)
For my first Pentathlon event of my second year in Arts Scholars, I had to attend an event as part of the NextNow Festival on campus. I chose to attend the Redveil concert on Saturday night in the Clarice Courtyard. Redveil is a local rapper whose music I have known about for about a year, so I was very excited for this show. I got there fairly early, so I was able to get a spot that was quite close to the stage. One of Redveil’s friends started off with a DJ set, where he played a bunch of popular rap songs. This got the crowd energized before the main set. When Redveil came out, he brought a bunch of his crew to the stage with him, which was very cool. I always love when artists are able to involve their close friends in events like these. Redveil had an amazing stage performance and was able to get the crowd super energized, which contributed to a really raucous environment. It was clear that a lot of people didn’t know most of the lyrics to his songs, but that didn't matter much as he was able to get the crowd moving around nonetheless. It was great to just be able to let loose and enjoy the music with everyone else. After the show, I ran into Redveil on the way out and let him know that I loved the set. I’m hoping he performs around here again soon because I would definitely enjoy seeing him again.
Pentathalon Semester 3
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my third semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Record Painting
#visualart #artscholars // attended on 10/20/21
For my next Pentathlon event, I attended a record painting night hosted by Arts Scholars TA Emily. Myself and my friend Carey decided to attend because we both enjoy records, so we thought painting them would be a fun activity as well! I am not a very good painter, but I still found this event fun. Just the act of painting in a very casual manner was very therapeutic, and the music that we were listening to as well also added to the very relaxing atmosphere. Painting on the records was a bit more difficult than I expected, because you needed to apply much more paint than I imagined. Because of this, I decided to just paint very basic shapes and designs on the record. Carey decided to paint the cover of one of the records, which ended up turning out really cool. She was able to transform the cover art into a funny little comic, which I thought was really cool. If I were to try record painting again, I would definitely make sure to have a better game plan, as my lack of artistic ideas coming in led me to spending more time than I should have in figuring out how to approach painting.
Pentathlon Semester 4
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my fourth semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Aquarius
#film // watched at home on 2/6/22
For my first Pentathlon event of the semester, I decided to watch the film Aqaurius, by the Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho. The film tells the story of the woman Clara, who lives by herself in a beachside Recife apartment after the death of her husband 17 years prior. The main conflict of the film is between Clara and a construction company, who are attempting to buy Clara’s apartment for their real estate project. In fact, Clara is the only holdout left in the building, and refuses to leave no matter what. I found this film really intriguing for a multitude of reasons. I thought that the acting and writing for this movie were amazing, especially for Clara. In addition, I think this movie has a lot to say about aging. Clara and her friends are all on the older side of life, but that doesn’t stop them from being strong willed and driven to get what they want. I also enjoyed this film because I have never watched a movie from Brazil before, and this movie helped me see what a beautiful and diverse country it is. This film inspired me to explore foreign cinema more, especially that of Brazil!
Pentathlon Semester 4
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my fourth semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Speak to My Soul
#theater #dance #music // watched live at the Ware Center in Lancaster. Pennsylvania on 2/26/22
For my second Pentathlon event, I went to a performance of the choreopoem Speak to my Soul by Evita Colon. Evita Colon is an artist local to my hometown in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and I went to this event with my parents and my friend Carey. I had never seen a choreopoem before, which is a type of performance piece that blends together spoken word, dance, and music, but I was excited to see this performance. I was totally floored by the end, and this was definitely one of the coolest pieces of media I have seen in a while. The coolest thing about this was definitely the dance. The dancers for this performance were incredibly talented, and it was very interesting to see how the dance helped enhance the narrative of the choreopoem. The poetry itself was also incredibly powerful, with Colon and her fellow actresses speaking about the experience of being Black, Latina, female, and gay in today’s America. I found it awesome that they were able to pull together so many different intersections, and I also liked the heavy references to other black artists such as Ntozake Shange, Tupac Shakur, and Spike Lee. Overall this was a super cool experience and I hope to see something else by these artists sooner rather than later.
Pentathlon Semester 4
As an experiential component of College Park Arts Scholars, I attended a selection of five art events during my fourth semester. These events ranged in art mediums and each sparked dialogue among my peers.
Animal Collective - Live @ 9:30 Club
#music // watched at home on 3/31/22
For my most recent Pentathlon event, I decided to watch a recording of a recent live show by the band Animal Collective. This show took place a few weeks ago at 9:30 Club in DC, but I sadly did not attend. I was going to buy tickets but I saw Animal Collective in September in Chicago and I remember their set being not that great, so I decided to pass on this show. This was definitely a bad decision though because some friends of mine who went said it was a great show, and so luckily I found a YouTube recording of the show! The lighting for this show was super cool and I wish i could have experienced it in person. The setlist was very full and had a lot of cuts from their recent album, Time Skiffs, but also some highlights from their other albums too. What I love about Animal Collective live shows is that they have such a large back catalog to pull from and always switch it up to keep it fresh. This certainly wasn't the best Animal Collective live recording I've ever seen, but they did close with two of my favorite songs, "In the Flowers" and "For Reverend Green." I will not make the mistake of not buying tickets the next time they are in town!
