Ancient Elephant Bone Tools 

CU researchers surveyed the highest number of flanked bone tools made by pre-modern hominids ever discovered.

400,000

Years ago humans produced sophisticated tools from bones near Rome, Italy

13 ft.

Height of the straight-tusked elephants whose bones made the tools

98

Tools identified

1

Smoothing tool found that wouldn’t become common until 100,000 years later

1979–1991

Years the site, Castel di Guido, was excavated

2021

The team’s findings were published in the journal Plos One

Alum Wins Breakthrough Prize

JILA physicist Jun Ye (PhDPhys’97) was awarded the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for his groundbreaking atomic clock research. The optical lattice clock he designed enables precision tests of the laws of nature. His clocks are so precise, they would not gain or lose a second in about 15 billion years. Ye has worked at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ”, for more than two decades. 

Theatre Program Receives Record-Breaking Gift 

Roe Green (Comm, Thtr’70) gave $5 million to CU șù«ÍȚÊÓƔ’s theatre program, the largest ever for the Department of Theatre & Dance. The gift will fund an acoustic upgrade for the University Theatre, establish endowed funds for student scholarships and fund events designed to further students’ careers. In recognition of the donation, CU will change the name of University Theatre to the Roe Green Theatre, which is expected to reopen after renovations in fall 2023. 

Fish Fins Inspire New Designs

The long, thin bones in fish fins contain segmented hinges that enable the fins to be flexible and strong. CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” mechanical engineering professor Francois Barthelat and his team are studying the little-researched mechanical benefits of this segmented structure, with the hope that similarly modeled designs could aid in better underwater propulsion systems, new robotic materials and aircraft  design. 

Heard Around Campus 

 

When people ask you, ‘Why do you like horror?’
they phrase that really carefully. 
 What they really mean is, ‘Why are you such a weirdo?’”

 

— CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” English professor of distinction Steven Graham Jones in a CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” Today interview talking about his new horror novel My Heart is a Chainsaw, published by Simon & Schuster.

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Photos courtesy CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” 

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Shakespeare’s enduring legacy is on display at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. 

The Bard’s turns of phrase, witty puns and beautiful verbiage still have a place in today’s emoji and TikTok-ruled society.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival makes sure of it.

For more than 60 years, the festival has kept William Shakespeare’s language alive, sharing his famous (and not-so-famous) words with new generations of theater-goers on the CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” campus.

After a 2020 COVID-19 hiatus, the tradition plans to continue in 2021 with a spiced-up performance schedule and dynamic cast, which includes Sam Sandoe (BioChem, Thtr’80), who’s been performing with the festival for 50 years.

“Shakespeare’s language is some of the greatest ever written, and the importance of the ideas and the conflict and the human nature of it all translates century after century,” said Sandoe. “So this 400-year-old playwright is still valid and important to us now.”

For Sandoe, Shakespeare is a family affair. Though the festival was officially founded in 1958, its origins date back to 1944, when CU librarian and English instructor James Sandoe — Sam Sandoe’s father — directed Romeo and Juliet at the newly constructed, 1,000-seat Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre.

James Sandoe, who directed many performances at CU and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, passed along his love of the Bard and the university to his four children. He died in 1980, but Sam Sandoe says he still thinks of his father often during rehearsals.

After tagging along to performances with his family as a child, Sandoe began acting in the festival as a teenager in 1970 and fell in love with Shakespeare. Even while working full time for CU șù«ÍȚÊÓƔ’s University Communications team from 1996 to 2017, he rearranged his schedule to make time for rehearsal, often leaving his house at 5 a.m. and not returning again until midnight.

He’s acted in so many plays that he’s on track to complete the entire canon — meaning he’s performed in all 37 of Shakespeare’s plays, some more than once.

“For somebody who is not in theater full-time to manage to notch all of Shakespeare’s plays is an act of endurance — and it took me half a century,” Sandoe said. “I’m proud of that.”

Even after all these years, Sandoe, 65, still revels in the collaborative process of getting a show ready for opening night.

“You’re working with a bunch of creative people, trying to translate words on a page into something dynamic, and that’s a great deal of fun and a great challenge, but it’s very rewarding,” said Sandoe, who lives in șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ”.

The Colorado Shakespeare Festival is a professional theater company housed within the CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” College of Arts and Sciences. The festival — the second oldest Shakespeare Festival in the country — regularly collaborates with students, faculty and staff from CU’s English and theater and dance departments, and it offers a graduate certificate in applied Shakespeare.

“There’s a long, long history of Shakespeare scholarship here on this campus, and there is a great deal of passion and love for Shakespeare among our scholars,” said Tim Orr, Colorado Shakespeare Festival’s producing artistic director.

Professional actors temporarily relocate to șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” from May to August when they land a part and work alongside local actors like Sandoe. Professional directors collaborate with festival staffers to determine an artistic vision for each production. Up to 23 cast members can be involved in one performance.

Celebrities like Val Kilmer and Annette Bening have performed in the festival, which still hosts many performances in the Mary Rippon amphitheater.

The lineup for the festival — which runs from June to mid-August and sees roughly 30,000 audience members a season — is determined two to three years in advance, to avoid repeating titles too often. Orr said he considers each season as a whole, taking care to offer a diverse array of shows so someone could reasonably attend all of them. That also means incorporating some non-Shakespeare plays into the lineup, such as Homer’s The Odyssey or Cyrano de Bergerac, and adding a modern twist to classic plays. “When it comes to the text, I don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” said Orr.

“When it comes to telling the story, I want to see something new. Every line of Shakespeare could be interpreted two or three different ways, so that gives you a nearly infinite number of interpretations of what he meant.”

If the festival resumes in 2021, for instance, actors will wear 1950s costumes and tromp around France for All’s Well That Ends Well, and there will be a 1980s glam punk rock vibe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“I’ve never produced or even seen a season of theater that was in pre-production for two years,” said Orr. “More time to dream. More time to imagine. It should be amazing.”

Even after 400 years, the themes and emotions depicted in Shakespeare’s work remain relevant — and they keep audiences coming back, year after year.

“Shakespeare didn’t feel anything that you or I don’t feel,” said Orr. “Like any great artist, he’s just a master at expressing it and conveying the experience so that you and I know that we’re not alone and that we’re not the first people to have experienced this.” And being in șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” doesn’t hurt, either.

“You’re going to hear amazing language that has never gone out of production, and you’re going to see it in one of the most beautiful venues in America, under the stars, under the mountains,” said Orr. “It is not only seeing a Shakespeare play, it is the full experience of seeing it here.”

Photos by Zachary Andrews and Jennifer Koskinen 

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Gavin Lodge couldn't find a fashionable diaper bag for fathers, so he created his own. 

It wasn’t for a lack of effort. Gavin Lodge (IntlAf, Phil’99) just couldn’t find what he was looking for.

When he and his partner, Todd Ellison, were preparing for the birth of their first child in 2011, a key baby item was not meeting their needs: The bag.

“It was while we were doing registry stuff that I wondered, ‘Why isn’t there a slick-looking diaper bag out there?’” said Lodge, a New York City actor. “Everything was either quilted or feminine or schlumpy and apologetic.”

Eventually, they relented: “We bought a schlumpy bag.”

Upon welcoming their second child in 2013, Lodge was not giving in as easily. He decided to design his own diaper bag with dads in mind.

The effort took years. Lodge was performing in the Broadway play Annie and juggling life with his two children, Ellison and Colton. By the time he had a usable bag, his youngest was out of diapers. But he’d sparked a long-term venture for himself.

“There’s this baby industry out there almost entirely catering to moms,” he said. “I want to empower dads.”

In fall 2016 he launched his diaper bag company, E.C.Knox, with a navy bag with black racing stripes. A year later, Barneys New York was selling it.

“I like to say I built this company in four-hour increments of babysitting,” said Lodge, who often raced to design meetings across the Manhattan Bridge on his bicycle.

His sleek messenger-style bag contains ample pockets; removable, waterproof linings; a zip-out changing pad; flashlight; computer sleeve; and instant access to wet wipes. It converts to a backpack when needed. And there’s room for a sippy-cup — or, when occasion arises, a wine bottle.

“I definitely designed that intentionally,” Lodge said.

Entrepreneurism wasn’t part of Lodge’s career plan as an actor, nor was it a thought in college. 

Lodge, an only child who grew up in Lakewood, Colorado, received a Boettcher Scholarship, which brought him to CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ”. Aspiring for a foreign service career, the Presidents Leadership Class member jumped full force into college life.

“With his incredible time management skills, he was good at everything he committed himself to,” said CU theater professor Bud Coleman, who worked with Lodge on three CU musicals.

But when the Broadway musical Rent came to town seeking talent, Lodge — a member of the CU a cappella group Extreme Measures — was intrigued and tried out.

He didn’t make the show, but the experience was transformative in making him rethink his future plans: “I didn’t feel like having a career yet.”

After graduation, he worked for the 2000 Al Gore presidential campaign and then as executive assistant for Maria Cantwell, a U.S. senator from Washington. She encouraged him to pursue a job in Washington, D.C. But Lodge still felt a pull to Broadway, and moved to New York instead.

He made his Broadway debut in 2004 by performing in the musical 42nd Street. He also met his partner Todd, who was a conductor for the play.

In 2009 the couple decided to have children via surrogate.

Their parenting experiences shaped Lodge’s bag design, which often ranged from quick diaper changes on city park benches to business meetings after preschool drop-off.

After receiving his first bag sample in spring 2016, a fellow preschool parent helped him secure 15 minutes to pitch his bag to Barneys.

Today, his $250 bags are sold at Maisonette, the online luxury baby retailer, Amazon and several boutiques across the country, including Twinkle by Zoe in Aspen, Colorado. Lodge also has expanded his E.C.Knox line  to include a weekender bag and swaddle blankets.

“Politics taught me that if I knock on more doors than the competition,” Lodge said, “my persistence will pay off.”

Photos courtesy Gavin Lodge 

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Jim Doyle (Thtr’78) knows how to turn a space into a spectacle.

The Academy Award-winning special effects guru masterminded the water-dancing Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas, the volcano outside the Mirage hotel nearby and the flame cauldron for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Soon he’ll be guiding a new generation of thrill-producers as an adviser to a pioneering new CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” master’s program that blends elements of theatrical, lighting and graphic design with aspects of architecture, landscape architecture and engineering.

Fully approved by the Board of Regents, the master’s in experience design is preparing to enroll its first students next year. It’ll be among the only academic programs of its kind — and a timely addition, as venues aim to add bits of Hollywood and theme park magic to their sites.

“More and more we are being asked to provide these design services to areas where entertainment was normally not thought of a few years ago,” said Doyle, director of technical resources at Los Angeles’ WET Design. “Where do you get people who have some sort of education in this? You can’t.”

CU plans to fill the void by educating versatile designers who can transform uninspired or static spaces at hotels and zoos, on cruise ships, in parks, shopping centers and Federal Reserve banks — almost any place that hosts lots of visitors — into visceral, dynamic environments.

“The experience design industry has indicated that the abilities to think through projects, to collaborate effectively and to communicate eloquently are the qualities most lacking among aspirants to their field,” said Bud Coleman, the former CU șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” theater and dance department chair who has led development of the new degree. “Our main objective is to train a process of thinking.”

Over four continuous semesters, students will develop skills in communication, modeling, scenic art, dramaturgy and design technology, for example. They’ll also do group projects, devising their own solutions to assignments faced by real-world design firms. And they’ll complete internships with firms like Doyle’s while developing portfolios.

Few other universities have similar programs, according to Coleman. Savannah College of Art and Design offers an MFA in themed entertainment design, for example. Columbia and Carnegie Mellon offer degrees in aspects of entertainment technology.

Doyle — who won a 1992 Academy Award for technical achievement — and Dave Cooperstein of PGAV Destinations, an architecture and planning firm whose clients include Sea World, NASA and Busch Gardens, have signed on as early industry advisers. The program will draw heavily on faculty and instructors from CU’s theater and dance, environmental design and engineering programs.

“Having someone that has the knowledge and understanding of the collaborative process is incredibly valuable,” said Cooperstein, who designed China’s Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, one of Asia’s top theme parks. “Those are the types of people we can put in a brainstorming session and they can help design an experience no one has ever done before.”

Incoming students will represent a wide range of talents. Coleman and program director Bruce Bergner, a theatrical scene designer and artist, expect a meld of creative students who range from novelists and cooks to artists and engineers.

When they graduate, they’ll be on a path blazed by Jim Doyle.

“Once people figure out this exists,” he said, “you’ll have people all over the world who will want to hire them.”

Illustration by Rod Hunt

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Single Carrot stages theater revolution

When members of  put on Illuminoctem last November, they used a classic storyline — destiny brings boy and girl together, they fall in love at first sight and, despite adversity, are united in the end.

But the way the story was told showcased the group’s unique style. The play was completely wordless, and actors moved across stage with a mix of contemporary, interpretive and African dance moves. The beat of drums and an original composition by Jesse Case (Thtr’07) pulsed in the background.

Photo courtesy Single Carrot Theatre

The originality, edginess and energy of the performance perfectly represent the faces behind Single Carrot: 10 CU graduates, most of them theater majors, who decided to make their own rules in the theater world by starting a brand new company.

“We discovered that if we all came together we could create amazing projects,” company member Margaret “Giti” Lynn Jabaily (Thtr’05) says. “We wanted to give ourselves the opportunity we had been looking for.”

After graduation the group went through a list of 50 potential cities before settling on Baltimore. The city wasn’t already saturated with theaters, making it a place where they felt they could truly make an impact in the community. That desire is reflected in the theater’s name, Single Carrot, which was taken from a quote by French painter Paul CĂ©zanne, “The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.”

“It stuck with us, looking at an everyday image of a carrot and having the idea that one day it could be looked at in a different light so much that it could start a revolution,” company member Elliott Rauh (Engl, Thtr’05) says.

The theater occupies a space in the new city-designated arts district, and three years after beginning the venture, Single Carrot has rocketed into the city’s performing arts scene. The company performs to sold-out audiences, has won accolades from Baltimore’s City Paper and Broadwayworld.com and even snagged the attention of the The New York Times.

Each company member plays lead roles, supporting parts and directs for different plays. Whether they’re reworking old classics or putting on original productions, they try to push the envelope and aren’t afraid to take on shows with violence or nudity.

With ambitious plans to offer more performances and theater classes for kids and adults, plus an endless amount of passion and excitement, the group members see the sky as the limit for Single Carrot’s future.

“I’m working with some of the arts leaders who will shape the way America sees theater in the future,” Elliott says. “And the fact that I get to call them my friends and make crazy, silly art with them every day is pretty much the greatest thing ever.”

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Lyric soprano Cynthia Lawrence (MMus’87) practices with CU-șù«ÍȚÊÓÆ” College of Music students in February in preparation for the music college annual gala performance.

During the last time Cynthia Lawrence (MMus’87) sang with world-renowned operatic tenor Luciano Pavarotti, he gave her a one-eyed glance to see where she was going to land before she plunged backward off a wall in Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca.

Evoking gasps from the audience in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the ever-daring Lawrence landed without incident. For 18 years, she had shared the stage with Italian master Pavarotti, spending hours with circus flyers in preparation for jumping as high as 26 feet in her various roles with him. She remembers their last outstanding performance as if it were yesterday.

“I learned he was always observant, always aware and searching for subtle performance nuances,” Lawrence, a lyric soprano, says. “He knew the strengths of those around him and gave them power, responsibility. What a showman.”

One of the most commercially successful tenors of all time, Pavarotti died on Sept. 6, 2007.

Lawrence herself has had a memorable career, performing in starring roles on the world’s most important opera stages from the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London to the Deutsche Opera in Berlin. From jumping off walls, stabbing a few famous baritones and throwing herself on others, her life is full of exciting and dramatic scenes that don’t tend to be a part of the average 9 to 5 job.

Lawrence loves performing, meeting people and putting disparate singers together in different roles. She also teaches master classes around the country and serves as a voice faculty member at the University of Minnesota.

She tells her students they all have to make choices. Choosing to be really good or only okay is up to them.

“Unless you choose, you’ll never know,” she reflects.

For Lawrence it all started at CU when undergraduate dean Charles Byers encouraged her to abandon her dreams of playing piano and being a country western and Broadway show tunes singer.

Before long, she launched into operatic repertoire with voice professor Barbara Doscher. Doscher’s world-class instruction later surprised both Pavarotti and Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo who assumed Lawrence gained her vocal technique from a New York studio.

Lawrence developed her character and fortitude, however, from her early years spent working with horses. The mental preparation of riding beside 30 horses helped her stay calm.

“It’s similar to being on the operatic stage,” she says, noting getting nervous is useless. “You have to stay composed. I get up and I’m energized.”

Two decades ago, the accomplished singer almost missed Pavarotti’s competition in Philadelphia because of a flight she needed to catch. A conference call with Pavarotti, Opera Company Philadelphia and her soon-to-be-agent resulted in her participating in “Pavarotti Plus — Live from Lincoln Center” in 1989. Another call followed, asking her to join him in singing the lead roles in Gaetano Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.

“I’ve never learned so much in such a concentrated time,” she reminisces. “It was just the two of us on stage. He was always a friend, mentor, very demanding, sympathetic and kind.”

Lawrence learned some important life lessons from the big-hearted Italian. When you are a performer, you perform and leave the baggage of your personal life off stage, she says. Pavarotti wanted others to be “on” 100 percent for a performance just as he was, regardless of their personal issues. Audiences expected no less.

“You wallow or you rise and do the job the best you can,” she says. “Both our public and private faces are real and come from within. You have to explore and develop them.”

In October 2008, Pavarotti’s widow created a concert in his memory. Singing in the ruins of Petra, Jordan, Lawrence joined the Jordanian royal family, PlĂĄcido Domingo, Spanish tenor JosĂ© Carreras and American operatic baritone Sherrill Milnes and rehearsed with Sting. A newly released DVD, A Tribute to Pavarotti: One Amazing Weekend in Petra, includes Lawrence as a soloist and speaker.

Singing with other great artists, she observes their high standards as well. Their focus is on performance quality and the ability to transport the audience through their singing.

“It takes years to get there — some never do,” she reflects.

Lawrence subscribes to the philosophy of her husband Mark Calkins (MMus’87), whom she met at CU when they both performed in a campus production of Giacomo Puccini’s La Boheme: “Amateurs practice until they get it right,” she says. “Professionals practice until they can’t get it wrong.

Marty Coffin Evans (Engl’64) is a frequent contributor to the Coloradan.

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