News
Our thoughts and love go out to Gail Lerner and Colin Campbell at the loss of their two children, Hart 14 and Ruby 17, in a brutal car crash with a drunk driver, outside of Los Angeles on Wednesday, June 12th. Gail and Colin are both '96 graduates from the Theatre Program, Directing Concentration of the School of the Arts, and soon after graduation, married. Gail is an Emmy nominated producer and writer for television including Will and Grace and Black-ish. Colin is an award-winning film director, writer and producer who also teaches at Cal Poly Pomona and Chapman…
Many Columbia students and alumni took home awards at the 2019 Palm Springs Shortfest last week, the largest short film festival in North America.
Every year, our stage management students and alumni help put together and produce countless shows, and this year has been no exception. Below is a recap of many of the achievements from our current students and recent alumni.
The Kilroys have named their 2019 List and many Columbia alumni were recognized for their work. The Kilroys is a gang of playwrights, directors and producers in LA and NYC who are done talking about gender parity and are taking action. The group mobilizes others in the field and leverages their power to support one another. Founded in 2013, The Kilroys is named after the iconic graffiti tag “Kilroy Was Here” that was first left by WWII soldiers in unexpected places, a playfully subversive way of making their presence known. This year’s list from The Kilroys recognizes…
Moonbound, a graphic novel by nonfiction alumnus Jonathan Fetter-Vorm ‘16 is available now. Released on the year marking the fiftieth anniversary of the voyage, Moonbound tells the monumental story of the moon and the men who went there first. With vibrant images and attention to detail, Fetter-Vorm conjures the long history of the visionaries, stargazers, builders, and adventurers who sent Apollo 11 on its legendary voyage.
Alumna Jackie Thomas-Kennedy '06 won the 2019 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize for her story, Eugenie is Anointed.
Visual Arts Assistant Professor Aliza Nisenbaum recently unveiled the results of a three-month long residency with Art on the Underground, in which she painted a colorful large-scale group portrait depicting fifteen Transport for London workers, who work across the service-provider spectrum. The enlarged, vinyl mural will be exhibited until September 16, 2019 at the Brixton Underground Station in Brixton, London. The original painting will be shown at Nisenbaum’s forthcoming exhibition at Anton Kern Gallery in New York starting September 12, 2019.
Visual Arts alumnus Cameron Welch '16 recently received the first annual One River Emerging Art Award, which includes a $5,000 grant from One River School, along with his first New York solo exhibition. Welch’s four-day Pop Up Solo Show was from April 30 to May 2 in Manhattan and coincided with the Frieze Art Fair.
Alumna Jessica Shields ‘18 has been announced as a recipient of a 2019 HBOAccess Writing Fellowship.
The 45th Annual Seattle International Film Festival featured two films by alumni and faculty this year, Bora Kim '11 for House of Hummingbird and Sameh Zoabi '05 and Professor Dan Kleinman for Tel Aviv on Fire. The festival took place from May 16-June 9, 2019, showcasing more than 400 films from nearly 90 countries to 140,000+ attendees.
The 64th Annual Drama Desk Awards presented by Broadway News were announced June 2, 2019 at The Town Hall in New York City.
Moara Passoni, a current student, co-wrote the documentary, The Edge of Democracy, which screened in New York this month and premiere on Netflix soon thereafter. It previously screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Watch it firsthand at Rooftop Films in NYC on June 11th.
Fiction alumna Casey Plett ‘12 won the $60K Amazon Canada First Novel Award for Little Fish, published by Arsenal Pulp Press. Little Fish also won the 2019 Firecracker Award for Fiction. Plett is currently a finalist for the Writers' Trust of Canada's $5,000 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ emerging writers and Little Fish is shortlisted for the 2019 Lambda Literary Awards in the transgender fiction category.