Designing King Lear: How Costume Design for a Theatrical Production is Affected by a Transition to Film

Designing King Lear: How Costume Design for a Theatrical Production is Affected by a Transition to Film Jacob Steven Currence William Shakespeare’s King Lear was written in 1606, and it recounts the folktale of a king losing his power and sanity. Several hundred years later, in 2022, West Virginia Public Broadcasting aired the West Virginia University School of Theatre & Dance production of King Lear. As costume designer for the play, it was my task to depict King Lear’s decline through his wardrobe. My costume work needed to reflect his descent into madness and ultimate loss of power. Moreover, this production of King Lear was gender-swapped, meaning that Lear, Kent, and Gloucester were portrayed as women. This allowed for a unique design approach, in which I sought to display these characters’ power and eventual loss and/or gain of it through the use of female garb and costume. These characters’ costumes also had to reflect the power dynamics between parents and children. Goneril, Regan, Cordelia, Edmund, and Edgar’s wardrobe all symbolized their standing with their respective parents and in society. I first provide an analysis of the play itself. Next, I discuss the inspiration, research, and design process for the costumes. Finally, I outline in detail the development and execution of building and utilizing the designs for the production. Though the challenges associated with this environment were never-ending, the final product’s broadcasting proves the strength and survival of theatre arts in numerous forms

Testing whether macroevolution follows microevolution: Are colour differences among swans (Cygnus) attributable to variation at the MC1R locus?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The <it>MC1R </it>(melanocortin-1 receptor) locus underlies intraspecific variation in melanin-based dark plumage coloration in several unrelated birds with plumage polymorphisms. There is far less evidence for functional variants of <it>MC1R </it>being involved in interspecific variation, in which spurious genotype-phenotype associations arising through population history are a far greater problem than in intraspecific studies. We investigated the relationship between <it>MC1R </it>variation and plumage coloration in swans (<it>Cygnus</it>), which show extreme variation in melanic plumage phenotypes among species (white to black).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The two species with melanic plumage, <it>C. atratus </it>and <it>C. melanocoryphus </it>(black and black-necked swans respectively), both have amino acid changes at important functional sites in MC1R that are consistent with increased MC1R activity and melanism. Reconstruction of MC1R evolution over a newly generated independent molecular phylogeny of <it>Cygnus </it>and related genera shows that these putative melanizing mutations were independently derived in the two melanic lineages. However, interpretation is complicated by the fact that one of the outgroup genera, <it>Coscoroba</it>, also has a putative melanizing mutation at MC1R that has arisen independently but has nearly pure white plumage. Epistasis at other loci seems the most likely explanation for this discrepancy. Unexpectedly, the phylogeny shows that the genus <it>Cygnus </it>may not be monophyletic, with <it>C. melanocoryphus </it>placed as a sister group to true geese (<it>Anser</it>), but further data will be needed to confirm this.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our study highlights the difficulty of extrapolating from intraspecific studies to understand the genetic basis of interspecific adaptive phenotypic evolution, even with a gene whose structure-function relationships are as well understood as MC1R as confounding variation make clear genotype/phenotype associations difficult at the macroevolutionary scale. However, the identification of substitutions in the black and black-necked swan that are known to be associated with melanic phenotypes, suggests <it>Cygnus </it>may be another example where there appears to be convergent evolution at MC1R. This study therefore provides a novel example where previously described intraspecific genotype/phenotype associations occur at the macroevolutionary level.</p

Roswell Daily Record, 11-11-1904

https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/roswell_record_news/1362/thumbnail.jp

No evidence of microplastic ingestion in emperor penguin chicks (Aptenodytes forsteri) from the Atka Bay colony (Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica)

Microplastic (500 μm using Attenuated Total Reflection Fourier-transform Infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy. A total of 85 putative particles, mostly in the shape of fibers (65.9 %), were sorted. However, none of the particles were identified as MP applying state-of-the-art methodology. Sorted fibers were further evidenced to originate from contamination during sample processing and analyses. We find that MP concentrations in the local food web of the Weddell Sea and Dronning Maud Land coastal and marginal sea-ice regions; the feeding grounds to chick-rearing emperor penguin adults, are currently at such low levels that no detectable biomagnification is occurring via trophic transfer. Being in contrast to MP studies on other Antarctic and sub-Antarctic penguin species, our comparative discussion including these studies, highlights the importance for standardized procedures for sampling, sample processing and analyses to obtain comparable results. We further discuss other stomach contents and their potential role for MP detection, as well as providing a baseline for the long-term monitoring of MP in apex predator species from this region

The Bronze Emperor

The Bronze Emperor is a historical fiction novella tracing the Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius from its creation in the Roman Empire to 2012. Each chapter moves the story forward and time, focusing on an event or a moment in history that either directly involved the statue or simply happened nearby with the statue as a silent witness

The research and treatment of a Qing Dynasty garment from the Buffalo Museum of Science

The scope of this project was to research, analyze and treat a sleeveless garment from the Buffalo Museum of Science that is thought to be originally from China. The sleeveless garment was donated to the museum by Chauncey J. Hamlin and little information is known about the context or origin of the garment. Research was conducted to gain historical information about the type of garment and why it was made. Analysis was conducted on the fibers, metal wrapped threads and dyes to identify the materials used. The garment was treated with a heat activated adhesive support patch to stabilize the areas of splitting on the main fabric

Camille Silvy: A Photographer of Modern Life

Camille Silvy (1834-1910) enjoyed a major reputation as a photographer in Paris and London in the period 1858-68. He was a photographer of modern life, in the sense introduced by his contemporary, Charles Baudelaire. Silvy's best-known work, 'River Scene, France' (1858), is a tableau of modern leisure - including working class leisure - on the outskirts of town. In addition, Silvy created a series of 'Studies on Light' in London in 1860. These studies of fog and twilight include, arguably, the first use of blur as a creative effect in the history of photography. Silvy redefined still life in a work which includes the Times newspaper and a mass-produced sauce bottle. However, Silvy's modernity was expressed in many other ways. He was highly entrepreneurial: he ran his studio as a portrait factory, experimented with new techniques and pioneered the reproduction of works of art and wartime battlefields

Spartan Daily, April 1, 1936

Volume 24, Issue 105https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2433/thumbnail.jp