UCSD-TV Blog – Page 102 – The latest news, information, and behind-the-scenes scoop on the people and programs behind UCSD-TV.

In Their Own Words: Writers and Authors

Explore new interviews and readings from your favorite authors as well as up and coming authors and students from the University of California.

Writers explain in their own words the process of creation, how they stay motivated, and what it takes to go from an idea to a completed piece of writing. Listen as they read new and popular excerpts of their work and discuss the writing life during in-depth interviews. From poetry to prose, memoirs to fiction, screenplays to blogs – whether your passion is reading, writing, or both – with our latest collection, you’ll discover new books to explore and perhaps find the inspiration to write one of your own.

Featuring:

… and more!

Browse our collection of Writers & Authors today!

Roll over, Tennessee Williams, and tell Erskine Caldwell the news.

Yes, it’s true: as a general rule we video types will happily shoot anything that moves. That said, I believe there are few things as satisfying as shooting and editing dance, and if comes in the form of dance theatre, so much the better.

“Dance theatre,” much in vogue in the dance world these days, may be defined as the theatrical representation of a story that is set to music and performed by trained dancers. In much the same way that opera is drama expressed through music, dance theatre (also known as “concert dance” and “dance drama”) uses movement and gesture to define characters and propel the narrative.

John Malashock, Artistic Director of San Diego’s Malashock Dance, is an accomplished practitioner of dance theatre whose past work in the genre includes two collaborations with UCSD-TV (and Your Humble Correspondent), “Soul of Saturday Night” and “Love & Murder.” In “Snakeskin” Malashock has teamed with Krishan Oberoi, Artistic Director for the acclaimed choral ensemble SACRA/PROFANA, to present a piece inspired by the work of Tennessee Williams, in particular Williams’ 1957 play “Orpheus Descending.” “Snakeskin” tells the story of a small Southern town whose surface placidity is disrupted by the arrival of a drifter in a snakeskin jacket. His presence arouses (ahem) unseemly passions in several of the town’s womenfolk, and as you might expect the tale unfolds in the best Southern Gothic tradition.

All of the members of SACRA/PROFANA are singers as well as instrumentalists, and Oberoi’s original music and lyrics range through a variety of influences, from neo-baroque to folk-rock to Stravinsky. Malashock’s choreography is equally diverse, by turns lyrical, combative, and athletic. The Forum Theatre at UC San Diego proved to be the ideal setting for a work that relies on intimacy for its impact (and it’s an excellent video venue in the bargain).

“Snakeskin” is a cogent illustration of the artistic maxim that “there is universality in specificity.” Though the inspiration, costumes and stage design speak of a distinct period and setting, this oft-told story achieves freshness through the interplay of sound and kinetics, and acquires a near-mythic status as it plumbs themes of bigotry, class, small-town isolation, chauvinism, and sexual jealousy. Tennessee Williams would be so proud.

Watch Snakeskin – Malashock Dance + SACRA/PROFANA and browse more programs from Malashock Dance.

———-

Contributed by John Menier, Arts & Humanities Producer

Fast Facts about Testosterone

Dr. T. Mike Hsieh sat down with Dr. David Granet to discuss diagnosing, treating, and living with low testosterone. Here are a few key takeaways from their talk:

Chemically, testosterone is a steroid hormone.
Andropause is the term for when a man’s testosterone level begins to decrease.
Restoring a hormone balance along with lifestyle changes can promote healthy weight loss.
Testosterone is the same in everyone’s body but the hormone receptors we have are very different. Men with less sensitive receptors are more susceptible to testosterone-based health issues.
Testosterone is not a magic bullet to aging.

To learn more about low testosterone, Low Testosterone with T. Mike Hsieh on Health Matters.

Drones on the USS Midway

“It’s not taking pilots out of planes. It’s putting propellers on smart phones.” So says Chris Anderson, co-founder of 3D Robotics describing “Solo,” the world’s first Smart Drone, to an audience of San Diego students aboard the flight deck of USS Midway. He and other UAV leaders from General Atomics and Northrop Grumman pumped up the crowd with tales of military and civilian derring-do for drones, including protecting wildlife from dreaded poachers in Africa.

This program was the second installment of the STEAM Leadership series, created to inspire the innovators of tomorrow.

Watch Drones on the USS Midway on The STEAM Channel.

Fourth Season of Script to Screen a Big Success

The UCSB Script to Screen series just completed its fourth and most successful season to date. We hosted three special Academy screenings (Whiplash, The Theory of Everything, and The Grand Budapest Hotel) where we connected Oscar nominees with students and the Santa Barbara Academy/Guild community. We also expanded our series to include a focus on television with our 10th Anniversary of Lost with Executive Producer/Director Jack Bender. This season our guests of honor shared key lessons about the importance of personally connecting to the material as well as having a family-esque support system to help bring the script to the screen.

Here are some special quotes from our guest artists:

29040 The Theory of Everything with Oscar-nominated screenwriter Anthony McCarten:

“In 2004, that was the real catalyzing moment for me when I read Jane Hawking’s auto-biography. Everything I thought I knew about Stephen Hawking was displaced by everything I didn’t know. This was a unique, emotional insight into his private life. This incredible love story, very much one of a kind, unprecedented in some ways, challenging, heartbreaking, triumphant. I thought if I can get the rights to that book and marry it with the public world and what we know of Stephen and his public story, you know we would really have something special.”

29315 Whiplash with Oscar-nominated writer/director Damien Chazelle:

“I was a drummer when I was in high school, and I had a teacher that was very much in this mold. It was the sort of thing where drumming had been this sort of hobby for myself that I did not take that seriously. As soon as I got in the orbit of this conductor/this teacher and his big band that he ran, he suddenly felt like life or death everyday. I felt the worse thing possible would be to screw up a hit or a beat. I just remember the daily dose of dread that I would feel during that time. I don’t play that much anymore, but you get a lot of fodder from that sort of emotional experience. It occurred to me that there might be a subject for a movie there.”

28922 500 Days of Summer with screenwriter Scott Neustadter:

“This was very much a cathartic thing. I’d been broken up with, didn’t understand why, could not accept that it was just that she didn’t feel the same and then a minute later she got engaged, and I was like, What in the world? I was writing to put it all out there.”

The UCSB Script to Screen series returns in October 2015 for its 5th season. This coming year we will be expanding to include more actors on the stage with the screenwriter. Plus, we are currently planning a major event with a frontrunner to the 2016 Best Picture nominee and with a very special guest.

Browse all programs in the Script to Screen series.