Raised and homeschooled on a farm near Dexter, Iowa, Brenna Findley, 37, attended Drake University and the University of Chicago Law School. Upon graduation, Findley worked as an attorney in private practice at a national law firm in its Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. offices. She later served as Chief of Staff and Counsel to Congressman Steve King, R-Kiron. Returning to private practice with Whitaker Hagenow GBMG in Des Moines, she was her party’s nominee for attorney general in 2010. She is currently serving as Counsel to Governor Terry Branstad of Iowa.

How did you first become involved in law and politics? Did you always want to be a lawyer?

I was always interested in being involved in my community and trying to make a difference. So I started volunteering with campaigns when I was 13. My dad is a farmer. There are no lawyers in my family. Some people said I should be a lawyer, but I didn’t decide until I was a senior in college for sure.

What best prepared you to be a lawyer?

I think to work in law and politics, it’s important to have preparation so that you can think critically and analyze. Communication skills are very important. Being able to work hard, which I learned on the farm, is essential. Along the way outside of academics, you acquire the people skills that are needed in order to serve and communicate with people, to listen and understand their concerns.

Who in the political sphere has influenced you the most and how?

There are different people for different reasons. When I was 16, I was a page in the legislature, and so I watched House members and how they interacted. So I learned a lot from just watching how that worked. I learned what was good and what was bad, what was effective and what was ineffective. So that was very valuable. When I was running for [Iowa] attorney general, one of the things I did to prepare for debates was to watch some Margaret Thatcher videos. I think she is someone who’s articulate and firm, but she explained ideas in ways that were compelling. And so obviously I admire her. I read documents that were related to the founding of our country, and that was inspiring. Especially by the examples of many of the founding fathers and everything they gave up in order to serve and to help get our government on a good path right off the bat. And there are other political leaders that I worked with that I admired. Sometimes I learn as much from the people I don’t admire, as the ones that I do. I try to learn from everything.

You ran for attorney general in 2010, will you run again in the future?

I might. It’s too early to make that sort of decision. I really enjoyed running for office. I enjoyed meeting all the people and campaigning in all of Iowa’s 99 counties. And communicating a message to all of Iowans how to solve problems and how things could be better. Not just proposing things, but proposing some concrete solutions to some difficult problems. I enjoy that challenge.

What was the best part of campaigning?

Meeting all the people.

What do you like most about your current position?

It’s a wonderful opportunity to serve and make a difference. [Serving was] one of the things that I hoped for after losing the race for attorney general. There were so many things that I cared about – that I wanted to impact as attorney general – but I lost the election and wasn’t able to do that. The governor hired me as his legal counsel, and I’ve been able to work on a number of issues I care about. I get to work with a very experienced governor, and I’ve learned a lot from him. He is a great executive.

What is the best advice you could give college students trying to get into public policy?

To get into public policy, it’s important not only to have academics, but to have practical experience as well. So volunteer in whatever capacity the organization is willing to utilize you within. For campaigns, that would be door-knocking, passing out literature, answering phones, or helping get ready for events. I learned a lot by doing those sorts of things and made a difference as well. Get involved early on and try different things. I quickly found the areas that interested me and those that didn’t. Directly volunteering, being involved, and being engaged were very important.

(407)

It was a dark and stormy night last night as we sat down to write our last staff editorial of 2013. Hillsdale College, it’s been real.

We’ve shared a lot. Back in our day, the fraternities all had parties because they were all in good standing. Without further ado, the class of ’13 highlights reel, in the order we think of them:

1) DJ $crilla. “I’m at da Hill, I’m at da Hill, we Hillsdale, we Hillsdale” just can’t speak to anyone else like it can to our class.

2) Googled Jared Veldheer recently? Two of the top headlines are “Veldheer has muscles on top of his muscles” and “Veldheer has become a shredded monstrosity of a man.”

3) “And that’s how I met my wife.” Last class to have Dr. Reist for freshman English.

4) The Snowpocalypse. Likely the only snow day Hillsdale will have this century, and we had two in quick succession. We’re getting out of here with two fewer days of class than everyone else. #winning.

5) A consistently super hot baseball team. You may not win, but you look good doing it. And that means you, Scott Lantis. Here’s to no roadkill on our porches.

6) Beating Grand Valley in football that one time.

7) Herman Cain and Hillsdale College — where presidential candidates come to die. Maybe Santorum was right to jilt us for Hope College.

8) Hillsdale Unfiltered. Said no one, ever.

9) The Beyoncé CCA. “Pornography” just ain’t what it used to be.

10) Just letting this time wash over us. It flew by, but it was done well. It’s been a blessing and an honor to know you all and to be in this place.

Keep trying to figure out “what is the good.” As far as we’re concerned, it’s good night, and good luck. (324)

The trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell has only recently received the attention one would expect in our sensationalist, media-driven society. In addition to charges of drug pushing, Gosnell stands accused of killing one woman and seven fetuses that were born alive during abortion procedures. During his career, Gosnell performed around 1,000 abortions per year in poorly-run, unsanitary clinics. His clinic in Philadelphia has been described by prosecutors as a “house of horror.” That sentiment has been widely seconded by those who have read the details of Gosnell’s alleged actions.

Some of those outraged and horrified by the Gosnell case have moral principles that are not informed by religious concerns. Like the famous atheist journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, many of the non-religious have “secular” reasons for opposing abortion. The “pro-life” movement has long been associated with religion, particularly Christianity, while secularism is usually associated with “pro-choice” viewpoints. Secularism, however is widely connected to humanism, a position that definitely includes a “pro-life” element. If one can be “pro-life” for human beings after birth, it would seem consistent for one to be “pro-life” for human beings before birth as well.

To determine the morality of killing or abortion without reference to religion, we must first have a good reason for believing that killing a human being is morally wrong. A simple way to discover the morality or immorality of an act is to determine what the injurious aspects of an act may be. For example, this “wrongness-based” account would assert that stealing is a “wrong” act because it deprives a person of property that was justly earned. The “wrong-making” aspect of torture is that it causes physical and psychological pain to a fellow creature.

The essential harm caused by killing is deprivation of the victim’s future. We value our futures, which is why we believe that an “untimely” death is particularly tragic; the prematureness of that death deprives the victim of a future that otherwise would have been realized.

The principle of reciprocity is the only standard necessary to determine the morality of the act. At a minimum, what’s required is that an individual does not treat others in a way in which she would not wish to be treated. Since we do not want to be deprived of our futures, it is immoral to deprive other human beings of their futures.

The future of a human embryo is, obviously, like ours. That future must be as valuable as our futures. Since abortion deprives the embryo of its future, abortion must be as morally wrong as killing any other human being. Now, there might be contexts in which abortion is morally permissible. If, for example, the mother’s life would be at extreme risk if she carried a pregnancy to term, it would seem plausible that she should be able to obtain an abortion. If we believe that one can kill in self-defense, then abortion in self-defense should be permissible as well. This does not change the fact that abortion is morally equivalent to killing any other human being. I would not sleep well for some time if I were to kill in self-defense; I doubt few people could.

The principle of reciprocity can be found in almost every culture during every age. One can cite a wide variety of reasons for following this principle: “God said to,” “Confucius said,” et cetera. Alternatively, a person might follow the principle of reciprocity because she has found that doing so leads to the most emotionally and spiritually rewarding results. Regardless of the reason, the commonality of this principle ensures that a wrongness-based approach to moral questions is valid for most people.

One can be “pro-life” without recourse to religious principles, challenging any person, religious or secular, who is not “pro-life” toward the unborn. Even the staunchest “pro-choice” advocates are horrified by Gosnell’s alleged acts. The shared emotion generated by the Gosnell case, combined with the moral principles that both secular and religious people share, demonstrate that there is still a chance for a meaningful dialogue about abortion.

(929)

Join a cult. That’s my final advice to my fellow students as I enter into that mysterious place we call the real world. I am not suggesting you start sacrificing chickens in your dorm room or restart the now-defunct campus group that sword fought in the Arb. But instead this: find a professor who shares your worldview and understands your life ambition. Be part of an academic team.

My friend Katharine Mancuso ’12 took an 8 a.m. class with Provost David Whalen, and she told me she’d go at 6 a.m. if that’s what it required to take his class. Dr. Brad Birzer alone is reason enough to major in American Studies, and it seems every year someone starts dressing like Dr. Justin Jackson out of admiration. Among competing and disagreeing departments, no one disputes that Hillsdale College boasts a spectacularly good faculty.

Never again will you be surrounded by such a vast pool of capable mentors. While our liberal arts education strives to make us well-rounded individuals, we shouldn’t disregard its available depth. Hillsdale has these peculiar professor cults, and they are worth preserving. Become a protege. I did, and I know it has directed my otherwise meandering college experience.

I took John J. Miller’s advanced writing class the fall of my junior year, after two years of feeling academically amiss. I can’t remember why I signed up for it. Seven students tore one another’s writing apart, disagreed, praised improvement, and disagreed again. My graded assignments had as many words in red ink as they did in Times New Roman font.

It wasn’t all roses and unicorns, but an adventure in bad grades and endless revisions. He taught me to defend the Oxford comma to my dying breath, to hate adverbs with zeal, and to omit needless words. But he also showed me there was an academic home for me at Hillsdale, and that I had the potential to do something great with my remaining time here. I only wish Miller had come to the college sooner, though I might not have noticed because I was very busy during my underclassmen years picking out the perfect outfit for the next fraternity date party.

Joining the Dow Journalism Program as a rising senior meant I had much to learn in little time. I snagged my job as Opinions Editor because of an uncharacteristic temporary lapse in judgement by Editor-in-Chief Patrick Timmis (another person to whom I could dedicate an entire column of gratitude). Miller edited everything I wrote, even when I emailed it to him at 3:07 a.m. and needed feedback the same day. He lent books and advice. And when an ear infection prevented me from flying home for Thanksgiving last fall, he and his wife graciously opened up their home to me for the week. He’s been my biggest advocate and too often also my therapist.

What’s remarkable is how typical my story has become at Hillsdale. I think the journalism program is the best program at the college. I am on Team Journalism. But in every field there are students who beam with pride and loyalty to professors and departments, convinced as I am, that they have discovered the greatest treasure of the college. Let that competition continue.

So find your own Miller, whether in the Biology or History department. Offer something of value to them and in return they will enrich your college experience immeasurably. Try not to be needy — it will happen sometimes but try not to be — and instead be motivated and helpful. Their generosity will overwhelm you.

On Tuesday, Miller introduced me to a woman columnist at the newspaper I’m heading to after graduation because he thought she could be a mentor. She talked with me for nearly an hour, offering helpful words of advice and insight. When I hung up the phone, inspired and ready to board a New York-bound plane immediately, I dug around for a sweater and darted to Miller’s office to spout effusively about how great she was.

After a few heel clicks, I realized that it wasn’t where I had ended up, but how I got there. Miller has taken a nebulous interest and helped me channel it into a marketable skill that I love. Sometimes Hillsdale students look down on vocation, but we shouldn’t. Miller didn’t just advance my career; he advanced my understanding of how to pursue a life of purpose. That’s an education.

And it’s an education to which I am inestimably beholden. When we discover these rare individuals, we take on an obligation: to thank them. That task will take a lifetime to accomplish, beginning with something as small and insufficient as writing your last-ever Collegian column about the power of their service.

(2152)

Your first response when you hear that someone goes to University of Virginia or Notre Dame is likely — “Oh, I hear the campus is beautiful.” You might also know that Virginia has a great law program, and Notre Dame is a top medieval studies institute, but that won’t color your perception of the entire university the same way aesthetics will. A number on the Princeton Review rankings is just a number, but green lawns and airy colonial architecture provide an image that stays in the minds of prospective students, donors, and teachers. Which is why Hillsdale College should focus its current capital campaign on beautifying the campus.

If Hillsdale wants to be an elite institution, it needs to look like one. The college’s current capital campaign  has two goals — extending campus, and making the existing structures better to look at. The challenge is uniting those goals. Hillsdale needs more spaces that are purely aesthetic. The last building campaign made some strides in that direction. Lane and Kendall Halls are elegant, and the front half of Central Hall looks great  But the other half of campus, built mostly in the ’70s, is all function over style. Compare the high ceilings and decorative empty spaces of the Howard Music Building with the cramped, dingy feel of Mossey Library. Simpson, MacIntyre, and Olds  Residence Halls have the decor and feel of a bunker, or a prison. Hillsdale should change that.

The college does have practical needs as well — so far in the current campaign, it seems to be winning. The latest project, the huge Biermann Athletic Center, is functional. It also looks like a massive pole barn. Many of the new projects are necessary. The college does have a housing shortage, so the new dorms are a good idea. It’s also hard to begrudge the planned addition to the Dow Leadership Center to give the graduate students a home. But does the Roche Sports Complex really need a climbing wall? Doesn’t it make more sense to give the ugly visual arts building a facelift?

The need for aesthetics, however, is not just superficial. Hillsdale College is devoted to the pursuit of the “good, true, and beautiful.” Goodness and truth are easier to grasp — professors teach the precepts of them in philosophy, ethics, history, and the like. Beauty is more elusive, something understandable but not quite definable and needing concrete examples to mean something. Being surrounded by beauty is necessary to truly understand what beauty is. So yes, the new building campaign, if done right, should help the college fulfill its mission by adding a little more beauty to the lives of the professors and students already here.

Fixing the teeth on the Reagan statue wouldn’t be a bad start either.

  (731)

At 4 p.m. on April 23 the Spring all-level student art exhibit will open not only to the public, but most importantly to world renowned artist Chris Untalan, the outside juror of this year’s annual student art exhibit.

“He is a very accomplished artist and we appreciate the work that he does in traditional and classical sculpture and drawings,” Barbara Bushey, assistant professor of art, said. “His work reveals the high ideals and the high standards that we like to adhere to. We think that he has a pretty good eye and a pretty good hand and we would like to hear what he has to say about our students.”

Untalan, during the fall 2012 semester, showcased to Hillsdale College his classically inspired nudes and portraits, using such art to communicate his ideas and emotions.

“He’s got a sort of weird edge to his art, but yeah he will recognize really skillful stuff, but he will also enjoy sort of interesting subject matter too,” junior Joseph Craig said. “His stuff was weird and he will bring an interesting approach to judging which will be fun.”

All mediums of art will be submitted to the annual exhibit from photography to self portraits and sculptures to graphic designs, everything the art department and its students have been working on for the 2012-2013 academic year will be displayed in this week long event.

Junior Sarah Chasen said she isn’t too picky about how the event goes down.

“I just want my professors to be proud of me and I want to participate and do my best,” she said. “So I don’t look at it like a competition, I look at it as something I want to be proud of and participate in. I mean it isn’t all about winning, but they are still judging you so you still want to do a good job even if you don’t win.”

Junior Shannon Baldwin admitted that an exhibit during finals week was exhausting, but said there were perks as well.

“It definitely comes at a busy time, but when you think about it its always busy and I look forward to it because its fun to see other’s work,” she said. “It’s fun more to see other people’s stuff because you have already seen your own.”

Senior Kyra Moss is looking forward to the exhibit to showcase her interest in candid photography through a staged environmental portrait of sophomore Megan Landon.

“Because I really like taking pictures of people but I like them to be candid,” she said, gesturing to the photograph of Landon. “This picture was staged but it looks like its not. And it’s like looking in on something that you shouldn’t be seeing and I like that you don’t necessarily think that its pretty but it makes you think ‘oh what is happening.’”

All art students will be submitting work for the exhibit and will be unbiasedly judged by Untalan as he will reveal the winners in the various categories as well as give monetary prizes during the art ceremony on April 23.

“This is just to celebrate what we are doing here in classes you know.” Dr. Bushey said. “So we can reveal the variety of what we do in the art department as well as the excellence that we are able to attain. Its an opportunity to show off.”

lreyes@hillsdale.edu

(555)

Western civilization will collapse within our lifetimes and our children will scratch out a barren existence in its ashes. Despite the title, Jonathan Last promises to avoid selling doom in his citation-laden new book “What To Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster.”

Unfortunately, regardless of whether he wants to make money off despair, he paints a pretty bleak picture of the future.

To start with brute facts, a country needs a total fertility rate (TFR, roughly the average number of babies a woman would bear over her lifetime) of 2.1 to keep the population at the same size.

The population grows and falls as the TFR rises above or falls below 2.1. It makes logical sense: on average, each woman needs to have a bit more than two children to replace her and their father.

Contrary to the expectations propagated by people like Paul Ehrlich, writer of “The Population Bomb,” a declining population is a very bad thing, at least if you like human progress. Natural resources cannot exploit themselves, and so people are necessary for a civilization to develop. In fact, lower fertility rates correlate with decline in economic output.

When fertility rate declines, the median age of a population increases because fewer young children are born to offset the increasing age of the living. But a ‘greying’ population changes the overall inclinations of a population. The bulk of entrepreneurs are between 18 and 34; older people are less inclined to work, to invest money in venture capital, and to be creative and risky.

As a result, an older population will be less innovative, especially when it comes to technology. In the United States, Social Security faces a particular problem. Mr. Last calls it a “Ponzi scheme” which will implode without a continued influx of new participants, in this case, young people.

Unfortunately, Last’s book revolves around the incontrovertible fact that fertility rates are crashing around the world. Every First World country already has an unsustainable fertility rate, and Last declares that “only 3 percent of the world’s population lives in a country whose fertility rate is not declining.”

Recovery seems unlikely. Modernity and education themselves correlate to lower rates of childbearing. In 2001, studies revealed something that has never occurred in history: two countries, Austria and Germany, had an ideal fertility rate below replacement.

Since then, four other countries in Europe have joined the list of populations that consider national suicide the ideal. A birthrate of 1.5 (which a number of European nations are below), will cut a population by 25% every generation.

And while we might want to fix the problem by incentivizing childbearing, government intervention has a depressing track record. For instance, the country of Singapore, when it gained independence from Britain in 1965, initially aimed to drive the country’s fertility rate down from 4.7 by propagandizing, encouraging abortion, imposing financial penalties for additional children, and creating benefits for having only one or two children.

The fertility rate hit Singapore’s target of 2.1 in ten years and continued falling to 1.74 in 1980. After flirting with trying to promote motherhood for educated women only, in 1986 Singapore did a complete about-face.   The government of Singapore promoted motherhood by publicly extolling children, creating tax incentives for having four or more children, increasing maternity leave, subsidizing numerous childrearing expenses, helping grandparents live near grandchildren, campaigning against abortion, and requiring counseling before sterilization or abortion. Singapore’s current fertility rate is 1.11.

People simply cannot be paid to make babies they don’t want.

The real problem with modern birth rates lies neither in the government nor in the marketplace, but in individual selfishness.

Children are inconvenient and dramatically rearrange ones’ life. (Surprise!) But, Last argues, “if you believe in anything seriously enough–God, America, the liberal order, heck, even secular humanism–then eventually babies must follow.” While God probably won’t be affected by our self-extinction, future Americans will be. The question is, will we care?

jwalsh@hillsdale.edu

(1144)

Poetry Performer Richard Austin will read the works of Gerard Manley Hopkins April 18 at 11 a.m. in the Hillsdale Academy library. In addition to the performance he will be participating in discussion with Dr. Ellen Condict’s high-school class.

“My Academy students memorize between 150 to 200 lines of Hopkins’ poetry to recite in public during their upper school years (we also do a several hundred lines from Eliot, Donne, and others), so they have a real connection with the material and are looking forward to hearing a professional,” Condict said.

Students from 5th grade through 12th grade will be attending, as well as any Academy parents who want to join class.  Condict said Austin will also visit with her Hopkins honors seminar Wednesday evening as they discuss “the desolate sonnets.”

Condict said she and Dr. Nicole Coonradt have both been familiar with Austin’s work for years, and Coonradt knows him personally from Hopkins’ conferences she has attended in the past.

“She got in contact with him about coming to Hillsdale and he graciously accepted the invitation with short notice,” Condict said.

Austin’s visit is being sponsored by the Hillsdale College English Department, Hillsdale Academy Parents’ Association, the Chaplain’s Office, and the Catholic Society.  CDs of his work will be available after the Thursday evening performance in Phillips.

–– Abi Wood

(249)

The final Hillsdale College concert choir of the year will feature a collaborative performance of “Lux Aeterna” by Morten Lauridsen, which incorporates aspects of the requiem text. The concert will additionally recognize the graduating seniors in their final concert.

They will perform on April 21 at 3 p.m. at College Baptist Church, performing a selection of a capella pieces sung by the Chamber and College Choirs.

“We are doing a major piece called “Lux Aeterna” by Morten Lauridsen, and there are a couple really awesome moments with that piece that have spots of clashing, almost dissonant sounds, and I really like that,” senior Sarah Delserone said.

The concert revolves around “Lux Aeterna,” in which both choirs will sing with Teacher of Music Debbi Wyse accompanying on the organ. Both the chamber and the college choirs will be performing six or seven a capella pieces as well.

“I think it’ll be a really good concert. The big choir has done really well this semester and the chamber choir performed last week in Holland, Mich., and eating and traveling together really helps bring the group together,” Professor of Music James Holleman said. “It’s also a lot different from playing just a part in a performance like Convocation, so it really solidifies the group. The chamber choir is peaking at the right time.”

Holleman commented that the choirs are even more prepared because they recorded several of the songs to be performed for the CD being released by the Music Department later in the year.

“We are also performing a couple of a capella pieces that we recorded for a patriotic CD that the Music Department is putting out, which is pretty awesome,” Delserone said. “It is exciting to do a couple of smaller pieces after “The Messiah” last semester, and it is exciting that we get to sing a variety of styles.”

Junior David Kreuger said the choir performed another piece by Lauridsen last year, so he is excited to sing one of his more extensive works.

“His stuff is really fun to sing and to hear all the parts of beauty really come together,” he said.

As the final concert of the year, the music department recognizes the graduating seniors in the choir, and the seniors in the orchestra will be recognized in their May concert.

“As seniors we have been getting emails saying to email Cheryl our information so Holleman can call us down and announce our futures to the world, and I am really excited about that,” Delserone said. “Professor Holleman has been really excited, and we lost a lot of people after “The Messiah” because people flock to it, but we kept a really good group, and we are in a really good position about it. And, of course, Debbi is awesome.”

                                                         tsawyer1@hillsdale.edu (123)

The scene of Hillsdale College’s upcoming production of “Eurydice” doesn’t begin as expected for a Greek tragedy. It begins with peaceful ocean sounds, a girl sitting on a beach chair beside a mound of sand, and a young man picking away at his guitar nearby.

Not your average Greek tragedy.

The performance, directed by George Angell, is an adaptation by Sarah Ruhl of the classical Greek tale “Eurydice,” the wife of Orpheus, who must rescue a deceased Eurydice from the Underworld. Orpheus travels down to the Underworld and finds Eurydice, but tragedy strikes when they try to travel back to earth.

Ruhl’s adaptation involves a retro, 1950’s setting and comprehensible, beautiful language. Angell said this should be expected considering the year of out-of-the-box Greek theatre that the Hillsdale College Theatre Department has put on this year.

“We haven’t been much ‘in the box’ of traditional Greek theatre all year,” he said. “The point of the season has been to see how Greek theatre has influenced everything that has come after.”

This year’s plays included “Trojan Women,” as adapted by Ellen McLaughlin in 2005 to explore issues rising from the Balkan Conflict, “Medea” with the original script, but set in colonial Michigan, and “A Funny Thing,” described by Angell as “Greek by way of Rome, by way of Broadway.” There are many adaptations of “Eurydice” available, but the department choise one where the action is seen through the eyes of Eurydice, whose part in the play is usually minimized.

“I think it is one of the most beautiful and poetic plays ever written by an American,” Angell said. “I also find it to be absolutely the saddest play I know.”

The part of Eurydice is played by sophomore Carolina McNicoll, who transferred to Hillsdale this semester. This is the first show she auditioned for at Hillsdale, and Angell said she was perfect for the role.

“She is one of those actors you hope will walk into your audition out of the blue and solve all your problems,” he said. “She is an experienced actor with substantial training. What she brings to the role is a level of both innocence and true honesty –– a great combination.”

The character of Eurydice is innocent and pure, making all the more effective the simple sadness in her voice when she says softly, “What a happiness it would be to cry,” or the confusion in her face when she arrives in the Underworld via elevator, carrying an umbrella and a suitcase and looking for all the world like a lost Mary Poppins.

The contrast between the darkness of the Underworld and Eurydice’s purity is only heightened by her interactions with her also-deceased father, who, in love and tenderness, tries to protect her as much as possible from the darkness of Hell.

Senior Stephan Godleski, who plays the part of Eurydice’s father, said his favorite part of the play is his connection to Eurydice.

“I spend almost all of my scenes with her, building our relationship from scratch while the audience watches,” he said. “I think the Father’s relationship to Eurydice is such a moving and poignant statement of love and devotion that I feel truly honored to be able to take part in it every time I perform the show.”

Godleski said that the part of the father requires both emotional dedication and, at times, a detachment from what’s going on around him.

“In a piece as strongly rooted in feeling as ‘Eurydice,’ it is exciting exploring the different ways that people show their feelings, and, as an actor, it is a challenge avoiding the natural pull towards melodrama or indication.”

Godleski added that another challenge that presents itself in “Eurydice” is the use of stillness on stage.

“It has taken me four years here to finally be able to even allow myself to take the moments on stage where nothing happens, the moments when more can be said through inaction than through action,” he said. “It’s a hard task, allowing yourself to be so vulnerable, but I think those are some of the most important moments in this play.”

Sophomore Aaron Pomerantz, who plays the part of Orpheus, said that from both a technical and an emotional standpoint, this has been his most difficult part yet.

“I’ve brought in a lot of different aspects from different parts of my acting education, including the use of mask work, viewpoints, and a lot of emotion memory,” he said.

Pomerantz is a guitarist and vocalist outside of the play, and he said his musical pursuits helped him identify with Orpheus, who sees everything in the play through the perspective of music.

“For this play, I assembled a huge collection of various songs, each of which I’ve mentally ‘linked’ to a different part of the play, and each of which I’ve found incredibly helpful throughout the rehearsal process, because I think it’s something that Orpheus does, seeing people and events and linking them together with music,” he said.

Pomerantz said one of the hardest parts of the performance was the scene where Orpheus and Eurydice are separated at the end of the play.

“Orpheus has spent the entire play longing for Eurydice, growing desperate and perhaps a little insane in his loneliness,” he said. “He has this brief moment of hope, where he knows Eurydice is following him and he thinks he’ll be able to bring her back, and then she’s dragged away from him for good. It’s just a heartbreaking scene, every time.”

The orchestrator of this last, heartbreaking scene is the Lord of the Underworld, played by senior Julia Shelton. The lord is a twisted, multi-faceted villain with an disturbingly unpredictable mode of action.

“This character was certainly new for me in one respect, as it’s the first ‘villain’ that I’ve had to play,” she said. “Villains are generally more challenging than heroes because you have to present their motives in such a way that, while the audience may not agree with them, they at least understand them.”

Shelton said one of the key parts of the Lord of the Underworld’s character was his incredible, dark power. The difference between the classical Lord of the Underworld and this adaption is what Shelton calls “an ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ theme,” where nothing is as it seems.

At one point her character wheels out onstage in the form of a child riding a scooter. Chillingly enough, however, the child lacks innocence and, in fact, still holds all the strings.

Shelton actually plays three different characters, or, rather, appearances of the same character.

“The hardest part of the performance for me is keeping in mind that even though I play three different “characters,” they are all really the same character, and that character wants something very specific,” she said. “It’s easy to get caught up in playing those three images as separate entities, but while they each have their own personalities, they also all have to have that subtle connection to tell the audience that they are seeing the same person in a different guise.”

The “Alice-in-Wonderland” aspect of the Lord of the Underworld’s character is echoed in the chorus, who are in fact three stones—Little Stone, Big Stone, and Loud Stone—that wear masks and crouch like guardians at the gateway to the underworld.

The play is also accompanied by extensive and interesting sound effects.  Some of the most notable are the hiss of steam in Hell, the wash of waves upon a shore, the pop of a champagne bottle bursting open, the sound of the Mississippi rippling through the Deep South.

The performance will run April 24-27 at 8 p.m. and April 27 at 2 p.m.

                                             awood@hillsdale.edu (1556)