For the final year of Platform: An Arts & Humanities Research Laboratory, the teams are joining forces to uncover and explore the history of Bloomington. Please check out a description of our projects below, along with a schedule of events.
Professor Tyron Cooper
Jazzin’ B-Town: Discovery Through Music is the umbrella concept for events on October 22nd and 23rd dedicated to fostering meaningful exchange between jazz and classical musical traditions as well as IU Bloomington and broader community artists. The following events will be offered in line with this significant initiative, which stems from a recent partnership between Indiana University’s Archives of African American Music and Culture and the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. For more information contact aaamc@indiana.edu or bso@bloomingtonsymphony.com
Maria Hamilton Abegunde + Raymond Wise + Carey Champion
A collaborative exploration, this project will research and explore the life of Elizabeth Breckenridge (1843-1910) who worked as a domestic service for IU's first president for over 50 years.
Rather than fabricating Lizzie's life or filling in the missing pieces of an arcive, this project will use the arts to create an opening of possibilities to lcoate Lizzie's story within a larger narrative at Wylie House, in Bloomington, and in Indiana.
Collaborative works include music, poetry, and performances, all of which will be made available to the public in April 2023.
May 18-20
Star running back, Anthony Teague is just a winning season away from making the big time – but the pressures of being a student athlete threaten to crowd out a promising future. On The Line: A College Football Play, explores both the humanity and the inanity around universities’ most visible product, college football. Set against the backdrop of adoring fans and the money that flows through the sport, this play explores the machine that is college football and how it enmeshes Anthony and those around him.
On The Line: A College Football Play was written by Indiana University Department of Theatre, Drama, and Contemporary Dance faculty members Jonathan Michaelsen and Ansley Valentine and has been in development since late 2021. Michaelsen, whose academic career has included stops at universities in both Conference USA and the SEC before joining the faculty at IU, has long observed the contradictions exhibited by academic institutions in their efforts to both encourage and corral the ever-growing influence of sports, in particular football, on college campuses; “When I was on faculty at the University of Alabama, you couldn’t get close to campus, much less to your office on game days; the university was entirely given over to the over 100,000 fans who descended on Tuscaloosa every home game weekend. And I often wondered: does college football exist to support the academic mission, or is it the other way around? I couldn’t resist exploring that question in a play."
Jim Manion + Mark Hood + Hoon Lee + Jeremy Reed
Focusing on Bloomington from 1971-1993, this project is attempting to collect, archive, and share the history of the DIY music scene.
Jim Manion, one of the founders of WFHB, and Mark Hood, sound recording engineer and emeritus professors of Sound Recording and Engineering, are acting as oral history guides for this project. Graduate students Hoon Lee and Jeremy Reed will offer interpretations, archival work, and preservation.
Watch for a public digital archive, several essays, a public talkback, and several performances over the course of Spring 2023!
Nathan Schmidt
This project will be motivated by the following research questions: What histories have been lost with the relegation of the Gentry Brothers to the status of mere historical curiosity, and what histories need to be regained? What part does the circus play in the history of Bloomington as a part of the American entertainment industry, and how does a clearer understanding of this history allow residents to re-envision their sense of place? How can Midwestern circus and public performance arts contribute to a renewed sense of regional identity while taking larger networks, such as historical and national contexts, into account?
With plans for a digital archive and a demonstration of Hoosier circus arts, watch for more from this project in June 2023.
A multi-disciplinary team of artists, scholars, tthe former Bloomington Area Birthing Services director, Tandem Birthing Center's founders, and the staff of the Kinsey Institute are joining forces to collect and archive the history of birth in Bloomington, Indiana.
“Legacies of Birth” will be a timely initiative that speaks to long-standing strengths and contemporary needs in our city. Though its history is not yet understood, for several decades BABS made Bloomington a national “hotspot” of women’s health and birth services. It is no accident that when Rikki Lake made the popular 2008 documentary, “The Business of Being Born”, one interviewee was local midwife Mary Helen Ayres. Nor is it surprising that numerous members of the city’s “town” and “gown” populations are former BABS clients who remain individually invested in the drama of birth. Tandem is at a pivotal point in securing local funding and visibility as a community institution. Our initiative steps into this moment. “Legacies of Birth” will be a multi-disciplinary, multi-decade story of itinerancy, knowledge and experience that promises to re-vision birth and community, past and present.
This project will culminate not only in a professionally managed archive housed at the Kinsey Institutee, but also a series of events taking place from May 1-8, including a symposium, an exhibition installation, and a community oral history event.
The Buskirk-Chumley Theater will be celebrating its “Neon Centennial” in 2022. Our plans include a series of special programs from August 2022 – June 2023. The Indiana Theater (now the BCT), owned by the local Vonderschmitt family, showed its first silent film The Storm on December 11, 1922, accompanied by music from the theater’s organist.
Recovering the history of the theater has been challenging, due to the many changes of ownership over 100 years. We have been blessed with dozens of people willing to share their knowledge and memories, including a descendent of the Vonderschmitt family, the daughter of the projectionist for 65 years, and many former employees, board members, and movie-goers who have contributed and helped us fill in gaps.
Partnering with the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, the Bloomington chapter of the NAACP, and the IU Black Film Center and Archives, the BCT is taking the occasion of the Neon Centennial to explore and celebrate the diverse community that has contributed to the success of the theatre over the last 100 years.
This research will culminate with a podcast called "The Balcony," which will cover the history of Black audiences at movie theatres, conversations with Black Elders who remember going to movies at the BCT, and the end of segregation at the theatre.
