Archives - Wil Aiken

I’m fully aware of the connotations that being an NPR listener carries: white, middle class, pseudo-intellectual, all-around nerd who thinks that facts about ducks are good conversation starters. This connotation doesn’t really bother me, because in my case, it rings pretty much completely true. Read More

I’m too sober for this. That was my prevailing thought as I sat through the midnight screening of “Suicide Squad XXX: An Axel Braun Parody” in Hoyt on Saturday. (Technically Sunday, I guess.) Why was I at a midnight porno screening? Brilliant question. It’s a brilliant question because I asked myself the same thing through […]

“Confessions of a College Musical Theater Group,” the title of Off Broadway On Campus’ spring show on Friday evening in Strong Auditorium, may sound like a placeholder title for the performance group’s biannual musical revue, but it actually held a lot of relevance. Many of the musical numbers were accompanied by scenes, appropriated and amended […]

The May Room in Wilson Commons is an interesting place to stage a musical because it doesn’t seem built for them. It’s small (compared to something like Strong), and its stage is an elevated platform, also small, with no curtains. But necessity is the mother of invention, as the ROC Players proved in the finer […]

Last weekend marked the 40th annual Simcon, the UR Simulation Gaming Association’s convention of board games and more. Senior Stephen Watson, the association’s Simcon chair, explained that the term “simulation gaming” is really a “catch-all way to distinguish yourself from video games and other things.” The convention, which ran from Friday afternoon to Sunday evening, […]

Students gushed with enthusiasm at crowded Feldman Ballroom tables last Saturday for Afrikanza, the culminating event of Africa Week, organized by the Pan African Students’ Association. “Afrikanza is an event that is used to reinforce cultural diversity in the University environment among PASA members,” said sophomore Kaps Chalwe, the group’s vice president. The theme of […]

Have you ever seen something and thought, “Who in God’s green earth came up with this?” If you have, then maybe you’ll have felt a bit what I was feeling when I was watching “The Indefinitely Untitled Play,” the first of four theater pieces performed at the 19th Annual One Act Play Festival in Todd […]

UR Symphony Orchestra’s concert last Saturday wore its message on its sleeve. As emphasized in a speech by director and conductor Rachel Waddell, the concert dealt heavily with immigration and the immigrant experience, noting in the programme that “many of us, or our ancestors, once had to make the brave leap to leave their own […]

Truthfully or not, the fashion industry is known for its tensity, but the mood was relaxed at the “Recycle the Runway” competition last Saturday at Drama House. “Recycle the Runway” is an annual fundraising event that GreenSpace, a special interest floor in Burton that focuses on the environment and sustainability, puts on. The idea is […]

Four different music groups played last Friday evening in the Wind Symphony, Brass Choir, and Jazz Ensemble concert in Strong Auditorium, all of them conducted by director William Tiberio. In general, I space out a lot, but instrumental music makes me really meditative. I like the sort of music offered up by the Wind Symphony, […]