Arts & Entertainment
When Bud Welch lost his 23-year-old daughter, Julie, in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, he was consumed by grief at the loss of his only daughter and rage toward the perpetrator, Timothy McVeigh.
After performing at opera festivals around Europe, tenor Chase Henry Hopkins ’12 wanted to create the same musical atmosphere in his hometown, Edwardsville, Ill. So in 2018 he founded Opera Edwardsville to develop performances, arts education and community collaborations through live opera.
Danny M. Cohen ’06 MA, ’11 PhD, an associate professor in both the School of Education and Social Policy and the Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, teaches social change, human rights and Holocaust history.
Greg Berlanti, a writer, producer and director and 1994 School of Communication alumnus, and his husband, former professional soccer player Robbie Rogers, recently made a $2 million gift to the school via the Berlanti Family Foundation. The gift will endow a professorship and help expand opportunities for students interested in writing for the screen and stage.
To this day I’m still not sure how I managed, as an RTVF major, to weasel my way into Craig Kinzer’s sophomore acting class. I never even wanted to be an actor, but I knew filmmaking involved working with actors, so I talked my way into the class.
After graduating from Northwestern with an undergraduate business degree, Alan Tripp ’37 worked in broadcasting and advertising, at one point running his own ad agency. Now, from his retirement home in Bryn Mawr, Pa., the 102-year-old has achieved a lifelong dream with the release of Senior Song Book — a mix of ’40s- and ’50s-style tunes with modern lyrics that he calls “grown-up music.”
John Stoops performed with Second City and then joined Boom Chicago, a comedy club and improv group founded by Northwestern alumni in Amsterdam. Now Stoops runs The Revival, a theater and education company that focuses on improvisational skills.
Northwestern theater alumnus Austin Harvey, an advanced cicerone and curator and co-owner at Beermiscuous, shares his favorite new beer trends.
On a Saturday afternoon in late March, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Genevieve Thiers ’04 MMus opens the balcony doors of her home in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. She sets her iPhone on a music stand and cues up the app that will be her accompaniment.
Jasmine Warga ’10 won a John Newbery Honor in January for her recent book "Other Words from Home," a story about a 12-year-old Syrian refugee named Jude who lives in Ohio with her mother while her father and brother remain in Syria. The award-winning young adult author shares how her family’s immigrant background shapes her writing.
