Arts & Entertainment
In 1973, two Northwestern students assembled the cast and crew of Northwestern’s first-ever Mee-Ow Show, originally conceptualized as a new outlet for creatives who felt limited by existing campus performance options. Half a century later, the show — and its ever-growing repertoire of successful alumni, from Julia Louis-Dreyfus ’82, ’07 H to Seth Meyers ’96, ’16 H — is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a spring 2024 reunion.
Whether you know her as NPR radio host Margaret Jo on Saturday Night Live or Cady Heron’s mom in Mean Girls, odds are you know — and love — Ana Gasteyer’s work. Last May, the actor, comedian and singer returned to campus and sat down with Northwestern Magazine’s Clare Milliken to discuss her own career and tips for aspiring artists.
Racheli Galay ’07 DMA is a founding member of Quartetoukan, a Jewish-Arab quartet whose music reflects the multicultural, multilingual society in Israel. A classically trained cellist who specializes in Jewish music, Galay has toured Israel, Germany and Spain with Quartetoukan since 2012, performing songs in Arabic, Hebrew, English and Yiddish that promote harmony and peace.
After booking his biggest acting role yet, Charlie Oh ’16 felt an itch to be part of something that better reflected the contemporary Asian American experience. He wrote a play about a Korean family on an all-American road trip, incorporating themes of identity, assimilation and legacy.
Kevin Hoban ‘09 and Jordan Simkovic ‘09 make music as Captain & Cat, a musical duo producing educational songs and videos for kids. The duo recently won the 2022 John Lennon Songwriting Contest Grand Prize.
One of the first “backpack journalists,” Kevin Sites ’89 MS covered conflicts and disasters across the globe, including a yearlong endeavor to cover every conflict region in the world. Those experiences informed his debut novel, The Ocean Above Me, about an emotionally traumatized war correspondent who finds himself fighting for his own life — and confronting his past mistakes — during a harrowing shipwreck.
Literature can help us make sense of life’s biggest questions. And no one did that better than the great Russian novelists, says professor Gary Saul Morson.
In May 2022 Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History renovated its outdated Native North America exhibit hall and opened Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories, a permanent exhibition. Doug Kiel, assistant professor of history at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and a citizen of the Oneida Nation, served on the Native American advisory committee that spent 4 ½ years setting the agenda for the renovation and bringing it to life.
Northwestern students find their groove by embracing regional moves from across the globe.
After years of study and training — including four years in Northwestern’s celebrated theater program — Mark Hoebee finally danced on the Great White Way, appearing in a production of Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. After “about 10 Broadway shows and national tours, he enjoyed a successful career as a choreographer and director of musicals before joining the Tony Award–winning Paper Mill Playhouse, where he is producing artistic director.
