brianna smrke | thesil.ca

J.J. Bardoel
Silhouette Intern

From world poverty to a vertical garden in downtown Hamilton, the McMaster Social Innovation Lab looks to allow students a haven for solving problems and expanding on ideas that could potentially benefit others on campus. Michael Hewlett and Brianna Smrke, co-directors of MSIL, had the vision of creating a place where students could be given tools to become better problem solvers.

“The Social Innovation Lab is an inventor’s workshop for undergraduates” said Smrke. “It is a space where students can come and apply their knowledge from what their learning in class and what they already know to solve some kind of real problem, big or small.” The Lab has accumulated a group of 30 volunteers who will help students in having their vision come to life through planning and prototyping.

The pilot project is partially funded by the Forward with Integrity movement, and partially by the Student Life Enhancement Fund.

“We’ve had two rounds of Forward with Integrity funding. First, was with the workshop in the spring for different people in the University to see if they were interested in supporting this idea further,” explained Hewlett.

“What that really helped us do, was give us a little bit of support by people saying ‘We think you have a nugget of something good here, develop it a little bit further.’”

The second part of their FWI funding was used for development over the summer, and the Student Life Enhancement Fund money will be used for pilot projects in the fall and spring.

The team prepared for the launch over the summer, with Smrke being granted a travel scholarship from McMaster to travel to India in order to observe a social innovation lab there.

Their official website has a feature, dubbed the “problem bank”, which has a varying collection of potential problems for MSIL to work on. The co-directors emphasized that no one problem is of a higher priority than another.

“I would say that we do not really have a priority and that’s the point of the bank being so open,” said Smrke.

“We’re really trying to get different kinds of people in the space at the same time.”

The Social Innovation Lab is currently working on a wide spectrum of projects, some of which are focused on campus life, others on issues regarding life outside McMaster. One project had the team brainstorm ideas to reduce the waste of food on campus, which led them to set up Twitter and Facebook pages, and after events, can be contacted to take the food. Another has them preparing a fundraising campaign for a student who has ambitions to go to Africa.

MSIL, currently located in Thode B117/A, is still developing the workshop for students. The space has tools for members to learn how to create prototypes on budget, with light hardware, utensils to draw, as well as space for students to keep their ideas stored in the room.

Hewlett and Smrke, who hosted the soft launch of their space on Oct. 2, are optimistic for the project’s future.

“I’m really grateful to the McMaster community, we’ve received so much support so far and I really hope that we can provide a good return on the investment that has been put into us,” said Smrke.

“I’m looking forward to seeing what will come about in the space, how people are changed by it and how people change the space, how the people take ownership of it, so it becomes a McMaster thing, not just something we’re both involved but something the whole campus sees as a place to try out their ideas.”

Photo credit: Brianna Smrke

Brianna Smrke

Most plays can’t be easily compared to party store items, but McMaster Musical Theatre’s production of Into the Woods on Feb. 25 (its second night) wasn’t like most plays. It was pure glitter.

There was glitter on the stage, there were glitter-tossing moments, and there was even glitter decorating the tables where the near-full house sat. Not surprisingly, glitter was specially thanked in the play’s program. But the comparison runs deeper. The production itself fell over you like a shower of sparkles – kind of disorienting, sometimes chaotic and uneven, but more often than not, there were flashes of brilliance.

For the unaware, Into the Woods is a musical mega-fairytale that pulls familiar characters – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack of Beanstalk fame and more – into a story about choices, connections and consequences. A Baker and his Wife attempt to lift a Witch’s spell, hoping to conceive a child. Their quest draws numerous narrative threads into a single, very tangled cord.

With almost twenty characters and seamless integration of a live orchestral backing, song and dialogue, Into the Woods is undoubtedly a technically demanding show. It could have been easy for the production to become mechanical, or worse, to come unhinged. Thankfully, nothing of the sort happened.

After an uneven opening number, Julia Theberge’s Witch pulled the audience into the play. Wisecracking and slightly terrifying, but somehow strangely relatable as an overprotective parent, she made the script of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine her own. From then on in, it was a character free-for-all. The characters – their challenges, quirks and passions – were what the audience noticed. They shone – sparkled, even – and caught our attention like, yes, glitter.

Madeleine Mant brought an authenticity and sweetness to the Baker’s Wife, even giving a touchingly accurate portrayal of a pregnant woman wincing her way through an elaborate dance number. Choreographer Chantal Labonte was en pointe here and especially also in the solo of Little Red Riding Hood (a wonderfully expressive Nicole Jerdzejko). Harrison Cruickshank and Jason Wolwowicz were scene-stealers as princes. Their duets were met with roars. Cruickshank especially, with his deadpan delivery and delightful self-assuredness, did the near-impossible – making his lamé tunic look simultaneously regal and ridiculous.

No character was too small to leave an impression. Matthew Bergen was a hilariously lecherous Big Bad Wolf. Thomas Ciolfi captured Jack’s sweetness and vapidity. As Jack’s long-suffering mother, Rebekah Pullen’s comedic timing was impeccable. Julie Lane was a believably frail and knobbled grandmother. Harrison Martin gave a surprisingly stirring silent performance as Milky-White the Cow, though his udder was more reminiscent of a deflated jellyfish than anything else.

Chris Vergara as the Narrator was the Everyman Into the Woods needed to pull things together. Part vocal effects (baby birds and human baby cries), part lighting effects (it was he who tossed the glitter) and the rest charm, Vergara broke tension and drew out some large laughs.

The orchestra, perched high above the stage, was effective without being distracting.

Behind the glitter, there still was substance. In conversation, Vergara and Mant both talked about how they hoped audiences would walk away thinking a bit more carefully about their choices. “I hope they realize that the world is a lot more connected than we think. Your decisions have repercussions that you couldn’t predict,” said Vergara.

“It really makes you ask yourself, ‘Once I get a happy ending, what’s next?’” said Mant. “Nothing is as clean and simple as it might at first seem.”

If you like your fairy tales with a little bite, glitz and glamour, take a trip Into the Woods.

Into the Woods continues Thursday, March 1 through Saturday, March 3 with matinee and evening performances at the Lyric Theatre in downtown Hamilton. Tickets are $25.00 for adults, $15.00 for students and seniors, available at tickets.lyrichamilton.com.

Brianna Smrke

This is Your Brain on Bach

“When Music Tells Us Something”

The McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind

Integrated Concert and Lecture

November 5, 8 PM

Convocation Hall

A German neuroscientist, a husband-and-wife team of pianists and a Hungarian-born mezzo-soprano walk into Convocation Hall. Waiting for them are two flute-bearing McMaster faculty members and two grand pianos, not to mention a crowd of curious students, faculty and community members.

Is this a joke without a punch line? More like an oddly fascinating way to spend a Saturday night. The McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind’s seventh annual Integrated Concert and Lecture brought together music and neuroscience without cheapening either discipline.

Dr. Stefan Koelsch of the Freie Universität Berlin presented graphs of brain activity, summaries of key experiments and several jokes about the Germanic predilection for cold beer in an effort to convey the multiple meanings of music. Although his initial focus on terminology was a little disengaging, it paved the way for an exploration of what music can tell us. What truly made the content relatable, however, were the musical stylings of Elizabeth and Marcel Bergmann. Pounding on their grand pianos, they brought music out of the laboratory and onto the stage.

Starting the integrated lecture with a rendition of the First Memphisto Waltz, an emotionally intense, back-and-forth piece describing fiddle-stealing, frenzied dancing and naked frolicking, the Bergmanns set the tone for a powerful evening. Throughout the lecture, Koelsch was able to employ their expertise to illustrate points of his lecture. Symbolic music, for example, was accompanied by a classy rendition of the Sleep Country Canada jingle.

Margaret Bardos, the mezzo-soprano, layered her voice on top of the pianos for several songs. Also contributing their talents were two of McMaster’s own. Laurel Trainor and David Gerry, both professors associated with the MIMM, piped in with flutes for a few pieces, most memorably in “Toast and Eggs”, in which the melody they provided wove the morning sounds of a kitchen into a song. This piece was not out of place in an eclectic selection of music that ranged from The Rape of Lucretia to West Side Story to The Sound of Music. In a way, this variety in genre supported one of the main ideas of the talk – that the ability to find meaning in music is universal.

After most pieces, Koelsch began to analyze the component parts for meaning. But nearer to the end of the lecture, he simply instructed the audience to appreciate the sounds instead of picking them apart – he encouraged the crowd to let their hands drum on chair backs and their feet tap on floors. All he wanted, he concluded by saying, was to convince us that “music is not meaningless.” It seemed a rather modest goal for such a meaningful night, but one that was handily achieved.