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This semester, TCNJ’s School of the Arts and Communication is hosting Artist-in-Residence Sebastienne Mundheim, and her company White Box Theatre. The Philadelphia-based theatre company will perform “Kea and the Ark” next month in Black Box Theater.
Mundheim is a performance-maker, installation artist, writer, designer, puppetry coach, and workshop leader with more than 30 years of experience in arts education. She recently collaborated with students in Professor of Art Elizabeth Mackie’s Structure II and Installation, Performance & Media courses. During two sessions, Mundheim worked on various projects with them including puppets that implement visual installation, storytelling, dance, and theater.
In the first session, she did warm-up exercises with students and techniques to teach them about performance. It allowed students to create their own story through the puppets and structures they made. Mundheim said working with the students in the advanced art courses was energizing and fun.
“I loved the students’ willingness to experiment with materials and movement. I loved their open, reflective, and honest thoughts about the class experience,” she said. “I was sad that we only had two sessions together. I can’t wait to see what they do.”
Mackie said the collaboration allowed students to understand construction and explore ways in which they could implement movement into their sculptures and creations to send a message to an audience. It challenged students as they had to come up with ways to make their projects strong enough, fit onto their bodies, and how to hang them.
Pepper Rodriguez-Hernandez ’27 said that working alongside Mundheim gave them a newfound appreciation for art through puppetry.
“While I was creating my puppets, I was reminded of our lessons of teamwork and trust throughout it,” Rodriguez-Hernandez said. They explained that whenever there was a stumble, their classmates would problem solve together and bounce off each other’s ideas. “They helped me come to solutions I would have never imagined on my own.”
Clinical Professor of Music Jose Bevia and Adjunct professor of Music Technology and Composition Quinn Collins will working with painter, cellist, violinist, and songwriter, Daniel DeJesus on the musical aspect of the “Kea and the Ark” performance through a workshop.
Bevia, Collins, and students will explore music, theory, and incorporating improvisation and graphic notation.
“I hope that this approach will be composition to the experience and work with traditional music notation. The workshop will be eye-opening to our students,” Bevia said. Learning traditional music notation is important as it sets up a foundation that every musician needs to have.
Bevia said that DeJesus’ approach will be an enriching extension of what the students do in class. “I hope that they will see a different approach to music creation, complementary to what we normally do in our classes,” Bevia said. He explained that although blending music with theatre could be challenging, it is going to give students an opportunity to think outside the box.
“Sebastienne Mundheim’s White Box Theater has launched our Artist-in-Residency program with a splash: installing paper sculpture and puppetry in Gallery 111, sharing reels of performance work on digital screens, meeting with Visual Arts students to inspire and structure storytelling and making, meeting with Music and Music Tech students to explore improvisational methods for composition, and engaging several of our students in installation, videography and stage work, and soon culminating in March with a performance of ‘Kea and the Ark,” wrote Pamela Barnett, dean of the School of the Arts and Communication. “We are proud and excited to host White Box at TCNJ.”
Tickets are available for “Kea and the Ark” on Saturday, March 1, at 2 pm and Sunday, March 2 at 2 pm.Through electric cello, puppetry, movement, and storytelling, Kea and the Ark tells the story and life of Kea Tawana who built a three-story tall and 86-foot-long ark in Newark New Jersey using material from abandoned homes in the 1980s.
Mundheim’s paper sculptures and puppets are also featured in her Performance Environments exhibition in AIMM 111 side gallery until March 2.
– Emilia Calabrese ’27
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