Celeste Kelley ’13 designs costumes for Nickle and Dimed in Chicago

TangleKnot Theatre in Chicago presented Joan Holden’s Nickel and Dimed as its inaugural production July 19 through Aug. 11.

TangleKnot’s Artistic Director Dani Snyder-Young is assistant professor of theatre arts and head of the Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts program at Illinois Wesleyan. She also directed Nickel and Dimed, with alumna Britnee Ruscitti ’10 who served as assistant director. Curtis Trout, director of the School of Theatre Arts, was the production’s scenic designer. Alumnus Tristan Meredith ’12 was lighting designer, and Celeste V. Kelley ’13 designed Nickel’s costumes. Antonio Gracias ’12 was the production’s sound designer. Current student Sarah Menke ’15 received an Eckley Summer Scholar fellowship to serve as assistant stage manager and audience development and outreach associate. The project was funded in part by an Illinois Wesleyan Artistic and Scholarly Development grant to Snyder-Young and Trout.

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Daniel LaRocca’s ’13 work helps IWU Observatory

Daniel LaRocca of Palatine, Ill., Kyle Connour ’15 and Chelsea Davitt ’14, both of Bloomington all made precise observations of asteroids resulting in the designation of the University’s Mark Evans Observatory as an official observing site.   Under the direction of Chair and Professor of Physics Linda French, the three also installed a new telescope and charge-coupled device (CCD) camera at the observatory.

Daniel also worked with Prof. Linda French, studying the properties of trojan asteroids at the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. He is the co-author of the papers titled ” A Rotation Study of Jovian Trojan Asteroids” , by L.M. French, R.D. Stephens, L.H. Wasserman, D. Coley, D.A. Rohl, D. La Rocca, N. Jaggi and S.M. Lederer, and “A Troop of Trojans:  Photometry of 24 Jovian Trojan Asterioids”, by L.M. French, R.D. Stephens, D.C. Coley, L.H. Wasserman, F.Vilas, and D.M. La Rocca.

Chelsea Davitt ’14, Daniel LaRocca ’13 and Kyle Connour ’15 pose with the new telescope in the Mark Evans Observatory.

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