Vol. 38, No. 18

2-15-2007
By: Julia Harris

Making waves @ Wexner Center

Arts presenter builds bridges on campus

The butterfly effect is the idea that one insect’s wings can set off a global chain of events. For the Ohio State performing arts community, that butterfly is Chuck Helm.

Helm, director of the Wexner Center’s performing arts program, is responsible for bringing dance, theater and music acts to campus. But more importantly, he’s responsible for initiating collaborations between the Wexner and other departments on campus — namely theatre and music — that have changed the way performing arts are taught and experienced at Ohio State.

Helm has brought in groups like the Royal Court Theatre from London, a Pakistani devotional singer named Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the French dance company, Compagnie Maguy Marin.

“As a contemporary arts center, the Wexner focuses on vanguard work in all artistic disciplines,” says Helm, who has been at the Wexner since 1991, two years after the center opened. “It’s our feeling, and the feeling of other leading contemporary arts centers, that it’s not enough to be a showcase for art; we need to act as a catalyst, to be an agent for new projects in art.”

As agents go, Helm is considered by many to be among the best. He is a member of many professional networks for presenters, including the Major University Presenters Network, an organization of 20 leading universities around the country. A major goal of the group is to encourage other universities to step up to the plate and sponsor new work from artists of all stripes.

“Universities need to see that work as a form of research,” Helm explains. “In essence, that’s what you’re doing. Artists have a hypothesis just as an engineer or scientist has a hypothesis. They need tools and resources to conduct their work, and they test it through audiences or our students.”

Helm has taken his own words to heart. Over the last decade, the Wexner Center has sponsored a number of creative residencies where artists in three areas — visual, performing and film/video — spend an extended period of time developing and refining original work.

“Because we have these artists here for multiple weeks, we have more opportunity to involve them in classroom experiences or with community groups,” Helm says. “It’s also important to give our young artists relationships with key professionals.”

Involving artists in the classroom with both faculty and students has proven to be beneficial to all parties. Helm has invited the student orchestra to play in concerts with visiting musicians, he has sponsored jazz workshops for students with guest jazz artists and he’s arranged for the student chamber group to play music with and for a dance ensemble.

By far the longest-running collaboration is between the Wexner Center, the Department of Theatre and SITI Company of New York, an independent theater company. Since 1996, SITI has been at the Wexner on eight occasions — six of these as the recipient of creative residencies. During those residencies, SITI has led in-depth workshops for OSU theatre and music students, teaching their own rigorous systems of acting techniques and involving the students in the decision-making process of creating new theater. The company also has used its time here to finalize and premiere new work it then takes out on national tours.

Seeing SITI perform, and taking part in one of its summer workshops, was a life-changing process for Associate Professor of Theatre Jeanine Thompson.

 “I had never seen an acting company who did not compromise in any element of performance,” she recalls. “I fell in love with the rigor of their techniques and how demanding their focus was. I convinced our department it was essential to invite them back for more intensive workshops with our students.”

SITI has come to campus for teaching residencies through the theatre department and for creative residences at the Wexner.

Thompson, who notes that SITI’s influence helped spawn a new curriculum at the department, is grateful for the collaborative opportunities Helm has created between the Wexner and the Department of Theatre.

 “Chuck brings in world-class work and makes it directly available to my students,” she says. “They have the unique opportunity to see original, edgy and timely work, up close and personal. It has changed lives.”

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