Inside Neely Auditorium, Phillip Franck, associate professor of theatre and chair of the VU Theatre department, works with faculty, staff and students during tech week for a recent production of The Country Wife. Tech week activities include installing the play’s set, hanging equipment from the lighting grid above, focusing lights to illuminate a scene and create a mood, and timing sound elements. For each of the department’s four productions, Franck conceptualizes and designs sets, lighting and sound in collaboration with the director, costume designer and technical director.

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Neely Auditorium was built in 1925 and originally served as Vanderbilt’s chapel and meeting place. It was redesigned in 1976 as a black box theater, but its gothic arches and columns remain part of the department’s classrooms, offices and workspaces. “Neely is really an interesting place to work,” Franck says. “It’s funky as frog fur. I give credit to the college for making it so professional. It would be tough to find a small theater as well-equipped as Neely.”

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For tech week, Franck sets up a worktable mid-auditorium and directs the installation of lights, sound and sets. During performances, lighting is managed from a booth above the audience.

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When he started as a theatrical lighting designer, Franck says, light changes were managed using analog equipment. Now Franck designs lighting plots on a laptop and coordinates with the professional computerized lighting and audio system. For The Country Wife, the computerized board executed changes for 154 lights.

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Franck teaches Theatre 212 Scenery and Properties and Theatre 213 Lighting and Sound, courses that explore the design aspects of theatrical production. Students do most of the production work on shows. Senior psychology and theatre major Elise Masur (center) and first-year student April Philley (right) touch up paint.

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To indicate the precise spot he wants a light focused, Franck uses a spear he discovered in the overflowing prop room. It allows him to view adjustments from a distance and indicate locations for modifications to the light beams. After he started using the spear, students insisted he obtain the companion Viking helmet.

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Much of the behind-the-scenes theatrical magic occurs in the dark, during both tech week and production. Franck’s glow-in-the-dark hardhat allows him to be seen and protected in case a student drops something from the lighting grid more than 22 feet above. The professional grid has a working load capacity of 22,000 lbs. of equipment.

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Franck designed The Country Wife stage to face the audience in what is known as proscenium style. Neely Auditorium accommodates any stage size, shape, placement or presentation.

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The Country Wife set uses Franck’s creative lighting and shadows to create mood and provide flexibility for scene setting. The experienced lighting designer also designs for professional theaters, including Tennessee Repertory Theatre.

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Senior Tyler Weaks (left) assists technical director Nate Otto (in red bandana) adjust the set. Weaks works as a staff carpenter in the department’s scene shop and plays Sir Horner in the play.

In central Peru, bioarcheologist Tiffiny Tung and her team examine human remains excavated during an earlier season’s dig. The assistant professor of anthropology is currently studying the Wari culture, a pre-Incan civilization that lived in the Andes about 1,400 years ago.

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For several years, Tung’s summer research base has been the archeology lab at Peru’s National University of Huamanga in Ayacucho.

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These trophy heads (human skulls that were modified after death and displayed or worn) were recovered from the Wari site of Conchopata. Iconographic depictions and strontium isotope tests on bones and teeth helped Tung and colleagues establish that the trophy heads were most likely of Wari enemies, rather than of venerated ancestors.

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Animals were often used as offerings in houses and tombs; the llama and guinea pigs skeletons serve as comparative samples for identifying animal bone fragments found at the dig. (The duck skeleton is part of another archeologist’s research; the lab is shared by a variety of researchers and students.)

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Carlos Mancilla Rojas, one of Tung’s Peruvian colleagues, has partially reconstructed these ceramic urns from pottery sherds found at the Conchopata archeological site.

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Kristina Kitko, BE’08, a Ph.D. student in Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering, molds dental casting material to make casts of cut marks on bone fragments. The casts will be analyzed with a scanning electron microscope at Vanderbilt. From that analysis, they’ll learn whether the marks were made by stone or metal tools, or if they indicate accidental damage caused by non-human agents.

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First-year anthropology graduate student Matthew Velasco measures a bone using an osteometric board. When femora (thigh bones) are measured, bioarcheologists can estimate stature.

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In addition to teaching, research and publishing, Tung also
consults for media such as the Discovery Channel, History
Channel and National Geographic. She was featured in the Discovery Channel’s 2005 series, Mummy Autopsy.

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Peruvian archeologist and graduate student Mirza del Castillo uses a magnifying lens to look for human-induced modifications such as cut marks or drill holes on skull fragments while Emily Sharp, BA’08, records the findings. They also search for evidence of healed fractures or lesions that would indicate disease.

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Tung’s work draws researchers from all over. Tung is on the dissertation committee of Christine Pink, a Ph.D. student at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Pink is comparing the morphology (shape and form) of human teeth, which are under strong genetic control, to document biological relationships between various Wari-era populations.

Professor of Art Marilyn Murphy’s spacious studio-office fills a corner of the third floor of the E. Bronson Ingram Studio Arts Center. The space serves as photography studio for taking digital images of works, carpentry workshop for building crates for shipping canvases and artwork, library for reference works and images, supply storeroom, counseling center for interaction with students, and work studio for Murphy’s oil paintings, graphite drawings, and printmaking.

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“The Oasis” is one of 16 works exhibited in Murphy’s one-woman show titled Wind Mischief at the prestigious Carl Hammer Gallery in Chicago. Gallery curator Carl Hammer personally chose the works to appear in the show. Each piece reflects Murphy’s oft-reoccurring themes of wind and flight. “The individual pieces hang together well as a body of work,” Murphy says.

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The near corner-to-corner windows let in the natural light requisite for capturing colors and tones.

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Vanderbilt gives faculty and staff a commemorative chair in recognition of 25 years of contribution to the university. Murphy’s rocker, black with gilded trim and featuring the university seal, provides needed seating.

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Murphy rescued the 1960s-era orange fiberglass chair when the art department moved from the Cohen Memorial Building. “It’s a great design, made by Herman Miller,” she says, not to mention wacky and eye-catching.

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The mechanical pencil on a chain is part of the approximately 100 in Murphy’s collection. A flea market find, it originally served as a pencil and a telephone dialer. “They all do tricks or have advertising,” she says of her collected pieces.

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As director of studio art when the new studio arts building was in the works, Murphy sat in on dozens of planning meetings. The architects and designers suggested carpeted floors, but Murphy insisted on a surface that would stand up to paint, plaster, ink, clay, chalk, and more. The spots under the camera lights are not from art materials, however. They appeared during the installation process.

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Her green apron is splashed with ink of all hues from the hours Murphy spends teaching printmaking and creating prints.

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Some of Murphy’s surrealistic graphite drawings begin here.  She’s known for her juxtaposition of everyday life with images and situations that are just a bit off kilter.

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Murphy teaches drawing and composition, painting (all levels), printmaking and relief printing. “I love to teach. Art can allow students to view the environment around them with greater awareness. Because drawing is learning techniques and strategies as well as developing ideas, anyone can learn to draw,” she says.

Photo by John Russell.