The event is organized by the center’s director, Associate Professor of Art Beth Shipley, and faculty colleagues who sought to give students an opportunity to engage with work outside their disciplines and view their peers’ creations in one shared space. It was held on May 1—earlier than in years past—so that even more of the community could attend during the busy spring semester.

“Students often don’t get a chance to see what everyone else is doing at the College or to see that work all together,” Shipley said. “There are also smaller disciplines, like the design disciplines in theater or the music program, that we’d like to highlight. And the happening is a place for that.”

Indeed, the 12,000-square-foot visual arts center—known affectionately as The Judy—was filled with work from students in visual art, dance, theatre, music, creative writing, film and digital media, costume and set design, animation, and more. Even the Carson Hall elevators carrying audience members from the first floor to the top floor of The Judy were put to use, with speakers playing a sound arts project from Professor Libby Lussenhop’s Audio Fiction Fundamentals class. Elevators also served as the backdrop for a romantic comedy saga written by Professor Kenny Finkle’s Dramatic Storytelling class; the play depicted an unexpected love triangle that becomes increasingly complicated as the elevator stops at each floor and had to be meticulously staged and timed as students ran the mechanics behind the scenes.

It’s a Happening takes its name from artist and art theorist Allan Kaprow, who pioneered the concept of “happenings” in the late 1950s. Kaprow’s happenings were interactive, spontaneous art events that eschewed traditional structure for improvised action and audience participation, breaking down walls between the artist and the viewer. As a nod to that history, Shipley included a quote from Kaprow on the event program: “Not only will these bold creators show us, as if for the first time, the world we have always had about us but ignored, but they will disclose entirely unheard of happenings and events.”

“Kaprow is a kind of grandfather of this sort of art experience,” said Art and Art History Chair Hallie Cohen. “It’s a Happening is more than just a fun event—it’s an educational experience, an intellectual pursuit, and that history is important for students to understand.”

Like Kaprow’s happenings, MMC’s showcase made room for collaboration and spontaneity, in part by “setting the stage for impromptu intersections between the disciplines,” Shipley said. That included holding improvised dance performances in the center’s Digital Immersion Room as work created by Professor Sarah Wright’s Interactive Media class played in the background. In another example, Layla Borghese ’28 strummed the guitar and sang an original song in The Judy’s main hub, as a large screen next to her flashed students’ 3D stop-motion animation projects. Watching those juxtapositions, “there was something magical in the moment,” Shipley said.

Shipley and faculty organizers also arranged a series of live performances, such as the elevator play and cabaret, both firsts for the event; printmaking and theatrical makeup demonstrations; singers; and poetry readings. Tableaus of recent Theatre productions Lysistrata Jones, Spring Awakening, and A Thousand Years, complete with lighting, costumes, and props, were arranged to provide a more fully immersive experience.

This year’s event also included theatrical improv performed throughout the night—and throughout The Judy—by Professor Ellen Orenstein’s Viewpoints class. “Viewpoints” is a training method that explores aspects of space and time through movement to help actors become more present and spontaneous on stage. The students used it to interact with the artwork and live performances.

“It was perfect for the happening—it’s an experimental, improvisational, cross-disciplinary, performative kind of theater,” Shipley said. “I thought they were amazing.”

Though the class briefly appeared during It’s a Happening’s first annual event in 2023, they had not been able to stay the whole night. This year, “we set the event date to intersect with the time of the class,” Shipley said.

It’s a Happening is coordinated by a faculty committee that includes Shipley, Cohen, The Judy’s Director of Operations Xander Peterson, Theatre Arts Professors Mary Fleischer, Vanessa Leuck, and Ray Recht, and Communication and Media Arts Professor Sarah Nelson Wright. A larger team of faculty sponsors helps to select student work and organize student participation. “There’s a lot of gratitude for all of the faculty who help to make the event a reality,” Shipley said.

Still, Cohen added, the events’ success over the last three years would not have been possible without Shipley, who, as the director of The Judy, has sought to expand cross-disciplinary creative collaborations at the College. “Putting on the event is a major organizational challenge. There’s no question that without her enthusiasm and, more than that, her incredibly hard work, this event would not come together the way it does,” Cohen said.

View the photo gallery below for more great scenes from the showcase. 

Published: May 21, 2025