With over 45 people packed into a small seminar room in St. George Tucker Hall, the new Korean language classes look every bit like your average Modern Language course at the College of William and Mary. But there is one key difference between these classes and those taught by the modern language department:

The professor is a student.

This Korean class is one of many courses organized by Hello WM, a student group formed earlier this year that aims to introduce and teach underrepresented languages. All Hello WM classes are taught by College students.

Hello WM founders, Mark Johnson ’09 and Daniela Schiano di Cola ’09, got the idea for creating an instructional heritage language group after completing a project in a linguistics course.

“Obviously, if anyone wanted to learn a language, they could be like, ‘Oh you know this language, teach me,’ but how many times do people actually do it?” Johnson said. “One of the points in making the organization was that it somewhat formalizes it. People actually sit down in classrooms together, and there’s some structure.”

Schiano di Cola said she helped start the group with the goals of teaching students languages as well as trying to better represent those dialects at the College.

“We want to teach languages to students, and while doing that, show the school the kind of demand there are for these languages,” she said. “At the same time, we don’t want it to be completely replaced by the university. Particularly, having an informal [class] gives it a lot more variety to the languages that can be taught.”

Alex Bellah ’11, a 24-year-old international relations major who spent three years after high school training to become a Korean interpreter for the United States Air Force, is one of the instructors of the Korean course.

“The variety of interests and backgrounds was pretty astounding,” Bellah said. “There were a lot of people who had some experience learning Asian languages before and there were others that had no experience. There were some people who were part of the Asian Student Council community, but at the same time, there were others who were from various other organizations.”

Each session, taught by six student instructors, consists of two hour-long segments. The first hour is reserved for beginners while the second hour is reserved for more intermediate to advanced speakers. For each class, instructors try to keep the ratio of students to instructors fairly low.

“Many studies have shown that it is difficult to learn a language if there are too many people in the class. From my personal experience, I found that the ideal number is right about ten,” Bellah said. “If we have fewer than that, you don’t have the opportunity to vary up your speaking partners and learn different aspects of the language, and too many more than that and you spend a lot of time not really using the language in class.”

Even with a successful first class, Bellah acknowledged that there are bound to be obstacles that Hello WM will need to surmount in order to become successful.

The Korean program has to battle with other weekday commitments of College students and must find sufficient funding for the program from the school.

“We try to offer one class per week, but in large part, we’re guides for people who want to continue studies,” he said. “The biggest obstacle will be funding. The one big thing is that it’s going to step on the toes of both the Chinese and Japanese department, which are largely funded by grants geared toward East Asian studies. It would be very difficult to make the case for not sharing funding with that program.”

Kang Yang ’11, a Taiwanese international student who speaks Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, was among those who came to learn Korean. Yang said that since the class had just begun, it could definitely be more structured.

“What they can do is less repeating [concepts], teach more, and have people take notes,” he said. “After that, people will go home and study themselves, and they can improve faster and learn more stuff in one day.”

Johnson said that part of the goal of the language program was not only to educate College students in new languages but also to help instructors develop their teaching skills.

“One of the issues I’m interested in is teaching structure [to our instructors],” he said. “Our organization will eventually be a springboard for people who are interested in language teaching.”

In addition to Korean, Hello WM also teaches Farsi, Portuguese and American Sign Language. Johnson and Schiano di Cola also plan to bring Cantonese, Tagalog, Hebrew and African Creole to the College through the program by the end of the semester.

“The ultimate goal would be to help create a multilingual America,” Johnson said. “We’re working towards helping to legitimize multilingualism because there’s still a lot of resistance to it, surprisingly.”

William Shakespeare’s plays, with their sharp wit and dramatic power, are perhaps the greatest to have ever graced the stage. With classics like “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet” even non-English majors can claim familiarity with his works. Despite his fame and success as the king of theater, not all of Shakespeare’s works share the spotlight on the modern stage.

The College of William and Mary’s student-run organization, Shakespeare in the Dark, plans to change this by shedding light onto one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays this weekend, “Troilus and Cressida.” The play, set during the Trojan War, will be performed Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. in the Sadler Center Commonwealth Auditorium. The story of the Trojan war is based on a myth that recounts the Greek siege of the ancient city of Troy.

The cast includes both novice and veteran student actors who portray the battling factions. There are many soliloquies and instances of heated dialogue — typical of a Shakesperean play — which the actors portrayed. Cressida, played by Hope Wright ’09, was bold and strong as the female lead, while Logan Wamsley ’12 thundered with stubborn anger and thick headedness as Ajax.

Although the cast is garbed in an array of colorful togas, “Trolius and Cressida” stresses the acting over the costumes and scenery, a trait characteristic of Shakespeare in the Dark This emphasis on sparse staging actually added to the play because it forced the cast to tell the story through their performance alone.
This tragedy contains all the elements necessary for classic entertainment; a love story, choreographed fight scenes, and plenty of sharp dialogue. Shakespeare aficionados and those interested in a compelling plot that has so far been lesser-known than his other plays will appreciate this production.

Student tickets are $4. The trailer can be seen at web.wm.edu/so/shakespear/oldshows/current.html.

The Flat Hat went behind the scenes with Wamsley to talk about the play. He covered everything from his experiences in bringing this play to life to his passion for writing and interpretation of character.

**Describe your previous theater experiences.**

I first got involved with theater near the beginning of last semester of fall 2008. I got a three line role for “Caesar and Cleopatra” in Mystic [Theater]. I had no acting experience then, but I enjoyed how people got together to create a cohesive product. I was really blessed to get a role in “Medea” afterwards, which Second Season put on. I played Creon. I also did a quick role with “Macbeth” by Shakesperare in the Dark.

**Can you tell me a bit about Shakespeare in the Dark?**

It’s more social than anything. It’s not necessarily low-key. But the focus is less about seriously interpreting the show, rather than a bunch of people who love to act and love the concept of theater and putting on something fun, which I think theater should be about.

**Do you feel that the legend of Troy overshadows the love story between Troilus and Cressida?**

I think that Shakespeare’s intention for the love story to play a small part in the play is irony. The very end [the war] remains unresolved. It kind of emphasizes the pointlessness and pessimism and ridiculousness of the destruction of war. The play ends on a darkly ridiculous note that it makes everything seem pointless.

**With the war scenes, how technical does the choreography get for fighting?**

I’m in two lengthy fight scenes. Having the black belt and several years of martial arts experience helped me out. I know about staff and sword work. It’s easier for me to pick up the choreography.

**Are you nervous about performing tomorrow?**

For me personally, I’m not too nervous. I hope my health holds out because I had the flu last weekend. I’m nervous for the play as a unit because it’s a pretty intricate play. There is a lot of margin for error as there’s a big cast. Though it won’t be a perfect show the first time through, it’ll be enjoyable to watch. We all put enough heart into it to make it a good show.

**How do you prepare yourself before you go on stage?**

Before I go on, I get really quiet. I’m a massive, massive reader. So one thing that always calms me down is reading, I I’m a massive, massive reader. So one thing that always calms me down is reading, I actually have a script from Casablanca that I read. In my opinion, it’s the greatest screenplay ever, with some of the greatest dialogue. I’m a big fan.

**You play Ajax in this play. What’s his character like?**

Plot-wise, Ajax is a very proud but somewhat thickheaded, aka dumb, individual. He is a strong warrior, but he’s also the butt of a lot of jokes in the Greek camps.

**How do you depict Ajax?**

In real life, I don’t consider myself as thickheaded as Ajax, so I just try to damper all my other thoughts and concentrate on brute force and single-mindedness. He’s a guy that definitely speaks with his actions rather than his words, which translates into raw brutality.

**What was the greatest challenge for you in this show?**

One of the reasons I got into theater in the first place is because I write. One of my dreams in life is to become a writer of literature and fiction. I like to interpret characters in real life by bringing out their persona. With plays, there are so many ways to say a single line that you have to pick a certain interpretation and go with it. You have to pick a persona, which is what I did for Ajax.

**What was the most memorable aspect in preparation?**

We did most of our practice in the middle of the night on the third floor of Washington, so it gets pretty secluded, and we had very interesting conversations.

**After this experience, do you plan on continuing with theater while at the College?**

Absolutely, I had a blast doing these plays. I’m taking Intro to Theater next semester. I’m a really shy guy, and I’ve been using theater to express myself — get over my fears as they say.

__All smiles, Genny Mak is a delightful coffee date. The senior sports a stenciled T-shirt from Homebrewaroo 2006 and beautiful wooden Tanzanian earrings. Her outfit illustrates both her dedication to the College of William and Mary’s programming committee, AMP, and her funky personality. Genny is full of surprises — she likes making up her own words, shows her incredibly goofy side, and has a definite affinity for construction work and tool belts.__

**What are you involved in on campus?**

This year I’ve been really focused on AMP as the publicity chair, I was an [Orientation Aide Director] and I work at the Williamsburg Daycare. I’ve also been wanting to do some community service as well — there’s a little boy inside me that’s always like “Gimme a hammer, I want some nails. Gimme a tool belt and I wanna build something.” So I thought, “Housing Partnerships, perfect.” I’ve been going the past few weeks and we’ve been working on housing demolition across the street from Golden Corral. I don’t actually get to use the sledgehammer that much because I’m not strong enough, which is really sad.

The other day after Housing Partnerships I was really dirty and I didn’t want to wear anything that looked good so I put on the extra extra extra large Campus Golf shirt I ordered just for fun and a pair of boys shorts and white cowboy boots and decided to walk across campus to drop my one friend off. I realized as I was walking that nobody walks around like this unless they’re drunk or crazy, but it was just me — not drunk or crazy.

**What’s your favorite AMP event you’ve seen or been a part of?**

A really cool program was when we had the group N*W*C* come, which is a series of really bad words. But they were really cool. It’s just these three guys who did a show on racial awareness. We had helped them during load-in beforehand and before their show they wanted to go to the gym so some people took them over. I was at the gym and they looked really lost, so I asked them if they were lost and ended up walking them back to [Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall] and we had a really long chat. It was really interesting to hear about who they were as people other than what was on the show.

**This year you and your committee managed publicity for AMP. What’s the coolest publicizing method you used?**

For My Chemical Romance we did a parade that we called the death parade. We all dressed in black and put duct tape on ourselves to look like skeletons.

**When you’re bored, what sorts of things do you do?**

I think of random things. So, I’ll be running on the trails and I’ll just make up stories in my head, like “Oh, maybe a little man will come out of a hut and invite me into his house and we will drink water from the creek that runs right next to his door.” I’ll think of random stuff. I’m doing an independent study for French, so I’m writing a book about four American students who go over to France and about their time there. So I also think about things I can add to that.

Also, this summer whenever I drove home, I went past this house that was doing
construction where they would throw out small planks of wood. So I would just pull over and pick up their trash and put it in my car, bring it back home, and make things. I made this bookshelf that’s too small to hold anything. It’s just a plank of wood with two other pieces of two-by-fours. It’s in my bathroom, but it can only hold my perfume bottle which is tiny and my brush because it can lie horizontally. I painted it white too. I guess I was taking other people’s trash and turning it into a … treasure-holder?

**What’s something people around here might not know about you?**

I have weird obsessive-compulsive disorder tendencies, like I don’t like it when people walk in my room with shoes on and I won’t let people sit on my bed unless I think they’re in appropriately clean clothes. But at the same time, I do everything on the floor. I sit on the floor, work on the floor, do my homework on the floor. I can’t work at a desk really. I also don’t have a chair; I have a big red bouncy exercise ball as a chair because it’s more fun to work on. I don’t really use it as a chair that often, most of the time I’m lying on my belly on top of the ball, reading and highlighting. I also have to do a lot of work at the gym because I have to move around a lot because I get antsy.

**You mentioned you are a very superstitious person?**

With coins, I can’t touch them if they’re not heads up. I can’t even touch it with my shoe. It’s really sad because there are actually a couple coins in corners of my room that are tales side up. If I’m having a bad day though I’ll pick them up since it can’t get any worse, otherwise they just hang around. Or I’ll just ask people to pick them up for me.

**I hear you’re a Gmail fan. What’s your favorite Gchat status you’ve put up?**

I’m pretty obsessive about my Gchat status. I’ll get random sounds that will express how I’m feeling for the day and put them up. Like it might be flustered, it’ll be like, “gerflaberstab.” The one right now, because I’m kind of embarrassed and weird-feeling is “snarfblatt,” but that’s actually from the “Little Mermaid,” which is one of my favorite princess Disney movies. I have my own language. Once I say it to people, they know what I mean so it’s kind of universally understood. Like if I said “oosh” to you, what would I mean? It means exasperated, but okay with everything.

**Who is your celebrity crush?**

I was actually talking about this the other day. I would say Christian Bale, but actually I think Paul Newman, even though he’s dead. He was an extremely attractive man, but he also did so many nice things and he was down to earth. He had really lovely blue eyes and, yeah, just great. He seems like a really good person.

__Genny may be cracking jokes and goofing off around campus, but she also knows just what she wants for her future. After working at a consulting job in Falls Church next year, she wants to be the principal of an elementary school that has a Montessori school for three-to-six year-olds. It seems great; she’d be able to serve the community with her smarts and dedication while providing the kids with a constant supply of inventive playfulness.__

It’s got to be hard to be Greg Mottola. After receiving both critical and popular acclaim with his teen-comedy sensation, “Superbad,” the director faced an unfair, but unavoidable situation: Everything will inevitably be compared to that first breakthrough hit. It must not be easy for a budding director to face that kind of pressure right off the bat. In some ways I feel sorry for Mottola. But after watching his latest movie, “Adventureland,” I really just feel sorry for myself.

The film follows the misadventures of James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg, “The Squid and the Whale”) in the summer of 1987. His plans of backpacking across Europe are derailed when his parents’ finances take a turn for the worse, forcing him to get a summer job. With no work experience and a degree in comparative literature and Renaissance studies, the only place that will hire him is the local amusement park, “Adventureland.”

Unfortunately for audience members, hilarity does not ensue. For a film marketed as a quirky teen comedy and heralded as the latest continuation of the “Superbad” legacy, the movie is, dare I say, remarkably unfunny. Trading the raunchy, gross-out humor of its predecessor for a more understated tone, the film earns a few smirks, but the laughs are few and far between. This new strategy would be passable if not for one thing: The characters simply aren’t likeable enough to pull off a satisfying coming-of-age narrative.

Eisenberg makes a valiant attempt at pulling off a shy intellectualism, but his efforts fall embarrassingly short. More importantly, it doesn’t even seem like he was intended for the leading role — in both appearance and ability, Eisenberg is little more than a poor man’s Michael Cera. However, he wasn’t the worst of the cast. No matter what the situation, Kristen Stewart (“Twilight”) could only manage one expression throughout the entire film. Her emotional range — or lack thereof — robbed the funny quips of humor and made her dramatic scenes unintentionally funny. However, the biggest misstep in the cast was Ryan Reynolds (“Definitely, Maybe”), the over-the-hill amusement park mechanic. Like Stewart, his delivery was entirely dispassionate; his performance, lifeless. The problem is, while the young ingénue has yet to show us any talent, she made a romance with Edward Cullen look downright bland. Reynolds’ hollow performance in “Adventureland,” proved Reynolds has finally gotten to the so-long-as-the-check-clears stage in his career.

This is a film carried almost exclusively by the peripheral characters. Park owners Bobby and Paulette (Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig of “Saturday Night Live”) are delightful in their eccentricity; however, the real show-stealer is Joel (Martin Starr, “Knocked Up”), a nihilistic Russian major with a penchant for Gogol and off-the-cuff philosophy in the style of Silent Bob. Sadly, even Joel’s delightfully deadpan delivery fails to save the film from it’s self-made grave of mediocrity.

“Good weather is good for the College,” a friend of mine told me this weekend, pointing to a dense crowd of high school students and parents trailing a backwards-walking tour guide. In the golden sunlight of a perfect spring afternoon, we sat at a table outside the Daily Grind, listening to a band playing for the Fridays @ 5 Alma Mater Productions concert series. As I tried to imagine how we must’ve looked from the point of view of those prospective students on such a day — idyllic 70 degree weather, live music playing right on campus, students laughing and lounging with their friends like posh étudiants at a Parisian cafe — I realized he was absolutely right. I could see from their giddy, awestruck expressions they would move into a dorm on the spot, if given the chance.

As I watched the tour guide lead them around the Crim Dell and head for the Sunken Garden, I could only imagine how enthralled the prospective students would be by that sight. I had only just come from an hour’s reading session on the grassy slopes, and I knew what they would find. Each plot of lawn seemed a petri-dish of every aspect of college life in a high school student’s dream. A group of shirtless guys played an epic game of Ultimate Frisbee, while several groups of girls with textbooks open pretended not to watch the players’ toned and glistening chests. A few musicians played Linkin Park songs with stringed instruments, and the warm gusty wind carried their music so that it filled the whole garden. The prospective parents would be pleased, of course, because everyone brought bio notes, or in my case, a copy of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” with the best intentions of getting some good work done in the beautiful sunshine. Of course, the blue skies weakened my resolve. “’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than to never have loved at all…” I barely could finish a stanza of the heartbreakingly melancholy work before a gleaming shoulder blade or strain of music would send me into a daydreaming spell.

Yes, I knew they’d walk along our endearingly uneven brick pathways (endearing until the day you’re late to class and have to sprint across them in flip-flops), stand in awe of the beautiful Wren building, and gaze down Duke of Gloucester Street as the evening light plays across perfectly preserved history — and it would seem so perfect that parents would be ready to sign tuition checks even if their children had yet to, technically, apply.

The College of William and Mary gets the chance to shine on days such as these, when its best assets are shown off by the magnificent weather, and prospective students get a peek at the opportunities for free entertainment on the weekend. The school is just as perfect a college on those dismal days of February when the sky is dark as pavement and mud puddles flood the sidewalks, rendering them impassable. However, the overall effect isn’t the same. On these awful examples of Virginia winters, I pity the families for having to brave the unfortunate weather, but even more, I pity the College for not getting the chance it deserves to shine. My college visit occurred on such a day and somehow hearing about the fantastic academics and rich history as mud soaks through your Chuck Taylors just doesn’t have the same impact as it would on a day like this past Friday.

But I’m here, aren’t I? I chose to come to the College despite a waterlogged tour and soggy Chucks, and I know statistically I can’t be the only one of my kind. So, while my friend was right — that the Undergraduate Admissions Office and student tour guides relish days like this weekend for their prospective students to see — I’d like to think we don’t come here just for the weather, or the outdoor concerts or the shirtless Frisbee. Well, maybe for the shirtless Frisbee. The autumn photographs on the college pamphlets might attract us to the College, but it’s the College itself that keeps us coming back every fall.

__Zoe Speas is a Confusion Corner columnist. She often gets distracted by Frisbee players.__

Short and balding with a floppy comb-over of curly, sweat-soaked hair, and sporting a purple Gandalf print T-shirt Dan is hardly what is to be expected from a musician quickly gaining prominence in the industry. Nonetheless, students at his WCWM concert Sunday night packed as close as possible to the stage in Trinkle Hall to hear him and his 12-person ensemble perform their experimental dance music.

Everything about his performance stood out as both innovative and subversive to the typical concert mentality, starting with the glowing green plastic skull hanging ominously above his head. Deacon refused to allow the audience to stand still, and often turned away from the audience altogether to address his band.
His ensemble, dressed in matching stark-white jumpsuits adorned with a veritable hodgepodge of multicolored patches, waited patiently onstage for Dan to finish his meticulous sound check during the concert, though the opening bands Teeth Mountain and Future Islands had long since come and gone.
The evening began, surprisingly, with a long stretching session. “Everyone lean to the right,” he said. “Then to the left.”

He brought the audience down on one knee, and, to the chagrin of the easily embarrassed, told audience members to point at dissenters.

Once the music finally started, the audience pulsed in time to the strobing yellow, red, green and blue lights, casting multicolored shadows along the ceiling. The high energy of the small but powerful crowd quickly reached almost surreal levels.

“Let’s make a big circle in the middle of the room,” Deacon said to the crowd, who soon lined up around the perimeter of the room. He picked two students who he asked to “be as sassy as fuck the entire time,” and they began to dance in the middle, gradually pulling more and more dancers in.

Later in the evening, Deacon instructed the mass of panting hipsters to form a tunnel, reminiscent of country-line dancing. Dancers ran, hopped, wiggled and crabwalked through the tunnel of strangers’ arms and hands. The tunnel snaked its way across the room, outside the building, through the parking lot and back into Trinkle through another entrance. By the end of the song, the crowd was back in the room, dancing with the same energy since the first synthesizer chord of the concert.

The concert ended only just after midnight. Most attendees left alert and ready to finally begin their homework for the night. Others, such as Barbara Helfang, 79-year-old grandmother of ensemble member Jeffrey Helfang, were struggling to stay awake. The most die-hard fans remained to ask for signatures, lavish praise upon the exhausted Deacon and, in the case of one excited student, discuss 1800s Russian classical music.

Dan Deacon spoke with The Flat Hat as he was breaking down his set.

**In college you were a music major. How did you get started with music?**

There was this program on my family computer called Midisoft. I discovered it and started composing that way, and that was sort of my introduction.

**On your website you say you’re a part of the Wham City art circle of Baltimore, Md. What is it?**

It’s this very loosely knit and shattered art collective. It used to be a performance space [where] artists [lived] together collectively, but now we’re like a focus group and e-mail list. It’s in a state of flux at all times, so right now it’s sort of a low period. It’s not very cohesive as a collective, just a group of individuals who work under the same brand rather than as a collective.

**You’ve been a major proponent of the free digital music movement and even offer free mp3s on your website. Why is that?**

I think digital music isn’t really a commodity. [It] isn’t worth anything. I mean there’s a demand for it, but there’s endless supply so there’s no reason for it to cost anything. People are going to find it anyway so I’d rather people hear my music than not hear it. And making it free is a way to do that. I mean, obviously I still sell music. I also think it’s a good way to reach a large audience, because it helps people to discover you and figure out what you’re about musically and introduce you to even wider audiences.

**Tell me more about your performance style. You’re known for changing the concert dynamic by doing strange acts. How did this happen?**

I think what we do grew pretty organically. I see a lot of people in independent music with the similar mindset and aesthetic about performance, and try to recontextualize and reinvent the concert experience. I just think it’s something that’s happening right now in the American underground music scene.

**Does your performance style have an effect on the type of fan you attract?**

Maybe. I think people come to the show with an air of excitement perhaps and [they know] that it’s going to be different, but I’m not sure. It’s hard to think what the audience member thinks.

**What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever done to your audience?**

I don’t know. I guess one show I made everyone — I guess I do it all the time now — but I made everyone go outside, and I just did the whole show while I was inside and they were outside. But there were only like seven people there. It was in Cleveland.

**Have you always done experimental music? Or has your style developed during your career?**

I think it’s been somewhat in development for the past seven or eight years, changing and evolving to the sound you hear now. If you listen to my older stuff it’s much more noisy and eclectic and experimental and dark and suitable for the time period, I think.