Daily Texan: Undergrads Prepare Piece on Body Image for Cohen New Arts Festival

Reimagining body image, beauty through art

By Jasmin Carina Castanon

November 6 , 2012

Through the Cohen New Works Festival, presented by the UT University Co-op, students are given the opportunity to use theater as an agent for social change. Theatre studies junior Sarah Marcum and theatre and dance junior Paige Brown are taking advantage of this opportunity by collaborating on a project that draws attention to modern-day beauty ideals and their various effects on women.

(Photo: Chelsea Purghan for the Daily Texan)

Students have the opportunity to submit their own original pieces for consideration to be showcased during the weeklong festival that happens every other spring. The committee accepts all types of “new work,” whether it is theater, dance, music, film, design or visual art. The festival’s committee-at-large, which consists of about 40 undergraduate and graduate students, is currently in the process of selecting the works that will be showcased in the festival.

“It is a process that incorporates a large number of voices to help create as diverse a festival as humanly possible,” PR/Marketing chair Isaac Gomez said.

Marcum and Brown submitted an original piece about how Western culture’s modern ideal of beauty affects the day-to-day lives of women in the United States.

Marcum said the piece was influenced by the people in her life battling with the struggles of body image and beauty.

“Sarah approached me one day about wanting to create a piece on beauty and appearance that really talked about the very real social and political ramifications of having this one idea of beauty and how it plays itself out on different types of women,” Brown said.

Read more at the Daily Texan on-line . . . .