MSU Research roundup-Documenting Shakespeare -Horse harm -Books on film -Paris’s Red Belt

Documenting Shakespeare

This will be the 30th season for Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, an outdoor touring
company that has been crisscrossing the state since 1973. Tom Watson, assistant professor in
MSU’s media and theatre arts department, is now making a documentary film about the
process. He has already filmed Joel Jahnke, artistic director for the company, as Jahnke
auditioned actors in Seattle and Chicago. Watson will continue by filming rehearsals, set
construction, costume fittings and performances in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Filming will
end around Labor Day. It will then take a few months to edit his work, Watson said. Funding
came from an MSU Scholarship and Creativity Grant.

Horse harm

One-third of the people injured in horse-related accidents are not even mounted on the horse,
says Shelley Smith Otoupalik of Arlee. They might be kicked, bitten or knocked over. In a study
extended recently with funds from a nursing honorary based at MSU and Carroll College,
Otoupalik found that more western Montanans are injured in May than any other month. The
fewest horse-related injuries and deaths occur in December, January and February. Montana is
different from the rest of the country in that residents continue to use horses for reasons other
than pleasure riding, Otoupalik said. They also use horses for ranching, moving cattle and
hunting.

Books on film

Filmgoers often criticize a movie for not truthfully following a novel. But a lot more goes into
film adaptations than simply reproducing the characters and story line of a book, said Walter
Metz, an MSU assistant professor of media and theatre arts. In fact, how the story is adapted
says almost as much about the cultural and historical time period in which the film is made as
it says about the book. Metz is exploring this idea by studying films made in the 1950s from
novels published before World War II, such as William Faulkner’s "The Sound and the Fury."
He’s working on a book about what he’s found that will be finished next year.

Paris’s Red Belt

Communism may be on the decline in France at the national level, but at the local level it still
seems popular, said MSU associate professor of French Chris Pinet. At least that’s the case in
Villejuif, a town of 47,000 people who continue to elect Communist municipal leaders.
Villejuif is part of the Red Belt, a series of working class communities surrounding Paris. So why
is Communism successful at the municipal level and not at the national one, Pinet wondered.
He’s writing a book about how Communism has changed and adapted in France since the fall
of the Soviet Union. The project is funded in part by an MSU Scholarship and Creativity Grant.

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