This week, justArts spoke with Ingrid Schorr, the acting director of the Office of the Arts, about the finalized line-up for featured events for this year’s Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts.

JustArts: I saw that there was a lot of new information released, which is really exciting.

Ingrid Schorr: Yeah, the planning is going great. We have our featured events finally set and we’re ready to make that announcement. I guess we already have informally, but there will be a press release coming out soon. The Sunday schedule is full, and everything’s looking pretty great.

JA: Is there a specific event that has been challenging or rewarding to plan?

IS: It’s always both of those things to work with artists from off campus. So our featured event is “The Burning Boards,” which is a performance by the Los Angeles-based artist Glenn Kaino. That was part of the challenge…communicating with a very busy artist who’s literally working all around the world. Communicating with his gallery, with his studio to get all those pieces in place. While [Kaino] said months ago “Yes, I would love to come to Brandeis!” we had to work with his gallery and studio to make sure that all the pieces were in place for him literally to be here.

JA: Is there an event that the staff and yourself are most looking forward to?

IS: We’re really looking forward to “The Burning Boards” for a number of reasons. Visually, it’s just beautiful and unlike anything we’ve ever seen on campus before. It involves communities that have not been traditionally part of the festival of arts. We’re co-producing it with the Chess Club, [that has] a very diverse range of members and also contact with people off campus, for example, the Waltham Chess Community. And then we’re bringing in artists, and scholars, and thinkers and people from Brandeis to be part of the chess match.

Some of the confirmed players: Lisa Lynch, the provost, the artist Glenn Kaino [and] the President of the Chess Club Misha Vilenchuk ’16. There will be 32 altogether.

A very diverse group of people from lots of different nationalities, different ages, different skill levels, and it’s a really interesting event for the chess world because traditionally in the chess world, you play matches to advance your ranking, because everyone wants to get the ranking of master or grandmaster. This is not going to do anything for your ranking; it’s a social event and a community event.

JA: How do you expect to attract students to the event?

IS: I’m hoping of course that people will come out to see their friends, professors or favorite staff people play. Also, it will just be such a beautiful visual event at dusk. I don’t know the exact number of candles that will be burning, but 16 chess boards, times however many chess pieces per board, and those will all be lit. Blazing away outside the Rose Art Museum, at dusk.

And we’ll have some other pieces to the event—there will be some live music performed by students, and Provost Lisa Lynch will make some remarks, but by and large it’s going to be the chess match. So I’m hoping that students will come because it’s a lovely interlude before Friday day and Friday night.

JA: Is there something that you want students to take away from the festival?

IS: The theme of the festival is Find Your Light. We hope that people will find inspiration that brings them illumination and maybe lightens their spirits or sheds light on their understanding of the world or their understanding of what it means to be an artist, or to make art, or to shed light on the campus so they see it in a different way.

Every new experience means seeing your landscape with new eyes, and we’re hoping that the events of the art festival will bring that new perspective, even if just for a moment. For example, we have a lighting design class that’s going to be doing an outdoor installation. I won’t tell you where it is because I want people to find it on their own. It’s a place on campus that’s a little dreary, and they’ll be making a spectacular sculptural installation with light. I’m sure you’ll find it. It’s a place that people walk by every week.

I’m also hoping that people take away pride in their own achievements. We have so many students who are presenting work as the culmination of their year or of their four years at Brandeis, like the senior festival of plays, seniors in Theater Arts who are directing or writing or producing original work.

A lot of the music ensembles are giving concerts, the early music ensemble, the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra and the chamber choir and Safali (music and dance from Ghana) have concerts. In visual art, we have a graduate program in Studio Art, and they’ll be giving their final exhibitions of the year.