Too often, performers are working with makeup artists and crew who are not trained on their skin tone and hair texture. So, when they should be fully embodying a character, they are instead confronted with limitations that can feel frustrating and demoralizing. Now, a professor from the School of Music, Theatre & Dance has teamed with a performer from RuPaul’s ‘Drag Race’ to change all that.

Retired Michigan Today columnist and beloved film professor Frank Beaver reflects on the life, career, and creative legacy of award-winning actor James Earl Jones, who died Sept. 9. As the distinctive voice of iconic ‘Star Wars’ villain Darth Vader, Jones has long cultivated an ardent fan base among his fellow alumni. Michigan football fans hear him each fall as the voice on the Wolverines’ pre-game hype video.

Veteran filmmaker Ilana Trachtman spent a decade researching and documenting the 1960 protest at Glen Echo Amusement Park, one of the nation’s earliest organized demonstrations to end segregation. The artist’s labor of love peaked when she discovered essential footage of a dramatic confrontation that matched an audio recording she’d been holding for years.

Throughout her time as an improv performer at U-M and in Los Angeles, Anna Garcia, BFA ’17, learned to listen and react, two critical skills for any successful actor. Those skills launched Garcia to the silver screen this summer, where she starred with Scarlett Johannson in “Fly Me to the Moon.”

U-M professor and beekeeper Brian Stork was brainstorming a unique Mother’s Day gift for his wife when he created a honey chocolate confection that he now sells to uplift unsupported young adults in Muskegon, Mich.

Entrepreneur Janie Deegan, BFA ’09, struggled with addiction and homelessness until she combined her love of baking with a degree in theater to create Janie Bakes. Since 2015, this culinary artist has been serving up “life-changing baked goods” and plenty of inspiration in her three New York locations.

When Italy’s Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79, it buried the palatial villa of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, Julius Caesar’s father-in-law. These black and brittle papyri may look like charred croissants, but U-M classicist Richard Janko believes they contain lost masterpieces of literature, history, and philosophy.

Performances by students at U-M’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance mark the first recordings with full orchestration of music from “La, La, Lucille,” George Gershwin’s first complete score, written when he was just 21 years old. The production opened on Broadway in May 1919, toured the Northeast in 1920 and California in 1922, and then was lost to history.

Drawing inspiration from the Black church, American composer Nkeiru Oko fuses elements of oratorio, theater, and opera to celebrate the spirit of rising above expectations. Partly in tribute to the activist and poet laureate Maya Angelou, the work celebrates the transformative ability of Black women. Hill Auditorium: Feb 10.