VOLUME 107, ISSUE NO. 16 | STUDENT-RUN SINCE 1916 | RICETHRESHER.ORG | WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2023
Black Art at Rice: Akaya Chambers designs her future in theatre MORGAN GAGE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
TABC opens opens new new TABC 60-day investigation investigation of of Pub Pub 60-day MARIA MORKAS & BRANDON CHEN
ASST. NEWS EDITOR & FOR THE THRESHER
The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission opened another 60-day investigation into The Pub at Rice during the first week of classes. This comes after previous TABC investigations in 2019 and 2022. Head bartender Jonathan Lloyd said TABC officers came to Pub on Jan. 12, the first Pub night of the semester, due to receiving a new set of complaints for the same reasons as before: serving underage and overintoxicated patrons. “We sincerely do not know why this new complaint was filed because we had not even had a Pub night yet since reopening ,” Lloyd, a Will Rice College senior, said. “We conveyed as much to the officers, who mentioned that they will be coming by every so often for 60 days until the complaint can be closed.” TABC officers visited Pub again on Wednesday, Jan. 18. Miles Sigel, the general manager of Pub, said TABC also visited Pub unannounced last semester. “They don’t give us any information about what the complaint [is], and they usually come in and walk behind [the] bar and look for hard alcohol and any clear violations,” Sigel said. “A lot of what they do is just ... trying to scare us into making sure we’re doing the right stuff … We kind of know on our end how to operate with the rules, regulations and policies. But obviously, it’s a hard balance between getting the word out to the student body without scaring them too much.”
SEE PUB INVESTIGATION PAGE 3
JENNIFER LIU / THRESHER
ZEISHA BENNETT / THRESHER Akaya Chambers, Martel College senior, works in theatre across campus, costume designing for two shows this
‘It’s close to home, always’: Sharing and preserving AAPI stories RIYA MISRA
FEATURES EDITOR A handful of decades ago, the Gee family came to Houston. Rooted in the era of Jim Crow and tracing its way through the civil rights movement, the Gee family spent much of the mid to late-20th century building their legacy. Now, the family name marks a large and vibrant network of Chinese Americans across Houston. Without the Houston Asian American Archive, their stories — and many others — wouldn’t be preserved. HAAA, which was founded by Anne Chao in 2009, seeks to document the stories and lives of Houston’s vast Asian American community.
Chao, HAAA’s current program manager, said that the archive was sparked by a chance encounter at a function, where a friend of hers was looking for a place to chronicle old newspapers. “A friend of mine said, ‘My father was a publisher of the first Chinese bilingual — English and Chinese — newspaper. He’s retired and we have all these old newspapers at home. We don’t know what to do with [them],’” Chao, who is also an adjunct lecturer in the Humanities department, said. Chao discovered that, despite Houston having one of the largest Asian American populations in the country, the city had no depository of the activities and life histories of local Asian Americans. Chao said that in July 2010, she sent out a prospective intern to interview her friend’s father and potentially start a new initiative. “Mr. Gene Lee was actually a grocer who really wanted to become a newspaper writer,” Chao said. “So toward the end of his career, he sold
a grocery store, bought a secondhand printing press and started writing [a newspaper] on his own … He was so proud on his deathbed that his experience, his life, [his] entire history is now preserved in our archive at Rice University.” According to Chao, HAAA quickly grew in popularity, amassing 450 interviews in over 13 years. The archive, which Chao describes as Pan-Asian — that is, representing all ethnic groups across the continent — captures Asian American stories that would otherwise be lost to time. “As people heard about us interviewing people, referrals [would] come to me saying, ‘You should interview Mr. or Mrs. XYZ … They have stories that if you didn’t capture them, [will] be lost forever,’” Chao said. “We also noticed that, in studying the official history of Texas, Asian American activities are not mentioned very much, even though they’ve been here since the early part of the 20th century.”
SEE AAPI PAGE 6
When Akaya Chambers was twelve years old, she made her own Halloween costume — a steampunk TARDIS dress. It was the first time she had ever sewn, but she hasn’t put down her needle and thread since. In the years following, she discovered a passion for costume design and theatre on and off of the stage as a costume designer and actor, and on the page as a playwright. “I deleted all the photos,” Chambers, a Martel College senior, said when asked for a photo of the dress. “It was intermediate, and I had never sewn anything in my life. I was sitting there sobbing as I’m like, ‘I don’t know how to do a pleat. I don’t know how to do any of this.’ But then I got to the end of it, and I actually made something that I could wear … Then I found out later that I could transfer [sewing] to a different medium, [costume design], that could actually make money for me.” In eighth grade, Chambers joined a combination visual and dramatic arts class in its first year at her school, describing it as her first step into theatre. She has been involved in theatre ever since, from middle school to high school to college. “Most of high school was a blur, but I know I spent countless hours building things in the costume shop for shows,” Chambers said. “It wasn’t like each individual time, I was like, ‘This is what I want to do,” but it was each individual time that I [worked in the costume shop] — this is something that gives me joy. I love to see the person in their costume and … my ideas or the concepts that [a designer] gave me realized as a physical thing.” Outside of costume design, Chambers has appeared on stage as an actor in multiple productions. She said that working in various areas of a production has made her a more well-rounded theatre artist. She said that her roles as both an actor and designer are challenging, but that the structure of the commitment is different. From watching her brother read Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” to being a part of a performance of “The Colored Museum” by George C. Wolfe, Chambers said that witnessing theatre by Black artists made her decide theatre was something she could pursue. “I can be an artist, I can be a Black actor in the arts and continue to pursue this,” Chambers said. “Because there are plays, there are productions that have people like me, who look like me.” This semester, Chambers is also writing a science-fiction play as part of her senior capstone project in the English department. She said that the show follows people on a ship in space who turn into zombies and was inspired by her love of science fiction horror, a genre not often explored on stage. While it draws on the horror genre, she said there’s plenty of comedy in the show. “I just tried to make myself laugh. I’m like, ‘If I can make myself laugh, maybe somebody else will laugh, and that’s when [the play] goes through workshop [for the English senior seminar]. I’m like, ‘Okay, did they think it was funny?’ If they think it was funny, that’s good. Keep that.” To include more Black artists in every aspect of the production process on and off the stage, Chambers said that theatre companies should look at more modern shows.
SEE BLACK ART AT RICE PAGE 8