At Bucknell University, some weekends are spent studying, some are spent celebrating, but this one is about storytelling. On October 24, the campus will once again transform into a living film set as the Bucknell Film Club launches its 48-Hour Film Challenge, with this year marking an exhilarating collaboration with the Weis Center for the Performing Arts that dares students to write, shoot, and edit an entire short film within just two days. The challenge begins with a mandatory prop reveal at 7 p.m. on Friday, October 24, at the Weis Center. The props are random, sometimes ridiculous, and always […]

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Some performances feel less like concerts and more like ceremonies, moments that blur the line between past and present, between what is sung and what is remembered. Kurbasy’s Songs of the Ukrainian Forest was one of those rare evenings. It didn’t simply perform; it reached, branching outward from deep cultural roots and carrying with it echoes of survival, sorrow, and hope. Before the first note was sung, the Weis Center was already steeped in reflection. The pre-talk, led by Heather Almer, Assistant Director of International Student & Scholar Services, set the tone for the evening with both warmth and understanding. […]

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Originially published in The Bucknellian. On Oct. 21, 2025, the Weis Center for the Performing Arts filled with the glow of lamps, music and movement. The night carried a special meaning. It was Diwali, the Festival of Lights, when Hindus around the world celebrate hope, goodness and renewal. That same spirit of light and devotion came alive on stage as Nrityagram, one of India’s most celebrated dance ensembles, performed “KHAṄKHAṆĀ: The Sound of Dancing Feet.” It was an evening that went beyond performance. It was worship, storytelling and art all woven together with grace and meaning. Even before the lights dimmed, […]

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The Weis Center Atrium had never felt so alive. Before the performance even began, the space pulsed with an energy that was warm and contagious. Conversations intertwined, laughter filled the air, and a gentle hum moved through the crowd like the sound of anticipation itself. It was not noise but life, a kind of harmony that emerges when people gather for something they love. Children weaved through clusters of adults, friends called out to one another across the room, and strangers exchanged smiles that needed no introduction. Under that roof, the evening became a celebration of togetherness and of the […]

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This year, the Samek Art Museum and the Weis Center for the Performing Arts have cometogether under one unifying theme: trees. It is more than coincidence, more than a sharedimage. It is a collaboration that asks us to think about growth, process, and connection acrossart forms, and to experience how these lessons move between the museum and the stage. At the Samek, Gina Siepel’s exhibition To Understand a Tree anchors the season. The project,created over six years in communion with a single tree, blends ecology, queer experience, andenvironmental philosophy into a living portrait of interconnection. But the exhibition does notstand […]

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It is not every day that Bucknell becomes a portal to the rainforest. On the evening of September 30, the Weis Center for the Performing Arts transformed. What began as a crisp fall night soon unfolded into an immersive journey through one of the world’s most vital and endangered ecosystems. The performance, an extraordinary multimedia presentation by National Geographic explorer and ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni, pulled back the canopy’s veil and invited us not just to see the rainforest but to feel it. Even before the lights dimmed, the Atrium pulsed with life. The Environmental Expo turned the space into […]

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After several years, the Weis Center opened its Atrium once more for performance, and for that moment there could not have been a better choice than the André Mehmari Trio. Some concerts are made for grandeur and scale, but others are meant for closeness, for stillness, for intimacy. This was the latter, a performance that felt less like spectacle and more like a bud slowly opening, quiet, delicate, and full of promise. André has lived for over twenty five years in the Atlantic Forest, the vast tropical rainforest along Brazil’s coast, and his music carried that landscape within it. The […]

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Some nights feel like a spark. Others, like a flame. And then there are nights that feel like a seed planted, something that roots itself quietly, grows inward before it grows outward, and promises to linger long after the final note. Kings Return gave us that seed. It could not have been more fitting that their performance marked not only their long-awaited return to Bucknell but also the beginning of a new year for the Weis Center, itself reborn through a complete renovation. With its theme of trees, an image both simple and immense, ordinary and eternal, this season began […]

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c A Night of Communion and Celebration: Ruthie Foster Closes the Weis Center Season There are evenings that entertain, and then there are evenings that stay with you quietly, completely, without asking for permission. Ruthie Foster gave us the latter. From the moment she walked onto the stage, there was a shift in the air. The audience, already pulsing with anticipation, rose to meet her energy, and she returned it with something even greater: presence. Ruthie wasn’t just here to perform; she was here to connect. And from her very first note, that intention carried the room. There was no […]

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A Night of Daring Beauty: DakhaBrakha at the Weis Center From the moment DakhaBrakha took the stage at the Weis Center, the air shifted. There was no need for words, no need for introductions—the setting itself, drenched in shadow and sound, was invitation enough. The audience sat in quiet anticipation, not yet standing, but utterly alert. It felt like the prologue to a myth—grand, majestic, yet deeply personal. You weren’t just watching a performance. You were being summoned into something larger. DakhaBrakha didn’t play music. They conjured it. Each piece unfolded like a self-contained story, rooted in folk tradition but […]

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