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and the school-city committee,
which she joined in December
2014.

Challenger Leaf said he is look-

ing for his first break into political
office. After graduating from the
University in 2012, the 24-year-old
launched Neutral Skin and Hair, a

company that produces and sells
mineral sunscreen.

This bid for candidacy is not

Leaf’s first run-in with Ann Arbor
politics. When he was 18, he wrote
a proposed ordinance to limit the
city’s installation of police sur-
veillance cameras. In 2013 he was
co-chair of the Mixed-Use Party,
which ran University student
candidates and focused on zoning
reforms around the city.

“I’ve always been interested in

politics and I hope to transition
into being a politician,” Leaf said.
“I like making policy, and to me
that’s what’s interesting about pol-
itics. It’s the policy. It’s the power
of legislation. And making rules
and anticipating how they are
going to affect people, and trying
to make fair and good rules.”

Among Leaf’s priorities are

increasing infrastructure, afford-

MICHIGAN
From Page 1

LUNA ANA ARCHEY/Daily

City Council candidate Will Leaf.

BRIAN BECKWITH/Daily

City Council candidate Sabre Brierre.

2-News

ACROSS

1 Spell
5 Traitor

10 Letters causing a

rush

14 Property

measurement

15 Flopped

financially

16 Bonkers
17 Response to a

drone

18 Quibble about

accommodations?

20 Zeus’ beginning?
21 Forgives
22 Director Burton
23 Little bit
25 “Too Much, Too

Little, Too Late”
duettist

27 Marshmallow

that’s been
toasted too long?

33 4x4, e.g.
34 “1984” worker
35 Get used (to)
38 Assembly stage
40 Hit from a tee
42 Start of Operation

Overlord

43 Scrutinized, with

“over”

45 Abounds
47 Generation
48 Small group of

tiny monarchs?

51 Google, say
53 Canyon part
54 “A Bug’s Life”

extra

55 It might blow up

in a crash

59 Shade at the

shore

63 Worthless

buzzer?

65 [I’m doomed]
66 Goes wrong
67 Bridge expert on

some “Sports
Illustrated”
covers

68 Mozart’s “a”
69 Soft-spoken

painter Bob

70 Irish hero, briefly
71 Pringles

competitor

DOWN

1 Now hyphen-less

rapper

2 “Dies __”
3 Spotted

aquarium dweller

4 Film estate with a

championship
golf course

5 “Avian” for whom

flight is often
futile

6 __ Reader
7 It may be

hammered out

8 Help providers
9 Stain

10 European

attraction

11 Independent

country since
2011

12 When Hamlet

says, “The
play’s the thing
... ”

13 Dickinson output
19 “Amen!”
24 Trivia Crack, e.g.
26 Mind
27 Horrified reaction
28 One of the

Ringling brothers

29 Drowns in the

garden

30 __ Star
31 Circular

32 Chevy’s

“American Pie”
destination

36 Woolen yarn
37 Socket set
39 Review target
41 Newly formed
44 Joe sans jolt
46 Take on moguls
49 The Cat in the

Hat’s numbered
cohorts

50 Visuals

51 Word with tooth

or saw

52 Año starter
56 Repeated word in

“Take Me Out to
the Ball Game”

57 Do a new mom’s

job

58 On a cruise
60 Gave notice
61 Radius neighbor
62 Pinnacle
64 ’40s spy org.

By Jim Quinlan
©2015 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
04/03/15

04/03/15

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Friday, April 3, 2015

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

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6 — Friday, April 3, 2015
Arts & News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Orchard’ ponders
existential queries

EVENT PREVIEW

Chekhov classic
still relevant for

21st-century

audiences

By GRACE HAMILTON

Daily Arts Writer

Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry

Orchard” raises many questions
for its audiences each perfor-
mance. But for
millennials, per-
haps those ques-
tions are more
existential.

“Every single

day, we are met
with this end-
less stream of
horrible things
in
the
world:

Ebola,
Fergu-

son, rights being
taken away in
Indiana,”
said

SMTD
senior

Ellie Todd. “But we also have
BuzzFeed; we have cat pictures;
we have The Next 21 Ways to Fry
an Egg.”

Todd is directing Anton Chek-

hov’s “The Cherry Orchard,”
produced by student group Rude
Mechanicals. So what do any of
these millennial symptoms Todd
describes have to do with Chek-
hov’s famous play?

They represent forms of dis-

traction, forms of denial. Finding
out, “What Pizza Topping Are
You?” allows us to avoid confront-
ing other problems. This tendency
to avoid difficult realities by con-
structing alternate realities was
part of Russian early 20th century
culture as well.

The play follows widow Lyuba

Ranevsky and her household as she
comes to terms with the approach-
ing auction date of the family’s
cherry orchard. Left with few other
options for paying their debt, the
orchard is ultimately sold to the son
of a peasant, Yermolay Lopakhin.

For a drama that is profoundly

historical and locked in a unique

time, its themes remain remarkably
pertinent. Instead of BuzzFeed as
distraction, the pervasive coping
mechanism of the time was, simply,
denial.

“They are constantly going into

town, spending money and lend-
ing money. If you are talking about
selling the orchard, I’m gong to
talk louder about whose smoking
those cheap cigars over there,”
Todd said describing the parallel.

This production aims to draw

out parallels like these by taking
the play out of the time and place
of 19th-century Russia.

“The set is just trees and basi-

cally this bowl that’s painted like
a giant tree ring. So we’re quite
literally in one of the trees,”
Todd said. “We’re going for a
very timeless feel, our sound-
scape is ethereal and timeless
and so are the costumes.”

There are other, deeper univer-

sal challenges of the human condi-
tion that the play explores.

“At every level, there’s a

microcosm of the macrocosm.
There’s the issue of wealth and
big social change, but the meta-
phors get smaller and smaller
until you’re left with very human
truths,” Todd said. “It’s about a
feeling of value. At its very core,
you can link all questions of
wealth and status and such to a
very simple feeling of fear. Fear
that you are irrelevant.”

Lyuba’s relevance comes from

the orchard. The prospect of its
sale and destruction is about her
own sense of losing standing in
the world. The play is brilliant in
its many petals of symbolism, held
together neatly by lively charac-
ters and subtle comedy.

Chekhov’s unique sense of

comedy is something Todd found
captivating as she continued her
reading and research process.
Although Chekhov’s work is
often seen as gloomy and sad, the
playwright himself had very dif-
ferent intentions. Todd recited a
quote of his addressing this:

“You tell me that people cry at

my plays. I’ve heard others say the
same. But that’s not why I wrote
them … All I wanted was to say

truthfully to people: ‘Have a
look at yourselves and see how
bad and dreary your lives are!’
The important thing is that
people should realize that, since
when they do, they will most
certainly create another, better
life for themselves. And so long
as this different life does not
exist, I shall continue to say to
people again and again: ‘Please
understand that your life is bad
and dreary.’ What is there to cry
about in this?”

Amid the metaphor, scattered

laughter and bits of tragedy,
Chekhov’s ask is for self-reflection,
as is Todd’s.

“I can’t change everything

in the world, but I can create
something that will spark an idea
in somebody’s mind. Success to me
is that people in the audience go
home and spend time in reflection,
that the themes of the play inspire
them to look at those themes in
their own lives,” Todd said.

With a cast of 14, teams of

costume
and
set
designers,

producers through the Rude
Mechanicals, Todd, and her
assistant Wygodny (who acts in
the play as well), it will be clear
to audience members that an
enormous amount of work went
into the production, both on and
off the stage.

“Sometimes
I
think
to

myself, ‘I’ll just never be as
smart
as
Chekhov,’”
Todd

said.
Understanding
the

play in the first place takes a
commitment. The production is
an accomplishment.

“The word that we feel the

most is ‘devoted.’ A lot of people
have passion, but the difference
between a lot of people and
those few that make amazing
things is devotion. That’s what
we’ve tried to be,” she said. “We
eat, sleep and breathe the cherry
orchard.”

Tears? Laughter? Existential

Crisis? It is hard to say what
audience members will feel after
“The Cherry Orchard.” What-
ever your reaction, prepare to
set aside some time to figuring
it out.

The Cherry
Orchard

April 3rd and

4th: 8 p.m.; April

5th, 2 p.m.,

Lydia

Mendelssohn

Theater

Students: $5

Adults: $8

able housing, conserving forestry
and making transportation easier
for citizens of Ann Arbor. He also
advocates for changing election
dates, which he argues would
allow more citizens to participate
in elections, as many people are not
in Ann Arbor in August when the
Democratic primary happens.

Leaf acknowledged some of the

disadvantages of running against an
experienced candidate like Briere.
He said he doesn’t know as many
people and does not have the access
to the city or media attention that
Briere has.

However he believes he has a bet-

ter-articulated platform and clearer
goals, and overall feels confident

about his chances.

“I don’t get angry very easily. I

think that is important. I am very
level headed, even-tempered I
think. I am very determined, very
tenacious,” he said. “I think I criti-
cize myself and my own ideas and
try to improve them that way. I ana-
lyze things to death and I think that
is important on City Council right
now.”

Briere said it’s easy for someone

to have the kind of platform Leaf has
when they do not know what it is
like to be in government and found
his approach to be much more black
and white compared to her own
nuanced style.

“Everybody has a personality

trait,” she said. “I am extraordinari-
ly realistic. I am not idealistic at all. I
probably never have been. Someone
asked me recently what I thought
about Will and I said, ‘You know,
even if Will and I were the same age
we would disagree on the way to get
anything done.’ ”

Leaf does not believe Briere’s

“black and white” evaluation of
him to be true and added that
City Council often avoids making
hard decisions.

“There is a big difference

between seeing both sides of
an issue and listening and get-
ting lots of different perspec-
tives, which is critical and really
important, to not having convic-
tions and not having an opinion,”
he said. “To me, not taking action
is itself an action.”

Leaf said he is aware that being

elected would not garner him
everyone’s support, but thinks
that City Council members are
able to frame discussions.

“I think it’s not just saying,

like, ‘I’m going to be one vote on
this pre-existing slate of issues.’
It’s that any individual on council
is in a good position to frame the
way the issues are,” he said.

An important point for both

candidates is zoning reconsidera-
tions.

“I would love to see that we

were making changes to our
zoning to really encourage more
solar alternative power by setting
our premiums so that someone is
expected to put a green roof or a
solar roof on any building above a
certain height,” Briere said.

She also called on the city to

rezone certain sites in accor-
dance with the city’s master plan.

“The incentives were built into

the zoning and now it’s time to
reevaluate the incentives because
they did not result in giving us the
housing variety and other tan-
gibles like greener buildings and
more pedestrian amenities that
we had wanted.”

For Leaf, zoning is an issue

that will directly affect another
significant concern for the city:
affordable housing.

Affordable housing and fos-

tering conditions for its devel-
opment in Ann Arbor have been
recurring themes in this year’s
City Council meetings.

City
Council
adopted
the

Housing
Affordability
Equity

and Analysis, which proposes the
construction of 3,139 affordable
homes in Ann Arbor and 4,178
new middles class homes in Ypsi-
lanti by 2035.

Leaf found the report to be

unrealistic because of the costs
associated with implementing
the proposals. He added that
affordable housing will have to be
facilitated through market mech-
anisms, which the government
can help create through zoning
reforms.

He believes current zoning

rules restrict the supply of hous-
ing, which leads to continually
high prices. He said removing
or reducing minimum lot sizes
and eliminating parking require-
ments and floor area require-
ments would allow for more
houses and therefore prices to
drop.

Leaf
recognized
potential

resistance
against
proposed

changes and supports two ways
to make it an easy transition. The
first is to establish performance
zoning, a type of zoning based on
the effects of the development.

“One is to carefully regulate

physical effects of developments
like the noise, odor, light shin-
ing into houses and thing like
that, and to focus more on per-
formance standards rather than
zoning,” he said.

The second is changing the

city’s Master Plan such that the
planning commission could be
able to allow property owners
to opt in to mixed use neighbor-
hoods. This could be done in con-
cert with establishing effective
buffer zones.

Briere also recognized the high

levels of housing costs, including
rising taxes and housing prices.

She said City Council is cur-

rently considering two options.
One is to allow the creation of
accessory dwelling units, which
contain two units in a house,
and the second is to decrease the
frontage requirement to allow
for the creation of duplex apart-
ments that would have the option
of renting.

Briere identifies the problem

of affordable housing as being
regional, as it includes Ypsilanti
and Ypsilanti Township, and
thinks it should be addressed in
that context.

“We talk about affordable

housing in Ann Arbor,” she said.
“But we really need to be address-
ing the income and race and
opportunity and education divide
between
Ypsilanti,
Ypsilanti

Township and Pittsfield Town-
ship.”

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