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. 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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.”