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We Know What You Did Last Summer

by Sean McManus
September / October 2007 , Page 20

Didn't get to the beach enough this summer? You're not the only one. Here's what some other busy alums did during their summer months.

1

The Scenester

John Lithgow is no stranger to Shakespeare: He acted in some 20 of the Bard’s plays by the time he was 20. Since then, he has appeared in just two, as Laertes in Hamlet and Achilles in Troilus and Cressida. So when he was approached about playing Malvolio in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Twelfth Night, opening August 30th in Stratford-upon- Avon, the Tony Award winner decided the time was right. “We ended up getting a meeting room at the hotel and running through the gulling scene and a few others,” Lithgow remarks of his initial meeting with director Neil Bartlett. “I think we surprised each other by how much we knew.” Lithgow says he’ll be the “old fart” in a production cast mostly with younger actors, many of whom will be performing cross-gender. “Clearly a show not to be missed.”
2

The Mystery Man

In Evanston, Ill., where his apartment overlooks Lake Michigan, Scott Turow is struggling with a sequel to his 1987 novel, Presumed Innocent. “It’s like writing with a vulture on your shoulder,” he explains. To combat what he calls “the worst thing that can happen to a writer”— self-imitation— Turow “wanders around the book with character sketches, dialogue, and clever lines.” His theme this time around: “How much does one really recover from personal tragedy?” Pointing to John Updike’s “Rabbit” series, Turow says that he believes in the virtue of following a character through time. “I’m working with some really rich stuff,” he says. “But there’s always the question: Can I get my arms around it?”
3

The Healer

Since turning his English thesis into the bestselling novel, Beasts of No Nation, in 2005, the now 24-year-old Uzodinma Iweala, or Uzo, has worked for Richard Branson’s Virgin Unite in Nigeria, his parents’ home country, and for the Millennium Project under Columbia’s Jeffrey Sachs. This summer, Iweala spent a month at the Santa Maddalena retreat for writers and botanists outside Florence working on his second book, a nonfiction account of HIV/AIDS patients in Africa. “I wake up every morning around eight, work for a few hours, and then go for a swim before lunch,” he e-mails from Italy. “Then I work some more and go for a run in the evening.” In September Iaweala starts Columbia Medical School, where he plans to focus on public health and infectious disease.
4

The Entertainer

Most of singer/actress Tatyana Ali’s weekends this summer were spent acting in two-minute shorts for the Fox reality show On The Lot, where aspiring filmmakers compete for a million-dollar development deal with DreamWorks. “It was like acting camp,” says the 28-year-old Ali. The former Fresh Prince of Bel-Air star was also shooting the upcoming revenge thriller Hotel California, which she describes as “darker than I’m used to.” The film will premiere in January 2008. And Ali acted in the play The Divorce, which ran at Los Angeles’ Wilshire Ebell Theatre in August. “I like acting in different mediums,” she says.
5

The Investigator

It wasn’t exactly a subtle title: Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. Now former Newsweek correspondent Clara Bingham is writing and co-producing a documentary based on this 2004 book by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “I’m interested in David and Goliath struggles,” says Bingham. In July the crew traveled to Appalachia, where RFK Jr. spoke at a church in Logan County, W.Va.; locals have complained of red tap water caused by contamination from mines. August brought digging for archival footage of political hearings and press conferences. “It’s like reporting a story—everything can change depending on what you find,” Bingham explains. She hopes to wrap filming in November, with a release date in the spring.