MIT Music & Theater Arts Section

Bravo to Xinyu Xu ‘26 (@xinyuxu_ ) for taking home the 2026 Louis Sudler Prize! 🎆 A lighting designer, technical director, carpenter, pianist, and director, Xu came to MIT planning to study computation and cognition until a production of Tick, Tick… Boom changed everything. She switched her major to Theater Arts and never looked back, going on to co-design lighting for the multimedia dance Volta and to light and associate-direct Jay Scheib’s (@jayscheib ) six-and-a-half-hour epic A Dream Like a Dream as her senior thesis. “No one goes to theater to see the lights,” she says. “But you can’t see the show without lights. For me, the stage feels like a canvas.” The Sudler Prize is presented annually to a graduating senior who has demonstrated excellence and the highest standards of proficiency in music, theater, painting, sculpture, design, architecture, or film. 📸 Images courtesy of the artist 🔗 Read more about Xu at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #sudlerprize #lightingdesign #theaterarts

Congratulations to the four recipients of the 2026 Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards: Clay Lewis ‘26 (@_claylewis_ ), Andrea Marcano-Delgado PhD ‘26 (@andreanmarcano ), Perry Naseck SM ‘25 (@perrynaseck ), and Gloria Zhu ‘26 (@riazh_ )! 🎉 Lewis, a music major with a minor in computer science, composed scores for the Logarhythms’ (@mitlogs ) films and is headed to USC’s screen scoring program. Marcano-Delgado balanced a PhD in chemical biology with a deepening vocal jazz practice, co-founding the MIT Afro Latin Ensemble along the way. Naseck, a Media Lab PhD student, has become the de facto lighting designer for the Thomas Tull Concert Hall while researching live concert visuals for improvised and AI-generated music. And Zhu, a double major in computer science and art and design, created metal wearables featured at the MIT Gala (@mitgala ) and has mentored fellow students in MIT’s makerspaces for three years. Named for past MIT President Jerome B. Wiesner and Laya Wiesner, these awards have honored students whose artistic contributions enrich campus life since 1979. 📸 Images courtesy of the artists 🔗 Learn more about the student artists at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #wiesnerawards #studentartists #mitarts filmscoring vocaljazz medialab

The 2026 Student Art Awards celebrate nine artists whose work spans lighting design, live coding, fabrication, film scoring, vocal jazz, and more. ✨ Xinyu Xu ‘26 (@xinyuxu_ ) takes home the Louis Sudler Prize for her transformative lighting design in MIT Theater Arts productions. The Laya and Jerome B. Wiesner Student Art Awards go to Clay Lewis ‘26 (@_claylewis_ ), Andrea Marcano-Delgado PhD ‘26 (@andreanmarcano ), Perry Naseck SM ‘25 (@perrynaseck ), and Gloria Zhu ‘26 (@riazh_ ) for their wide-ranging contributions to MIT’s creative life. And the Harold and Arlene Schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts honors Coco Allred SMACT ‘26 (@coco_allred ), C Jacob Payne MArch ‘27 (@cjacobpayne ), Jessica Stringham SM ‘26 (@_thisxorthat ), and Harrison White MArch ‘27 for distinguished bodies of work in visual art, design, and interactive media. 🔗 Read more about all the winners at the link in bio #artsatmit #thisismit #studentart #mitarts #studentartawards

Mariano Salcedo '25 (@marianoawesome ) is a master’s student in MIT's Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program. He's designing an AI to visualize and express music and other sounds. The new graduate program is a collaboration between MIT Music and Theater Arts (@mitmta ) in the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and the School of Engineering (@mit_engineering ).

some fabulous pics by @costanzatinti + video by tony of the show we had the pleasure to play this past saturday for MIT’s lighting design midterm !! this was one of the coolest things i’ve ever been a part of !!

Ken Urban is a senior lecturer of dramatic writing in MIT Theater. He is an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and musician. In the classroom, Urban says he treats his students as real-world playwrights, encouraging them to write characters and create worlds that are different from their own. “One of the things students often write about in my classes, as STEM majors, is the ethical implications of the work that they do,” he says. Learn more about Urban’s approach to teaching at MIT in this video spotlight.

MIT alum and distinguished cellist Carlos Prieto ’59 returned to campus on March 31 for an afternoon of conversation and music, co-hosted by the SHASS Dean’s Office, the Lewis Music Library, and the Emerson/Harris Program. Prieto presented his most recent book to the MIT Libraries and performed before an audience of students, faculty, staff, and friends of MIT Music. Two Emerson/Harris cellists, Jasper Lee and Chengyu Li, also performed. The event highlighted the extraordinary artistry and interdisciplinary spirit thriving at MIT.

“Hiii-iii! I’m Spider Rabbit,” beams the man in white coveralls, floppy paper ears, and chalky face paint. Played in March to a packed house at MIT and currently at La MaMa in New York, Spider Rabbit is a surreal solo one-act by poet Michael McClure, brought to life by MIT senior lecturer Dan Safer and actor Tony Torn. The pair spent an intensive week on campus working with creative collaborators and MIT students to develop a production they’d begun building together a few years ago. For Torn, who taught acting at the Institute a few years ago, the chance to work with students again was a perk of rehearsing on campus. Students like Joy Ma ‘25, completing an MEng after earning her bachelor’s in physics and computer science, joined the production team during rehearsals—one of over 10 theater classes she’s taken at MIT. As Torn puts it, “once [MIT students] see theater as a different kind of creative problem to be solved, they immediately lock in.” Spider Rabbit is now playing at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York through April 12. 🔗 Read the full story at the link in our bio 📸 Photos by Ben Rose/MIT and HErickson/MIT #artsatmit #thisismit #experimentaltheater #lamamaetc #theaterarts

Mariano Salcedo (@marianoawesome ), a student in @mitmta and @mit_engineering 's Music Technology and Computation Graduate Program, is designing an AI to visualize and express music and other sounds. The simulation tool he designed observes Neural Cellular Automata (NCA) as it reacts to audio in real time. “What if we could improve the ways we model self-organized systems?” he asks. “That is, systems like multicellular organisms, flocks of birds, or societies that interact locally but exhibit interesting behaviors.” Learn more about Mariano's research, his time inside and outside the classroom, and more at the link in our bio.

Danny Yang (@dannyfyang ) is a senior majoring in biology (@mitbiology ) and minoring in Japanese (@mit.global.languages ). In this video spotlight, Danny talks about one of his most memorable SHASS classes, 21M.030 (Introduction to World Music), where students study global music traditions and cultures. "That's not something that I really experienced before coming to MIT. It was something that I was extremely moved by when I took that class."

SPIDER RABBIT Presented by MIT Theatre Arts Written by Michael McClure Directed by Dan Safer Original Music: Christian Frederickson & Jared Michael Nickerson Featuring: Tony Torn “First written in 1971, Spider Rabbit is an absurdist, anti-war, gargoyle cartoon that feels increasingly relevant over 50 years later. It’s a radical, expressionistic, surreal journey – an episode of Pee Wee’s Playhouse that turns into a poignant tragedy, that then turns into a howl against brutality.”

What playlist would you pair with a novel? 🎻📖 After a conversation with a literature professor (Sandy Alexandre) and a cognitive neuroscientist (Rebecca Saxe) about the novel IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, our visiting novelist Ling Ling Huang picked up her violin—and with pianist Yoko Greeney—played the scenes she hears in the very story she authored. Thank you @violingsquared That evening, we saw how #MIT can also mean "Music Is Translation"—how a narrative passage on the page can become music to your ears. What music plays in your mind when you read? #ImmaculateConception #LingLingHuang #literature #music