Students win first Adam ’07 award

The state of Pennsylvania will be greeted with two creative minds from Princeton this summer.

Halcyon Person ’10 and Samuel Zetumer ’09, the two winners of the newly established Alex Adam ’07 Award, will each be awarded up to $7,000 to complete a creative work this summer. Zetumer will train at the Pig Iron Theater Company in Philadelphia to become a clown, while Person will go to Pittsburgh to write a novel based on the history of her family.

“I’m so excited,” Person said about the prize, which was announced yesterday afternoon. “Awards like this make Princeton such an incredible place. You have the chance to explore your options.”

A theater class in his freshman year introduced Zetumer to the unusual art form of clowning. The courses he’ll take this summer on character creation and clowns will be taught by Quinn Bariedal and Italian clowning master Giovanni Fussetti.

Zetumer said he prefers this slightly alternative acting style to the “realistic and natural acting style” because it lets his “imagination soar.”

Without the award, Zetumer said he would have only been able to take one course, and paying for it would have “involved a large debt to my parents and a lot of linear algebra tutoring.”

Zetumer, who is concentrating in mathematics and pursuing a certificate in theater studies, has submitted an application to put on a clown show for his senior thesis.

Lea Steinacker ’11, who is taking a Greek theater class with Zetumer this semester and shares his passion for clowning, described him as a “ridiculously talented guy when it comes to physicality who has great comedic talent.”

“These classes are going to be heaven on earth for Sam. He’ll just soak them up,” she added.

The other Adam Award winner, Person, has taken a creative writing class every semester since her freshman year at the University. The novel she plans to write will tell the story of a Pittsburgh steel mill and the people whose lives revolve around it. A family reunion last summer inspired Person to write the story.

“I remember everybody sitting around after dinner, all these men and women whose lives circled around the mill. It was beautiful how their stories were interconnected,” she said.

The award will support her over the summer as she does her research and writes. Upon finding out she had won the award, Person called her grandfather.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

“He has already started to round up family members and his friends. He’s an amazing man, and I’m so excited to tell his story,” Person said.

Kate Siegel ’11, who took a fiction writing course with Person last semester, said that Person “gave great insights and ideas to people about their work.”

“Halcyon did a beautiful reading at the end of the semester,” Siegel added.

The Alex Adam ’07 Award was established in memory of Alexander Adam ’07 by his famliy. Adam died last year of Ewing’s sarcoma. Freshmen, sophomores and juniors are eligible for the award, and next year three prizes will be given out instead of two.