News India Times

www.newsindiatimes.com – that’s all you need to know News India Times (April 25, 2026 - May 1, 2026) May 1, 2026 10 Community Mason Gross Theater Productions Have Become More Environmentally Friendly, Thanks To This Senior M aya Ramdayal is drawn to what she calls the “world-building” aspect of theater – creating the sets that serve as the habitat for the characters in a play. While studying set design at Mason Gross School of the Arts, she also has been able to prioritize the environmental impact of her designs, thereby “world-building” in an additional way. “We throw away a lot,” she says. “It’s kind of impossible to save everything. Building our own shows, you learn how much waste can happen, but also how much you can recycle.” The Rutgers–New Brunswick senior gets credit for making sustainability part of the planning pro- cess for theater at the university, influencing both the Mason Gross faculty and her fellow classmates. “Maya is the first person who really made it a priority and wanted to take action,” says David P. Gordon, chair of the theater department and associate professor of scenic design. He says Ramdayal brought the issue to his attention, and he has become more eco-con- scious because of her influence. Sustainability, Ramdayal says, can involve “simple things like using stock platforms when we can.” Those platforms have interchangeable legs and can be used and re-used at various heights. Sustainable sourcing for materials, she says, is also key: “We have fabric scraps from a previous show; can we use them? Or can we buy second-hand fabric?”Wood, another material in high demand by set designers, is easily damaged, but Ramdayal said the careful use of screws can prevent pieces from breaking. Mindful care of floorboards from the set Ramdayal designed in her junior year for “God of Vengeance,” by Sholem Asch, a main stage show at the Philip J. Levin Theater, resulted in their later use as material in class. “Being wasteful,” she says, “is outdated.” For Rutgers Day on April 25, Ramdayal designed the set for a performance of For Colored GirlsWho Have Con- sidered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” by Ntozake Shange. For the set, Ramdayal repurposed textured paper from an earlier production. The cast also used recycled scripts. (Show time is 4:30 p.m. at the Little Theater on the Douglass campus.) Her classmates agree Ramdayal is leaving her mark at Rutgers, having reshaped the approach to theater. Ben Levie, lighting designer and senior at MGSA, recalled the painstaking process of selecting appropriate LED lights that would fit their budget as well as their sus- tainability goals. “I never would have thought to do this if not for Maya, but it turned out the research I needed was so accessible, I just needed to want to look,” he says. “I think that was the biggest thing she gave us, just a reason to try this way of doing things. There were always the tools and the capability, and the team was so on board as soon as she brought it up, but nobody would have put those ideas into action without Maya,’’ he says. Gordon, the theater department chair, says he has been impressed with Ramdayal’s growth as a designer over the past four years. “She’s really soaked up every- thing she’s learned here,” Gordon says, “and has turned into a seriously good designer who not only is able to understand very easily how physical and visual elements work on stage, but also how they and she, as part of the collaborative process, work with all the other parts of the production and the design.” Ramdayal learned about sustainable theater produc- tion during her semester abroad in London in fall 2024, when she and other Mason Gross students studied at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Lyric Hammer- smith. “It lit a spark in me,” she says, recalling a presenta- tion from a sustainability advocate in London. When she returned to Rutgers and began designing for a produc- tion of Hurricane Diane by Madeleine George, a comedy about Dionysus’s attempt to save the world from climate change, Ramdayal took the theme of the play as a sign and kept sustainability in mind. She found resources and guidance through the Broadway Green Alliance, a NewYork-based organiza- tion which aims to reduce the environmental impact of theater on Broadway, college campuses, and elsewhere. Ramdayal decided Rutgers needed to participate in the initiative, so she became trained as a collegiate Broadway Green Captain. A guest speaker from the alliance at Ramdayal’s Theater Colloquium class helped spread the mes- sage to her peers. “After that talk, interest grew,” Ramdayal says. “Sometimes it felt like I was the only one who cared, and then so many people reached out, it was validating.” For her final production, Ruined, by Lynn Not- tage, at Jameson Theater on the Douglass campus in April, she mostly used recycled wood to con- struct the bar run by the main character. Paints for the set were donated by another scenic shop. Gor- don praised Ramdayal’s stylized approach to the set for “Ruined” and noted the versatility of the bar, the main physical piece on stage. “The bar breaks apart and can be re-figured into multiple con- figurations that can then turn it into other spaces and suggest other things,” Gordon says, “and that makes the setting much more fluid.” Ramdayal hopes that future students can continue sustainable set design after she graduates. Gordon says there is already interest in following her example. “I’m feeling optimistic that we’ll be able to keep this going and sustain Maya’s original vision,” he says. She has several recommendations for students who’d like to learn more and do more to help the environment and encourages students to take some of the classes that shaped her vision including “Upcycling: An Artistic Response to the Environmental Effects of Fast Fashion,” taught by DeniseWagner, and an online course, “Intro- duction to Environmental Arts.” She said students also can pursue a minor in Cre- ative Expression and the Environment, a joint program through the School of Environmental and Biological Sci- ences, School of Arts and Sciences and Mason Gross. Ramdayal intends to continue this mindful approach in her professional life, beginning this summer with a NewYork City run of Julius Caesar, by Dead Horse Pro- ductions, which will be set in a garden. She says she initially felt awkward being known as the eco-conscious set designer on campus. But now she owns it. “At first it was weird, like, ‘Maya is the sustainable per- son,’” she says. “And now I’m like, ‘Yeah, I am. And now you’re thinking about it. It’s on your radar.’ -(This article first appeared on Rutgers.edu April 20, 2026. Usedwith express permission) By Kelly-Jane Cotter PHOTO: JOHN MUNSON/RUTGERS UNIVERSITY Maya Ramdayal gets credit for making sustainability part of the planning process for theater at Rutgers, influencing both Mason Gross faculty and her classmates. I nstacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta launched a hedge fund that relies on an army of artificial intelli- gence agents, one of the few using that technology to essentially replace fundamental portfolio managers. Thousands of bots scour the internet for trade ideas, conduct in-depth research, pick stocks to wager on and against, size bets and even execute trades. The 39-year- old entrepreneur started the firm, Abundance, last year with a small crew of quantitative researchers, engineers and AI experts who build and sustain AI models. While many hedge funds incorporate AI to support human traders, Palo Alto, California-based Abundance ultimately aims to have artificial intelligence run the entire fund. The firm already has stock-picking strate- gies run solely by AI, but some strategies in the works will have a degree of human involvement for now, Mehta said in an interview. Still, human investors are more limited than AI, he said. People “can only track so many opportunities at once, process them only so deeply, make only so many high- quality decisions,” Mehta said. “Even for the exceptional investor, the process is locked inside their mind. AI changes that entirely.” Hedge funds have relied on automatization to some degree for decades, with quant firms like D.E. Shaw & Co. seeking to eliminate human whims from the trading process. But generative AI is dramatically shifting the work flow of a slew of industries, especially finance, and sparking commentary about whether the technology can improve on human judgment. Late last year, Citadel founder Ken Griffin argued that generative AI isn’t helping hedge funds beat the market By Hema Parmar Hedge Fund Launched By Instacart Co-Founder Has AI Call Shots - Continued On Page 12