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March 2017: Contents

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• Remarks from the Chair: Standing on tradition
• Another set of ears — Amy Altadonna mentors Brendan Lynch in sound design
• Renaissance woman — Linda Tardiff takes over the Shea Theater
• Updates

Remarks from the Chair: Standing on tradition

Hello friends!

I hope winter has treated you kindly, wherever you are, and that you are looking forward to a busy and creative spring!

We have just wrapped our production of Hedda, and it was truly inspiring to experience. This gifted and adventurous company took a fresh look at a classic drama (Hedda Gabler) and developed an ending that rang with hope and possibility. I was proud to have our Dean in the audience with me to see their work.

Thinking about Hedda the rest of our season, I realized that building on tradition to create something new is a theme for us this spring. Play Lab, now a tradition here, presents works so new our students are the first to inhabit these characters. In Quiara Alegría Hudes's The Happiest Song Plays Last, Puerto Rican traditions, music and food figure prominently in. This multi-generational story deals with negotiating identity and community in a post-9/11, smart-phone world and is underpinned by the (live) music of the cuatro, a traditional Puerto Rican instructment. Ta’zieh, our season closer, is built on a centuries-old Iranian procession and in-the-round outdoor performance; director Nikoo Mamdoohi aims to translate her cultural traditions into a form that will resonate in the here and now.

It’s probably become clear, over the course of the notes I’ve written since taking the position as Chair, that one of the things I find most satisfying about this work is the opportunity to build bridges, whether it’s between different traditions, different disciplines, or different generations. I love that the shows we’re producing this spring reach into all manner of communities, whether it’s the Iranian student community collaborating passionately on Ta’zieh or the Puerto Rican community members who are represented in the Happiest Song cast. I appreciate so much the years of work by my colleagues and our students to actively bring a more diverse population to our department and to transform our department from the inside, outward.

The energy of last year’s production of Collidescope: Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America, produced by Professor Judyie Al-Bilali and directed by guest artists Ping Chong and Talvin Wilks, continues to inspire us in this current season. I also wish to highlight the work of Priscilla Page, Director of the Multicultural Theater Certificate. There are now 16 students in this program, which builds on past work by Priscilla, Harley Erdman and others to embrace theater from under-represented voices and to create new avenue for study.

We are exploding beyond our traditional space, turning an old space into a vibrant new performance venue. New Africa House has been a fixture on campus for years, presenting arts and culture events with a multicultural focus, often centered on the experiences of African-American artists and scholars. Its basement is now home to theatrical performances, with theater courses to come in the fall. Gil McCauley and Judyie Al-Bilali are leading the way in forging that new relationship.

We’re also expanding beyond our traditional reach in terms of community engagement. Whereas previously, our interactions with high school students have primarily been to host them as patrons for our student matinees, this summer, we’re bringing them into our spaces as our students. Faculty member Lena Cuomo, with grad student Jennifer Onopa, is launching the first-ever Summer Theater and Performance Intensive, a two-week pre-college program that will bring high schoolers into our theater to create a new devised piece that will reflect their concerns, hopes and ideas about their communities and the world. It runs July 23 to August 5 — if you have a high school student looking to follow in your theatrical footsteps, send them our way!

I write this note in the wake of a wonderful visit to the department by Gabe Capolupo ’86. Gabe built a successful career in technology at Silicon Valley networking giant, Juniper. It was fascinating to hear about the ways in which she has used the skills she acquired in theater to serve in a completely different field, a perspective she shared with students at a lunchtime Q&A. I love meeting alumni like Gabe, who predate my time with the department. The conversations I have with them form yet another bridge between past and present, between our department’s traditions and our way forward.

I invite you to be part of this endeavor too. I’d love to show you what’s happening in our spaces now, and to hear from you what it was like when you were here.

Please, come see us when you get a chance. I’d love to say hello!

Sincerely,

Gina

Updates

Hello theater folks — what have you been up to? If you haven’t checked in in a while, let us know how you are! If you’re not sure what to write, here’s a question to get you thinking: Knowing what you know now, what piece of advice would you give an 18-year-old version of yourself just starting out at UMass?Send us your thoughts, both serious and silly!

Four UMass Theater seniors — Miranda Tremblay, James Busker, Evyn Newton, and Mike Smith — road-tripped to the USITT conference together. We're going to try to get them to give us a report in the next issue.

We can’t wait to see her make her debut, but in the meantime, we think these rehearsal clips of Katy Geraghty ’15 in Groundhog Day are pretty great. (For those of you who didn’t know her while she was here, she’s in the second row on the far left, with red, blond-tipped hair.)
http://www.broadway.com/videos/157529/we-have-these-clips-on-repeat-watch-andy-karl-the-cast-of-groundhog-day-perform/

She can’t tell us the name of the movie she’s working on yet, but Stacey Gonillo ’11 is living in Atlanta, GA and diving into the film industry by working as a Physical Asset Assistant. She promises to tell us more about what that entails once the movie’s out in 2018.

Jacob Hellman ‘09 successfully defended his Preliminary Exams (comps) and is now a Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He’s also working as an elementary school teacher at Madison Jewish Community Day School, creating and teaching his own curricula for social studies and Jewish studies, with theatre as a basis. In December, he led a workshop in devised theatre at the 44th Biennial Alpha Phi Omega National Convention in Pittsburgh, PA.

Our favorite South African expatriate, professor Megan Lewis, has 2 books out and another in the works. Already out is Performing Whitely in the Postcolony, which “offers a timely parable for global whiteness as we enter the Trump era. This study examines how white privilege and power are maintained, and contested, through performance.” Also available is Magnet Theatre: Three Decades of Making Space , a chronicle of Magnet Theatre, the amazing South African company which visited us several years ago. And this spring break, Megan is traveling to South Africa and Botswana to work on her book Staging Wild Africa: Safari and/as Performance, which is, Megan explained, “3-part analysis, {that} will look at the practice of safari through the lens of performance.”
Megan also participated in a panel about teaching controversial topics, a subject on which, as you can guess even if you haven’t met her, she is a bit of an expert: http://dailycollegian.com/2017/02/08/teaching-controversial-issues-professors-talk-strategy-necessity-at-seminar/

Katrina Frances Lewonczyk ’10 let us know that over the summer, she was promoted to Operations Manager at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven.

Mark O’Malley ’07 wrote to say,  “I am the lighting designer for the band Magnetic Fields' 50 Song Memoir tour, which starts at Union Transfer in Philly this March. The piece was created during residencies at ArtsEmerson, and Mass MoCA , where it premiered this past November. It then transferred to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in December as part of The Next Wave Festival.”

Multicultural Theater Certificate Program Director Priscilla Page ‘00G performed in Latinas con Pluma, a Holyoke event celebrating Latina writers and Latina women’s experiences.

Emily Taradash ‘14G is working full time running the Costume Shop at Ocean State Theatre, where she designed costumes for White Christmas and will be designing Little Women and Victor/Victoria later this season. She enjoyed reuniting with fellow alumni Emma Ayres, Brianna Sloane, Elizabeth Pangburn and C. Webster Marsh (as well as many others) on The Water Project back in September.

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