Blogs
MURRAY HORWITZ, Playwright, director, lyricist
Sometime in my sophomore year at Kenyon College, 1967-68, the James Cotton Blues Band came to campus. Kenyon in those days was a men’s school and it was a dance weekend so there were women there but it was still mostly guys and I didn’t have a date. So I was unhappily unencumbered. I’ve always been good at getting near the stage at rock and pop music concerts, and I actually got up on the stage for that one.
I’m lying on the floor underneath the piano with the music all around me and looking over at James Cotton dancing that little two-step … and it was just really transforming.
HEIDI ONKST, UMD Senior Director, Individual Philanthropy and Regional Programs
A few years ago I had the opportunity to see Dan Hurlin’s Disfarmer at the Center. I had read about it beforehand, so I knew the story: the hermit photographer who managed to capture incredible images of the people he lived among, even though he was an outsider. I had gone to one of Dan Hurlin’s discussions before the performance so I understood about Mike Disfarmer’s background and what they were about to bring to me onstage.
…To actually see the story unfold through puppetry was amazing. I’ll never forget seeing the Disfarmer puppet get smaller as the production went on, shrinking down until he was nobody.
KATE GIBSON, Production Coordinator, Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center
I have a plaque on my desk that says, “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible. – Walt Disney”
Ballet is the only art form I ever studied in which I didn’t dream of a career. I didn’t realize until I was an adult struggling through life as a theatre artist how much I appreciated having an art form that remained a hobby.
It…led to me going back onto pointe - for no reason other than proving to myself that I could.
JOHN LAYMAN, UMD Professor Emeritus, Physics and Science Education & Donor
Theater has the luxury of generating re-creations and interpretations of events and ideas plucked from all of history and from the imaginations of men and women. Fortunately, on extraordinary occasions, theater will create new history to be savored by history’s creators and those of us privileged to be present.
The history generated that evening may have begun within our group in the Clarice Smith Center, but one cannot tell where it has gone from there.
RUTH WATKINS, Theatre major, UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Marketing major, UMD Robert H. Smith School of Business
I spent my last semester abroad in London, which was fantastic and I was able to do it partially because I had received a scholarship from the donors at the Clarice Smith Center.
The best part was seeing that there is an audience for the kind of theater I want to do.
HELEN HUANG, Costume and Set Designer, UMD Professor, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance
As a costume designer who emigrated from China to the United States, I always find a personal connection with plays in which the protagonist is searching for his or her place in the world.
…this play changed my perspective on the meaning of home…
LAREE ASHLEY LENTZ, MFA Costume Design 2012, UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Costume Designer for A Midsummer Night’s Dream/仲夏夜之梦
Last May I embarked on an international journey that opened my eyes to a new culture when, along with a few designers and UMD theatre faculty, I had the amazing opportunity to visit Beijing.
…I learned the importance of expression and the simplicity of line.
HASAN ELAHI, Media Artist, UMD Professor of Digital Media
I work in a field where I don’t really know what field I work in. And I’m okay with that. I’m fascinated by work that challenges my ideas and my preconceived notions, things that really take me out of a comfort zone. I’m okay with just being an artist. It allows me to jump from place to place to place to place to place, or from content to content, without having to categorize what kind of response people should have to what it is that I do.
Hearing Kronos Quartet really made me rethink what music is.
DAVID C. DRISKELL, Artist and Art Historian
It was 1964 and, as a young professor at Howard University in the Department of Art, I had a grant to travel to Europe. It was my first visit to Europe; I started out in Greece. And I wanted to recount some of my classical education, specifically Greek theater, so I went to the amphitheater at the base of the Acropolis to see a performance of The Birds by Aristophanes.
…the arts are universal. They move beyond barriers…
I love the moment where you see something happen on stage, or backstage, when the person gets it, when it clicks. Moments like that happen all the time at the Clarice Smith Center.
I get to watch students have those ‘aha’ moments and I see all the work that has gone into it…