Blogs
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
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The Lost World isn’t your typical coming-of-age play – unless your idea of a coming-of-age play includes a secret world of dinosaurs under the bed. I spoke with writer and director Jared Mezzocchi, an assistant professor in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies design department, about his inspiration for the play and the multimedia aspects of the performance.
"I think the biggest challenge has really just been making sure that everybody is seeing the same thing in their head as we’re building it. It’s a really complex landscape, because it’s all kind of a memory play, set in the mind of our narrator, who’s telling the story."
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
Fun, quirky and genre-based – that’s the kind of theatre that inspires Jason Schlafstein.
He often saw it at the Capital Fringe Festival, but “it didn’t seem like year-round theatres were doing theatre that had that kind of spirit all year,” he said.
So Schlafstein, a University of Maryland School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) alumnus who received his B.A. in Theatre Performance in 2008, joined with Colin Grube to found Flying V Theatre in 2010. The company was recently named the 2015 John Aniello Outstanding Emerging Theatre Company by theatreWashington and the Helen Hayes Awards.
The UMD family is a really strong one,” Schlafstein said. “I’ve never seen in this town a group of alumni who are so invested and supportive in working with one another.”
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
Analyzing musical text and preparing opera roles are big parts of the School of Music curriculum for vocalists, but it’s often hard for undergraduates to have the opportunity to put these skills to use.
That’s why School of Music students Daniel Hopkins and Carlos Howard decided to found OperaTerps, the University of Maryland’s first undergraduate opera company. Their first production, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, opens this Saturday at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
“Because it’s an independent project, we’re all really strongly invested in it…This is something we can say was totally our own.”
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
First-year MFA Dance student Colette Krogol will represent the University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) 2015 Emerging Creatives Student Summit at Virginia Commonwealth University from January 28 to January 31. This year’s summit, titled PULSE: Creative Collaborations for Cities in Flux, brings together students from a variety of disciplines to tackle issues facing developing cities.
The 2015 Helen Hayes Awards nominations are a great demonstration of how the faculty and alumni of the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies contribute to the cultural community of the Washington, DC area.
Congratulations to Taurus Broadhurst, who is the recipient of the inaugural Audience Choice Award at the 32nd Annual Choreographer’s Showcase!
Calling all artists in the DMV area! Are you a local performing artist who is interested in developing new work? Do you or your company want audience feedback on projects you are designing? Do you value input in your creative process?
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
Cosi fan Tutte (“Women are like that”) is one of the most oft-performed operas today, so it’s hard to imagine that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the opera was rarely performed. Infidelity, disguise, trickery – all cloaked in a beautiful, melodic Mozart score – were considered topics too risqué for the stage. Today, the opera provokes a contemplation of gender roles and the human challenges of fidelity.
Perhaps…“Cosi fan tutti” would be a more appropriate title for this whimsical opera that explores the human heart and the power of the human spirit for forgiveness.
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
Helen Huang, Professor of Costume Design in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, has published Elizabethan Costume Design and Construction, a how-to book chronicling the process of designing and constructing Elizabethan costumes.