News & Updates
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major.
Trigger warning: Rape
“We’re all good kids,” proclaims one character in Naomi Iizuka’s Good Kids, but what does that really mean? Good grades? A football scholarship? Not getting drunk? Can bad things happen to good kids? Can good kids do bad things?
Rape isn’t something that only happens in a “dark alleyway.” It’s not something that girls “ask for.” It’s not something that anyone deserves. And it’s not something that should hide behind a “wall of silence.”
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.
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.
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.
This post was written by Lauren Burns, a sophomore Multiplatform Journalism and History double major.
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The deaths of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, among others, remind us that our country has much to do in terms of reconciling our nation’s past sins with its present.
The play never lost focus of its message: freedom isn’t free, and not all Americans have the same amount of freedom, if any at all.
By Emily Schweich, junior broadcast journalism major at the University of Maryland.
To truly appreciate The Me Nobody Knows, one needs to understand where it came from.
The musical is based on the 1969 book The Me Nobody Knows: Children’s Voices from the Ghetto, which compiles the voices of 200 students from Harlem. Teachers encouraged these students, who were between the ages of 12 and 18, to write down their deepest thoughts, fears and concerns. The book’s editor, Stephen M. Joseph, asked his students to respond to four dimensions of their identity – how they see themselves, their neighborhoods, the world outside, and the things they can’t see or touch.
The result: A moving collection of young people’s voices that was adapted into a musical by Robert Livingston, Gary William Friedman, Will Holt and Herb Schapiro in 1970. Alvin Mayes and Scot Reese, co-directors of the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ production, have situated these teenagers in a church basement, in a therapy/support group of sorts.
This post was written by Lauren Burns, a sophomore Multiplatform Journalism and History double major.
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A band with a Spanish name would typically perform Spanish songs, right?
For some reason, I didn’t think much about this during my walk from my South Campus Commons apartment building to The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. So, embarrassingly, I was surprised to hear predominately Spanish lyrics during La Santa Cecilia’s first song.
A highlight was when she sang “Como Dios Manda,” which she described as a traditional love song, in a time when noise from Facebook and social media complicate love. La Marisoul’s voice was loud and powerful as the audience was nearly silent and the band gently played while allowing her voice to be the absolute focus of the song.
This blog post is by Emily Schweich, a junior broadcast journalism major at the University of Maryland.
One might think that puppets are just for kids. Not so. Pointless Theatre, a D.C. company founded by UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) alumni, blends puppetry, theatre, dance, live music and visual art to create unique onstage spectacles for adult audiences.
From October 9 to October 13, Pointless Theatre is in residence at Joe’s Movement Emporium in Mt. Rainier to rehearse for and polish their performances for a showing Saturday, October 11 at 7PM. Pointless Theatre will perform two original twenty-minute pieces, Famous Birds and Nom-noms, followed by a conversation that will allow audience members to share their thoughts and feelings about the work.
“This residency has allowed us to reinvest in our company members, build skills they haven’t had before, and give them the opportunity to flex their directing muscles or design muscles in a low-risk environment,” Whalen said.