News & Updates
This blog post is Emily Schweich, a sophomore Broadcast Journalism major.
Vibrant costumes and perfectly coiffed hairstyles shone on the Kay Theatre stage as the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies presented Thornton Wilder’s The Matchmaker this October. As the actors moved effortlessly around the stage in their 1880s attire, one could hardly believe that many of them walked into the dressing room bare-faced, wearing sweatpants and some ponytails, just an hour before the show.
It’s like this pressure hour. They come in in sweatpants, with no makeup on, no pin curls, nothing. They have to completely redo their hair, do their face and put on this multi-layered, multi-piece costume.
From Thursday, October 24 through Sunday, November 3, you can experience the Visible Seams video installation in our Grand Pavilion:
This blog post is by Drew Barker, Graduate Student and MLS Candidate.
If you’re not paying attention, you’ll miss the beginning — however, this dance piece will demand your attention soon enough. What starts with the dinging of a bell quickly scales stairs and then ushers you outside only to look back in at a space you have never seen in such a way. Ladies in bright colors dance/run down corridors, pause, revel in a modern arabesque with arms churning, and then disappear around a corner. Visible Seams is a dance piece choreographed by MFA candidate Erin Crawley-Woods which utilizes the interior and exterior of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in ways epic and sensual.
Crawley-Woods blends an entertaining sense of humor with a swaying meditation on human relations.
This post is by Lauren Burns, a sophomore Multiplatform Journalism and History double major.
The typical dance performance does not come with a warning to wear comfortable shoes and to bring an umbrella in case of rain, but Visible Seams is not the typical dance performance. For Erin Crawley-Woods’ MFA Dance Thesis, she creates a site-specific piece, starring 15 graduate and undergraduate dancers, that incorporates the architecture of the Clarice Smith Center in its choreography. Erin explains her inspiration and vision for Visible Seams in the following Q&A interview.
I guess my inspiration was this place – not just the building but everything that goes on within it, and my interest in pursuing this project was to create a thread through all of that, through the process of making a dance.
The Kennedy Center has announced that two faculty members from the UMD School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) have been selected to participate in their New Visions/New Voices May 2014 program. Assistant professor Faedra Chatard Carpenter has been chosen to be the lead dramaturg of the Festival and professor Scot Reese will be the director of Oliver of Brazil, a Brazilian take on on the Dickens classic Oliver Twist.
The festival is a week-long biennial program for playwrights and theaters to stimulate and support the creation of new plays and musicals for young audiences and families.
This event has been cancelled.
Academy Award-winner and four-time Tony nominee Estelle Parsons will work with students in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) at a salon to be held Tuesday, October 15 from 1:30-3:20 p.m. in studio 3736 in the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
From Friday, September 20 through Monday, September 30, you can experience the Visible Seams sound installation in our Grand Pavilion. Created by Tomek Regulski, the music comes and goes as freely as the guests who come through the Clarice Smith Center every day.
Preparing to succeed in the competitive world of theatre arts requires students in UMD’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) to delve into a diverse theatre curriculum with an impressive faculty of eclectic backgrounds. The newest addition to the TDPS faculty line-up is Jennifer Barclay, a noted actor-turned-playwright whose recent work entitled Counterweight: An Elevator Love Play will debut this October in La Jolla Playhouse’s inaugural “Without Walls Festival”. This one-of-a-kind Festival of on-site work will simultaneously stage events around San Diego’s Playhouse Theatre District, presented by the Playhouse and partner institutions the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) and UC San Diego.
Barclay joins TDPS as Assistant Professor of playwriting and performance beginning this fall, and will teach both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Modern Cuba is home to an incongruous mixture of modern and traditional. Bustling, urban Havana is a remarkable contrast with the remote and isolated countryside, where many Cubans live and work.
Laurie Frederik Meer arrived in Cuba's eastern Guantanamo Province on the back of a Russian flatbed truck accompanied by twenty-four Cuban artists and theatre performers. The professor in UMD's School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies conducted ethnographic field research for over two years, attached to a troupe of performing artists who trekked into the most isolated parts of Cuba's mountain terrain. These artists presented outdoor theatre that celebrated cubanía (Cuban-ness) and the beloved campesino (farmer), while at the same time questioning their traditional role in a modern Communist society.
As an anthropologist, [Dr. Laurie Frederik Meer] examines how and why particular cultures use theatre to define themselves and deal with social and ethical conflicts.