WHAT’S ON @ RARIG?
Rarig Center, West Bank Twin Cites Campus, University of Minnesota
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"Welcome to the Rarig Center...The show is about to begin.”
October marks the start of The University of Minnesota’s Department of Theatre Arts & Dance UMTAD) fall showings. With an emphasis on classical text, rather than full productions, these studio showings are open to the public.
Reserve your FREE general admission seats by linking to the Calendar of Events at: http://z.umn.edu/umtad
BFA Studio Series 2015-16, performed by The University of Minnesota / Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program students, begins as the Senior Company brings to life Chekhov’s classic works The Cherry Orchard in repertory with Uncle Vanya newly translated by Libby Appel and performed on the Stoll Thrust stage.
Cherry Orchard directed by Risa Brainin October 6 and 9 at 7:30pm, and October 10 at 2:00 pm
Uncle Vanya directed by Michelle O’Neill
October 8 and 10 at 7:30pm,October 11 at 2:00 pm
Later in October, the Sophomore Company plays three works by contemporary American playwright Sam Shepard known for realism of language and challenging performance style. These showings will be performed in rotating repertory on the Larry Liu Stage/ Kilburn Theatre.
Heartless directed by Ellen Fenster
October 27 at 7:30pm, October 31 at 2:00pm,
November 1 at 7:30pm.
Buried Child directed by David Colacci
October 29 at 7:30 pm,October 31 at 7:30 pm,
November 2 at 7:30 pm
A Lie of the Mind directed by Bruce Roach
October 30 at 7:30 pm, November 1 at 2:00 pm,
November 3 at 7:30pm
Creative Collaboration+BA=ValleySCARE
It’s official! ValleySCARE is now in full swing bringing to life a bizarre animal menagerie bound to have you screaming with terror! UMTAD has been working in partnership with Shakopee Valley Fair as part of a creative collaboration project with 19 B.A. students who are getting real-life performing experience. Adorned in full gruesome makeup and costume, the students operate the attraction themselves by leading groups through the maze where visitors get to experience the elaborate set-up of horrific sights.
credit : Lisa Miller
Together these creative collaborators learning basic skills required of designers, stage managers, make-up artists and mask- makers, will conjure this truly creepy creation for ValleySCARE spectators. Not only are our B.A. students getting quality performance experience, but they are simultaneously entertaining the local community as well. The creative collaboration is overseen by faculty member Luverne Seifert and guest theatre artist Jim Lichtscheidl. The attraction is operating now through October 31. Ticket price is included in the general park admission. Come on over to ValleySCARE to support our current students—its bound to be a night that you won’t soon forget! For more information on this event, contact valleyfair.com or visit valleyscare.com for details.
Mark Your Calendar NOW…
“Performing Arts as/and Cultural Diplomacy”
October 22, 4:00 pm
Best Buy Theater, 4th Floor of Northrop
Free and open to the public
Northrop’s visiting artist Sean Curran (Artistic Director, Sean Curran Company) will be in conversations with Sonja Kuftinec (UMN Theater Arts and Dance) about how artists understand cultural diplomacy and ways of translating cultural encounters into performed events. Curran’s new work, Dream’d in a Dream, was a result of a journey his company took to the far reaches of Central Asia as cultural ambassadors of the U.S. State Department—and was inspired by the haunting and exquisite beauty of traditional Kyrgyz music, created in collaboration with Ustat Shakirt, the ensemble that will play live for this full-evening work on October 24 at 8:00pm.
"Theater Amidst European Migrant Crisis”
November 2, 2015, Noon Free
November 2, 2015, Noon Free
Rarig Center 550B
Brown Bag Lunch Conversation with
Cypriot Theater artist Dr. Ellada Evangelou
Europe and the Mediterranean have seen a complete restructuring of the map over the last century many times-- revolutions, uprisings, wars, financial crises, and so much more that were not anticipated. Who would have thought that the balance of the Cold War would have been disrupted? Who could have seen the regimes in the Middle East falling? Who could have predicted riots in London and Paris? As we try to understand why these events have taken place, we refer to cultural production, and more specifically theatre. That the arts and politics are connected is not news. They feed off each other, on the individual level, in communities and nations. In the Euro-Mediterranean, it’s like they have been holding a mirror up to each other for thousands of years...just ask Lysistrata!
“We think about how ideology has played a role in these changes, and especially the development of nationalism,” Dr. Ellada Evangelou says “Take my homeland of Cyprus as an example, and other interesting places, such as Egypt, Spain, Turkey and Greece. The conversation will be based on examples from these places, examples that come from contemporary theatre practice: theatre companies, performances, festivals and others.”
NEWS
Spotlight on SAGE Award Nominees: TAD Students, Alumni and Faculty 
The 2015 list of nominees for SAGE Awards is alive with connections to the University of Minnesota’s Dance Program – represented by 20 individuals: current students, alumni and faculty. The Minnesota SAGE Awards for Dance are given annually for outstanding achievement in six categories: Outstanding Performance, Performer, Ensemble, Design, Dance Educator, and Special Citation to work presented in the past year. Named in honor of Sage Cowles, a choreographer, performer and philanthropist who is recognized nationally for her dance leadership, these awards are presented annually. Ms. Cowles passed away in 2014, and it is with heartfelt appreciation for her contributions that the community continues to celebrate Minnesota dance artists through the Sage Awards.
The University of Minnesota’s Theatre Arts and Dance Professor Ananya Chatterjea, has been nominated for Outstanding Dance Educator, and alums Renee Copeland, Katie Haynes, Brittany Radke, James Galtney, along with current students Alexandra Eady, Kealoha Ferreira,Magnolia Yang-Sao-Yia and Leila Awadallah have been put forward in the category of Outstanding Dance Ensemble for Ananya Dance Theatre ‘s Neel: Blutopias of Radical Dreaming and Aahvaan: Invoking the Cities. Outstanding Dance Ensemble category includes nominees in Contempo Physical Dance’s Motirô performers – Marciano Silva dos Santos affiliate faculty member, and alums James Galtney, Timothy Herian, Gemma Isaacson, Mirabal Miller, Alexander Pham, and Elander Rosser.
Karla Grotting, affiliate faculty member, is nominated for a Special Citation for her research and dance project Lost Voices in Jazz.
Angharad Davies and Dustin Maxwell, both affiliate faculty are nominated as an Outstanding Performers as is alum Timothy Herian.
Penelope Freeh, affiliate faculty member, is nominated for Outstanding Design of Test Pilot and Andrea Reynolds was also nominated for 'Every Other' for Outstanding Performance.
This year marks the eleventh annual Minnesota SAGE Awards for Dance, will be held in The Goodale Theater at The Cowles Center for Dance & The Performing Arts on Tuesday, October 13, 2015
at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are currently on sale through The Cowles Center 612.206.3600 or http://www.thecowlescenter.org
Transitions in Theatre Arts & Dance Department
Department chair Marcus Dilliard welcomed three new colleagues to the Theatre Arts & Dance Department, Rhianne Jones, Jason Allyn-Schwerin, and Michael Cobb at September’s faculty/staff meeting. Rhianne is the Theatre Arts Program Assistant, Jason joins our faculty as Technical Director, and Michael Cobb serves as one of our Voice and Dialect coaches. Here, in their own words, are their very brief bios:
Rhianne - "I moved to Minneapolis from Wales (UK) in February this year. My background includes a variety of voluntary sector positions, and 8 years at Durham University where I worked to provide opportunities for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. I also spent two years as a photographer in Paris."
Jason - "I am a former TAD student with an MFA from University of Texas at Austin. For the past 12 years I was Penumbra Theatre's Techincal Director and managed Penumbra's Scenic Studio where we built shows seen at the Guthrie, the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, Theater Latte Da, Opera Omaha, The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the International Forum in Tokyo, among others."
Michael – “I spent the last three years as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Prior to that I served in the same capacity for one year in the B.F.A. Acting program at the University of Utah and seven years as Head of Voice, Speech, and Text/Resident Vocal Coach at the National Theatre Conservatory/Denver Center Theatre Company until the conservatory’s closing. I have an M.F.A. from the A.R.T./Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard, an M.A. from Brown University, and am a graduate of the conservatory at Trinity Rep, afterward serving as a member of the acting company there.”
STUDENTS: Center Stage
Eric Larson (B.A.’16) and Joe Kellen (B.A.’15) created PROPER BABY: "Work In and Out of Progress" which played at the Southern Theater the last Monday in September. The evening-length split bill shared a presentation of Kellen’s play, Bad Electricity, and Larson’s four short performance pieces. Participating performers: McKinnley Aitchison, Neva Dalager, Ed Euclid (B.A.’15), Joni Griffith, Brian Grossman, Mauricio Jordan, Joe Kellen, Julia Kindall, Jacob Mobley (B.A.’15), Haley Mosley (B.A.’15) , Eric Norton, Evan O'Brien, Kevin Springer, and Audrey Rice (BA’15).
April Bailey (B.A.'17) will play the role of Emma Carrew in the musical Jekyll & Hyde, in Lakeville Minnesota’s Community Center. Ms. Bailey blends her theater work at the U of M with vocal training. This summer she studied abroad in Verona Italy with Opera Viva!,a program specially designed for young performers. “It was a wonderful experience. I learned so much about voice and opera that I can use in on stage.” She performs in the Lakeville October 23 through November 1.
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Dan Piering as Roggeriero with Lizz Windnagel as Morgana
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Dan Piering (B.F.A.'16) spent this summer as a company member of Mixed Precipitation Theatre (yep! they play in all sorts of Minnesota weather, not to mention all over Minnesota!). Mr. Piering had a starring role in Escape from Alcina’s Island, A Picnic Operetta playing tenor role of Ruggeriero outdoors in 15 different venues, from farms, community gardens, and orchards to vineyards from August through September. The show, billed as a guitar-swinging retelling of the 1735 Handel opera, Alcina, combines the notion of picnic and a tasting menu with operetta to celebrate with a unique blend of music, food sampling, and storytelling.
"It was definitely one of the most creative things I've ever been a part of, combining aspects of classical operatic music with trucker songs from the late 20th century" Italian baroque opera met the truck-driving country anthems of the 1960s and ’70s. Think Handel’s arias plus country tunes with songs like “Six Days on the Road,” “Heartaches by the Number," and “Diesel Smoke, Dangerous Curves”. Dan reports between the melodramatic dialogue, and organic cooking "performing it was a ton of fun, but what really made the experience for me was the strong, accepting community of that cast and creative team."
Interesting tidbit: Roughly half the cast and creative team were all graduates from the University of Minnesota!
Now the Plymouth, Minnesota native is appearing in Uncle Vanya with his B.F.A.Senior Company. "After graduation, I really want to hit the ground running and get as much work under my belt as possible. I just want to act, anyway and anyhow, and am really looking forward to trying to cannonball into the wonderful artistic community that is the Twin Cities."
Acclaimed Performer Tim Miller Leads B.A.Workshop
Uncovering Your Truth, Discovering Your Body
Miller, an acclaimed solo performer, knows of which he speaks. He is the author of the books SHIRTS & SKIN, BODY BLOWS and 1001 BEDS, which won the 2007 literary prize for best Drama-Theater book from Lambda Literary Foundation, and has taught performance in the theater departments at UCLA and at Cal State L.A. Miller's solo theater works have been presented all over North America, Australia, and Europe at such prestigious venues as Yale Repertory Theatre, London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Walker Art Center.
With humor and passion Miller connected with each individual. “Using your own memories and myths as a jumping off point, we will see where a deep sense of personal history creates performance that jumps out from our bodies onto the stage or the page,” said Miller. Guiding participants in his interdisciplinary approach to create their original performance work, he asked them to begin by examining their own “dreams, obsessions, peeves, memories and desires.” In the first portion of the six hour intensive, students isolated a personal “moment of truth,”from their own lives, then added movement, gesture, and eventually words as a rich foundation to evolve their own performance art piece.
The session’s second part explored “the charged border between our bodies and society,our narratives, our politics, ourselves and one another,”according to Miller. First, he asked the group to identify metaphors used daily in speech that reference different body parts. “Pain in the butt… Adams apple… butterflies in my stomach… heart on your sleeve.” Next each person was asked to examine her/his own body to find a scar. “Let it reacquaint you with the meaning it holds in your life story.” Using drawings or body mapping as research, students were encouraged to eventually developing a story of “your own outcry, spiritual development, personal growth, maybe sexual awareness,” associated with that section of your body.
The workshop session yielded strong affirming response to Miller’s approach, “I found out that performance can be based on the time I told the truth. It’s really and powerful,” said one person. Another said, “This session said to me these truth moments were and still are important moments from my own life….so important that I can make art from them. I always thought of them being way too personal to share. But now…now I don’t feel that way.” Some else confided, “I never talked about this before, I never thought about making art about it before. It seemed, well, not universal enough…This training is extremely cathartic, by that I mean, it shows me that it CAN be channeled into my art.”
Tim Miller brought forward “our hearts and brains” said one student as well as hopes and fears, to this workshop experience and found a unexpected fresh way of devising their own performance narratives. September’s workshop was arranged through B.A. Program head Lisa Channer and TAD associate chair Sonja Kuftinec.
ALUMS
Sam Bardwell (BFA ’08) and Hope Cervantes (BFA ‘06) earn high praise for their performances in the three character play Things of Dry Hours by Naomi Wallace, directed by Wendy Knox, now playing at Frank Theatre through October 4.
"Cervantes…perform[s] with earthy honesty…a fierce exterior…[yet]…guards a heart of gold. Bardwell…has a feral, manic energy leaking out of his hungry soul…” (Star Tribune) “ … Hope Cervantes and Sam Bardwell showed the full breadth…[of ] the ever-shifting dynamics between these two…a passion that is mixed with sorrow and hesitation.” (City Pages) “ Cervantes and Bardwell make this relationship an intricate dance -- sometimes charged with erotic possibility, other times fraught with racial, cultural and political conflict …” (St. Paul Pioneer Press).
Jennifer Blagen (B.A.), Ashley Rose Montondo (B.F.A. ’11), Dustin Bronson (B.F.A.’10) and Shae Palic (B.F.A.’16) appear in the Guthrie production of To Kill A Mockingbird. Ms. Blagen plays the part of Miss Stephanie Crawford, Ms.Montondo plays Mayella Ewell, and Mr. Bronson is in the role of Mr. Walter Cunningham. Shae Palic (B.F.A.’16) is an understudy in the show, which has been extended until October 25.
FACULTY
In the News
Sarah Bellamy credit: MPR
Affiliate faculty members Sarah Bellamy, co-artistic director of award-winning Penumbra Theatre and Randy Reyes, artistic director of MU Performing Arts were recently interviewed about their transitions to new leadership roles guiding their respective theatre companies in an New York Times article titled "Minnesota Theaters Embrace New Leaders; Others May Follow." See complete article Ms. Bellamy teaches a course titled “Performance and Social Change” at the graduate level. Mr. Reyes teaches in the University of Minnesota BFA/ Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program.
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Randy Reyes credit: Lia Chang
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“The arrival of younger principals to replace the 60- and 70-something men who have steered the local scene for a generation could bring with it an opportunity to refashion, even re-purpose theater-making here and beyond...Sarah Bellamy is a few months into her new job as co-artistic director of Penumbra Theater Company, part of a multi-year transition under which she will gradually take the reins from her father, Lou Bellamy….“The aesthetic that was created here at Penumbra is so intimately tied to his vision and his character and his style, and I want to continue that,” said Ms. Bellamy, nodding to her 71-year old father seated across the table in the theater’s conference room. But in her vision, Penumbra will be a space as much about community dialogue as it is about producing plays that reflect the African-American experience....Ms. Bellamy, who is working toward her doctorate in comparative studies in discourse and society at the University of Minnesota, wants to “activate Penumbra’s mission more deeply and more fully.”
“Randy Reyes is also succeeding a founder, having assumed the artistic helm of Mu Performing Arts in 2013 after Rick Shiomi’s 21-year tenure. … Mr. Reyes, a beloved Twin Cities actor now running Mu Performing Arts, which focuses on the Asian-American experience. Asked if he felt any pressure to preserve a company built painstakingly over two decades by the quietly charismatic Mr. Shiomi, Mr. Reyes responded with a wry chuckle. “Every day,” he said. “I don’t wa nt to wreck this thing.”There seems to be little danger of that. Since assuming the helm of Mu, Mr. Reyes, 42, has steered a deft course — directing a production of “Twelfth Night” that played with both gender and race, and starring in a production of the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music” with an all-Asian cast. He’s currently pondering how, and if, the small company should grow beyond its current $600,000 budget and itinerant performing schedule.”
Practicing the Craft: Directing, Designing, Choreographing
One of the hallmarks of the Theatre Arts and Dance faculty is the fact that those who are “makers” of theatre, that is to say, practitioners of what they teach, work as professional theatre artists across the Twin Cities, as well as the nation. Here is a partial list of theatre arts and dance faculty members whose work that can be seen on stages this October:
The Guthrie Theatre’s To Kill a Mockingbird, while set in 1935 Maycomb, Alabama, can trace its look, sound and feel to the creative imaginations of four distinguished artists teaching a few blocks away at the University’s Rarig Center: lighting designer Marcus Dilliard (department chair), costume designer Mathew Le Febvre, B.F.A. Actor Training Program’s voice and dialect coach Lucinda Holshue, and B.F.A. acting and movement artist Randy Reyes.
Michael Sommers, faculty member, directs and designs A Thin Veil, by master storyteller Kevin Kling. This spine-chilling ode to the unexplained at Open Eye Figure Theatre, plays October 22- November 1. Sommers is co-founder and artistic director of the award-winning Open Eye Figure Theatre.
Joel Sass, associate TAD faculty member, directs and designs a powerful production of Sharr White’s play Annapurna at the Jungle Theater, playing through October 18. Mr. Sass stages a new play by Conor McPherson The Night Alive November 6- December 20 also at the Jungle Theater. As a visiting guest artist this semester, Mr. Sass teaches a directing class.
Bob Rosen, associate TAD faculty member directs Elliot, A Soldiers Fugue by Quiara Alegria Hudes at Park Square Theatre now through October 4 in St. Paul. A director, performer and educator, Mr. Rosen co-founded the internationally acclaimed Theatre de la Jeune Lune company in Paris and Minneapolis in 1979, and served as co-Artistic Director from 1985 through 2005.
Randy Reyes, associate TAD faulty member directs Murder for Two with book, music, and lyrics by Joe Kinsoian and Kellen Blair also at Park Square through November 1. As previously noted Mr. Reyes, Artistic Director of Mu Performing Arts, teaches in the University of Minnesota BFA/ Guthrie Theater Actor Training Program.
Carl Flink , TAD faculty member choreographs Sweeny Todd: Demon Barber of Fleet Street directed by Peter Rothstein for Theatre Latte Da now playing through October 25 at the Minneapolis’ Ritz Theatre. Mr. Fink, cofounder and artistic director of the dance company Black Label Movement, is currently collaborating on The Moving Cell Project with biomedical engineer David Odde, which took him to India this summer.
