Hope College Theatre Department receives recognition at the Region III Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival

The Hope College Theatre Department is proud of the hard work and effort of their students. Hope Theatre participates in the Region III Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. The annual regional theatre festival is a gathering of more than 1,300 college theatre students and faculty who join together to showcase the best work of the five-state region of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. In addition to invited productions that are juried and selected to perform, theatre students also have the opportunity to display their work in dramaturgy, design, stage management, directing, playwriting, musical theatre, as well as acting.

This year, Hope College received incredible recognition. Senior Akia Nyrie Smith and her scene partner senior Sam Hill, received the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship Award, sophomore Emmie Sandstedt received the Stage Management Fellowship, and junior Rachel Dion was selected for the KCACTF/Lort Leadership Award for artistic administrators. These four students will represent Hope College and attend the National KCACTF festival at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in April.

Junior Rachel Dion
Sophomore Emmie Sandstedt

As Smith put it, “I just feel very grateful and honored. I am in a very mixed state of shock. I honestly didn’t think I would be here, but I was hoping and I was praying. And I couldn’t be happier with the turn out.”

Senior Akia Nyrie Smith and her Irene Ryan partner, Sam Hill.

Other special recognition at the festival included participants and their scene partners who advanced to the semi-final round of the Irene Ryan Acting scholarship: senior Kierney Johnson and her partner senior Elizabeth Schonfeld, junior Rachel Dion and her partner sophomore Maxwell Lam, and sophomore Gracen Barth and her partner junior Shanley Smith.

The Irene Ryan semi-finalists and their partners.

Senior Nathan Gingrich was a Stage Management finalist and sophomores Teresa Cameon and Katie Joachim were finalists for the Musical Theatre Intensive that included an opportunity to perform in the Musical Theatre Intensive showcase.

Sophomores Katie Joachim and Teresa Cameon.
Senior Nathan Gingrich alongside Theatre Office Manager Reagan Chesnut and sophomore Emmie Sandstedt.

Other accomplishments at the festival include the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship participants and their scene partners – junior Jose Angulo and his partner junior Brynne Fritjofson, junior Olivia Lehnertz and her partner senior Griffin Baer, and junior Katrina Dykstra and her partner sophomore Katie Joachim. Junior Olivia Lehnertz also participated in the Dramaturgy program.

Junior Olivia Lehnertz presenting her dramaturgy research.

Hope College Theatre Department was also selected to tour their production of “The Line Between” as a participating production to the festival. This regional recognition was a great honor for the entire cast and production team. “The Line Between” had two performances on during the festival.     

The cast and crew of “The Line Between” with Hope College President Dennis and Betty Voskuil.

As Lehnertz said, “It was a really great opportunity to tell this story for our peers in theatre. The audience was so engaged and supportive. It’s definitely a highlight of my college career.”

Congratulations to the Hope College Theatre Department for the honors received at the festival!

Theatre Alumni Emily Svendson (’15) and WAR PAINT

Hope College Theatre alumni Emily Svendson (‘15) has been backstage on Broadway as a wardrober for WAR PAINT.

Starring Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, WAR PAINT is a new musical about the women who dominated the beauty industry, Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. With fierce competition, the two women sacrificed everything to become two of the country’s first major female entrepreneurs.

Svendson has been working with the production for the past year and a half, starting with the early stages in Chicago.

“WAR PAINT has been the most difficult and most rewarding journey I have been on. This show has been a huge part of my life for the last year and a half. I worked on the out of town last summer at the Goodman Theatre and even then in its early stages, it was a huge, challenging show. Once we started in New York, I knew most of the company from the summer but there were a million of new challenges and problems to face. From learning Union Rules, adjusting to little bitty living spaces, and many others, I have learned so so much about myself as a dresser, an artist, and as a human. It’s been the most surreal experience. If you told thirteen year old Emily (who sat in her room and cried to I Dreamed a Dream almost every day) that she would do a quick change with Patti LuPone, she would have thrown cheese in your face,” Svendson said.

As a wardrober, it is Svendson’s job to maintain costume quality during every performance. She assists with quick changes, attends to costume mishaps and makes sure that everything is ready to go. Some off-stage changes can be as quick as 30 seconds!

During performance, Svendson and her crew would start little backstage rituals to keep the buzz of backstage bustling – whether it be high fives to the beat of the music or spending time with Ms. LuPone when she was around.

WAR PAINT gave its final performance on Nov. 5 so LuPone can undergo immediate hip replacement surgery. For Svendson, closing week was crazy and strange.

“We were fortunate to know that it was coming (sometimes you don’t get much notice) but it’s still en ending of a huge chapter. During the week, we spent our down time getting ready for load out: cleaning out dressing rooms, sending every costume to dry cleaning, organize accessories. Our closing performance was one that was really special. The energy from the audience was positive and full of love, which made everything that we were doing worth it. Change is always hard but it brings bright new beginnings,” Svendson said.

Now that the production has closed, Svendson hopes to trust the process and continue to find  more work.

“That’s the best and worst part about Broadway; nothing is ever certain. It’s terrifying that you could spend years on a show only for it to last a few months. But that’s how this business goes. You just dust yourself off and keep going.”

LA: Chad Coe

What happens to our students after college? In this series we will look at Hope College alumni taking on the real world in no other city than Los Angeles.

To begin our series we will start with Hope alum, Chad Coe, a 2004 graduate with big dreams. We are so proud to see his dreams becoming a reality.   

Chad Coe made his Victory Theatre debut this fall in the World Premiere Parody based of Hedda Gabler – Resolving Hedda.  He is just coming off the Ovation nominated West Coast Premiere of The Lyons at The Road TheatreChad was also in the original cast of The Rose and the Rime at The Kennedy Center. His Los Angeles theatre credits include: Dracula Directed by Ken Sawyer, World Premieres of The Red Room Directed James Mellon and The Light Bulb w/ Stephanie Powers. He can be seen on TV recurring on Colony(USA Network) and Matador (EL Rey Network)

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Coe was originally recruited to Hope by the basketball team. However, the summer before freshman year Coe became ill and was not able to join the team in the fall. During this time, Coe was inspired by his brother, a student at NYU, who was shooting a feature film. Excited about a new passion, Coe quickly joined Hope’s theatre program in hopes of chasing a similar dream to his brother’s.

“It was kind of a serendipitous moment for me,” Coe explains.

He acted in plays in elementary and high school but when he took his first acting class with Professor Jean Bahle, Coe knew theatre was the right fit.

Though Coe actually graduated with a communication degree from Hope, he was a huge part of the theatre program. From his favorite role in Hope’s devised piece, The Rose and the Rime, where he and the cast performed in Washington D.C. on the Kennedy Center stage for Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. Coe threw himself into theatre productions and took every acting class the department had to offer. Coe is thankful for the technique he learned at Hope that served as a foundation for taking his craft out into the working world.

In the midst of his TV and theatre career in L.A., Coe began to lose the “why” in acting career. What was he doing all this for anyway? Last spring, Coe was cast in the Nicky Silver play, The Lyons. The play is a dark comedy about family relationships. The production was in an intimate venue in the city and ran for a 5 months- A long run in the city of L.A.

  

What draws Coe to L.A. is the creativity surrounding him. Need a drummer? Ask the neighbor. Need a graphic designer? Ask the barista. Creativity is wheeling in and out of every conversation and the collaborative opportunities are never ending.

“What is it inherently inside of you that’s bringing you here? If you work and work and work, you get better but you have to really strip down and reveal who you are.”

To follow Chad Coe and his career in L.A as he continues his work check out his website! www.chadmcoe.com

We are proud of our Hope alums and the contribution they are making to the theatre scene in Los Angeles.

Faculty Summer Series: Daina Robins

Daina Robins, Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Theatre Department, has co-led a May term to Ireland for the past four years. Professor emeritus John Tammi led the first Ireland May term in 1996, But now Robins joins him as they take a group of students through winding cobblestone streets and incredible cliff side views. The aspect Robins loves most about leading with Tammi is the fact that he is a wonderful storyteller and has a terrific sense of humor, two things that blend right in with Irish culture.

The traditional classroom is transformed into a mystical, magical, foggy fairytale as students learn about the culture by interacting with it day in and day out.The students pile into 9-person vans and travel throughout the countryside in order to soak in everything Ireland has to offer. The trip takes you through Dublin, Belfast, Galway, and other small towns that are filled with quaint pubs, gorgeous landscapes, and rich history.

Even though Robins and Tammi have theatre backgrounds, you do not need to be a theatre major or even interested in theatre in order to partake in this incredible opportunity. Conversations spring from the rich cultural heritage that is woven into the roots of the country. Conversations of politics, history, poetry, religion, people, and politics evolve in the vans between visiting historic sites, museums, and theatres.

Primarily built as a Senior Seminar, the Irish Culture and Celtic Wisdom May term culminates in students writing a life view paper. The class gives students access to the Irish people and culture and prompts them to ask deeper questions of themselves.

 “Immersing into a culture gives you the opportunity to reflect back on your own life: What are your values? What is your belief system? What is your relationship to faith, religion, politics, land, family, urban life, art?”

This term is three plus weeks of self-exploration through the study of Celtic culture, Irish people, and the way others live and breathe the same way we do on the other side of the ocean.

Devising Workshop with Rich Perez

The DeWitt stage was the location for the first of a workshop series for the launch of  faculty member Rich Perez’s new devised project.

The Hope College Theatre Department has a strong commitment to creating new plays and specifically devised work. The department has partnered with  Nathan Allen for Rose and the Rime (2007) and with The Hinterlands for  Goodbye Beauty, Hello Dust (2015) and recreated  The House Theatre of Chicago’s,  The Sparrow (2015).

Last spring, students devised The Line Between with Hope Theatre alums Dan Kwiatkowski and Erik Saxvik. The opportunity sparked a flame for students to use their voices and tell their own stories.

Devised theatre is a collaborative process in which the script is developed with the entire company of actors and designers.  The method can vary, but in The Line Between, students created the work through workshops, writing prompts, movement exercises, imagery,  and structured improve, to create the original play.

This upcoming spring, that flame with spark again. Faculty member Rich Perez will direct the final production of the season, a devised piece completely created by students.

The production hopes to pull influence from the classic Western and martial arts. Perez hopes to take these dominantly male genres and flip them on their heads – creating opportunities to showcase powerful women.

The workshop began with the group of students participants split into three groups – poets, musicians, and  dancers. Each group took 20 minutes to come up with a creative presentation in their area with only the word ‘transformation’ as inspiration.

20 minutes later, each group gathered and shared their performances.  The musicians had each brought an ordinary object – a fork, a knife, a box of push pins – and together they created a groovy kind of orchestra.

The dancers began spread out across stage and each started slight movements in their own time. Together they clumped in the middle, reaching toward the sky. Continuing their performance, they formed into a single file line and followed each other and repeated the movements of the leader at the front.

The poets stood up and each person read a short five to eight line poem they had wrote. Each one offered a new take on the word ‘transformation’.

Perez couldn’t have been more thrilled about the workshop.

“I felt incredibly inspired by our first devising workshop! Those who participated were courageous, energetic and worked extremely well together,” Perez said. “I was able to gain insights into our actors’ strengths and challenges, which will give them a leg-up in ensuing workshops and the subsequent audition. It is my goal is to make sure everyone is on an equal playing field when they come to audition in November. Hopefully even more people will attend our next workshop, focusing on stage violence.”

Faculty Summer Series: Richard Perez

Professor Richard Perez as Director of Water and Power with the Urban Theatre Company of Chicago

Professor Perez, known as Rich, quirky and kind, radiated a welcoming, creative presence as I took a seat across from him in his office. There is no question this Hope College professor is determined to bring diversity and edge to the program.

Before he began teaching at Hope in 2013, Rich worked as Associate Artistic Director at Chicago Dramatists. His previous experience includes actor training with Uta Hagen in New York, leadership of the Bloomington Playwrights Project in Indiana for seven years, and a season as an acting apprentice at Actors Theatre of Louisville. (Just to name a few credentials.)

With a passion for inclusion, Rich often dedicates his time and efforts to produce diverse, thought provoking theatre and this summer was no exception. As a part of the Latinx community, Rich found the perfect project to continue achieving that work.

This past May, Rich went to Chicago to direct Water and Power with the Urban Theatre Company (UTC) This play, by Richard Montoya, was originally set in Los Angeles. In order to make it more relevant to a local audience, Montoya adapted the script to take place in Chicago for the UTC production. The theatre rests in a cozy little storefront in the middle of Humboldt Park, a predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood.

Water and Power grapples with the questions of politics, power, and what it means to be “good”, in a society that often blurs the meaning of those words.  

Rich stands behind the notion that “in order to diversify the audience, you must diversify the plays.” As a man who grew up in California of Mexican heritage, and has lived in a variety of places such as New York, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, Rich has encountered many cultures in his communities. “We enter relationships with preconceived ideas of who certain people are. Perhaps it would be easier to get along if instead we sought out our similarities instead of our differences.”

This season at Hope College, Rich is directing the play Human Error; a complex comedy that wrestles with the complexities of divisiveness between progressives and conservatives. Rich ended our interview stating, “If nothing else, theatre should initiate lively conversation, long after you leave the playhouse.” For more details about our production of Human Error click here

Faculty Summer Series: Michelle Bombe

We our proud of our faculty working professionally during their summers. In this series we meet the faculty and hear about their work!

Walking into her new office, you are greeted with an eclectic, ceramic puppet tauntingly hung with strings from the wall. Colors dance around the room and Hope’s very own Director of Theatre sits behind her desk.

Michelle Bombe, Professor of Theatre, Director of Theatre, and Resident Costume Designer (Whoa titles!) obviously wears many hats in the Department. Her hard work and dedication to the craft of theatre is what keeps the spark alive and possible for many of her students. Along with her roles during the school year, Michelle has had an active professional career with 10 summers at Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, 1 summer at Theatre at Monmouth and a total of 18 summer seasons at Hope Summer Repertory Theatre. HSRT is a professional theatre company right here on Hope’s campus. This past season, she designed the costumes for Working.

Michelle enjoyed designing a production sharing “real stories that opened up different and diverse ways of thinking” for Holland Michigan.

What made season 46 unique for Michelle was the fact that her son was offered an acting internship at HSRT just like she had been 33 years prior for season 13 at HSRT. Griffin is a senior theatre major at Hope College this year and thought it was “cool to be in a theatre [he] had looked up to [his] whole life.”

Michelle fell in love with Holland and theatre at HSRT.  She has been on the faculty at Hope since 1991. What keeps her grounded in theatre is the fact she is “in love with the idea that, as a designer, [she] is creat[ing] the world of a play.” Griffin fell hard for theatre as well, with the help of his mother, by exposing him to varieties of productions of different genres. He pursues theatre because he “loves bringing stories to life and inspiring others to tell their stories.”

We are so glad the two of them share such a deep love and passion for the arts!

Theatre Professor Publishes in Online Journal

Congratulations to Hope Theatre Professor Michelle Bombe!   Her open letter to theatre students on auditioning was published in the journal TheatreArtLife!   Check it out here:  https://theatreartlife.com/lifestyle/top-11-audition-tips-for-students/

 

I know this is hard. I know you have your heart set on a particular role. You aren’t the only one. This business is crazy. It isn’t fair. Most of the choices are not in your control. Get used to this. It is the way of our world. So what should you do?…
theatreartlife.com

The Ghostlight Project

On January 19th, 2017, theatres across the country gathered together in a national movement called The Ghostlight Project. In the theatre, the ghostlight is used as a marker of safety when the theatre is “dark”. While it is a symbolic tradition, the ghostlight also serves a real function of security. The essence of the movement is to mark theatres as safe havens from any kind of discrimination.

At 5:30pm, the Hope College Theatre Department gathered in solidarity with many theatres across our timezone. As a community, the department pledged to create a space of inclusion, participation, and compassion.

Hope students delivered prepared speeches provided by the ghostlight project at the Hope ceremony. “Like a ghostlight, the light we create tonight will represent our commitment to safeguard-it will symbolize a safe harbor for our values and for any among us who find ourselves targeted because of race, class, religion, country of origin, immigration status, ability, age, gender identity, sexual identity or dissident action in the coming years,” said junior, Akia Smith.

“And our lights will symbolize hope-a belief that through our actions change is possible,” added sophomore Jose Angulo. Jose then led a countdown as students in the department all turned on their own lights to create “a huge ghostlight” as a community.

The project gathered a total of 728 participating institutions and theatres nationwide. Each theatre was given the opportunity to make their own pledge. Hope Theatre made the following statement:

Hope Theatre pledges to be a place of safety, a place of inclusion, and a place where dialogue can flourish. A place where ALL are welcome.

To honor this commitment and to share our light for others to see, we’ve chosen this single light which will remain lit in our lobby for the remainder of the academic year.

Directing I

      Every fall, a number of students from various disciplines within the Theatre Department step off the stage and out of the wings to take on a new role- director. The Directing I class primarily focuses on how to interpret a text, collaborate with artists from all realms, lead a rehearsal process, and combine all of these skills to put together a 10-minute play. 

The class is taught by faculty member, Richard Perez, who began his career in the theatre as an actor. Perez says he discovered his passion for directing, “…more by chance. Other actor friends who needed somebody to look at, maybe a monologue, or a scene they’re working on, I would look at it for them. They would come back and say, ‘hey, you kind of know what you’re doing’ and I always enjoyed it. I also always enjoyed being in the classroom, and I knew being a teacher would be my long term goal, but I wanted to be the best actor and theatre person I could be before I came to that.”

While being novice directors, the students found that their backgrounds in theatre have given them a better idea of their personal expectations. “I like to think of the director as the hub of communication for a production,” says junior Victoria Ward. “They have to be able to speak all of the languages necessary to bring everyone together successfully, so for me having backgrounds in acting, lighting and stage managing means that I can speak their language better to help convey the designer’s idea. It also helps me when I’m thinking about aspects like blocking. How will the lighting, costumes and set influence my actors? What should I be asking of my stage manager, knowing what their job entails?” The directing class also discovered that their particular emphasis of study has given them a certain focus for their work in direction. Senior Nils Fritjofson says, “Coming from a primarily technical background has definitely caused me to focus more on the practical side of directing; so I think more about scheduling, how people are entering, where props are going, and the location of scenic elements, than most people.”

Before jumping into directing their own productions, the students had the opportunity to work with the Acting I class. They were each assigned two Acting I students and a scene to direct. Victoria Ward says, “I was very excited because I thought I was going to feel similarly to when my friends and I would work on monologues before auditions, and I was very wrong. All of a sudden I felt like a new parent with this child to raise.” While this was an entirely different experience for the Directing I class, Perez says that at this point in the process they usually realize that, “They know more than they think do. Everything you’ve experienced as an actor, that comes back to mind, and you have to trust your instincts. I think it takes a long time to do that, as any creative person knows, but more often than not I think we have really good instincts and we have to pay attention to them.” Ward explains that she gained more confidence in herself as a director as the rehearsals continued. “Once I established how I wanted to go about the process and started working with them and asking them the big questions so that they could be the ones to make the decisions, I think we all felt more comfortable.”

Having finished working with the Acting I class, the students are now tackling their 10-minute plays, which they have already chosen. Perez urges his students to find a work that really speaks to them. “If they just think it’s funny or it’s cute or it’s intense, and if it’s not really something that they feel they can uniquely tell, then why do it?” The students of course all have different things they looked for when choosing their piece. Nils Fritjofson says, “I was looking for a scene with an interesting and unusual premise, that would still be relevant to an audience our age. Scripted, the piece that I chose, follows a young couple struggling with life’s meaning after discovering a script of their entire day on their nightstand.”

After the students selected their plays, the next step in their storytelling experience was casting.  Perez tells his class that the most important thing to look for while casting is, “…actors who take direction well. You may have an actor who comes in and auditions really well but then you get into the rehearsal process and they’re pretty much stuck in that place, which certainly doesn’t serve the piece. It’s important to really work with them to see if they can listen.” Perez also urges his students to look for actors who have chemistry with each other, and who know how to be good scene partners.

Directing I is truly a unique course for theatre majors, as it is often the area of theatre that students have the least experience in. Through the process, Fritjofson says he has learned that, “…directing a scene is a journey that the director and actors go on together, and one that involves a lot of trial and error. Discoveries are shared experiences. Establishing an open space where failure is okay and ideas are encouraged allows for discoveries to occur more often and more naturally.”

Performances for the 10-minute plays will take place this Monday, November 21st and Tuesday, November 22nd at 7:00pm in the DeWitt studio theatre. Both performances are free of charge.

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