Categories
Theatre

10 Can’t Miss Photos from SMU Theatre’s Production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” by Tom Stoppard

Tom Stoppard’s internationally celebrated play won the Tony Award and New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for best play. It focuses on Hamlet from the perspective of the two flummoxed courtiers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who are bewildered by the action surrounding them. Part Shakespearean tragedy, part Laurel and Hardy comedy routine, and part Waiting for Godot absurdity, it leads its two honorable, adventurous and inept characters to their unfortunate, unavoidable fate.

SMU Theatre’s production, directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni, runs through this first weekend in March of 2018 at SMU Meadows. Photographer Kim Leeson got a sneak peek of the production, and we’re here for these photos. 

Categories
Theatre

Light Talk Podcast Attracts Lighting Designers from Around the Globe

Left to right, Light Talk hosts Steve Woods, SMU Meadows; David Jacques, California State University Long Beach; and Stan Kaye, University of Florida.

By Mary Guthrie

You know you’ve got a good thing going when your brand-new podcast gets 7,000 downloads within three months. And the subscribers are tuning in from all over the world. And you get an invitation by the world’s biggest lighting convention, LDI, to live-stream your podcast at their next conference, which will be attended by 13,000 lighting designers from over 80 countries. It’s then when you realize your lighting design colleagues had been waiting for a podcast exactly like Light Talk to come along.

Steve Woods, professor and head of stage design in the M.F.A. Theatre program at SMU Meadows School of the Arts, is one of the show’s three hosts, collectively called “The Lumen Brothers.” Inspired by the light, fun and entertaining tone of NPR’s of Car Talk, Woods and fellow lighting pros David Jacques (California State University Long Beach), Stan Kaye (University of Florida) and their guests hold forth — or, according to Woods, “rant, muse and pontificate” — on the latest developments in the world of live entertainment and architectural lighting design. The seasoned professionals share their considerable experience and perspectives and offer shop talk and advice to professional lighting designers and students.

Light Talk caught the ear of LDI (Live Design International) and featured the show and its hosts in an article on the LDI website, saying “The format is like a fireside chat. These three guys are pretty funny, their lighting anecdotes and kernels of information interspersed with personal ramblings …” Light Talk, says the article, “… is a cross between Lake Wobegon and Greater Tuna, with a 45° lighting angle, lighthearted banter, and some nuggets of serious info infused. Listen in to Light Talk. You’ll be amazed or amused, and might even learn how to make a really good pot roast!”

You can hear their free podcasts on the Light Talk website or tune in through iTunes.

Learn more about SMU Meadows Professor and Head of Stage Design Steve Woods

Categories
Note Theatre

SMU Theatre’s Benard Cummings Talks Challenges, Favorite Shows, and the Path that Led Him to SMU

Photo by Kim Leeson

By Allison Barta

Benard Cummings is an Assistant Professor for the Meadows School of the Arts Division of Theatre. He received his B.F.A in Theatre here at Meadows in 1987. He went on to the Yale School of Drama and later moved to New York City. He starred in the film Raw Nerve in 1999 and the television series New York Undercover in 1996.

He has performed extensively in Off-Broadway productions such as “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me” at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, and has also tried his hand at playwriting. This fall he will be directing Normalcy by Bennett Windheim, off-broadway, for Theatre East.

What brought you to SMU Meadows?

I was born and raised in East Texas.  I’ve lived in NYC since the early 90s.  I am also a graduate of SMU Theater.  To be honest, my mom wasn’t in good health.  I was spending time going back and forth from NYC to Texas for a couple of months to help in looking after her, which was absolutely no burden.

I received an email asking me if I would consider applying for the teaching position at SMU.  All in the timing, I guess one could say. I applied so that it would allow me to be home for a while. Fortunately, I was offered the position. For the last 6 years, I have been able to be home, teach some great kids, work in one of the best theater departments in the country, and be near family. It has been very fortuitous, as I’ve been home for the passing of many close relatives. The old saying goes: “you are where you need to be.”  After many years of working in NYC and across the country in regional theaters, it was time to be home.  Time to say “goodbye” to some very close loved ones.

SMU has been remarkable.  The art, if you will, has totally balanced with the family life.  And I love teaching these wonderful kids selected to matriculate in our theatre department.

Do you have a favorite show you have either directed or performed in?

I love directing in academia.  I’ve done so at SUNY Purchase in NY and at the NYU/Stella Adler Studio.  So far, I’ve directed three shows on the main stage of SMU.

I also direct the incoming grad students in a rehearsal project in their first semester of graduate school.  But the most challenging directing project was with Dallas’ African-American Repertory Theater.  I was directing a production of August Wilson’s “Radio Golf” for the Elevator Series at the Dallas Theater Center in 2015.  On the last day of tech rehearsals, one of the actors became very ill and had to be hospitalized.  I was also slated to return home to NYC (I still have an apartment there) and begin classes at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey right after Opening Night.  But I could not leave this production in a lurch.  The cast was really strong and had been working very hard to bring this play to life.  So I decided to stay and take on the role.  It was the wildest experience I’ve ever had on stage. It was like walking a tight rope.  But I found myself having to go from director to actor in a matter of minutes during tech.  I loved every minute of that nerve-wracking experience.

How has your performance and directing career influenced your teaching career?

To quote “Hamlet,” The Play’s the thing.  Everything begins with the written words on the page.  I have learned over the years that careful attention must be paid to the world that has been created on that paper.  As a director or actor, I am now very aware that the beginning process must be painstakingly observed.   Young actors are anxious to act without having thoroughly examined the Given Circumstances of the play.

They act an idea of a scene rather than experiencing the life of the characters they are portraying. My acting and directing have taught me to teach my students to slow down, read carefully and thoroughly, and take notice of everything about the character they are portraying.  They must expand on this knowledge by building the world with the information the playwright has given.  Assume nothing!  Act only from what is given by the playwright.  Their play, the world they have created, is the thing.  Without a rich understanding of a character’s world (and how they operate in it) an actor is merely behaving rather than living. 

What is one piece of information you learned in School of Drama that you have carried out in your life and/or instruction?

Get to know the world of the character, make choices, and play fearlessly. 

I must go to the world of the character, not bring the character to my world with all of my prejudices and hang ups.  Sometimes an actor may play a role that may be considered “unsavory.”  If I bring the character to my world in order to make the character less “unsavory,” I may overload him with my prejudices.  Thus, I must carry myself to the world of the character and be of service to how this person lives in their world.  Judgment can actually close an actor from totally enveloping a role.

What should a student signing up for one of your classes anticipate?

Let go.  Give it up. Characters in the modern realism plays I teach from are not safe.  The playwrights have captured them in some very dire circumstances.  Their lives are large, and you must fill that life with equal largeness. I love the heightened realism of Chekhov, O’Neill, Williams, Wilson. I love characters with heightened emotional stakes, where they are desperate to live as they are surrounded by dire circumstances. I am going to inspire the actors in my class to be bold, to be brave, to be larger than the life they live, and to be fearless.

Categories
Theatre

Watch: The Student-Made Teaser for SMU Theatre’s The Rep

Scene from the 2014 performance in SMU Theatre’s The Rep

Every year in SMU Meadows Division of Theatre, three contemporary American plays are presented in rotation over a two-week period. It’s called “The Rep,” and it’s a staple of the student experience in our theatre program.

To tease the shows, Meadows student Marcus Piñon created a two-minute teaser:

Categories
Photos We Love Theatre

10 Behind the Scenes Photos from SMU Theatre’s Twelfth Night

img_4335One of Shakespeare’s most beloved comedies, Twelfth Night is a whirligig of disguise, mistaken identity, posing, posturing, cunning, confusion, music, madness, mayhem, sensuality, swordplay, revelry and romance.

SMU Theatre’s production of Shakespeare’s play opens tonight — Wednesday, September 28 — in the Greer Garson Theatre and runs through Sunday, October 2. Assistant stage manager Diego Martinez snapped these shots of the dynamic set. SMU Theatre Design student Kaylyn Buckley is the stage manager. More shows:

Thursday, September 29, 2016 – 8:00pm
Friday, September 30, 2016 – 8:00pm
Saturday, October 1, 2016 – 2:00pm
Saturday, October 1, 2016 – 8:00pm
Sunday, October 2, 2016 – 2:00pm

Get Tickets