DSU theater students put on show to travel to New York
By Grisha Syssoyev
Dixie State University’s new “Theatre and Society” class will have an opportunity to travel to New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia this April to spend nine days immersed in theater. The students will attend career development meetings with theater professionals, participate in an advanced theater-training workshop, tour MFA programs at New York University and Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, work with students at Montclair State, and attend Broadway and Off-Broadway productions of socially engaged work. In Philadelphia, the class will participate in a six-hour course taught by founding members of the world-renowned Pig Iron Theatre Company, a practical introduction to principles of physical-theater creation. The trip is an extraordinary opportunity for our southwest Utah students to forge professional connections, learn about theater practices in New York City, and lay the foundations for careers in the industry.
Taught by professor Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva, DSU’s “Theatre and Society” class aims to engage students with contemporary social and political issues through the lens of theater and to create a space for meaningful civic dialogue. The class combines coursework with public performances created under the auspices of Dr. Syssoyeva’s “Us. Here. Now: The New World Drama Series” staged-reading program at the Center for the Arts in Kayenta.
“The class is meant to get students to be socially engaged as well as politically engaged, to spark the interests of the public, and somehow inspire change,” said student Joshua France. “I feel like in the class, as we study these plays, we learn not just about political issues in our world but how to communicate with each other in civil discourse, and learn to democratically talk about certain topics that are very important in public speaking. I love to learn about different ways in which people have expressed themselves through this art, and how [theater] causes people to seriously contemplate not just their own lives, but the entire community, and national and international issues. I feel like being able to study this and bring it to [audiences] is one of the best things we can do as ethical people.”
On their east coast tour, in addition to the training they will receive in the Pig Iron Theatre Company workshop, the students will gain insight into how they might pursue a career in theater. They will look at several MFA programs as well as at how theater is practiced at the professional level. Student Alexis DeGraw stated that this aspect of the trip will help them learn where to go to graduate school, where to continue their education, and what is required of them to continue their education while the encounter with performance and training will show them what companies which are practicing devised theater are doing right now. It is increasing their knowledge, furthering their education, and opening career paths.
“For me, personally, it’s to explore this whole new atmosphere within the arts that I’m unfamiliar with, it’s highly intense, and highly colorful,” said student Abigail Taylor. “How adaptable am I in these settings? How interested am I? Being in New York, being in that environment … I’m traveling with people who have the same ambitions as me, to be able to share this is incredible. Just be. Just experience.” Taylor, who recently returned from an internship at the Sundance Film Festival, added that for her personally, the trip will allow her reconnect with contacts she made at Sundance.
This is the second year that Dr. Syssoyeva has taken her “Theatre and Society” students to New York. For Syssoyeva, the course is first and foremost about theater’s engagement in civic discourse.
“Theatre and Society grew out of my deep concern with the problem of our ideological divides being exacerbated by the echo chamber of social media,” Syssoyeva said. “At the outset, my principal aim was to put students in this part of the country in contact with students from other parts of the country and, through the lens of theater, to create a space for meaningful democratic dialogue. Western theater, since the time of the Ancient Greeks, has played a central role in encouraging civil civic debate.”
The trip, however, has an additional, professional component: the encounter with some of the best American theater productions, tours of great arts institutions like New York’s Public Theatre, and meetings with young and established theater professionals are all intended to challenge and inspire DSU theater students to aim high.
“When we went with the inaugural group last year, it was life-changing for those students,” Syssoyeva said. “More than half returned from New York having made the decision to pursue graduate studies because having seen high-level, professional American performance both on and off Broadway, they understood the level of technique required of them to participate in that world and recognized that they will have to pursue rigorous advanced training to be competitive on that job market.”
The trip is funded in large part by very generous support from DSU’s theater department and the college of the arts. To supplement that funding, the class is staging a benefit performance March 17 at 7:30 p.m., graciously hosted by the Center for the Arts at Kayenta. The performance will be a compilation of material the students have previously presented.
“We’re aiming for something like a student sampler, a DSU sampler,” said the show’s student producer, Kat Hunsaker. “A preview of what Dixie does. We’re doing a song from our current student-led production of ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ a dance from Professor Michael Harding’s recent Sam Shepard Project, a scene from the Comedy Storm production of ‘Five Women Wearing the Same Dress,’ three physical theater scenes from our intermediate stage movement class, and a clowning piece by theater instructor Alexei Syssoyev.”
The students have also been collaboratively applying for university grants and organizing multiple fundraisers to defray their travel costs. Led by student Cassandra Smith, they have been collaborating with local businesses (including a fundraiser at Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt March 21), selling book bags (thanks to the generous support of Custom Ink) with the tag line “Life is Better at the Theatre,” and running a GoFundMe page.
“The step by step process of learning how to write within Academia, and learning how to ask for help in an appropriate way from people who have [authority] over you, is a really humbling experience, and helps us acknowledge both our failures and our successes,” Taylor said. “For me, it’s all been new.”
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