Drama Alumni Newsletter 2012 - For Alumni and Friends of the University of Oklahoma Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama

Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama Official Naming Ceremony

see Helmerich, page 2

At a dedication ceremony on Wednesday, September 26, 2012, the School of Drama was officially named in honor of Peggy Dow Helmerich. A gift of $2.5 million from her and her late husband, OU alumnus Walter H. Helm-erich III., will fund a drama scholarship

endowment, which will provide up to 50 new scholarships for drama students each year and establish an enrichment fund, which will provide for activities to enrich the educational experience of OU drama students.

Mrs. Helmerich is civic leader and

Drama Alumni Newsletter 2012 - For Alumni and Friends of the University of Oklahoma Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama

community volunteer whose acting ca-reer included performances in Harvey with James Stewart and Bright Victory with Arthur Kennedy.

She retired from acting to marry Walt Helmerich and settle in Tulsa, where she raised five sons and became

Peggy Dow Helmerich takes a moment to visit with the 2012 scholarship recipients.

Hosting KCACTF Triumph!In Wiley Coyote cartoons, there is

always that moment when Wiley is just about to catch the Roadrunner, then sud-denly, he is hovering over a canyon, sus-pended in terror just before plummeting. The cunning Roadrunner sits victorious on the edge of the cliff, and Wiley can do nothing but gulp and look out with dopey, panicked eyes as he waits to be released from the freeze-frame and tum-ble into oblivion. Welcome to the School

by Anna Fearheiley

of Drama in the days leading up to the Kennedy Center American College The-atre Festival Region VI, to be held on our turf and hosted by our forces.

I’m sure that some of us thought Rena Cook had finally lost her marbles when she announced that we would be orga-nizing, staffing, participating in, hosting, and cleaning up a week-long festival for 2,000+ peers, colleagues, and VIPs. For-tunately, I wasn’t given time to be skep-

tical, because I was recruited to be the student coordinator of the festival within seconds of Rena accepting the massive task ahead of her. And because I don’t have a death wish, I jumped on the Rena-Cook-Bandwagon-to-Success right away.

So began a year of frenzied and ex-cited preparation. Rena’s office became Mission Control, and out of her mind and her computer flew ideas, e-mails, con-

see KCACTF Triumph, page 2

2012 UNIVERSITY THEATRE AND SCHOOL OF DRAMA PRODUCTIONS

DON GIOVANNITHEY PROMISED HER THE MOON(World Premiere)

MARY STUART SEUSSICALCONTEMPORARY DANCE OKLAHOMA

an active community volunteer. Peggy Helmerich was recognized in

2005 with OU’s highest honor, the hon-orary degree, and Walt Helmerich was awarded an honorary degree from OU in 2009. Six years ago, when the OU School of Drama produced the play Harvey, the school’s director, Tom Huston Orr, asked Mrs. Helmerich to visit with the cast of the play, and that visit led to a lasting connection between Mrs. Helmerich and OU drama students. In 2006, she made gifts totaling $500,000 to create a visit-ing professorship in drama and a digital video editing and camera acting studio.

In addition to their support for dra-ma, Mr. and Mrs. Helmerich have made gifts to OU that created endowments to support: Bizzell Memorial Library, and a library garden, as well as capital proj-ect contributions to the Wayman Tisdale Specialty Health Clinic at OU-Tulsa, Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, the Mary and Howard Lester Wing of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, and renovation of Boyd House.

At the dedication ceremony that made the new name official, Director Orr remarked, “The University of Oklahoma is proud that the name of Peggy Dow Helmerich will forever be linked with our School of Drama. It is in recognition of her distinguished acting career and of the generosity of Peggy Helmerich and her late husband that have presented so many opportunities for our students.”

HELMERICH SCHOOL OF DRAMA

from page 1tacts, assignments, obstacles, and ways to overcome them. I scurried to keep up, and only managed to do so because of fantastic inventions like Post-Its and espresso. For those who may not be fa-miliar with KCACTF, I will briefly paint a picture of the event. KCACTF exists pri-marily for the recognition and encouragement of excellence in theatre arts by college and uni-versity students throughout the United States. Competitions and showcas-es for design, performance, construction, dramaturgy, playwriting, and stage manage-ment are at the center of the festival. Full pro-ductions, work-shops, profes-sional auditions and interviews, and other go-ings-on make for a very busy week. Shortly after the roughest form of scheduling began in May 2011, Rena and I realized that the students needed to be heavily involved in the hands-on running of the festival. Once I set foot on campus in the fall, I began organizing student committees, each with its own set of student and fac-ulty leaders.

The festival began to take shape as committee heads took charge. On campus, rooms were booked in every arts facility, the student union, and vir-tually any other vacant space we could find. Stage crews were assembled, walls were scrubbed, signs were posted, and beloved piles of junk were hidden from

HOSTING KCACTFfrom page 1

sight. Off campus, we warned local busi-nesses of the impending invasion, re-served hundreds of rooms at Norman ho-tels, arranged for caterers, rented a fleet of vans for transportation, and cleared out the stock of Yellowtail at every liquor store in town as part of the visiting col-lege directors’ Welcome Gift bags. And as this madness swirled around them, Irene Ryan participants, design/tech/dramaturgy competitors, and the cast of Spring Awakening tirelessly prepared for the busiest of weeks.

For an event of this magnitude, there is only so much that can be done in ad-vance. At some point, everyone has to set aside their schedules, strap on their

Spring’s Awakening played to a packed crowd in the Rupel Jones Theatre.

The technical exhibits were displayed in the Weitzenhoffer Theatre.

big-boy boots, and be ready for any-thing. I can say with utmost pride and confidence that the students and facul-ty of the School of Drama did precisely that. From as early as 5 in the morning until past midnight, everyone (not an ex-aggeration) was available, willing, and working. From my perch at a tall table in the greenroom, from behind my comput-

see KCACTF, next page

CAESAR 2012 IPHIG´ENIE EN TAURIDE AND WHEN WE AWOKE THERE WAS LIGHT AND LIGHT

2012 UNIVERSITY THEATRE AND SCHOOL OF DRAMA PRODUCTIONS

AVENUE Q LION IN THE STREETS

Playwrights-in-Residence enrich lives of OU Drama Students by Dr. Kae Koger

There’s no experience in the theatre quite like working with a living play-wright on a brand new play. In 2012, students in the School of Drama had two opportunities, thanks to the Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residence Pro-gram sponsored by Mo and Richard An-derson.

The Spring semester brought play-wright Laurel Ollstein to Norman. The author of Opa! The Musical, Esther’s

Moustache, and Bias Cut, Laurel holds an MFA in playwriting from UCLA and is a recipient of numerous awards and grants for her work. Her Faith Broome world premiere was They Promised Her the Moon directed by Dr. Judith Pender in the Weitzenhoffer Theatre in April. The play is based on the experience of Norman native Jerrie Cobb, who was the first woman to be tested for NASA’s astronaut training program in the 1960s.

Ms. Ollstein had discovered Jerrie’s sto-ry while researching a short story about a woman astronaut and decided to write a play about Cobb’s extraordinary life.

The play was not completed when rehearsals began, so the cast and de-signers became vital collaborators in its creation. Many of the characters were based upon historical figures, so the ac-tors’ research played an important part in the development of characters. The

script evolved constantly as Ms. Ollstein wrote and revised new scenes, some inspired by improvisations during rehears-als. Junior Victoria Hines, who played reporter Meg Laugh-lin, described her experience this way: “Imagine if F. Scott Fitzgerald, Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby were sitting

around conversing in a room together. That’s it. Right there. The magic of the writer interacting with the characters. To work with a playwright is a two-way experience; not only can the playwright glean a character based off an actor, but an actor has a special insight into the mind of the character through the play-wright. Through Laurel’s words and my actions, we created Meg Laughlin. That’s magic.”

Scenic design junior Ethan Hartman, lighting designer Eric Stehl, projection designer Rick Reeves and sound de-signer Alan Hiserodt collaborated with Dr. Pender and Ms. Ollstein to create the production’s design concept which centered upon Jerrie’s NASA test experi-ence in an isolation tank. Junior Melissa Perkins designed costumes which helped to tell the story of Jerrie’s life, from her

Laura Jacqmin (grey striped scarf) with the director, dramaturg, cast and crew of And When We Awoke there was Light and Light.

Welcome reception for Laurel Ollstein. (l to r) Kae Koger, Judith Pender, Laurel Ollstein, Richard and Mo Anderson.

er and through a cloud of Post-Its, I ob-served the most extraordinary thing. Stu-dents and faculty were working together as equals in a way that I have never seen. When exhaustion and exhilaration are so extreme, there is no other option.

The rewards of our labor were more

than sufficient. The compliments from festival attendees were overwhelm-ing, and the joyful energy of the festival was infectious. Not to mention that our KCACTF participants walked away with a staggering number of awards. A huge thank-you to all of OU’s KCACTF partici-

pants from years past – you set the bar that led us to such success in 2012. A massive undertaking indeed, but a full year of tireless preparation and a full week of perseverance meant that this time, Wiley Coyote surrendered his panic and came out on top.

see Playwrights, page 4

HOSTING, SURVIVING AND TRIUMPHING KCACTF! from page 2

childhood in the 1930s to the 1990s. During the Fall semester, Chicago

playwright Laura Jacqmin joined the School of Drama for the fourth Faith Broome Playwright Residency. Her play, And When We Awoke There was Light and Light, opened in November in the Lab Theatre in Old Science Hall. Ms. Jacqmin was the 2008 recipient of the Wasserstein Prize, a $25,000 award for emerging playwrights. And When We Awoke. . . was commis-sioned by the Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago and developed at the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival and the Cape Cod Theatre Project. It tells the story of Katie, a high school senior, whose ambition to attend Harvard leads her to seek a “project” to help someone in need and give her an edge with admis-sion. After she promises to bring her online pen pal from war-torn Uganda to the United States, she learns that her new friend hasn’t been completely honest about his past.

Director Dr. Judith Pender cast 12 of the 17 roles with Drama freshmen and sophomores. These young actors played multiple characters in Katie and David’s lives and created some of the play’s most theatrical moments through improvisation, dance, sing-ing and movement. Ms. Jacqmin’s play came to life for the first time with the contributions of junior lighting design-er Emily Maddox, costume designer Rebecca Coleman, scenery and props designer Professor Michael Fain, and sound designer Alan Hiserodt.

Ms. Jacqmin and Ms. Ollstein also taught playwriting courses in the Helmerich School of Drama during their residencies. Students who took the classes not only received feedback on their writing from successful work-ing playwrights, but also learned about the most current developments in the Los Angeles, New York and Chicago theatre.

The Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residence program is made pos-sible by a generous gift from Mo and Richard Anderson in memory of Mrs. Anderson’s sister. It is dedicated to the creation of new plays and to the devel-opment of emerging and established playwrights.

Michael Fain spent the spring 2012 semester in New Haven, Con-necticut on sabbatical as a returning grad student at the Yale School of Drama. He participated in classes: Hydraulics and Pneumatics, Show Control for Live Entertainment, and Advanced Safety Seminar. He was on the special effects team for the Yale Repertory production of Good Good’s by Christina Anderson, the scenic animation team for The Winter’s Tale directed by Liz Diamond, Technical director for the Yale Baroque Opera Project Ilritorno d’Ulisse in patria, and stage carpenter for Funnyhouse of a Negro in the Yale Cabaret. He saw 16 productions while at Yale, many gal-leries and museums in New Haven and NY, and the world’s largest serpentine tent housing the Freize Art Show in NYC (a Yale grad was the Production Manager). He also spent time in NYC and visited with OU alums Steven Al-lain (Comedy Central taping), Driscoll Otto (Marquis Theatre preparing for Evita opening), and Megan Buchanan (helped move props on the subway to a production of Taming of the Shrew!).

Jon Young was Scenic Designer for Is He Dead? and Harry The Great at Creede Repertory Theatre. Both productions transferred to Denver, CO, at the Arvada Center and Lone Tree Arts Center, respectively. He was also Scenic Designer for The Mystery of Irma Vep for Lyric Theatre of Okla-homa.

Susan Shaughnessy taught the Puterbaugh course for World Litera-ture Today and directed Marina Carr’s By the Bog of Cats for the culmina-tion of the Puterbaugh Festival. Ms. Carr was in attendance. In May, OU alums Emily Jackson and Anna Fear-heiley performed a production of Ital-ian playwright Dacia Maraini’s Mary Stuart, directed by Professor Shaugh-nessy, also in Dallas at the Theatre Nouveau 47. In September, she di-rected OU alum Philip Wiles in Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo at the Teatro Pietro

Aretino for the OU/Arezzo communi-ty, and then in Arona and Angera for the International Festival 2 delle Due Rocche, Artisitc Director Dacia Mara-ini. She just finished directing Canadi-an playwright Judith Thompson’s Lion in the Streets in the OU Lab Theatre.

Matthew Ellis taught at the Loui-siana Tech Stage Combat workshop in April and was in The Nutcracker at OU as Mother Ginger, and David Mamet’s November at CityRep The-atre in OKC, playing the role of The Turkey Guy. At OU, he fight directed Dracula, Spring’s Awakening, Don Giovanni, Julius Caesar and Lion in the Streets.

Rena Cook is directing The Re-sistible Rise of Arturo Ui for Univer-sity Theatre. In the past year she has coached dialects for Lyric Theatre’s productions of A Christmas Carol and The Mystery of Irma Vep and for OKCity Rep’s production of The Nor-man Heart. In the summer she taught at Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain and at the University of Houston on their summer MA for Dra-ma Teachers.

Judith Midyett Pender directed the world premiere of Laurel Oll-stein’s play, They Promised Her the Moon, last April as part of the Faith Broome Playwright-in–residence pro-gram. She is currently in rehearsals for the new Faith Broome production, And When We Awoke, There Was Light and Light, by Laura Jacqmin. Early this fall, she directed scenes from the stage adaptation of the novel, A Fine Balance, for this year’s Neustadt Fes-tival honoring the novelist, Rohinton Mistry. Co-adapter, Sudha Buchar of the Tamasha Theatre Company in London, attended the festival and shared her expertise with Scene Study class and in a rehearsal. The film, Just Crazy Enough, starring Chris Kattan, in which she played the role of mental patient, Joyce, premiered.

School of DramaFaculty Stays Involved

Playwrights from page 3

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Designers’ Work from the OU Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama to be Featured in National PublicationProfessors Steven Draheim and

Jon Young along with undergraduate students Hana Goff and Brad Gray re-cently exhibited at the Design Expo, part of the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) An-nual Conference in Long Beach, CA, March 28-31, 2012

The Design Expo is a juried bien-nial exhibition featuring work from USITT members around the nation.

The selection committee included award-winning designers Deborah Bell, Howard Brandston, and Mi-

chael Devine. From the 120 designs exhibited, sixteen were selected by the panel of judges to be included in the USITT publication TD&T: The-atre Design & Technology. TD&T is a journal for design, production, and technology professionals in the per-forming arts and entertainment indus-try published four times a year, offer-ing in-depth, informative articles in a variety of areas including: architec-ture, costume design and technology, education, engineering, health and safety, lighting, management, scene design, sound design, and technical production.

Jon Young’s scenic design for The Odyssey.Steve Draheim’s design for Sunday in the Park with George.

Hana Goff’s scenicdesign for Dracula.

Of the sixteen selected designs, three designs from OU University Theatre productions were selected for inclusion in the summer issue of TD&T. Being highlighted are Ste-ven Draheim’s lighting design for Sun-day in the Park with George, Hana Goff’s scenic design for Dracula and Jon Young’s scenic design for The Od-yssey. This recognition is testament to the quality brought to the OU Uni-versity Theatre productions year-after-year.

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As the Editor of the Ghost Light I have an excellent view of all the many creative, exciting and profitable activi-ties that School of Drama alums do af-ter they leave us. Two such alums are Brent Black (BFA Performance 2006) and Greg Goff (BFA Design 2004). Each has carved out a unique and suc-cessful path for themselves. I hope you will be as inspired by their stories as I am.

Brent Black has become an on-line performance, writing, and com-posing sensation! He has created an online brand called “brentalfloss.” Under this label, he writes, directs,

films, edits and performs a popular video series. As a result of his online popularity, he receives invitations to perform live at video game confer-ences and conventions. He has found a way to put all his passions and train-ing together on the leading edge of the entertainment industry.

After leaving OU, Brent attended NYU for a degree in musical theatre writing, with the intention of writing and composing for musical theatre. In 2008, a few months after he com-pleted the program he made a YouTube video by taking an instrumental tune from an old video game called Mega Man 3 and adding satirical lyrics to it. Within a few days, the video had made the rounds on a lot of popular

blogs and websites and his YouTube handle “brentalfloss” was all over the internet. He quickly discovered that the huge library of video game tunes comprised a treasure trove of trunk tunes for a lyricist. More importantly, he discovered millions of people had the same nostalgic feelings for these songs as he did. Now, almost four years later, he has nearly 150,000 sub-scribers and over 50 million views on YouTube alone (millions more on other sites). In 2010, he released a brental-floss album, which hit number eight on the iTunes comedy charts. He has done live shows as brentalfloss all over the world including a performance with

the New Jersey symphony, and shows in Toronto and London.

Since 2010, the “brentalfloss” brand has been a fulltime gig, owing to CD sales as well as the YouTube Partner Program, where certain video producers get a share of the revenue from the advertisements that play be-fore videos.

As Brent explained in a phone in-terview, “I have accidentally become the Weird Al Yankovic of the video game world. And while it seems like a niche, video games are a 16 billion-dollar industry, and the kids from the Nintendo generation are now into their 20s and 30s, so there is a huge market for this kind of content.”

Luckily for Brent, the people who

actually created the games he parodies tend to be flattered by his work and he occasionally gets personal notes of encouragement from them. He mainly uses music from Nintendo games, and Nintendo has a long history of encour-aging artists and bands in the “nerd-core” scene who celebrate Nintendo games with music covers and remixes. Brent equates brentalfloss to the 21st century version of a tribute band.

The brand is growing, too. Last year, he began playing with a band called “brentalfloss and the Cartridge Family.” He has also teamed up with writer Dan Roth and artist Andrew Dobson and they’ve produced over a hundred strips of an online brental-floss comic strip called BRENTAL-FLOSS: THE COMIC, in which the sidekick character is based on fellow OU Drama alum Travis McElroy.

When asked about years at OU Brent said, “OU planted the seeds of everything I’m currently doing: act-ing, directing, sound design, and how to tell a story. While at OU Brent learned about costumes, scenic de-sign, he was a follow spot operator for Chess, was cast in shows, wrote music and learned to play the accordion. He also wrote and directed two musicals, Shades of Gray and OU-sical the Mu-sical, experiences he credits with in-stilling the love of writing, compos-ing, directing, while giving him the confidence to take creative risks. He is grateful for the depth of the eclectic training he received from the School of Drama. “OU supported my work and allowed me freedom to explore. I have friends who got similar degrees from other universities, but they did not learn the wide range of things that I got from OU. I didn’t know at the time how fortunate I was.”

In addition to brentalfloss, Brent is working on an untitled pee-wee sports musical with OU alum Aaron Kozak. Later this year, he will be mixing the worlds of video games and musical theatre with a series of professionally-animated videos that will function as narrative-driven musical numbers. Brent adds, “I have a feeling that soon-

Celebrating Outstandingby Rena Cook

Celebrating Outstanding

er or later Nintendo will realize that its well-known properties like Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda should be on Broadway; with any luck, they’ll bring me in to write the lyrics!”

If you want to see Brent’s work, here are some pertinent internet links: brentalflossthecomic.com/?id=67; youtube.com/brentalfloss and brentalfloss.com.

Greg Goff earned his BFA in Lighting Design in 2004 and is now a freelance Lighting Designer living in Brooklyn NY. Like Brent, he has taken an OU degree, coupled it with the advanced training of an MFA, and with commitment, tenacity and exper-tise has created an exciting career in the entertainment industry. His recent proj-ects include the US tour for the musical artist Girl Talk (All Day album tour), dance tours for Patricia Noworol Dance Company through-out Europe, the Nokia 920 cell phone launch in Times Square, The Golf Channels Feherty Live from Chicago, Oklahoma in Juneau AK, YoungArts at the Ken-nedy Center, Broke-ology at TheaterWorks Hartford, Mousetrap and Avenue Q at SRT Santa Rosa CA, Swee-ney Todd at Yale Univer-sity, and Newark is Burning at The New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

His recurring designs include the last seven summers lighting Robert Wilson’s annual gala at his experi-mental arts compound The Watermill Center in Southampton NY. He also works regularly as an associate to the designers Robert Wierzel, Peter Ni-grini, ML Geiger, Dan Kelley, and AJ Weissbard. Greg has designed shows in 49 of the 50 states!

After leaving OU, Greg attend-ed graduate school at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in the Design for Stage and Film. An interesting side note that also at NYU during his stud-

ies were OU alums Driscoll Otto and Amy Pedigo Otto, a detail he shares with a proud, “Go OU!”

When asked how his time at OU has served him in his career, Greg said, “My degree from OU was my first big step towards becoming a pro-fessional lighting designer. People enter our field in various ways, but for me taking those four years and learning all the elements of design, in the classroom first then in person on stage, helped me become a better designer and collaborator. The univer-sity experience is important to young professionals because it’s a safe place to try ideas out and sometimes make mistakes. You’re constantly learning

the positive and/or negative effects of your design decisions.”

Greg often works with OU alums and when he meets one he knows what skill set they bring to the table. “Just last week in Chicago I worked with Melissa Murphy and Brad Criswell on a TV show for The Golf Channel. This week he hired Michael Cole as his M.E. for a new John Patrick Shan-ley show at the New Ohio Theater here in NYC. If OU continues to properly groom young designers and techni-cians like they have for so many years they’ll be able to seamlessly integrate into the professional world right after school.”

Goff lighting design.

Greg has some sage advice to share with current students. Do some kind of summer/festival theatre while on break from OU. At those festivals or companies you’ll learn other ways to solve problems, new ways of doing things, and most importantly how to work alongside a brand new team of people. “As a freelance designer I con-stantly walk into a room of new faces each month, week, and sometimes ev-ery day. Being able to work well with others is an often overlooked but very important characteristic for designers. Remember it’s NOT about you, it’s about the play, and to create a really memorable piece of work it takes a vil-lage.” Summer theatre from his past

experience that he would recommend to any OU design student would in-clude the Williamstown Theater festival, Spoleto Festival (Charleston, SC), New York Stage and Film (Poughkeepsie, NY at Vassar College) and SRT (Santa Rosa, CA).

When I pressed Greg about his guiding phi-losophy of success he stated without hesitation, “Be organized! Be in the room (physically) and BE IN THE ROOM (men-tally focused)! Never let a minute go by without keeping busy because

there IS always something to do. Have five minutes? Send an electrician out to do a focus note, cue ahead with your programmer, make plans with your M.E. for what’s important to get done during dinner break, etc. That being said, you and your crew should enjoy your breaks/meals.”

He was quick to add, “Never be the designer or department that people are waiting for. Time is money. Work ahead every chance you get. Do you think there’s a change coming down the road...make plans for it now and have something ready to show the director for when the inevitable hap-pens.”

Degree into Gold

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Alumni AccomplishmentsAlumni Accomplishments

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Alex Goodrich (BFA 04) has booked a couple of commercials, includ-ing the role of Dealer for the CARFAX company for the next couple years (mean-ing he will be trying to outwit that pesky fox for a few more spots to come!). He received Jeff Award Nomination (the Chi-cago theatre awards) for Best Support-ing Actor in a Play for The Foreigner at Provision Theater and won the Jeff award for Best Supporting Actor for his per-formance in Hero: A New Musical at the Marriott Theater. He is working on a pro-duction of Harold and the Purple Crayon with Chicago Children’s Theater and will start a production of Everything Is Illumi-nated next year with Next Theater.

Alexandra Gonzales (BFA 10) works at the Alley Theatre in Houston, in the literary department as a script li-brary assistant. She has worked on several shows with significant playwrights includ-ing Rajiv Joseph and Theresa Rebeck on her newest play, What We’re Up Against. She is currently working with a few artists in town on a production for next spring; she is also starting to get her own work produced.

Amy Vorpahl (BFA 07) lives in Los Angeles and has had great success in the entertainment industry. She and several other OU grads played roles in Aaron Ko-zak’s play, Round Rock, which was nomi-nated as “Best World Premiere” at the Hol-lywood Fringe Festival this summer. Amy also held a recurring role this year on Body of Proof, Season 2 as Investigator Fontana, and appears as a paramedic on the Castle 2012 Season Premiere. She can also be seen in Progressive Insurance and Stride Gum national commercials. Most recently, she is producing and starring in The Worst Year of My Life, a feature film also starring fellow OU graduate Trevor David, and co-produced by another OU alum Bernie Stern, release date TBD. She also has roles in the features In a World, about voice over actors by Lake Bell and Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie by the AVGN himself!

Ashley Klanac (BFA 08) participated in a producer-run staged reading of a new musical called Room 16 starring Lorna Luft and Patti Murin. She also did a sum-

mer season with Millbrook Playhouse in PA where she revived her favorite OU role of Maria in Lend Me a Tenor and played Other Woman in Dead Man’s Cell Phone. She performed in a 10 minute musical competition at The Lyceum Theatre in Brooklyn for Ugly Rhino Productions. Most recently, she was in a production of Cole Porter’s Red, Hot and Blue with Musicals Tonight! at The Lion Theatre on Theatre Row. She is currently rehearsing for a thesis project with a student from the NYU Musical Theatre writing program.

Bethany Hughes (MA 06) is work-ing on an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in The-atre and Drama at Northwestern Universi-ty. She will be researching musical theatre as a cultural text for ethics.

Bethany Perkins Wood (BFA) earned her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin.

Blaz Bush (BFA 08) completed a Masters in Education from OU in 2010 as a Research Counselor at Project Achieve in New York City which is a non-profit organization performing research to de-velop new strategies for HIV prevention, primarily an effective HIV Vaccine. He is also a volunteer for the Trevor Project, a Suicide Prevention and Crisis Interven-tion helpline for LGBTQ youth 24 years of age and under.

Chase McCurdy (BFA 07) has been involved in the premiere of a musi-cal about the early days of Chicago, called State Street. He attended the School at Steppenwolf summer residency. This Christmas he will be returning to his kids’ show where he gets to play Santa! And he is actively auditioning for the upcoming season.

Christopher Fitzer (BFA12) is currently the Assistant Scenic Designer at Flat Rock Playhouse (North Caro-lina), working with the Resident Scenic Designer and Associate Designer on all mainstage and downtown stage shows, as well as acting as the Scenic Designer for the Flat Rock Playhouse YouTheatre. He also is working as a freelance public-ity designer - most recently working with Grex Group Theatre and Sanguine The-

atre Company (both founded and operated by OU Drama alums).

Clay Guiltner (MFA10) launched the Grex Group Theatre in NYC and with the help of some friends and many sup-porters, produced a 24 hour play festival as well as a production of Moliere’s The Pretentious Young Ladies. They are also mounting a staged reading performance piece titled “Ibsen’s Women,” a montage of some of Ibsen’s most famous women characters. The project is a benefit to help raise money for a NYC-based charity for at-risk and homeless children called ART START. They provide arts opportunities for these children and have made a signifi-cant impact on the lives of many through the arts over the past several years. Clay continues to teach at Southern Arkansas University.

Clayton Winters (BFA) moved to Richmond and VCU to pursue an MFA in Movement Pedagogy. He has been able to assist and teach multiple classes in Movement, Mask, Combat, Audition Technique, and Musical Theater. He was Assistant Choreographer to Broadway Veteran Patti D’Beck on a production of Grease; appeared on stage for VCU as VP Doug Panche in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and this year was the Associate Choreographer for Avenue Q, and Head Choreographer for The Col-ored Museum. He plans to complete his degree May 2014. Clayton has also had the opportunity to work regionally assist-ing David Leong as his Fights and Mili-tary Movement Assistant on a new musi-cal that debuted at Goodspeed Musicals in CT, and he is currently in production for The Producers at Virginia Rep where he is assisting again on choreography, will act as the show’s Dance Captain, and will appear on stage as Carmen Gia, Hitler’s gay boyfriend. In the meantime he is the Contemporary Service Director for St. Giles Presbyterian and has recently been awarded an Assistantship in the Graduate Deans Office assisting the Associate Dean with the regional accreditation of VCU’s Masters and Doctoral Programs. He and his wife Jessie are going to have a baby in April!

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A L U M N I U P D AT E sA L U M N I U P D AT E s

see Alumni Updates, page 10

Curry Whitmire (BFA 11) was nominated for a New York Innovative Theatre Award (IT Awards) for Outstand-ing Actor in a Featured Role for his work in, Christopher Marlowe’s Chloroform Dreams which was produced by Lunar Energy. The play recontextualizes play-wright Christopher Marlowe’s death in a hazy, smoky dream world that borrows from film noir, Greek mythology, and 70s drug culture. Director Philip Gates said, “Like our entire outstanding cast, Curry Whitmire navigated the many demands of our script and production with aplomb, mastering verbally complex and tongue-twisting speeches and throwing himself into expressionistic movement and dance sequences.”

Emily Jackson (BFA 12) is doing a directing internship at the Kitchen The-atre in Ithaca, NY where she assistant di-rected Frankie and Johnny and Opus, as well as Crooked in the spring. Dramatur-gical duties include writing study guides for high school and college students and reading new plays for the upcoming sea-son.

Greg (Kulich) Cooledge (BFA 92) is still in LA working to get a movie Take My Wife pushed into production, starring Tyler Perry and The Rock. Ride Along, a buddy comedy script he wrote seven years ago finally goes into production this month with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube; Tim Story is directing. There has been talk that Employee of the Month may become a TV series... ala The Office in a big box store. He and his writing partner also have a comedy script that they want to film in Norman, utilizing local talent from scene design to actors.

Illana Stein (BFA 06) is a free-lance theatre director in NYC where her credits include Ten Year Twilight by Crystal Skillman with Ingénue The-atre, Besties, part of Working Theater Directors Salon, and an excerpt reading of The Boat House with Sanguine Theatre Company (featuring OU alum Marlowe Holden). Most recently she directed Stop Kiss for Sanguine Theatre Company (pro-duced by OU alums Jillian Robertson and Karly Fisher and Lighting Designer Michael Cole). Ms. Stein was Executive

Producer and Director of Or What She Will by Charly E. Simpson which was se-lected as 1 of 200 shows out of 1,000 for the New York International Fringe Fes-tival (with lead actress and co-producer OU alum Monica Jones). Ms. Stein was a recipient of a Fringe Overall Excellence Award in Directing (1 of 5 out of 187, and the show was chosen as Reviewer’s Pick as well as being published with two dozen other scripts under the title “Best of Fringe 2012.” Other recent directing credits include Emma (Jon Jory adapta-tion) with Stolen Shakespeare Guild and a staged reading of Two Rooms with Am-phibian Stage Productions, both in her hometown of Fort Worth, TX. As an as-sistant director Ms. Stein has worked at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Reper-tory Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, and over 20 productions as an assistant di-rector and dramaturg at Cincinnati Shake-speare Company. This past summer, Ms. Stein was a member of the 2012 Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab.

Iqbal Theba (BFA ) is back on Glee for season four. His movie Playing for Keeps which stars Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, and Catherine Zeta Jones is coming out in December.

Jacey Little (BFA 09) is Associate Literary Manager and Dramaturg for the Alley Theatre. She is currently assistant directing and dramaturging Death of a Salesman with Artistic Director Gregory Boyd. Last season she dramaturged a new Theresa Rebeck play called What We’re Up Against with director Scott Schwartz. She also assistant directed and dramaturged The Seagull with Mr. Boyd, among other projects. In the coming season, she will be working with director/playwright Robert O’Hara dramaturging The Maintain Top by Katori Hall in the spring.

Jillian Robertson (BFA 09) is cur-rently working at The Juilliard School - Concert Office, a post production edito-rial house, and running Sanguine Theater Company with fellow alum Karly Fischer. She directed the Project Playwright Fes-tival winner, Bees and Lions, last August and is gearing up to workshop another new work with Judson Theater in October.

John C. Bailey (BFA) has numer-ous professional theatre/tv/film credits spanning the years since graduation. He is extremely active in the DC/MD/VA indie film scene for three years. He just won a Best Supporting Actor award at The World Independent Mu-sic and Film Festival. He is currently shooting Indie Western film “Day of the Gun” as cattle rustler Caleb Earl Bateman. He is set to play leads in two feature films, “Perimeter” and “Exit.” He is playing Henry Clay Frick, a major supporting role, in the History Channel’s groundbreaking miniseries “The Men Who Built America.”

Jonathon Hooks (BFA 10) is currently filming webisodes for “American MD”, a comedy web series about health care, featuring Samira Wiley (“The Sitter” with Jonah Hill) and Kathryn Kates (“Seinfeld”). In August he appeared in several episodes of “The (Ir)Regulars” with the Claque (www.the-claque.org). He also did a reading of The House of Von Macrame with the Manage-ment Theater Company which will open in January 2013 at the Bushwick Starr.

Joseph Campo (BFA 08) runs a web and mobile entertainment company in Belfast, Northern Ireland called, Vid-eo Hacker. Season 1 of their most recent production, a comedy web series called “The Clandestine,” has just been shot and is in post production. “The Clandestine,” about a group of geeks who form an out-law motorcycle club, is sponsored by Gin-gerparts.com and funded with the assis-tance of Northern Ireland Screen. Joseph is also developing Figment, an interactive animated graphic novel for smartphones and tablets, which tells the story of a girl with the power to manifest characters from her dreams into reality.

Justin R.G. Holcomb (BFA) is currently rehearsing A Christmas Story at Actors Theatre of Louisville. It will be his fourth year as “The Old Man.” The Stage Management intern on this production is fellow OU alumnus, Hannah Barnes.

Justin and OU Alum John Ivy, have

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a few harmonies to figure out before they are ready for the first public reading of their new musical, Snatchers! He also returned to star in the Off-Broadway pro-duction of Channeling Kevin Spacey. He played Theodore Roosevelt in The Moose That Roared, written specifically for him by Patrice Miller & Chris Chapell.

Karly Fischer (BFA 09) is a co-founder and executive producer of San-guine Theatre Company (sanguinenyc.com) in New York City. Sanguine recently closed Stop Kiss, which is in the running for an Innovative Theatre Award. She is currently working toward her MFA in Producing and Theatre Management at Columbia University. In addition to her studies and running Sanguine with OU graduate Jillian Robertson she also pro-duces with Manhattan Shakespeare Proj-ect, house manages at the Juilliard School and is a scheduling coordinator with WOW Cafe Theatre.

Kristin Pettigrove (BFA 05) is a Pharmaceutical Sales Training Manager for Alcon Laboratories where she oversees and teaches national training programs for representatives. She is currently manag-ing a team of representatives in Chicago though she still resides in Tulsa, OK and commutes weekly.

Laura Spencer (BFA 08) shot a couple roles on the TV shows “Jessie” (Disney channel) and “Animal Practice” (NBC) as well as an indie film in Canada last month. She is currently starring in “Wigs,” a channel on YouTube that has al-most 17 million views and features shows centering around strong female leads, Vanessa and Jan. Other notables on the channel include Jennifer Garner, Virginia Madsen, Julia Stiles, Jena Malone, Dakota Fanning, Maura Tierney, and Lois Smith, to name a few, and it is being produced by Jon Avnet (Black Swan, Fried Green Tomatoes, Risky Business) and Rodrigo Garcia (Albert Nobbs, In Treatment).

She plays Jane Bennett in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modern adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. Fellow OU alum Wes Aderhold joined recently joined the cast as George Wickham. Link to an interview about the series: http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=e0KRM-ijAyo&feature=share&list=PLCF81D4D6D905BBA7

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCF81D4D6D905BBA7&feature=plcp

http://www.youtube.com/user/LizzieBennet?feature=watch.

Linda Gillum (BFA 91) is currently directing Burn This for Shattered Globe Theatre. This winter she will appear in Fox on the Fairway at Theatre at the Center and in the spring she will appear in Creditors with Remy Bumppo Theatre where she is an Artistic Associate and Casting Director. She recently shot a na-tional Walmart commercial.

Marlowe Holden (BFA 09) is liv-ing and working in NYC. She co-founded Sanguine Theatre Company with fellow alums Karly Fischer and Jillian Robert-son, producing three shows with them and is now a member of Sanguine’s Acting Company. Marlowe studied with Terry Schreiber at T. Schreiber Studio for al-most two years. She has acted in two web series, one of which she also produced, cast and assisted with development of a project entitled “Sublet,” several staged readings and a short film. She is now a member of The Bats, the resident acting company of the award-winning Flea The-ater and appeared on its stage in a lead role in October. She is also collaborating with Buran Theatre on Adam R. Burnett’s latest work, Nightmares, due to perform in January 2013. http://www.facebook.com/l/NAQGOCiBHAQFhDA6t1C6-aZ1wQqTl_E-Fb_Injk1mhqT9Vg/www.marloweholden.com

Max Burnett (BFA 91, MFA 94) was nominated for a 2nd WGA Award, (he won his first nomination in 2010). He sold a multi-camera comedy pilot to Nick-elodeon and wrote a big budget feature for Josephenson Entertainment (MIB, En-chanted) entitled “Animal Control” which is currently getting talent attached. He is writing on staff for a new Nick at Night comedy entitled “Wendell and Vinnie.”

Milan Anich II (BFA) is a CGI Generalist/Set Designer currently teach-ing stagecraft at Owasso High School.

After leaving OU he went to Grad School at Georgia where he studied Theatre, Animation and Dramatic Media which fo-cused on ways to combine video, projec-tion, and animation into theatre.

Paige Hathaway (BFA 11) has been Assistant Designer for Daniel Con-way on such productions as Hairspray at Signature Theater in DC, Cyrano at the Arden Theatre in Philadelphia, Double Indemnity at Roundhouse Theatre in DC, The Diary of Anne Frank at Milwaukee Repertory Theater, and The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg at the John F. Kennedy Center in DC. She is currently designing scenery for a new work entitled In Time of Roses based on Shakespeare’s War of the Roses cycle at the University of Maryland. She is also a 2nd year MFA candidate in Scenic Design at the Univer-sity of Maryland.

Reece Scelfo (BFA) is currently with Nicolosi & Co. Talent Agency in NYC, where his responsibilities include all book-keeping, receiving and sending appointments to actors, maintaining and updating resumes and actors’ reels, com-municating on a daily basis with casting directors, and overall assistance to the owner of the agency and the two senior agents. Two of their clients are OU alums: the Emily Mechler (starring in Evita) and the Esther Stilwell (Broadway’s Pris-cilla...). The agency has clients all across Broadway (Annie, Chaplin, Chicago, Evi-ta, Mamma Mia, Newsies, Nice Work..., Peter & the Starcatcher, Scandalous, The Heiress, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Phantom of the Opera, Wicked), ma-jor television episodics and feature films. Previously Reece worked as an intern for Roundabout Theatre Co. and the cast-ing office of Jim Carnahan. His projects at the time were the National Tour of Spring Awakening; Broadway’s American Idiot; Bye, Bye, Birdie; Waiting for Go-dot; Sondheim on Sondheim, After Miss Julie; New York casting for the hit TV show “Glee.” He has also worked for 321 Theatrical Management, the general man-agement team for Wicked, Next to Normal, Peter & the Starcatcher, Sister Act, Bring It On and Traces.

A L U M N I U P D AT E sA L U M N I U P D AT E s

Let us know whatyou are doing!

Send your news to: renacook@ou.edu.

11

Ross Crain is performing and writ-ing for the IO West Theatre’s sketch team called The Mutiny, in downtown Holly-wood. He did a film called, “The Cherokee Word for Water,” playing the character of Frank.

Dan and Shanna Remke are still enjoying every minute of the roles they were cast in a year ago: “Dada” and “Mama.” Parenthood has been an amazing joy and blessing, and they delight in their sweet daughter every day. For the past five years, Dan has worked as a Media Buyer where he gets to meet all kinds of D list celebrities - shout out to the Real House-wives! Meanwhile, Shanna is an actual real housewife as she quit her job to stay home full-time with Penny. Along with some directing/teaching work with Seattle Shakespeare Company, she is still repre-sented by NW agent and did extra work on two national commercials, Ford and Bank of America.

Curtis Marxen (BFA 12) is current-ly an Entertainment Technician Disney’s Hollywood Studios.

Kelsi Kesler (BFA 12) is currently at Broadway Bound Children’s Theatre in Seattle.

Jessica Pettit (BFA 12) is the Stage Manager at Stage West Theatre in Ft. Worth.

Amy Oxley (BFA 12) is the Stage Manager The Mystery of Irma Vep at Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma.

Pamela Workman (MFA 11) is currently the Costume shop manager at Moorhead State University.

Michael Cole (BFA 11) is currently Master Electrician of Dear Darkness at the New Ohio Theatre. He was also Lighting Designer for the Off-Off Broadway pro-duction of Stop Kiss; Master Electrician at the Hangar Theatre and Master Electrician of My Fair Lady National Tour.

Chris Harris (BFA 11) is a 2nd year MFA candidate in Costume Design at Boston University.

Noel Huntzinger (BFA 11) is an Ensemble Member at Chicago Dell’Arte. She was Assistant Costume Design in-tern at Great River Shakespeare Festival, Costume Designer for The Drawer Boy at Filament Theatre Ensemble, Costume De-signer for Hank William: The Lost High-way at Filament Theatre Ensemble and Wardrobe Assistant and Costume shop at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago.

Kirk Fitzgerald (BFA 11) is the Lighting Director at Webster Hall in NYC. He was also Lighting Designer for the Bed Bugs musical, Associate Lighting Design-er for Elf, Broadway; Associate Lighting Designer for Shrek, National Tour; and Associate Lighting Designer 2012 New Year’s Eve in Times Square.

Andrew Brown (BFA 10) is a 2nd year MFA candidate in Production Man-agement at Boston University as well as Production Office Assistant at Huntington Theatre Company.

Cody Beseda ( BFA 10) works for ZFX Flying as a Flying Director Appren-tice in South Korea.

Hanna Barnes (BFA 10) is a Stage Management Intern at Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Jillian Donaldson (BFA 09) was the Costume Designer for the film “Heav-en’s Rain” and Costume Designer for the film “Cowgirls and Angels.”

Joanne Youngblood Harrah (BFA 53) acted with George C. Scott at the University of Missouri before transferring to OU. She carried her drama training forward twenty two years with American Airlines as a stewardess, then public relations and sales. The Harrahs live in George-town, TX where Joanne is on the Board of the Palace Theater and the Georgetown Symphony.

Stephanie Orr (BFA 06) is First Hand at University of Oklahoma School of Drama Costume Shop.

Tasha Casey (BFA) was Firsthand at Carelli Costumes. She and Tyler Coffman are expecting a baby in December and have moved to Austin, TX.

Jeff Boomstein (BFA 10) is an As-sistant Electrician at Feld Entertainment.

Meghan Buchanan (BFA) is work-ing at Paper Mache Monkey, LLC.

Nate Putnam (BFA) is the Sound Engineer for Shrek, National Tour.

Driscoll Otto (BFA 03) is a Free-lance Lighting Designer. His credit in-clude Rocky Horror Picture Show and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Flat Rock Playhouse, Trip to Bountiful at Hangar Theatre and Macbeth Shakespeare Dallas.

Amy Pedigo-Otto (BFA 03) was costume designer for The Man Who Came to Dinner at Peccadillo Theatre, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at Summer Repertory Theatre, and A Flea in Her Ear at Summer Repertory Theatre.

David Spirakes is touring with The Addams Family.

Uldarico Sarmiento ( BFA 09) is a 2nd year MFA candidate in scenic design at UMKC. He also won the Three Sisters Benefit Scholarship at UMKC, was Sce-nic Designer for Number The Stars at the Coterie Theatre, Set Designer for the film Yellow and a Draftsman for the film Au-gust Osage County.

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Laurel Sein as Queen Elizabeth II and Tiffany Mack as Mary Stuart performed in the Weitzenhoffer Theatre.Mary Stuart - Director - Alissa Millar, Scenic Design - Hana Goff, Costume Design - Lloyd Cracknell, Lighting Design - Leahe Knott, Sound Design - Samuel Hughes, Stage Manager - Rosie DiVincenzo, Dramaturg - William Palmer.

photo by Wendy Mutz

photo by Wendy Mutz

F R O M T H E D I R E C T O R ’ s C H A I RI am simply

overwhelmed by the amount of good fortune we have experienced this year as I gather the information to begin to write this welcome

note. It has truly been an amazing and busy year for the Helmerich School of Drama at the University of Oklahoma.

There is no better way to begin than with the offi cial naming cer-emony for the Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama. On September 26th, we, in conjunction with the President Boren’s Offi ce and the Development staff, hosted a ceremony, naming the School of Drama in honor of Peggy Dow Helmerich. The fi rst students to receive scholarships, as a result of the generous Helmerich endowment, were treated to a luncheon and joined by Mrs. Helmerich and many members of her family, President and Mrs. Boren and other dignitaries. The luncheon was followed by the unveiling of a plaque and memorabilia honoring Mrs. Helmerich. In addition to the formal events of the day, Peggy graciously spent some informal time with our students. Both the students and Mrs. Helmerich would like to have had more time to spend together. We plan to schedule a return visit sometime soon so that she can get to know our wonderful students and share more of her experiences from her days in Hol-lywood.

Because of the amazingly gener-ous endowment from Peggy and Wal-ter Helmerich, we were able to offer more scholarship dollars than ever to our students: 91 students directly ben-efi tted from the Helmerich funds. We are hopeful that this endowment will continue to prosper and we will be able to have an impact on students that will truly be life changing.

We have collected and displayed several photos and other pieces of memorabilia in honor of Mrs. Helm-erich, from when she was the young starlet known as Peggy Dow. They are on display in the lobbies of the Fine Arts Center and Old Science Hall. If

you a re i n t he a rea c ome b y a nd t ake a look.

This year brought more in-depth changes to our producing organization and processes. Kasey Allee-Foreman has offi cially moved into a new role as Production Manager for University Theatre and will be assisting Dean Taylor with all of his Producer re-sponsibilities. The University Theatre/School of Drama division is continuing to evolve as roles and responsibilities are more clearly defi ned.

With the help and leadership of Lindsay Stewart we hosted the 2nd Annual Alumni Gathering and Tail-gate. The weekend began with an opening night reception on Friday, fol-lowing the contemporary adaptation of Caesar. Saturday morning was all about a “talk-back” session with 15 alums sharing their experiences and insight and answering questions from current students. The weekend culmi-nated with a tailgate party on the load-ing dock of the Fine Arts Center. We all enjoyed sharing wonderful food and comradery while watching the OU – Kansas State football game projected on the big screen outdoors. Special thanks to Rick Reeves, Eric Stehl and Michael Fain for assisting with this.

I’m really excited about this new dimension for the School of Drama. The alumni network is picking up speed and will be of greater impor-tance in the future. I’m grateful that more and more alums are invested in helping develop fundraising and schol-arship opportunities for the current student body.

The University of Oklahoma and the School of Drama hosted a very successful 2012 Region VI KCACTF festival in February. We had approxi-mately 2,000 students and sponsors from surrounding states on our beau-tiful campus. I want to extend a spe-cial thanks to Professor Rena Cook who spearheaded the planning and execution of the festival. She worked tirelessly to ensure that everyone had a pleasurable and informative experi-ence. Our students hit the ground run-ning with assignments and tasks and

accomplished them with enthusiasm and professionalism throughout the festival.

Several of our current students walked away with national honors from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival held in Wash-ington, D.C. in April. Senior Kevin Percival became the second OU Drama student in the past three years to win the top acting award when he and his acting partner, Laurel Sein, won the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship compe-tition. In the area of design, lighting design senior, Brad Gray and scenic design senior, Hana Goff showcased their design work from the production of Dracula. Hana Goff received the Eugene O’Neill Center Fellowship in Scenic Design and Brad Gray was fi rst runner up for the National Partners of the American Theatre for Design Ex-cellence and third place overall for Ex-cellence in Lighting Design.

The lobby of the Weitzenhof-fer Theatre, with the supervision of Regent Weitzenhoffer and President Boren, underwent a major facelift over the summer. The lobby looks amazing with new wall-coverings, carpet, light-ing and decor. Wow what a difference! We are planning to update and reno-vate the interior space of the theatre when time and schedule allow. Thank you Max, for making all of this pos-sible.

Many of our faculty members did extensive travel over the summer: Lloyd Cracknell went to South Ameri-ca, Chris Sadler served as Stage Man-ager with the School of Music venture in Austria. Michael Fain has returned to teaching after spending his sabbati-cal at Yale University.

Jon Young and Steve Draheim had featured articles in the USITT publi-cation TD&T celebrating their design work on The Odyssey and Sunday in the Park with George, respectively. Hana Goff’s scenic design for Draculawas also selected as outstanding work accomplished by students.

Dr. Pender directed two scenes from the stage adaptation of Neustadt

13see Director’s Chair, page 14

Prize winner Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance to help celebrate the Neustadt Festival which is hosted by World Literature Today.

We continue the Faith Broome Playwright-in-Residenceprogram with funding from Mo and Richard Ander-son. This year we will produce And When We Awoke There was Light and 14

Top National Honors at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

Four students in the Peggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama won top national honors at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival held in Washington, D.C., April 18-21. The competition celebrates the finest and most diverse work produced in college and university drama programs across the country. Senior Kevin Percival became the second OU drama student to win the top acting award in the past three years when he and his acting partner, OU junior Laurel Sein, won the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship Competition.

Lighting design senior Brad Gray and scenic design senior Hana Goff represented OU School of Drama showcasing their design work in the area of lighting and scenic design (respectively) for the University Theatre production of Dracula. The students who advance to the national Kennedy Center College

Theatre Festival competition not only compete for scholarships and internships opportunities but also participate in workshops taught by master teachers and professional artists working in the theatre. KCACTF’s mission is to nurture and mentor young talent and prepare them for success in the theatre.

Jon Young, Tom Huston Orr, Rena Cook, with Drama students Brad Gray, Hana Goff, Kevin Percival and Laurel Sein.

Light, a world premier play written by Laura Jacqmin. The Faith Broome will undergo a major restructuring next year in an effort to give our students a more direct and hands-on playwriting experience.

Alum, Natalie Steinke, has returned to us and is assisting with Intro to Voice and Movement for the freshmen. She and Rena Cook co-teach this course. Natalie completed her yoga

certification and over the summer has been teaching at the Idyllwild Camps in California. I am really glad that she approached us with this contribu-tion and I’m excited to have her back among us.

And, as always, recruiting contin-ues to be one of our highest priorities, keeping us on the road, throughout the

country in an effort to bring the best and brightest to the University of Okla-homa. When we stop in your neck of the woods, please come and join me for a little Sooner Social Hour.

There are many more things that I could share with you, however, I think you get the idea that things are going pretty well with the Helmerich School of Drama. And you, our alumni, con-tinue to be our greatest testament to the strength and success of our aca-demic program. You continue to ex-cel at your chosen craft and I am awed by the commitment and brilliance of our family! As I sit firmly in my 10th year as the Director of the school, I can honestly say that I have never been so fulfilled in my professional life and impressed by the amount of talent that surrounds me. The faculty, the staff, the students and alums of the program are nothing short of miraculous. I can-not wait to see all that you accomplish in the next ten years.

All my best andBOOMER SOONER, T

Lou Antonio, veteran actor of stage and screen, and Emmy-nominated director, held workshops this spring for many of our drama students.

From the Director’s Chair, story from page 13

2nd Annual Drama Alumni Gathering and Tailgate

University of OklahomaPeggy Dow Helmerich School of Drama640 Parrington Oval OSH #121Norman, OK 73019-3067#127784300

Non Profit Organization US Postage

PAIDUniversity of Oklahoma

ADDRESS SERVICE REQUESTED

Wishing you a prosperous new year!T h e P e g g y D o w H e l m e r i c h S c h o o l o f D r a m a