Department of Theatre Arts
Program Highlight
The Department of Theatre Arts is both a theatre education department and the sponsor of one of Madison’s theatres—the recently re-christened “The Black Box Theatre.”
As participants in both, our students have the opportunity to engage in all aspects of theatre-making, from performance to technical design, stage managing to crewing. Every academic year our theatre offers four productions for the public.
This year’s selections include The COR Stories: Identity through the Lens of Theatre, the 1960-Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie, Mary Zimmerman’s The Arabian Nights, the Student-Directed One-Acts, and a Theatre for Young Audiences production by Edgewood’s own Chuck Taylor, ROARrrr. We will inaugurate the year with The COR Stories, an original ensemble/revue piece that brings together directors, writers, poets, dancers, and actors from the College and the greater Madison community. The title is in recognition of Edgewood’s motto cor ad cor loquitur, Latin for heart speaks to heart, and of our COR Program, the heart of the Edgewood undergraduate program.
COR encourages students to examine the connection between identity, learning, beliefs, and actions, in order to build a more just and compassionate world. The COR Stories will explore these connections through the lens of theatre and performance art.
We will continue to explore these same themes later in the year, for example in James DeVita’s performance of his play, In Acting Shakespeare, through which he reviews his discovery of and entry into theatre and performance.
Event Highlight
We are excited to sponsor a series of workshops, performances, and talks over the course of the year by renowned artists from around the country, through the Ahrens-Washburn Community Fellows program.
A highlight includes a campus visit by Tony-award winner and Macarthur Fellowship recipient Mary Zimmerman, whose play The Arabian Nights we will perform in February & March 2013. Ms. Zimmerman will be on campus on November 26, 2012 and will offer a public talk about her play and her current work.
