A major called devotion

The bitter chill of the night air hit an exhausted Addison Walden as he left Russell Auditorium after his second rehearsal of the evening.
“This is a tough field,” Walden said. “You have to be willing to work really hard. There are late nights, blood, sweat, and tears, but it’s what I love.”
Late nights are routine for Walden, a sophomore theatre major. In fact, late nights are routine for any dedicated theatre major.
Unlike other majors, there is little separation in theatre between classes and experience.
Georgia College Theatre Chair and Associate Professor Kathleen McGeever explained that outside work is part of school for theatre majors.
“You have to be present,” McGeever said. “You have to be active. You learn by doing in this field. So a student who just goes to classes is not going to do well.”
Experience is invaluable to theatre majors. Fortunately, there are countless opportunities for them to exercise their talents inside and outside of GCSU.
Currently, the workload of the GCSU Theatre Department is in overdrive as its members work on several projects. A Streetcar Named Desire is one show that just recently wrapped.
Androcles and the Lion, the children’s show that was preformed last semester, is back in rehearsals. It was chosen to be presented at the Regional Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Americus.
This honor is an opportunity for the students involved to get their names and faces known to the professional theatre world.
Another way students are being exposed is through the Irene Ryan Foundation. Irene Ryan was best known as ‘Granny’ from The Beverly Hillbillies. When she died, she left her estate to the Kennedy Center. Now thousands of students from all over the country audition in hopes of winning one of two scholarships. This year 14 students from GCSU are auditioning.
Student led productions are also underway. Annie Reeves is a senior theatre
major as well as the drama fraternity, Alpha Psi Omega, president. She recently lead the production of the Vagina Monologues. It featured women from all over the campus community, theatre majors and non-theatre majors alike.
To mirror this show, Reeves also put together a GCSU original production of the Penis Soliloquies. GCSU men from all over campus,
including non theatre majors, each wrote and performed a monologue discussing being male.
Perhaps the most well known of the independent theatre associations is Armed Farces Improv.
Every Thursday night students gather at Blackbird Coffee in downtown Milledgeville for what has been dubbed ‘Improv Night’. Theatre major Kate Bean founded Improv Night last year and it has been gaining momentum ever since.
“(Improv) is short for improvisation. In our case, it’s improvisational comedy. All the action and dialogue is made up on the spot,” Bean said. “I felt it was a type of performance art that Milledgeville did not have. It was something that the college didn’t really have either. I thought many college students could find it entertaining.”
Improv is fun, and it is also another venue for theatre focused people to exercise their talents. The general consensus throughout the theatre community is that it is all fun because it is what they love.
“I couldn¹t picture myself doing anything else. It’s so much more involved than any of the other majors. The workload can¹t even compare to theatre,” Senior Taylor Roy said.
All of this experience is in preparation for the working world. Scores of jobs are available for people in the theatre world besides acting.
“There are a lot of opportunities if that standard starving artist idea is not your cup of tea,“ McGeever said.
She said that theatre majors can go onto to do public relations work, be vocal coaches, choreographers, lighting designers, costume and makeup artists, and playwrights.
Acting is still at the center of junior theatre major Erin Burnett’s heart. “I love performing, it’s my passion,” Burnett said. “The things required of us- that’s what is expected in the real world. People don’t understand how hard we work.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Mar 2 2007. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry