Date:
11/12/2009
Contact: Wendel Sloan at 575.562.2253
Reporter: Robin Haislett
PORTALES—Eastern New Mexico University’s theatre department will perform the second annual Freshman Showcase at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Nov. 18 – Saturday, Nov. 21 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 22. There will be a reception and talkback session after the Saturday performance.
This showcase features mostly freshmen in Anne Beck and Janeice Scarbrough’s six-credit-hour class. The flexible guideline for the ENMU theater department is to not cast any freshman in a major production in the first semester. This is to ensure the student is not burned out from the beginning, according to Scarbrough.
“These kids work really hard in this building,” says Scarbrough. “If they get cast in the first show, they would never settle into college life; getting to know their roommate, getting involved in activities…we really want to give them a sense of balance,” explains Scarbrough. They also realize that students want to be in a show and created the freshman showcase to feature the talents of the new students.
This showcase will bring the audience into the classroom of the theater department and feature the student actors and the major tenants and practices of theatre. This performance shows a day in class in a more “tidy fashion,” says Scarbrough. Even the program is designed to look like the course syllabus.
“We decided, ‘Why not show the audience what we do in class?’ explains Beck. Scarbrough and Beck will be among the performers to complete the classroom atmosphere. Among the collage of events are vocal and physical warm-ups, choreography, stage combat, short scenes, auto-drama and “overnight-success,” which is a short script written overnight by the student.
Scarbrough describes an auto-drama as the seven-minute dramatization of the highs and lows of one’s life. “It’s not a narrative like ‘once upon a time, my mother gave me a letter to go to ballet school.’ It’s a little girl running on stage saying ‘It came! It came!’” explains Scarbrough.
Beck and Scarbrough are excited for the performance because it is a very informal and light-hearted experience for the audience with interaction and participation. “There will be more serious parts on the first act; the second act is just flat-out nuts,” laughs Scarbrough.
“The audience isn’t going to sit in rapt attention the whole time,” says Beck. “It’s not the ‘sit in your seat, clap, go home’ kind of show,” says Scarbrough. “There’s no one story to follow.”
“Instead of a story, what you’re going to see are the actors, not the characters,” explains Beck. “The class is very very jazzed,” says Scarbrough. “You get to see the actors transition through several different things.”
There is no reserve seating. Tickets are $4 per person.
For more information, contact Shirlene Peters at 575.562.2711.