Undergraduate Program
This semester we have three undergraduate teaching assistants –
Xiao Han and Melina Yelovich will both TA for THEA 1229 – Stage Management
Jess Fitzpatrick will TA for THEA 1227 – Scene Painting
First Experiences in Research Mentorship
Research that was completed include;
Aaryanna J. Dawson-Srarbia worked with Karen Gilmer – Aaryanna’s research was entitled ’Hourglass to S-Bend; Lethal lacing, an Evolution of the Corset’
Tia Gillespie, Ellie (Yingjie) Guo, Lauren Lussier and Jordan Rosenblum worked with Gianni Downs in the paint shop researching scenic painting. They had the opportunity to explore art-making as research while they learned the basics of scenic artistry and mural painting. They combined contemporary painting techniques with traditional scenic art practice and experiential learning while learning to build theatre productions from the ground up. Students collaborated with theatre faculty and student employees while learning a variety of techniques used on several Department of Theatre Arts productions.
Quinn Murphy and Kayla Pierre worked with Michelle Granshaw on a project entitled "Protesting in the Theatres: Black Americans' Fight for Equality after the Civil War." The project investigated Black activists’ organization after the Civil War, especially in relation to the Civil Rights Act of 1875, why and how theatres were utilized as sites of protest, and how the white theatre community reinforced and continued to champion white supremacist policies and culture. They researched and analyzed the ways Black Americans fought for equal access to the theatre and how these efforts were related to Black Americans' goals and strategies for achieving equality and justice during Reconstruction. They also discussed how to research and further incorporate Black voices and accounts into theatre and cultural history. Quinn and Kayla conducted research that included reading through congressional records, Black newspapers, and newspapers focused on amusement and theatre.
Kareem Zein worked with Annmarie Duggan to help create the mentoring room for the Theatre Arts Department, which is going to be used by faculty to mentor students on how to design stage sets. Kareem’s role in the project was to research the best combination of equipment so the room could be utilized for that purpose in the best way possible. The room would also be used to review rehearsals with the director and team to pinpoint certain lighting, acting, or sound components of the play in development so it can be improved on. The equipment consisted of 2 TV's (one for the mentor and one for the mentee), two PC's, and two PC monitors. Kareem also helped with designing the layout of the room so that the maximum space for work desks and other furniture may fit in the room in the best way possible.
Summer Undergraduate Research Award (SURA) – 2020 Recipients
Lauren Scheller-Wolf -‘Overcoming Language, Relatability, and Expense: Bringing the Works of Shakespeare to a More Diverse Audience’
Julia Rose Kreutzer - 'Queer Liberation Movement and New York-based theatre in the latter half of the 20th century’
Here is a link to PittWire article highlighting Julia Kreutzer;
Julia also wrote the following about her research project.
This summer, I was fortunate enough to receive a Summer Undergraduate Research Award where I was funded to pursue self-directed research virtually from May through August. My project centers around the intersection of two of my areas of study — politics and theatre. I spent the summer studying the effects that sociopolitical movements had on the development of various theatre aesthetics and artforms and, conversely, the impact that such artforms had on the success of these movements. Specifically, I’m focusing on the Queer Liberation Movement and New York-based theatre in the latter half of the 20th century. With the guidance of my faculty mentor, Dr. Patrick McKelvey, a preformist theorist and theatre historian who serves as an Assistant Professor in the Theatre Arts department, I was able to develop the dramaturgical foundation to serve as the basis for the rest of this project. My research is uniquely interdisciplinary, utilizing resources from the History, Political Science, English, and Theatre Arts Department. As a result, I am currently working towards multiple end products. In February, my research will culminate with the Theatre Arts Department, where I will be directing a full-length production of a play entitled Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties, implementing the aesthetics and knowledge I gained through my research journey. This opportunity has been the highlight of my academic career thus far and has allowed me to unite several of my passions and connect with a larger community of queer artists.
BPhil
Leann Mullen completed her BPhil entitled, ‘Through the Intersection of Gender, Class, and Career: A Look at the Life and Legacy of Lucille Lortel’
Michelle Granshaw mentored Leann through the research process and helped to navigate a fully remoted defense.
Leann wrote the following about her experience completing the BPhil.
I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in April 2020 with a double major in Theatre Arts and English Writing. Instead of receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree, I received a Bachelor of Philosophy, which the Honors College rewards to undergrads who research, write, and defend a thesis along with the completion of their coursework.
As a theatre student at Pitt, I loved participating in productions as a dramaturg, which combined my love for the creativity of theatre with my interest in history and research. After discussing these interests with my academic advisor Dr. Michelle Granshaw, she encouraged me to apply for the Office of Undergrad Research’s New York Scholars in Residence program. This research award funded several students from the Dietrich School to live in New York City for 10 weeks during the summer to access resources only available in the city. I applied in my junior year and was accepted to research the Off-Broadway producer Lucille Lortel, using her collection in the archives of the New York Public Library. Towards the end of my time in New York, I had to develop a project from my research that I could complete over my senior year. While the OUR was open to projects that creatively displayed the results of the undergrad scholars’ work in nontraditional ways, I was drawn to exploring my research more thoroughly in a thesis titled Through the Intersection of Gender, Class, and Career: A Look at the Life and Legacy of Lucille Lortel.
Prior to my time in New York, I had read a few books on the history of Off-Broadway and the only two books written about Lortel so I would have context for the archival materials and questions to guide my research. Once I was viewing the documents and memorabilia of her life, my understanding of how Lortel impacted theatre changed as I began to see her without the perspectives of her biographers to contextualize her choices. My research began to focus on how her gender led her to be depicted in the media at various points in her career, the political elements of the shows she produced, and how her wealth attributed to her career. With these distinct categories forming, I had a solid foundation to build my thesis on.
I was extremely grateful to have Dr. Granshaw guide me through the process of applying for a BPhil as my thesis advisor. The application involved collecting the signatures of three faculty members who could speak to my work as a student, writing a plan of study, and writing a thesis prospectus to explain the concept of my research. Another early step in the process was forming my committee for the defense, which had to be comprised of two Pitt faculty members and a professor from outside of the university. Once I submitted my application, I began to outline, write, and revise the three sections of my thesis.
Writing my thesis was a complicated process that required me to rethink how I developed and structured the arguments of each section into my overall thesis. I had never previously worked on a project that encompassed so many people, events, and ideas, but through multiple revisions and discussions with Dr. Granshaw, writing such a large paper became an exciting challenge. It was an opportunity to expand on the knowledge and skills of historiography and research that I began learning in my World Theatre courses.
In March of my senior year, I finished writing my thesis and was preparing for my defense when the university moved classes online for the rest of the semester due to the pandemic. Following the decision to close campus, the Honors College decided to host BPhil defenses over Zoom calls. My defense began with a presentation that I put together giving a quick overview of my research, followed by questions from the committee. At first, defending my thesis sounded like a very intimidating process to me, but it ended up being one of my favorite experiences as an undergrad. I was able to have a serious discussion of my ideas and experiences with this project with four professors who I learned so much from. It was encouraging and constructive to hear people who I looked up to engage meaningfully with my work. After applying some feedback and reformatting my thesis to the ETD guidelines, I was able to submit it through the honors college to complete the Bachelor of Philosophy requirements.
Completing the BPhil over my senior year was difficult and required a lot of hard work but was also the most rewarding experience of my time at Pitt. I was challenged to grow as a student and researcher, to have insightful and encouraging conversations with my professors, and to take on new opportunities, like presenting a paper related to my thesis as part of the Emerging Scholars panel at the Mid-America Theatre Conference. I greatly encourage any student with a strong interest in a subject or in research to consider pursuing a Bachelor of Philosophy.
Summer Production: She Kills Monsters: Virtual Realms
Congratulations and a job well done to all the students, faculty and staff members who worked so hard to produce SKMVR this past July. The design/tech faculty and staff involved were instrumental in making this production a success and they should be recognized for their extra efforts!
Faculty and Staff Activities
Welcome to our two Visiting Assistant Professors, Jianyu Hou and Delilah Picart.
Congratulations to Assistant Professor Patrick McKelvey who is a 2020-21 Humanities Center Faculty Fellow!
Cindy Albert – after 18 years of working in the Theatre Arts Department, Cindy announced her retirement. We would like to thank Cindy for all of her years of dedication and service to the department and to the students. Through the care and instruction Cindy gave to students, they were able to discover their own talents, strengths, weaknesses and confidence. She will be greatly missed.
Eben Alguire – Eben and his wife welcomed their new baby Riley Wren in June! We send our most sincere congratulations and best wishes to the whole family! Eben also took several online rigging courses and is currently pursuing the ETCP rigging exam for certification this year. He is a member of the USITT reopening commission. Eben also co-wrote an article to be published in TD & T this summer about the process for reopening theatres. Copies will be available in the department soon.
Kyle Cameron – Kyle developed 3D Modelling skills inside of Blender and learned how to integrate Unreal Engine into a virtual production environment for greater creative freedom. He also developed and released a video game!
Cindy Croot - This summer, Cynthia Croot continued her work on “We Crossed the River” a multi-media collaboration with Dominican-American novelist Angie Cruz (author of Let It Rain Coffee, Soledad, and Dominicana) and composer Eric Moe (University of Pittsburgh), about the detention of children in camps along the U.S. border. The performance piece is slated to premiere at City of Asylum in Pittsburgh this spring. She also began a new phase of her project “Recoil,” (about gun culture, community, and what it means to be “safe,”) beginning work on an online archive to detail incarnations of the project in the US and South Africa, and exploring a new phase of the work in Lisbon, Portugal.
Gianni Downs – Gianni did some independent work this summer. He was featured in an educational video for Backstage and NYU Tisch School of the Arts, tentatively titled, “The World of Live Performance”. Gianni also taught a course for the Provost’s Academy, a weeklong intensive course focused on incoming Pell Grant-eligible students. The course was a remote drawing and painting course titled: Illustrating Nature. As a coping and skill development mechanism, Gianni averaged 1 painting a week over a 10 week period.
Karen Gilmer – Karen participated in several intimacy workshops with Intimacy Directors and Coordinators (IDC) Intimacy and COVID Intimacy in Academia.
Michelle Granshaw - Michelle Granshaw facilitated multiple online research sessions on Writing a Book Proposal, General Publications Questions, and Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book as part of the Theatre and Performance Studies conversations started by Heather Nathans, Kirsten Pullen, and Tracy Davis. She served as a mentor for the same program's one-on-one research sessions and recorded a research session with Chrystyna Dail on Turning Your Dissertation Into a Book, which is available here. In July, she served as a mentor for the American Theatre and Drama Society's and Association for Theatre in Higher Education's First Book Bootcamp. She also continued to work on her research projects in progress, including a narrative history of the fight for the right to amusement and Black Civil Rights after the Civil War and a project examining the blue humanities and nineteenth-century theatre and performance.
MK Hughes – MK worked independently as a design consultant over the summer. She also developed digital designs to be imported into a “Second Life”- a video game via google SketchUp for an online production of “Gentle Larceny” by Dr. Stephen Schrum. MK worked on set designs and virtual production options for the Valiant Theatre Chicago’s debut production of “Crisis of Faith” by Nich Radcliffe. She is also the Director of Production Design and a board member for Valiant Theatre in Chicago.
Connie Markiw – Connie spent time this summer updating the department archives so that information and photos from past productions are available on the department website. Videos and workshops have been converted and uploaded to the cloud in order to preserve the rich history of the Theatre Arts Department. She also represented the department at multiply Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council (GPAC) reorganization meetings, she also got trained on a new ticketing system that will be allow more flexibility for virtual ticketing, and updated patron contact lists in order to effectively market our upcoming productions.
Ashley Martin – Ashley completed Connected Professional Development with Pitt. She was also selected as scorer for the 2020 College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) online national scoring conference (3rd time participating, 1st time virtual event).
Patrick McKelvey - Patrick McKelvey completed a chapter of his book, Performance Requirements: Disability, Theatre, and Work in the Modern U.S. and wrote an article for a forthcoming special issue of 'The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism'.
Josh Oliver - Josh is in his second year working for Pitt Stages as a department and graduate student administrator. He manages day to day office function, scheduling, and all grad student actions.
Undergraduate Student Update
We had a number of students offered positions at nationally competitive summer theatres this year. Unfortunately, each of those internships and jobs fell through, but I wanted to list some of those here for you as it shows that our students are competing with high-end BFA students and holding their own:
Barrington Stage
Berkshire Theatre Group
Glimmerglass Opera
Oregon Shakespeare Company
PCPA
Santa Fe Opera
St. Michael’s Playhouse
ChiChi Anyanwu (theatre minor alumna) started her own talent management company in NYC. It's called "chi talent management.".
Brian Pope had his new play "Milo de Venus" read as part of Pittsburgh Public's Playtime Series.
Brendan Peifer performed in “Milo de Venus” as part of Pittsburgh Public’s Playtime. And he’s also in preproduction for the film, House of Stones, with Pittsburgh-based, Redwood Media Group.
Alexis Primus will attend the MFA program in Acting Wayne State University in Detroit.
Connor Shioshita Pickett is an official member of the Neo-Futurists in Chicago.
Maya Boyd will be starting the MFA program at University of Houston.
Graduate Program
The department welcomes two new PhD students, Alison Mahoney and José Alba Rodriguez.
Alison Mahoney completed her BA in Theatre and Gender Studies from Northwestern University and an MA in Contemporary Performance Practices from Ulster University, Magee. She is the recipient of a George J. Mitchell Scholarship and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education Winnifred Ward Award for Outstanding New Children’s Theatre Company. She has worked as an actor, playwright, director, deviser, and producer and is a co-founder and past artistic director of the Bluelaces Theater Company in New York City. Her research focuses on devised work that is shaped by the inclusion of neurodivergent performers. She also explores how the dynamics between neurodivergent audiences encountering performers who are disabled/neurodivergent and nondisabled/neurotypical impact our understandings of audience theory, immersive theatre, and disability and performance.
José Alba Rodriguez received a BS in Marketing at the West Chester University of Pennsylvania and an MA in Dramatic Writing, Theater, and Performance Studies from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. José worked as a director and playwright/screenwriter, among other roles. Their research focuses on how dramaturgical theories intersect with politics and art as a practice of freedom, especially for people facing injustice.
This summer, Nicholas Barilar made progress on his dissertation writing and research. He organized the panel “Fizzles, Flops, and Frustrations: Failure in Theatre History and Theory” for the Association of Theatre in Higher Education’s annual conference at the end of July. For the panel, he presented his paper “The Politics of Inaction: Samuel Beckett's Act Without Words I and the Algerian War.” He completed work on a book chapter that will be published in the collection Beckett Beyond the Normal this October and revised a dissertation chapter into an article.
Courtney Colligan was awarded a Humanities Engage Immersive Summer Fellowship in Pittsburgh. She worked for the Women and Girls Foundation’s social advocacy group, GirlGov, to create an innovative and creative report about the long-term effects of the GirlGov Program on its students. You can read more about Courtney’s work with GirlGov here.
Victoria LaFave was awarded a Humanities Engage Curriculum Development Opportunity Grant for creating collection-based modules for undergraduate courses. She worked on a module for the undergraduate course Enjoying Performances that puts Pitt Theatre History at the forefront of conversations about race, gender, and sexuality through the Cap and Gown Club Archive and the Kuntu Repertory Theatre Archive. The project focuses on developing a module that asks students to rethink their understanding of themselves as spectators, both presently and historically. You can read more about Victoria’s work here.
Christopher Staley trained with SITI Company for a master class and week-long intensive, Theatre Nohgaku for a month of Noh chanting, The Alexander Center of Cambridge for a week long digital retreat, and Yoga Nidra for a 25-hour long certification program towards his Yoga Alliance membership. He submitted an accepted article on Suzuki and deixis to PARtake and chapter on Fun Home and TMT to the collection Theatre and the Macabre. He was the recipient of the Japan Studies Doctoral Research Award from Pitt’s Asian Studies Center, which helped supported his summer work and training related to his dissertation. He also was awarded a Humanities Engage Pitch Your Own Summer Immersive Fellowship for an internship with the Walpole Children’s Theatre in Walpole, MA. His internship focused on grants and fundraising, archival projects, and narrating the theatre’s history. He also worked with the theatre to respond to the current moment, including their taskforce on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. You can learn more about his work here.
Graduate Alumni News
Sean Cook (MFA 2020) started working as an Instructor at the New York Film Academy in Burbank, CA.
Teisha Duncan (MFA 2018) began her position as an Artist in Residence for Acting at Skidmore College.
Christiana Molldrem Harkulich (PhD 2017) started her position as a Instructor in Theatre Arts at Eastern Illinois University.