If you’ve ever seen a performance of a play by William Shakespeare, you know what a complexity of human themes and emotions it explores and why audiences find the Bard’s work as compelling now as they first did over 400 years ago. So universal is the appeal of Shakespeare’s work that it inspired the creation
Last week’s trip to Utah proved very rewarding for a group of more than two dozen Chapman Theatre majors competing in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival (KCACTF) – Region VIII. Students representing schools from Arizona, Central and Southern California, Hawaii, Southern Nevada, and Utah came together for the five-day event at Dixie State
The annual Henry Kemp-Blair Shakespeare Festival and Tournament is hosted every February by Chapman University’s Department of Theatre. Now in its 40th year, the Festival’s goal is to provide high school students with an opportunity to experience and learn more about performing Shakespeare. The Festival focuses on education, offering presentations and workshops
Once in a while, college theatre students have an opportunity to perform in a heavyweight Shakespearean classic. But rarely do they have the chance to be directed by a regional icon of the genre and in a performance of what’s arguably regarded as a touchstone for English literature. For the past four weeks, Chapman
This week, 26 Chapman University theatre majors will attend the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival ’s (KCACTF) regional competition in St. George, Utah. The festival, which runs February 10-14 at Dixie State University, features competitions in playwriting, devised theatre and acting, along with scholarship and awards programs. In addition, festival participants have the opportunity
Chapman University alumnus and adjunct professor Nicholas C. Avila,’01 has returned to campus to direct the upcoming production of Anna in the Tropics, the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Nilo Cruz (Waltmar Theatre, November 6-8 and 13-15, 2014). Above: Juan Julian (Donathan Walters ’14, right) brings the troubled marriage of Conchita (Zoe Donnell ’14, center) and Palomo (Cristian Guerrero ’14,
The afterlife of The Mikado — Gilbert and Sullivan’s famed operetta of 1885 — is a fascinating one. The original, of course, was vastly successful — the production at London’s Savoy Theatre ran for 672 performances, and the operetta went on to be produced by at least 150 opera companies throughout Europe and the United States
During the 2014 spring term, award-winning playwright José Cruz González and South Coast Repertory’s Project Engagement Director Sara Guerrero visited Dr. Theresa Dudeck’s Theatre for Social Change class to talk with students and invited faculty about their ambitious Dialogue/Diálogos project underway with the Santa Ana Community. This community-based, two-year theatre project gathered the stories and
Oscar Wilde is famously known for saying: “I regard the theater as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another these sense of what it is to be a human being.” There is something about the spirit of theater that continues to capture the
Inspired by the infamous 1927 murder trial of spouse killer Ruth Snyder, Machinal is the powerful tale of one woman’s isolation in a life that’s been entirely decided for her. Snyder is trapped first in a dead-end job, then forced to marry her boss and have a baby with him. But when she begins to discover her