Category Archives: Theater

Professor Chiment creates dead body for crime scene at Fox event

Professor Marie Chiment and the gunshot victim she created for a Department of Legal Studies event.

With only a head and hands (and no budget) Chiment had to get creative when she built the body.

Wrapped in fiber fluff, the tubes and boxes make a pretty good torso.

The Theater Department is on the receiving end of a lot of strange requests.

One came early this summer that Professor Marie Chiment couldn’t ignore — the Fox School of Business’ Department of Legal Studies needed a dead body.

On Aug. 1, Professor Samuel Hodge will lead members of the Pennsylvania Bar Association through a crime scene investigation as part of its continuing education program.

“Dr. Hodge and I have created a based-on-real-life crime scene that we will be using as a springboard for a more general discussion of how a murder investigation is handled, from the homicide through to trial,” says Legal Studies Administrative Coordinator Nicole Saitta.

With Chiment’s dummy in the starring role, the attendees will be able to examine the crime scene at the event and view a video that recreates the scene as well.

A Playwright’s Clues

Chiment, a big fan of crime dramas, stepped up to the challenge. She uses crime scene investigation techniques in one of her design classes (which she’s dubbed “DSI: Design Scene Investigation”).

“A playwright, when they’re writing a play, they’re dropping clues,” she says. “So as a designer, I search for clues.”

As part of the design class, Chiment provides her students with the first couple of pages of a play and has them design a set and costumes using only the scripted dialogue.

For the crime scene project, Chiment put into practice the techniques she teaches. She was told that a young white male was found dead in an alley of a gunshot wound to the right temple – and that “the rats had gotten to him.”

Collecting Body Parts

Assistant Technical Director Marka Suber pulled a head and hands from Temple Theaters’ stock of props. Chiment built the body from items she found around her house – delivery boxes, paper towel rolls and plenty of fiber fluff to make it humanlike. What resulted is a six-foot male dressed in a hoodie, jeans and Converse sneakers, who ended up on the wrong end of a handgun.

She tapped into the knowledge of a make-up artist for advice on how to build a realistic gunshot wound, and studied the wounds she saw on TV crime shows.

Chiment says the biggest challenge was mimicking the nuances of a human skeleton – making sure the joints are bent at a realistic angle and that everything is proportional. She ensured everything was sewn together so the body will remain intact on its trip to the event.

“I do get to do some interesting things in my profession,” she says.

SCT announces 2012 faculty awards

The School of Communications and Theater honored four faculty members at its May 1 faculty assembly.

Associate Professor Gregg Feistman, Strategic Communication, Service Award

Associate Professor Christopher Harper, Journalism, Creative Award

Associate Professor Donnalyn Pompper, Strategic Communication, Research Award

Associate Professor Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, Theater, Service Award

Owls flock to Arden Theatre stage in recent show

During the Arden Theatre Company’s recent run of Clybourne Park, the 2nd Street venue could have been renamed “Temple Theaters South.”

The show, which ran from Jan. 26 to March 25, was directed by Assistant Professor Ed Sobel and starred Associate Professor David Ingram; Josh Tower, THEA ’95, and former theater student Maggie Lakis.

Watch the SCT-ers involved in the production talk about performing in Philadelphia and how the Theater Department prepares its students for the professional world.

Video by Ryan Geffert

Clybourne Park footage courtesy of Jorge Cousineau and Arden Theatre Company

Associate Professor Williams-Witherspoon publishes textbook

Continuing the work from her earlier book, Associate Professor Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon, THEA, has written Through Smiles and Tears: The History of African American Theater (Lambert Academic Publishing, 2011), which offers a much needed contextualization of West, East and South African performance traditions. From the development of musical instruments, to the creation of song styles and cadence, to the playful comic parody that would serve as modest entertainment for hundreds of thousands of Negroes in the plantation quarters of the South, this text seeks to shed light on the rich history and tradition of African American Theater. It is a follow-up to her The Secret Messages in African American Theater: Hidden Meanings Embedded in Public Discourse (Edwin Mellen, 2006).

Providing a rare analysis into the political economy of African American performance traditions, Williams-Witherspoon’s book offers a unique addition to the American Theater canon. For students of theater, anthropology, Africana and African American studies, this text offers a more in-depth history of African American theater, its African retentions and its contributions to American theater and popular culture.

SCT alumni, faculty earn Barrymore glory

Six Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre went to Temple University School of Communications alumni and faculty Oct. 2. The awards are presented annually by the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia.

The SCT winners are:

OUTSTANDING OVERALL PRODUCTION OF A MUSICAL
The Flea and the Professor — Arden Theatre Company
(Assistant Professor Ed Sobel is associate artistic director)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A PLAY
James Ijames, THEA ’06 — Superior Donuts — Arden Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Krista Apple, THEA ’09 — In the Next Room, or the vibrator play — The Wilma Theater

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE IN A PLAY
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play — The Wilma Theater
(featured former student Kate Czajkowski; Krista Apple, THEA ’09; and Luigi Sottile, THEA ’07)

F. OTTO HAAS AWARD FOR AN EMERGING PHILADELPHIA THEATRE ARTIST
James Ijames, THEA ’06

TED AND STEVIE WOLF AWARD FOR NEW APPROACHES TO COLLABORATIONS
Adjunct Professor Robert Smythe and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia — Stravinsky’s l’Histoire du Soldat — Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

SCT alumni, faculty earn Barrymore glory

The SCT winners are:

OUTSTANDING OVERALL PRODUCTION OF A MUSICAL
The Flea and the Professor — Arden Theatre Company
(Assistant Professor Ed Sobel is associate artistic director)

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A PLAY
James Ijames, THEA ’06 — Superior Donuts — Arden Theatre Company

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A PLAY
Krista Apple, THEA ’09 — In the Next Room, or the vibrator play — The Wilma Theater

OUTSTANDING ENSEMBLE IN A PLAY
In the Next Room, or the vibrator play — The Wilma Theater
(featured former student Kate Czajkowski; Krista Apple, THEA ’09; and Luigi Sottile, THEA ’07)

F. OTTO HAAS AWARD FOR AN EMERGING PHILADELPHIA THEATRE ARTIST
James Ijames, THEA ’06

Theater professors’ shows rank among Philly’s best — Philadelphia Weekly

Philadelphia Weekly writer J. Cooper Robb ranked his top ten shows from the 2010-11 Philadelphia theater season.

Among them were [title of show], staged by Mauckingbird Theatre Company, of which Assistant Professor Peter Reynolds is the co-founder and artistic director, and Superior Donuts, directed by Assistant Professor Ed Sobel at Arden Theatre Company.

Click here to read the full story.

Original play featured at Equality Forum

It started with a simple observation.

Peter Reynolds, assistant professor of theater, heard how his students discussed sexuality — in all its forms –with one another. They were conversations that he never experienced when he was in college.

“I sensed a difference in their attitude toward queerness,” he says.

The conversations were open and not enveloped by social stigma. It was a phenomenon that Reynolds wanted to explore creatively.

He teamed up with Associate Professor Scott Gratson, STRC, and together, they received a seed grant from Temple’s Office of the Provost to create a play about today’s young LGBT community.

The result is que[e]ry, which was featured April 29 at the Equality Forum, a global LGBT summit held in Philadelphia each year, in Gershman Hall, 401 S. Broad St. It ran on campus from March 13 to 15.

Reynolds, who directed the show, cast an ensemble of 21 students with no script and only a perception of what the resulting show would be, which he says was equally exciting and horrifying. Over the next four months, the ensemble members shared their own stories and interviewed others to create the script from scratch.

“What I found out was that there is just as much hatred, bigotry and violence as when I was in school,” he says.

The show consists of more than a dozen vignettes based on real-life experiences. None of the actors tell their own stories – Reynolds says the rehearsal process revealed that the scenes were more powerful when approached from the outside as an actor. All of the pieces were anonymously submitted by students and performed by other students in the ensemble.

Calvin Atkinson, a junior theater major, says the rehearsal process was unlike any other he experienced.

“The first time I saw [the piece I wrote], it was really strange,” he says. The actor went a different direction than what Atkinson truly had experienced. While at first taken aback, he soon was comforted by the separation of the piece from true life. “It’s not necessarily about my exact feelings being transferred to the stage,” he says. “But it keeps my story alive.”

On the opposite side, Atkinson says the first time he performed a piece he knew someone in the room had written was intimidating; he hoped he did it justice. “My monologue was a very true experience. It was so specific and had a strong character,” he says.

While some of the stories touch on dark issues, the students made sure to include a lot of humor into the show.

“We didn’t want it to be The Laramie Project,” says Cody Long, a religion major in the ensemble. “This is not a pity party about bullying or about hate crimes. We do make mistakes and have a variety of experiences that aren’t all bad.”

Julia Freeman, a sophomore majoring in theater and Spanish, calls que[e]ry one of the most collaborative efforts in which she has ever played a part. “Every single person involved in the production was more involved with the greater good of the production rather than the greater good of their career,” she says. “This was our baby.”

When parts of the script weren’t working as a fluid aspect of the show, cuts were made and no one left with injured egos.

Gratson says the stage is a powerful tool to deliver the messages behind que[e]ry.

“Theater provides a platform for audiences to see [this] narrative brought to life,” Gratson says. “Also, theater allows for students to emerge as true citizen artists, giving voice to an important and growing movement in the United States. That voice, especially when coupled with the multimediated motifs that we included, really is accentuated through theater.”

It’s not just the audiences that have learned lessons from que[e]ry.

“I learned that I never cease to be amazed at the ability of our students. The students involved in this production came to the piece from throughout the university. They had a chance to not only work with other students from fields that were atypical of their usual studies but got to learn about an important part of human identity,” Gratson says. “The complexity of that identity and the dedication that our students have to better understand it — that was a lesson well-learned. Coupled with their drive toward achieving true inclusion and understanding of the queer community, this really became an amazing experience.”

Watch ensemble member Craig Bazan discuss the show on The 10! Show

Theater faculty help define dramaturgy — Philadelphia Inquirer

One of the most misunderstood roles in theater, Inquirer Theater Critic Howard Shapiro tries to get a grasp on a dramaturg’s role in a production. He asked Assistant Professors Ed Sobel and Peter Reynolds to help.

“Probably if you asked 50 different dramaturgs, you’d get 50 different answers,” Sobel says. “Because the role can be so undefined, it allows a lot of latitude for doing it well and a lot of latitude for doing it badly.”

Click here to read the full story.

Professor Sloan publishes book chapter on drama and counterterrorism training

Simulations are a key component in counterterrorism training, but they’re most effective when they are teeming with realism.

So when counterterrorism expert Stephen Sloan co-authored his latest book on the subject, “Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training,” he asked his wife, Professor Roberta Sloan, THEA, to write a chapter on the vital role dramatic techniques can play in the creation of believable role-playing.

“It’s important because if the personnel playing terrorists are not convincing, then the reality of the exercise is diminished and the training is not as professional and productive as it should be,” she says. “My chapter is a mini-manual on what, if you are not an actor, you need to do in order to portray a terrorist convincingly.”

For example, a terrorist from a Middle Eastern culture would have a far smaller personal space than an American. “That person, indeed, may stand close enough so that their breath goes into the other person’s face when speaking,” Sloan says.

It’s the attention to details like posture, stance, movement, or even ways of eating that help make the situation seem real. However, Sloan doesn’t expect participants to master the art of acting for this part of their job. “When I think of mastery in acting, that takes years and years of work,” she says.

Since his first book in 1981, “Simulating Terrorism,” Stephen Sloan has conducted simulations all over the world for police and military personnel; Roberta Sloan has participated in two of them.

“That was enough for me,” she says. “After all, I’m an actress myself and really get into my roles, so I found that playing a terrorist was ultimately very upsetting to me.”

Sloan hopes her chapter, lauded by reviewers for its “innovative approach,” will result in security personnel “being better trained to defend our nation against the ongoing threat of terrorism.”

“Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training,” published by University of Oklahoma Press and co-authored by Robert J. Bunker, will be released in May 2011. It includes a forward by David Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma, a former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.