Faculty News, Fall 2005

Kate Burke appeared as Lotte in the '05 Heritage Repertory Theatre production of Lettice and Lovage. For the third annual Blackfriars Shakespeare Conference at the Staunton, VA American Shakespeare Center she offered a workshop, "Fearless Shakespeare," which united 40 Shakespeare scholars and actors in an exuberant display of risky text exercises. Kate also gathered a troupe of 20 actors to present a 24-hour marathon performance created from stories of encounters with cancer, "Time to Tell Our Stories," for the '05 American Cancer Society Charlottesville Relay for Life. Coverage of the event was included in Dean Ed Ayers's Liberal Arts e-newsletter and Inside UVa.

Professor Bob Chapel has spent the fall semester on leave, having stepped down as chair after fifteen years in that position. He was a guest of the U.S. Speakers and Specialists Program, supported by the U. S. Embassy in Moscow where he taught the performance American Musical Theatre songs in English to Russian university students at the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts (GITIS) and the Cinematography Institute (VGIK) during the month of September and then spent October and November in Ann Arbor, Michigan where he directed "The Laramie Project" for the U-M Department of Theatre and Drama. In February, we will be going to Launceston, Tasmania where he will be directing "She Stoops To Conquer" for the University of Tasmania's Academy of Arts in Launceston. He will return to Charlottesville in May, 2006 to begin his 20th summer with the Heritage Repertory Theatre, his 12th as its Producing Artistic Director.
In the fall, 2006, he will return as Professor and stage director for UVA's Department of Drama, with an emphasis in musical theatre.

John Frick reports that his most recent book, Theatre, Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-century America (Cambridge University Press) was released in 2003. He also published "The City Mysteries Play on the Antebellum Stage: Investigating the "Wicked City Motif" in New Theatre Quarterly; "Monday the Herald; Tuesday the Victoria: (Re)packaging and (Re)presenting the Celebrated and the Notorious on the Variety Stage" in Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film; "Representations of Temperance in Drama" in Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History; and entries on Vaudeville and Burlesque in the Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Frick has book reviews pending in The Drama Review, The American Historical Review and Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film and an entry on "Langdon Mitchell and The New York Idea" is forthcoming in the Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. Frick is the President-elect of the American Theatre and Drama Society and is currently serving as that society's Vice President.

Gweneth West's costume designs for the Heritage Repertory Theatre’s Ragtime were selected for World Stage Design Gallery Exhibition, 2005 -- an international juried exhibition of set, costume, lighting & sound. Of the 244 costume designers from 43 countries, 55 were selected for the WSD Gallery Exhibition. Gweneth was one of the seventeen selected from the United States.

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