Kate Burke, Associate Professor, Voice, Speech, and Acting attended design meetings in March at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI, prior to coaching Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure and The Matchmaker this summer.

Her article "Help for Monticello Guides" appeared in The VASTA Voice (Vol. 2, Issue 1), the e-newsletter of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Inc. (VASTA).
Kate appeared in the Heritage Rep production of Lettice and Lovage last summer.

Bob Chapel, Professor, taught workshops in American Musical Theatre performance  at two academies in Moscow in September, and directed The Laramie Project  at the University of Michigan in October/November;  his production of She Stoops To Conquer at the University of Tasmania's School of Visual and Performing Arts in Launceston opened May 10. He will return for his 20th summer with Heritage Repertory Theatre this summer, producing five shows as well as directing South Pacific and Sunday in the Park with George. Next November/December will find him back in Moscow directing an American musical (sung in English and spoken in Russian) at The Russian Academy of Theatre Arts.  In the spring of 2007 Bob has been invited to direct Arthur Miller’s stage play, Playing for Time, based on the teleplay of the same title.  The play will be the inaugural production of the University of Michigan’s new Arthur Miller Theatre.

Betsy Rudelich Tucker, Assistant Professor, Acting and Directing, reports that her post show "Forums" between audiences and characters in her most recent U.Va production, Luminosity, were a successful experiment.  She invites you to to look up lauriebrooks.com on line, and try your own.

Most audiences were delighted with the chance to talk back to the characters and to reflect in this structured way on some of the play's issues.   The Forums enriched the production, which night by night matured in ideological and character depth, as well as in the more predictable performance ways.

Richard Warner, Professor, Acting, will be directing Steel Magnolias for St. Michael's Playhouse in Burlington VT this summer. His professional cast will be led by Judith Reagan.

Richard appeared in Rounding Third and The Price for the Heritage Repertory Theatre last summer.

R. Lee Kennedy, Associate Professor, Lighting Design, recently lit the dark comedy Cul-de-sac, a new off Broadway play by Tony Nominated actor/playwright John Carianni. Produced by Transport Group, the play was directed by Jack Cummings (MFA 1996) and stars Robyn Hussa (MFA 1996), Monica Russell (MFA 1996), and James Weber (MFA 1996). Costume design was by former U.V. drama faculty member Kathryn Rohe and  scenic design was by Sandra Goldmark who recently married Michael Banta (BA 1996).

John Frick, Theatre History and Dramatic Literature, has recently published "The City Mysteries Play on the Antebellum Stage: Investigating the "Wicked City Motif," New Theatre Quarterly; "Monday the Herald; Tuesday the Victoria: (Re)packaging and (Re)presenting the Celebrated and the Notorious on the Variety Stage." Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film;   and his two most recent articles, "A New Look at an Old Play:  Re-reading Royall Tyler's The Contrast," and "Not From the Drowsy Pulpit: The Moral Reform Melodrama on the Nineteenth Century Stage," are awaiting publication in The New England Theatre Journal and Theatre Symposium respectively.  His book reviews have appeared recently in The Drama Review, Theatre Journal, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film and The American Historical Review.  LaVahn Hoh included two of John's articles on his “Circus in America” Website.    John is the incoming President of the American Theatre and Dramatic Society and his most recent book, Theatre,  Culture and Temperance Reform in Nineteenth-Century America was named a 2005  Winner of CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles.  In Spring 2007, John will be on sabbatical leave to conduct research in London on his current book, The Theatre and the City: Representations of the Metropolis on the American Stage, and for a paper on stage adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin that he will present at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Connecticut in June 2007.