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Departures

Two of our colleagues, Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp and Betsy Tucker are "leaving the building."

Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp is leaving her position as the Head of our Dance program.  Under Rose's energetic and aggressive leadership the dance program has grown in numbers - to well over 50 minors - and customarily 8 - 9 courses each term that are consistently oversubscribed.  During any given term the number of enrollments in dance technique, history, or various composition courses totals c. 150. 

Rose's program also featured a number of exceptional dance residencies during her tenure that included: Axis Dance, David Dorfman, and most notably the Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. 

To Rose's credit recent program review assessment of our dance program is very complimentary.  External reviewers wrote that, "The educational component of the dance minor is taken seriously. The meaning of dance and its current aesthetic is clearly established in the studies and training. The bar is set high. The students are getting excellent training and a rich outlook on dance and its importance in the development of their careers in various areas of study."

Rose also spearheaded the effort that furnished our program a new dance studio space, which is located in Mem Gym. Through the generosity of dance program patrons a portable sprung floor was installed in the mem studio.
Rose also gave birth on April 26 to Zavier, new brother of Mateo.  We wish Rose, Benoit, and the boys all the best!  Thanks, Rose, for all that you have given to the emergence and growth of UVa Dance!

Betsy Tucker is on leave until spring of 2012 when she will officially retire.
Betsy writes that she will attend her 40th college reunion in Massachusetts at the end of May, and then head to Maine and finish repairs on a smashed family cottage.  Returning to Charlottesville in July, along with husband Chip, they will pack up their belongings and first travel to Leeds, England where, in September, Betsy intends to do the Coast-to-Coast walk across the Lake District and Yorkshire with her daughter Chloe.  The Tuckers will spend 6 months in Leeds, and then off to New Zealand for another 3 - 4 months.  So, says Betsy, "... it looks like, after 37 years of college teaching, that I've taught my last course as a regularly employed professor at UVA - since upon returning from leave in spring '12 I will be officially retired from the University."

The department threw a farewell Betsy party at the Bloom's home on May 24 and here are some of the comments that friends and colleagues shared about Betsy:

Betsy is a creative, generous and collaborative director. I don’t remember if it was Chloe or Zora, but one of the Tucker daughters (when very young…) created an ABC’s for Directors. The letter “D” stood for Do It: Do it like this and Do it like that. But I can attest first hand that Betsy is not “D”- dictatorial. ...some of my [favorite productions]: Much Ado About Nothing, 12th Night (with Kate Burke), Escape from Happiness and Good Night Desdemona, Good Morning Juliet. And let’s not forget Betsy Tucker, actress, in that memorable role of Fraulein Doktor Mathilde von Zandh in The Physicists.
 
Betsy practices what she preaches. She introduced me to the use of the word “essential” as it should describe the role of theatre in society. When I was last at UVa Betsy was studying the work of Augusto Boal. I had no idea the extent to which Betsy’s work had grown over the years and how many lives her work has touched. Recent Drama Department newsletters put this in perspective for me. Betsy has made a difference. From the students who developed and performed in outreach projects to the audiences who have been empowered, moved and profoundly touched; Betsy has made a difference.  The following is from an inmate at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women:  “…it is endearing to my soul to know that there are individuals out there who realize we are still women like everybody else, just that we have made mistakes.  And that you were willing to help alleviate our time is an action I cannot praise enough.

I have been blessed to know Betsy as a colleague and a friend. I don’t feel sad yet about loosing Betsy as a colleague to retirement—maybe because I just can’t believe (yet) that Betsy will really stop working.  I have for many years admired Betsy’s elegant touch with extra-textual moments in directing plays. She finds texture in the texts that most do not. One favorite example: Love’s Labours Lost at the Barboursville ruins, where the actors created a magical space, incorporating the ruins, bushes, and trees until the entire space (all the world, you might say) became a stage. I can count on seeing any play Betsy directs in new ways.

I’ve delighted over the years in Betsy’s superbly intelligent direction of Stoppard  (The Real Thing was the real thing; her Arcadia was heartstoppingly good) and Churchill (I saw both of her excellent Cloud Nines).  And let’s not forget Shakespeare: standing out in my memory are a cheerful Much Ado, an anarchic Midsummer Night’s Dream, a witty As You Like It (with wandering Cupid) and most triumphantly, her minimalist Twelfth Night with Mardi Gras trimmings. The best tribute for the last mentioned actually came from a not particularly theater-steeped friend who saw it with me; loudly praising the play, he innocently remarked, “It’s even better than this fancy Midsummer Night’s Dream I once saw.  It had trapezes.”  Yes, she’d outdone Peter Brook.

...and one of my favorite takes on Betsy submitted by a colleague -
Student to Betsy:  "You should be more nurturing!"
Betsy to Student:  "I nurture at home.  At school I teach."

Betsy writes that she is particularly pleased with the projects the class of '11 M.F.A. actors completed for their Community Outreach course.  The course met in the fall, but the majority of students elected to complete their projects in this spring.  
Projects the eight actors undertook include, theatre workshops with the Boys and Girls Club, reading at the Barrett Early Education Center, work with Recording for the Blind, interviewing and creating a film about a woman with Alzheimer’s, interviewing and performing the experiences of parents of LGBT’s, sharing in performance interviews with returning Vets, volunteering with PACEM (our homeless shelter), collecting stories from elders at a nursing home, theatre workshops with children at the Salvation Army, supporting the work of the Voice Project at Fluvanna Women’s Correctional Facility, and Playback Theatre sessions with a mental health organization and with cadets at VMI.

In addition, she's also proud of the work that Napoleon Tavale, Alex Grubbs, and Kate Burke contributed in the “End of Life Project” for two Medical Center Hours in February.  This project is a spin-off of Brian Dorries’ Theatre of War/Philoctetes Project, for which she was, as with last year’s work with the Philoctetes Project, the Associate Director in Charlottesville with Brian Dorries.  Both of these nationally recognized projects use dramatically read scenes from translations of Sophocles’ plays to focus the audience on, in this case, pain and dying.  The scenes are performed in a (passionate) stage reading--this year to a rapt audience of Medical School residents and nurses--and a discussion of their responses patients’ suffering, pain and dying was moderated by Mr. Dorries after.  In both of the last two years this has proved a very dynamic theatre model for invoking deeply felt discussion in the audience.  Check out the projects on http://www.philoctetesproject.org/  (look at the top, too, for “Our Other Productions”).

Perhaps we can take small consolation in the fact the Betsy will return to C-ville, spring '12 - when we're anticipating that she'll be available for a call to direct or teach - or, perhaps, even act in a department production!  Last words from Betsy:
Happy Trails to all! (but, let’s do meet again).

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