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News From The Chair
by Tom Bloom, Chair, Associate Professor, Scenic Design
tab4p@virginia.edu
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 Tom Bloom |
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How quickly a term flies by! We're already halfway through our production season, having just closed A Midsummer Night's Dream. As I look back on the last three months I'm amazed by what we've collectively or individually accomplished and by the accolades colleagues have received. Let me cite a few:
- Professor John Frick was the 2010 recipient of the Betty Jean Jones Award for Outstanding Teacher of American Theatre and Drama presented by the American Theatre and Drama Society.
- Associate Professor Lee Kennedy received the 2010 Barrymore Award, Philadelphia theatre's equivalent of the Tony award, for outstanding lighting design for his lighting design of The Light in the Piazza.
- Associate Professor Kate Burke arranged and moderated a symposium entitled, "Encountering the Other: The Irish Traveller," which was part of the RecentWorks Series production of By the Bog of Cats.
- The Department welcomed Brendon Fox - guest director of A Midsummer Night's Dream. From 1998 - 2005 Brendon was the Associate Director at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, directing 1 to 2 productions per year including an acclaimed production of Much Ado About Nothing with Billy Campbell and Dana Delany.
- Along with our department’s Technical Director Steven Warner and designer Michael Allen (MFA, '93), I was awarded a sponsored grant project to join with Texas based company Signature Science in designing, constructing, and fabricating life-like theatrical features as part of Signature Science's mission rehearsal business.
The BIG event of the fall was the October 21st groundbreaking ceremony for the Ruth Caplin Theatre. Donors Mortimer and Ruth Caplin were in attendance at the ceremony. In her remarks University President Teresa A. Sullivan said that the "The Caplins' gift is a reflection of their desire to assist the University in raising the profile of the performing arts here, as well as their great love of the fine and performing arts."
The Caplin Thrust stage features a unique audience-to-stage relationship set within an intimate and dynamic performance space, and will accommodate drama, dance and film. Of late, along with colleague and Thrust Theatre Steering Committee member LaVahn Hoh, we're engaged in the final planning stages for the theatre, in anticipation of major construction beginning early spring 2011 and occupancy scheduled for early summer 2012. (Read more at U.Va. Today)
Pictured left to right: John O. Wynne, the University’s Rector; Meredith Jung-En Woo, Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; John T. Casteen III, President Emeritus of the University of Virginia; Elizabeth Hutton Turner, Vice Provost for the Arts; Mortimer Caplin; Ruth Caplin; and Teresa A. Sullivan, President of the University of Virginia.
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