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| UMass Profile: Stage Presence |
Amongsat the thousands of people chasing their theater dreams in New York City, it seems that UMass alumni always find each other.
Take voice-coach Kate Wilson ’89, who teaches at Juilliard in addition to working in professional theater. In a letter to theater faculty last fall, Wilson said that not least among the blessings of UMass has been her membership in a network of artists she continues to work with today.
Wilson’s two latest projects, Shakespeare’s Othello and The Glory of Living by Rebecca Gilman, were cases in point. Glory featured theater alumnus Jeffrey Donovan ’91 in a starring role; Othello employed Rick Desroches ’89G as dramaturg, and former students John Dias as executive producer and Susan Goulet as lighting designer. Hampshire College alumna Liev Schreiber, who frequently performed in UMass productions, played one of the leading roles.
“It seems there are alums at every turn,” wrote Wilson, and this winter, during a quick dinner before a performance of The Glory of Living, she and Donovan theorized on why that is. They laid the credit at the feet of the department’s faculty.
“They prepared us well,” said Wilson. Students were taught to collaborate, be flexible, and realize that there’s more than one kind of theater, she said.
For Donovan, UMass theater faculty were masters of “thinking outside the box.” He recalled a class in dramaturgy – that area of theater concerned with text, context, and research – in which professor emerita Virginia Scott asked students to create a movie storyboard for a scene from The Merchant of Venice. The exercise got them thinking completely differently about the play, said Donovan.
It was that 1989 production of Merchant at UMass, where she shared acting credits with Donovan and Schreiber, that set Wilson on the road to coaching voice. When she’d declared her UMass theater major, with a double major in
English, she was leaning toward costume design. While she loved acting, her “big break” in Merchant was a happy accident: She learned the part of the wise advocate, Portia, to help a friend, and ended up walking off with the role.
Though she loved playing Portia, said Wilson, the experience confirmed that she wasn’t an actor in the way her friends were: “Jeff and Liev were naturals with that language,” she said. When she asked herself what she really wanted to do in theater, the question became, “How do I marry my love for acting with my love for literature?” The answer was helping actors work with words.
In The Glory of Living, Wilson said, the challenge was helping actors with the words of characters who have real trouble saying what they mean.
“Rebecca wrote people who want to communicate but can’t,” said Wilson. “Their voice and face are shut down.”
Donovan agreed. His role in Glory was that of serial killer who marries a 15-year-old girl (played by Oscar-winner Anna Paquin in her stage debut). Preparing for this complicated part required all the flexibility of outlook his teachers at UMass instilled in him. Part of his preparation was a trip to rural Tennessee.
“It’s a very interesting part of the country,” he said. “People are very unexpressive. There’s very much of a stillness in their demeanor.”
“I’d be lying if I said I blended in,” added Donovan, as Wilson smiled sympathetically. But as makers of theater these alumni seem to have nailed it. Glory of Living and Donovan’s performance received positive reviews from, among others, Playbill and The New York Times.
Jeffrey with Kate Wilson (Click for full size image)
END
Spring, 2002 - article courtesy of UMass Magazine
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THURSDAYS
