Dear Iowa Theatre Alumni and Friends:

The semester is in full swing, and we’ve already had an enriching array of events and performances. Below you will find updates from summer and the beginning of our fall semester.   

We’ve just closed our first mainstage production of the season, Shakespeare’s Macbeth directed by Mary Mayo. The production is part of Iowa Celebrates Shakespeare @ 400, a campus wide celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio – the collected edition of his works, and the first publication of plays including Macbeth. Please view the fantastic photos from our hauntingly resonant rendition of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy.  

We genuinely love staying connected with our alumni and we are eager to hear your updates. If you have news to share about your accomplishments or the work of a fellow Iowa Theatre grad, please let us know.  

Warmly,

Mary Beth Easley

Chair of the Department of Theatre Arts

Associate Professor, Head of Directing

The Space Between Coke Bottles and Orange Slices

By Nat Payán
 Oct 27 to Oct 28, 2023
 Alan MacVey Theatre

Men on Boats

By Jaclyn Backhaus
Nov 3 to Nov 11, 2023

Directed by Mary Beth Easley
David Thayer Theatre

Brother, Brother

By Sixtus Chetachi Igbokwe
 Nov 16 to Nov 18, 2023
 Alan MacVey Theatre

Macbeth Photo Gallary

Shakespeare's Macbeth, presented October 6-14, 2023 in E.C. Mabie Theatre

CLICK TO VIEW PHOTO GALLARY

Departmental News

• Isaac Addai (MFA, Acting) and Xiaoyan Kang (MFA, Playwriting) are both recipients of the Stanley Award for International Research. Addai’s research project, Sankofa, explores historical Ghanaian artifacts housed at the Stanley Museum of Art to uncover what these artifacts offer to both Addai’s personal sense of identity as well as the greater African and Black community in Iowa City and the United States. Kang will be using The Stanley Award to conduct research for her new play, The Words of Ants, which revolves around the last natural inheritor of Nüshu, a syllabic script used exclusively among women in China’s Jiangyong county. READ MORE.  

• On June 21-23, 2023, Cheta Igbokwe’s (MFA, Playwriting) new play, Awele, premiered at The Arts Theatre of The University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Igbokwe’s play follows the premise that life is a marketplace of bargains. Two discarnate figures, set for rebirth after an unfulfilled first life, stand before Awele, the goddess of rebirth and fortunes, to negotiate their way into an upper class for their second coming on earth. The play, Awele, is an allegory of bargains, choices, unrequited love and is a reimagining of Ilo-Uwa in Igbo thought.  

• Cheta Igbokwe’s play, Homecoming, was chosen as one of 11 plays on the longlist for the Nigerian Prize for Literature (NPL), Africa’s most prestigious literary prize. Homecoming revolves around Nwakibe and Adannaya Echeruo, a couple desperately seeking their missing son, Nebeolisa, as their journey intertwines with the endeavors of a writer. On August 6th, 2023, the Committee for Relevant Art (CORA) held the CORA-NPL Book Party at the Shell Hall of the MUSON Centre in Lagos, Nigeria as a tribute to the eleven playwrights longlisted for this distinction. READ MORE.  

• From August 28 to September 2, we hosted Ida Beam Distinguished Professor Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates. On August 31st, she delivered a lecture “From Shakespeare to Shange,” drawing upon her personal stories to enact a methodology she’s developed throughout her career to facilitate self-actualization and self-determination for the creative, performing artist. During her time on campus, Dr. Pettiford-Wates and her colleague, Olisa Enrico, also worked with the cast of the fall production of Macbeth. 

Alumni News

Help us celebrate the exciting work being done by Department of Theatre Arts alumni!

• Lost in the In-Between: Graduating into 2020, the first film made by University of Iowa students produced by the Daily Iowan Documentary Workshop, premiered at FilmScene last spring. Clara Reynan (2020 BA) is among the four UI Class of 2020 graduates featured in the documentary. READ MORE. 

• Bo Frazier (2020 MFA, Directing) is now working as associate marketing director at Baltimore Center Stage. 

• Joniece Abbott-Pratt (2006 MFA) starred in 'shadow/land’ at The Public Theatre in Manhattan. The New York Times reviewer said she and her costar Lizan Mitchell “embody the push and pull of a mother-daughter bond with captivating ease and grace.” READ THE REVIEW. 

Joniece Abbott-Pratt and Co-Star in "Shadow/land," image from NYT Article

• Amy Rodriguez (2021 BA) will be touring with HAIRSPRAY, Broadway’s Tony Award-winning musical comedy. Director Jack O’Brien and Choreographer Jerry Mitchel reunite to bring the show to new audiences. The touring production will be stopping at Hancher from February 23-25, to purchase tickets please follow this link.  

• Mark Fite (BA 1985) continues to survive in Los Angeles as an actor and comedian and is currently starring as Toni Martini in The Tony Martini Variety Hour, a long-running resident hit at notorious Hollywood hangout, The Three Clubs. Fite has worked with some of the most notable theatre companies in Los Angeles, including The Actors’ Gang, Theater of NOTE, and The Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival. Fite is also a founding member of the semi-legendary LA based comedy group, 2 Headed Dog, and has performed at The Comedy Store, The Improve, Upright Citizens Brigade, Festival Supreme, The Comedy Festival in Las Vegas, and San Francisco Sketchfest.

• Molly Brown (2015 BA) was a leading role in the film Bloody Axe Wound and has been contracted for a supporting role in a film called Mooch

• The University of Iowa’s new commercial features voice-over by Virginia Wangechi Muturi (2023 BA). The commercial has a prime spot during Hawkeye football games where Muturi highlights the great arts opportunities on campus. READ MORE.

Congrats to recent graduate Virginia Wangechi Muturi!

• Since 2017, David Coffman (1993 MFA) has been acting as Production Manager at Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture in San Francisco. Coffman has previously held the same position at San Francisco Opera’s Young Artist and national touring company for five years. 

• Julie Gale (MFA 2006, Dramaturgy) was named as Director of Education & Family Programs at Utah Film Center, a non-profit organization that serves the state of Utah public school system with Media Literacy and Media Arts Education for K-12 students. Gale is also the Festival Director for the Tumbleweeds Film Festival, the only kids film festival in the Mountain West. 

• Kenneth Collins (MFA 2023, Directing) will be performing at this year’s PRELUDE Festival at the Cuny Graduate Center. The annual PRELUDE festival is dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theatre, dance, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance. Collins will be performing a short excerpt STANDING ON THE UNSEEN SPIRALS OF THE VORTEX, a new work in progress by Temporary Distortion. Collins will also be moderating a panel discussion on AI in performance that he has organized with Laurie Anderson, Annie Dorsen, Andrew Scoville, and Marianne Weems. READ MORE. 

Please submit your alumni news here for possible inclusion on our social media, in future e-newsletters, and/or on the Department of Theatre Arts website.

Faculty News

• Lisa Schlesinger’s chamber opera, Ruinous Gods: Suites for Sleeping Children was previewed in the New York Times. The project, commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, centers on the experiences of displaced children grappling with resignation syndrome, a traumatic response to displacement. Schlesinger is working with composer Layale Chaker to explore the realm of opera as an imaginative space for empowerment. The collaboration is set to premiere at the 2024 Spoleto Festival. READ MORE.    

• This December, Schlesinger’s play Iphigenia Point Blank: Story of the First Refugee (which we presented in our 2018-19 season) will have its New York premiere. Iphigenia Point Blank: The Story of the First Refugee is an immersive theatre experience fusing together documentary film, live music, theatre and dance. This work is a culmination of a multiyear collaboration between award-winning artists from Syria, Lebanon, Greece, France, Russia, Iran, Iraq and the USA. 

Lisa Schlesinger and Layale Chaker collaborate on Ruinous Gods.

• Johanna Kasimow was accepted into the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Summer Institute for Higher Education Faculty. The two-week professional development program on “Preserving and Transmitting American Ensemble-Based Devised Theatre” occurred from June 5-16, 2023 in Philadelphia. READ MORE. 

• Jennifer Buckley guest edited the special issue of Modern Drama, "Teaching Modern Drama," which was published in June 2023. This special edition of Modern Drama contains valuable articles about pedagogical concerns, decolonizing curriculum, navigating classroom conversations, and much more. 

• Mark Bruckner has written the score and designed the ambisonics soundscape for "Body Concert," a work for puppeteer and large form sculptural puppets by Kevin Augustine of New York's Lone Wolf Tribe. “Body Concert” will be performed in two International Puppet Festivals in Europe this fall. First Bruckner’s work will be featured in "Three Are Too Many, Two Not Enough” in Plovdiv, Bulgaria on September 3^rd; then at the "Puppet is a Human Too 2023" festival in Warsaw Poland in October.