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I hope your Fall 2023 semester is coming to a gentle end. The department has been busy this fall and I know we are all ready to rest and recharge over the break.
This fall we launched our new musical theatre program in collaboration with the Music and Dance departments at ACC. In fact, we got so excited about the new degree; we did a show, and as Riverbats, we decided to lean into our brand. Our fall production, Bat Boy the Musical, directed by Professor Jamie Rogers, played to full houses for three weeks this past October. It was a fantastic show that showcased what our department has become, and provided an appropriately weird-wonderful kickoff for the degree program.
In that same vein, this notion of “What We Have Become” has been in the air this year. You may have heard: this year marks the 50th anniversary of Austin Community College. You may have also heard: it’s also the Austin Community College Drama Department’s 40th. Back in (19)83, Dr Charles Hill gathered interested collaborators, and started up the Gallery Players. A long road stretches from their tiny mezzanine-turned-performance-space at Rio Grande Campus to the place we call home at Highland. But four decades and a new campus later, I’m happy to say we are still serving Austin with shows, training, and a place, for anyone who is willing, to find their voice. I hope that forty years hence, the chair of the Austin Supermetropolitan Community College Department of Cyberdrama Studies will be able to write (or send telepathically) the same. Neither plague nor Skynet will keep us down.
Kidding aside, I am hopeful. I am encouraged. The students that have (and the ones that will) come through our doors are the source of that hope. I can’t tell you how proud I am of the work that our students are doing, nor can I describe how exciting it is to see our past students soar.
They do this work despite the pressures of the world. The list of things to be insecure about grows with every news cycle. It would be easy to say that there are more important things in the world than making art. I think it would be the wrong thing to say, but one could make the argument. My rebuttal is largely anecdotal, though there are stacks of data-derived evidence that tell the same story.
But look to the work. I had a wonderful conversation with one of our former students Jaron Myers not long ago. He is the head of wardrobe for the Broadway touring show The Girl from the North Country. We hosted a play reading by Alum Matthew Linder this fall. I’ve had multiple opportunities to lead future Riverbats on tours of our facility at HLC thanks to the fact that we have former students who are now teaching in area high schools and middle schools, carrying the message forward. That message is vital: Arts education makes a difference. The performing arts are not a frivolous extracurricular activity. They are central to sharing what the world right now needs most: Empathy. Creativity. Truth. Joy. Our alums embody these principles. We plan to keep spreading the word.
Starting now. I hope you can join us for Curtain Fall, our end of the semester showcase. Students will share their work from fall semester classes. Performances, design installations, and handcrafted artifacts. And treats from our friends in Culinary. Please join us!
And Spring is almost upon us. In January we will hold auditions for our Spring show Red and the June show, Hearts Like Fists. Red, a two-hander about American painter Mark Rothko, will run from February 23rd through March 3rd. It’s a fantastic show, and our production will be staged by ACC Drama alumni. Huzzah! After spring break, we will present a two-night affair in early April. Fiend Folio is a design-driven, devised piece using text from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Tempest. If you are at all interested in special effects creature design, you will want to get tickets for this show.
As always, we’d love to see you in the theater or in the studio. We have an exciting line up for next semester and some cool new course offerings. Hope you can join us.
Marcus McQuirter
Chair, Drama Department
Austin Community College
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