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scenes in theater arts
By Nancy Feigenbaum
StaffWriter
J.It's almost 10 o’clock
in Blocker. Time for class.
The students in Room 144
heap books and raincoats on
chairs bunched up at the back
of the room ... and start to
stretch.
A gym class in Blocker?
No.
At 10 a.m. Man' Anne Mitch
ell, assistant professor of speech
communication, walks in.
Dressed in an old pair of Gloria
Vanderbilt jeans, a white blouse
and maroon platform heels, she
warns the class:
"I hope you all read Chapter
11.”
At her instructions the 18
people in the room, mostly
women, scatter to stretch. One
person stands on a huge stage-
ladder, another sits at a table. A
few others are littered among
several living rooms' worth of
old-fashioned furniture.
Theater Arts 275 is off.
ftnn
Jl he way you're going
to warm up is to explore space
today," Mitchell instructs. “Any
way you want."
Someone starts moaning.
Soon others are dancing,
jumping, and waving their
arms around, just a few corri
dors from the staid classes of
the business majors.
“Let the sound go,” Mitchell
orders.
The level of moaning rises
like the eerie mood music of a
cheap horror film. Parts of it
look like a horror flick, too. In
the next hour these theater arts
majors sunive mob violence,
arguments, love scenes, and
some rough physical confronta
tions, learning to do con
sciously, the things we do
unconsciously every day. They
learn to do them consciously
and make them look natural
and it's not easy.
Both theater arts stu
dents and professors are in
sulted bv the notion that the
major is an easy one.
“We defy others to try and
keep our schedule," says asso
ciate professor of theater arts
Mike Greenwald, at an Aggie
Plavers rehearsal of “Twelfth
Night."
“These kids are in here six
nights a week. All this for one
credit,” he says.
Deena Elliot, who double
majors in theater arts and agri
cultural journalism, says there
have been weeks when she gets
only two hours sleep a night,
and she's come to consider four
hours a night acceptable.
“(Theater) is something you
have to rehearse and practice
every day," she says.
Tlie best actor, like any other
professional, makes the work
look easy. But the number of
lines to be memorized in a
light-hearted play like “Twelfth
Night" is staggering.
Several times in the course of
rehearsal, the lovelorn Countess
Oli\ia, played by freshman
Diedre Doigg, snaps out of her
reverie to call out “line?”
Doigg got the lead part when
the orginal actress got sick, says
Steve McCauley (left), a freshman theater arts ma
jor, plays Toby Belch in the Aggie Plav ers’ produc
tion of “Twelfth Night,” a comedy written by Wil
liam Shakespeare. Freshman physics major Casey
Melarcher (right) plays Andrew Aguecheek.