Emmanuelle Challet | ENERGIZE

Last month I had the privilege to participate in a series of workshops conducted by Energy specialist Emmanuelle Challet. She teaches a holistic approach to acting and to theater. Mind, body, and spirit are all vital to the artistic process. I just thought I would give her a bump here on my blog. Her work is really beautiful and powerful. Check her out if you ever get the chance. Also buy and read her book Balancing Act. It's quite the book.

Her website.

News From The Front #6 | Standing Ovations.

I'm not going to lie: standing ovations drive me crazy. It seems like everybody here in the Richmond area gives them out willy-nilly. I go into a theater and sit through a mediocre to good show. The lights go down as the last act comes to a close. The lights come back up and the performers come out for a curtain call. The audience claps and stands in approval. Meanwhile I'm stuck behind a lot of guys standing. I can no longer see the performers because of the people standing in front of me. Why didn't I stand you ask? The answer: I don't believe in just handing out standing ovations. I appreciate the show and the effort that all involved gave, but I just don't think it deserves that high a praise. There is always room for improvement.  (Yes I'm a director who will continue to give small technical notes after opening night. I work in an education setting for goodness sake. Even though you did GREAT. There is always someplace else to take the performance. There is something else to learn. It's about the process rather than the product.)

After seeing a show recently I was discussing this with a good friend and graduate school colleague. She told me that a wise theater person once told her this: "You only get three standing ovations in your life to give out. Use them wisely." This sounds like a good mantra for me to live the rest of my life by. I have handed out a few standing ovations in my life, but they were when I was young and naivete. I'm going to be stingy with them. Realistically I will probably only give out two because when it comes time to give out the third I will find myself unable to give it out in fear that I might come across something better and not be able to give it one.

So from here on out. I'm making a commitment. Three standing ovations. That's it. I'll try to use them wisely.

Cross posted from  (The Backstage Door.)

News From The Front #5 | What Graduate School is Really About.

Over the last few weeks I have been talking with some of my fellow graduate students. Graduate school is different than undergrad in lots of ways. One of the biggest ones for me is the community. For the first time you really have an exclusive academic community. A community to which you are an important member.

Anyway. One of my graduate school colleagues put up a show. I was one of three people from the graduate school community to show up to support her. I was a little troubled by this. I think it is our responsibility to show up, whenever humanly possible, to show up and support my fellow graduate students. Now admittedly, I feel this way a little selfishly. I want my graduate school colleagues to show up and support me and my work when ever I put up a show. But I also feel that it is our responsibility to do so. We are here to pursue a degree in Theater. We should be seeing as much theater as possible. It was a free show for goodness sake. But I think we have a responsibility to each other to help critique and give advice and to help each other grow as artists and people.

This past week one of my graduate friends put up a show and some of the undergrads were acting in it. I think we have even more responsibility to show up to this show. Not only was a peer directing the show but some of our students were in the show. If we are supposed to be the teachers of these students we should be taking every responsibility show up and see their work.

Not only this but I think there is an attitude that we should have as actors and directors for people who come and see our work. One of my students thanked me for seeing his work, he said, "It means a lot when my professors come to see my work." I think that's important as an artist to have that respect of our audience. We as audience should also have that respect for the performers. To show up and support their work. It's important. It meant a lot to have him tell me that it meant a lot for me to show up.

I think that's what this whole graduate school thing is about. The community. Building a better community. Support each other and support student theater. It's a good thing.

News From the Front #4 | I learn that I can teach texts I have never read before.

The majority of my semester is spent right now in Teaching assistant positions. One of the classes I'm TAing is the 400 level Modern Drama survey. I met with the other teachers of the class and we divided up the texts we would be teaching. They gave me The Laramie Project because of my experience with Documentary Theater, but I also got given O'Neill The Hairy Ape.

Not only is this a playwright I'm not a huge fan of, it was a play I had never read before. I was going to be teaching it in about three weeks. That time has come and gone, so I thought I would debrief on it really quick. I had to fill two full class periods. My first instinct was to go to a class discussion. This way I can get the students talking about it and not have to do a lot of lecture prep. I also did do some prep for some lecture on expressionism in the greater art world and more specifically expressionism and the theater. Talked a little about O'Neil himself. After this short lecture I opened it up for discussion lead by some pointed questions I had planned.

The discussion went less well than I hoped the first day. Part of this was my fault, i think partially because I was so nervous. It's hard to get a good discussion going in a class size that is upwards of thirty-three students. I'm used to my small classrooms of my undergrad where we were about ten or less. The biggest discussion classes I had were my honors classes early on that had about twenty students. In addition to that discussion is always harder early on in the semester when the students haven't gotten the feel of the class itself yet. However, I made it through the first day of discussion pretty much unscathed.

On the second day things went MUCH better. I felt a little better prepared and the discussion went a lot better. The students opened up a little bit more. I know it must be a little strange even having a new grad student coming in to teach. Especially once they learned how old I am. Most of the undergrad students are a year or so younger than me. After all I am right out of my undergrad. But I know a lot of that is my own insecurity about my performance as a teacher and my insecurity about what I do know about theater.

All I really needed to do was believe in myself, in my researching and in my abilities. In many ways these teaching sessions are our grad school tests. I passed the first one. I can breathe now.

News from the Front #3 or "Why I Want to Stay."

This last week I went out with a few of the other graduate students. As we tend to do at this point in our life, we got to talking about our plans when we were done with our graduate degree. My hope and dream for the past few years has been to start/develop a true academic theater program at an Adventist College. I think its despicable that out of all of our universities, we do not have ONE theater program that goes beyond a minor.

As we talked I had to explain many of the politics about the Adventist Church, Adventist Education, and Adventism in general. After I finished, my friend Penny asked me a question, "Why do you want to stay? Why do you want to go back? Don't you want to just go someplace else where you wouldn't have to deal with any of that?"

I thought about it for a moment and then replied. "No."

See, the answer is really "Yes." I would love to just be able to go someplace else. To go to a school where the community is sportive, the music department would want to put on a musical with the theater department, and there was hundreds of students who want to be involved in the program would be great. That would be nice. It would be easy. But I can't. I just can't. It's that simple. I cannot bring myself to take the easy route in life. It's like the novel the Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. As you go through life you can choose to be a tourist or a traveler. The tourist takes the easy way through life, preferring to be where it is comfortable for him and seeing the world from his air conditioned hotel room. The traveler takes the harder route, but in the end has a better experience. Being a traveler is not easy, making that decision is difficult. But it's worth it.

Maybe its my stubborn German side coming out. I cannot run from the difficulty. That would be cowardly. To run and take the easy road simply because there might be some bumps on the other road is the life of the coward. Of the Tourist. I cannot and I will not.

And besides, I kind of enjoy the struggle sometimes. Out of the struggle comes passion, and therefore passionate art. The work created with passion is always the best work. In the end, it is worth it. I can appreciate it more because of the struggle it took to get to that point. For example, on Saturday afternoon I was at a church potluck out here. A older gentleman asked me what I was doing out here in VA going to school so far from my family. I told him theater. He asked what i wanted to do with it. I told him teach and build a program within Adventism and practically got laughed at. He told me that having a program was not needed, and these students who want to go into theater would be far better served going into some other major and using that knowledge to build their theater. Although I agree it is good to know other areas and to bring that knowledge to your art, you must first learn about the form of theater. It would be like giving somebody an empty music composition book and telling them to fill it, when they were trained in English literature. It might help them, but without the music theory they would be unable to truly apply it and their art would be hampered.

That is what I want to provide Adventist students. That is what I feel I need to give them. I need to give them the opportunity to learn this form. Better yet the opportunity to express themselves in this form. That is the most important thing. I have seen students drop out of PUC or struggle through it in a different major because they wanted to do Theater, but were unable to because there wasn't an academic level program. I'm sure this doesn't only happen at PUC. It must be the case at La Sierra, and Walla Walla. Let's give these artists the opportunity to learn how to do theater, and learn how to do it well.

That is why I want to stay. That is why I cannot run.

Constructed Masculinity and Gender Violence

From an early age, boys are fitted with emotional straight-jackets tailored by a restricted code of behavior that falsely defines masculinity. In the context of “stop crying,” “stop those emotions,” and “don’t be a sissy,” we define what it means to “Be a Man!” Adherence to this “boy code” leaves many men dissociated from their feelings and incapable of accessing, naming, sharing, or accepting many of their emotions. When men don’t understand their own emotions it becomes impossible to understand the feelings of another. This creates an “empathy-deficit disorder” that is foundational to America’s epidemic of bullying, dating abuse and gender violence. Boys are taught to be tough, independent, distrusting of other males, and at all cost to avoid anything considered feminine for fear of being associated with women. This leads many men to renounce their common humanity with women so as to experience an emotional disconnect from them. Women often become objects, used to either validate masculine insecurity or satisfy physical needs. When the validation and satisfaction ends, or is infused with anger, control or alcohol, gender violence is often the result.

- Joe Ehrmann, former NFL player, from “Men Can Stop Rape”



This could not be more true today. We have our genders constructed for us from birth. However in the postmodern cosmopolitan world we find ourselves with the ability to construct and preform our own genders daily. To take control of our lives and not resort to the expectations of how a "man" or a "woman" is supposed to act. The key reason we need to destroy these stereotype constructs is that they, " lead many men to renounce their common humanity with women as to experience an emotional disconnect from them. Women often become objects used to either validate masculine insecurity or satisfy physical needs. When the validation ends, or is infused with anger, control or alcohol, gender violence is often the result."

Powerful stuff.

Byyonn Bain @ PUC

“Freedom is a woman I want, a woman I need!” The refrain echoed from PUC’s Dauphnee Chapel on October the 4th as spoken word poet and prison activist Bryonn Bain rocked the microphone.  Resident Artist Mei Ann Teo directed his autobiographical play Lyrics from Lockdown.  His powerful mix of spoken word and hip-hop poetry drew the audience into his phenomenal story. The hour-long show tells the story of a Bain’s wrongful arrest and subsequent imprisonment.  Through a combination of his own lyrics and the words of his family, Bain quickly grabbed the attention of the packed house and proceeded to move many students who were in attendance.  Melissa Totton, a Junior English Major, “He delivers a powerful performance that touches everyone regardless of their racial or socioeconomic backgrounds.” Many teachers asked their students to write short reviews of the show for their class and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Junior Communication Major Sonia Moses said, “He found a way to represent all the different sides of one issue. It was brilliant.” Bryonn’s story stands as a personal testimony of one man who is standing up for what is right. The play’s openness and raw honestly shine through the Bain’s text and light the way forward. Bryonn sums it up nicely at the end of his play, “The fish that we got, and the bread some said is all that we got. That’s all we need. For us to get fed and for us to feed, a whole lot of folks in need.” I know that this campus will be fed for the rest of the year.

Adventism and Higher Education

In the last year and a half, I have begun to observe a strange trend in Adventism. To be completely frank: I’m worried. We have become insecure in our ability to raise and educate our children in our own homes. We have abdicated our responsibility to train our children and instead depend our our SDA educational institutions to do the job the family should be doing.

This is not just a response to WWU’s budding controversy over internet censorship. It’s also the creationism/evolutionism debate that is raging at LSU. It’s also a response to one of the votes that came up at the NCC Constituency meeting. (Yes, I attended just to listen since I was not an official delegate.)

Adventism is very afraid right now. We are afraid for very little reason. We have become afraid of that which we have constructed to be dangerous to our faith. In our post-colonial world we have become the moral colonists. We continue to assert our logical positivism. This on the whole is not the problem or the issue that I am observing. It is good to be firm in our belief system. However, it is the point that this has lead us to.

Just like the western colonists of not so long ago, we have found an irrational fear of losing what little bit of control we have. Hatred was born out of the middle class because they were afraid of loosing what they had. The good people of our church are terrified of loosing what little control we have over our children. They are terrified that their children will loose their way when distracted by the ways of the world. Parents are terrified about their children and the internet addictions they struggle with.  Parents are afraid that their students might have to grapple with concepts like “atheism,” “LGBT,” and “evolution.” However, this does not stem from a true firmness in our beliefs, but rather from an developed insecurity about our beliefs and more importantly in the way we have raised our own children.

The role of the family is to teach our children about God and Jesus and to give them a basis for our faith system. The role of our elementary schools should be to reinforce this while beginning to educate our children how to function in society, learning reading and writing. This should continue through high school. By the time our children graduate from high school and are ready for college, if they have been raised well, we as parents should have nothing to fear. The challenges

The Bible says, “Raise up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it.”  (Proverbs 22:6) Do not leave the job of raising up your children to our colleges and universities. It is not their job. (They must have been given the basis long before reaching the college level.) The job of our colleges and universities should be to challenge and push our students to academic, spiritual, and personal excellence. To push our students to the next level, to learn to love as Christ loved. To teach us this, our colleges must treat us, the students, with the same level of respect we hold for our professors.

Our universities provides the unique environment where we can be challenged and pushed but it also provides us with a support structure for when we do fall into crisis. This is how I see our higher education system, and to be honest it’s the reason I decided to come back to PUC instead of going to UC Davis or UC Santa Cruz where I had been accepted as a transfer student. Adventist higher education should function as a nurturing support system that challenges students to figure out their own faith. A student’s faith is much stronger when they have gone through a crisis of faith and come out the other side. It gives us the chance to constructed our faith from the ground up, not just using our parent’s or our pastor’s pre-made faith. Our colleges and universities should have the goal of challenging us, but should also help to provide the mentors to help us come out of it. This is how I have come to see many of professors here at PUC. This faith based learning community does not exist outside of our Adventist system. I cannot stress enough about the importance of having the ability to investigate and figure out these things now rather than later in life when we do not live in a supportive community that can help us through. Without the process now, they will fall into crisis later in life, when they will not have the support network they have now. Would we rather our children face these things for the first time when they are 35 and find themselves unable to enter the conversation? At least here the professors continually care about our emotional, spiritual and personal development and can help us find ourselves.

The goal for me, if/when I have children will be to raise them with the basis but allow them to find their own path. This is how we should be treated at the collegiate level. We do not need the good people of our church to be breathing down our backs making sure we go in the way they would have us go. The only reason that they feel that we need stems from the fear and the insecurity in how they have raised us in the first place. Let your children become thinking adults. Give us that level of equality.

Now don’t get me wrong, I understand that we want to protect our children and make sure they stay in the faith. I have been raised in this church my entire life, and my dad is an SDA minister. I understand the importance of the values of our church. That being said, I would not be at PUC without the freedom to create my own place in Adventism. I think my parents did a great job with me. I have to give them a lot of credit. I am about to graduate college this next weekend and I feel great about the times and the experience I have had here. My parents have taught me to be open minded, but also to have a basis in the history and doctrine of our church. This is what I know: If a student (including myself) has been trained and taught to continue the search for “truth,” it does not matter what challenge or concept they are faced with. If we truly believe in the message of our church we do not have to be afraid of that.  It’s really as simple as that. I  hope and pray that we learn to live, love, let go, and continually seek what we understand to be “progressive revelation.”

Timothy Widmer
Student; PUC
B.A. English with Theater Emphasis.

Living the Dream

Another poster design. =D

Kingdom Borrowed: A Tragedy

So again, I've been trying out my design hat this week. I've been having a lot of fun. Here is my newest poster. This time it's for my very own play "Kingdom Borrowed: A Tragedy." The dates reflected on the poster represent the two stage readings it had this month. Enjoy.

Julia Gibbs Never Went to Paris

Every once in a while I like to put on my designing cap. I do not claim to be an incredible designer, but I like to have a little fun. I make it look good to my eye. Backstage durring the dress rehearsal for my friends play I decided to make a poster for it. Enjoy. =D

Spring Break

I cannot wait for spring break this year. Most college students go someplace to party for a week. That's fun I guess, but I've never been one to really party a lot.

This year: I will be headed to Virginia for an interview with the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University. I'm graduating this June with a Bachelors Degree in English with an emphasis in Theater. The program at VCU is exactly what I have been looking for. In fact its one of the few programs that exist in the nation. The MFA in Theater Pedagogy will prepare me to teach theater in the collegiate academic setting, and come back and help the nation. I'm so nervous for this interview, and I hope I do ok. I've been chatting with Dr. Barnes a little bit via email. She does want me to fly out and interview, so it sounds like i have at least a shot. She feels like its worth it for me to fly cross country to interview. Unless she is just screwing with me. (I hope not.)

I cannot wait for this quarter to be over, so I can go out to interview.

My First Stage Reading

It’s official. I think I’m a writer. Today I have my second performance/stage reading of my play “Kingdom Borrowed: A Tragedy.” It’s really exciting. My actors are fabulous, and the director is so talented. (The director is a High School History, Religion, and Drama teacher, who should be directing professionally in the city.) I am so grateful to have this incredible production. I have had to work my ass off for this crew though. I have felt like I need to concentrate everything I am on this reading, even though I have 17 credits of classes this quarter and have been letting that lapse for this reading. Between the first reading last week and my reading this week, I rewrote an entire character, and added a completely new ending. It’s really crazy. At this point I am more concerned about the actors and the show today than I am concerned about my script. I hope they do well today.

My play is about the Tragedy of the Biblical figure of King Saul. The story comes from the book of 1st Samuel. Now, I will warn you, this is no church skit. This is a real life living breathing absurdest modernist Shakespearean tragedy. 1st Samuel has an incredibly tragic character in the representation of King Saul. Of course I am challenging the entire judeo-christian reading of the book, but it’s been very fun to challenge my overtly christian audience to rethink the story. Instead of focusing on David, we should think about the supressed and marginalized characters.

It’s really nerve wracking today. My family is coming up. Mom, Dad, Grandma, Aunt, Couzin. It’s going to be crazy. A couple of girls i’m interested in are coming to see my work too. Which is just as scary. Consider me a nervous wreck.

I need to go help copy programs and fold them. Maybe it will keep me from throwing up out of nervousness.

Momento Mori

As many of you know: I am a huge musical nerd. Something made me think of a musical this week. It was in the place I least expected.

This week: Professor Jimmy Ha spoke for colloquy. The title of his message was: Momento Mori. He elaborated by searching for what unites us. Jimmy Ha is currently in the middle of a loosing battle with cancer. He is stage four pancreatic. To have him speak for my senior recognition was an honor. He is a gentleman and a scholar. He mused that there are many things that hold us together and unite us as humans and as a community of faith and learning. But what holds us together the most is death. All of us shall die.

Ha told a story of a Roman general who would return from war parading in triumph into Rome to the adulation of the crowd. While he was doing so a slave whispered into his ear, “Momento Mori.” Remember you shall die. It is a call to humility. Ha continued and ended with his thesis that perhaps what truly unites us when we think about live and death is the desire, the need, and the capacity to love and be loved.

This could not help me from thinking about the musical RENT. Fairly early into the musical there is a song sung by a group of people dieing of AIDS. The song is called life support: They sing:

Look. I find some of what you teach suspect.
Because I’m used to relying on intellect.
But I try to open up to what I don’t know.


Because reason says I should have died
three years ago.


There’s only us.
There’s only this.
Forget regret.
Or life is your’s to miss.
No other road
No other day.
No day but today.

At the core of this both Ha’s message and this song is the need and desire of someone else. A community. Love must go both ways. It must be mutual. Love builds community. And community is what we need to survive. Community provides us with the life support to make it through whatever the world throws at us. You see: Jimmy Ha was supposed to die two months ago, but here he stood on this Thursday past. A living testament to the healing power of his family and his community.

Thank you Professor Jimmy Ha for this message, and this reminder.