David Leong Invites Theatre VCU Grad Students (Past & Present) to Washington DC's Arena Stage

David Leong and Arena Stage's Artistic Director Molly Smith are workshopping the January 2014 production of Mother Courage starring Kathleen Turner.

This production features 13 new songs, a new visual look and style, and all new choreography.

David has reached out to our MFA Movement grads from all over the country to brainstorm this week in Washington.

Photo by Valerie Accetta

Here is a list of the participants:

Jamie Cheatham - Artistic Director, Head of Acting, Theatre Arts Department, University of Wisconsin at Parkside, WI


 Robb Hunter (2008) - Adjunct Instructor, Department of Drama, Catholic University (Washington, DC)


Penny Maas (2012) - Assistant Professor, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth TX


Marie Boyette (2012) - Assistant Professor, University of Connecticut, CT


Cara Rawlings (2005) - Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre and Cinema, Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, VA


Darrell Rushton - Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre, Frostburg State University (Frostburg, MD)


Jonathan Kipp Becker (2005) - Associate Professor, Ball State University (Muncie, IN)


Valerie Accetta (2013) - Assistant Professor, University of Alabama, Birmingham, AL


Ali Angelone (2009) - Assistant Professor, University of North Dakota, ND


Maggie Marlin (2009) - Assistant Professor, Missouri State, MS


Drew Richardson - Current MFA candidate


Brad Willcuts - Current MFA candidate


Kevin Inouye (2012) - Adjunct Professor, William & Mary University, VA

Kelly Shoger (2011) - Currently studying Alexander Technique, Charlottesville, VA

Photo by Kevin Inouye

The beautiful Ms Valerie Accetta has agreed to send the Blogster her workshop journal and photos to blog everyday!

Sunday, July 14, 2013

This is going to be an amazing week. We had our first meeting with David tonight and had the opportunity to meet everyone and talk through what we will be doing at the workshop. The work on Mother Courage is going to be challenging and creative, but even more exciting than that is having the chance to work with bunch of smart, talented and creative people who have graduated from or will be attending the Theatre VCU Graduate Program. What an incredible group of people – from all over the country!

In terms of the workshop, we will have four days to explore and discover how best to tell this story. Mother Courage is an iconic piece of theatre that has inherent challenges. Right now we have more questions than answers. In fact, David gave us all homework for tonight –to come up with one burning question to ask the director, Molly Smith, at our meeting tomorrow. We hope that by Thursday we’ll have a better sense of what the physical and stylistic language will be. Here’s to a great week!

Monday, July 15, 2013

Photo by Valerie Accetta

Arena Stage is a beautiful and truly impressive theatre. We started our day with a tour of the facilities, seeing The Fichandler Stage (where we will work all week and where Mother Courage will be performed), The Kreeger Theatre and The Arlene and Robert Kogod Cradle (a theatre used to promote new works). The architecture is stunning – the original buildings are intact and the remainder of the structure was built around them, highlighting the theatre’s past within an impressive glass structure. We are so lucky to work here for the week!

After the tour, we met Molly Smith, director of Mother Courage, to hear about her thoughts on the production and the major themes of play. We were also fortunate enough to get to meet (and briefly work with) with the composer, James Sugg, who taught everyone the opening song. Then David gave us our assignments for the day while he and Molly attended auditions for the production – we were divided into two groups and asked to come up with as many ideas for the opening of the show as we possibly could. We would show these ideas at the end of the day.

This was a difficult task. It is much easier to create staging and physical storytelling when given parameters or obstacles because you can narrow down the options. In this case, we were given a blank stage, could use as many or as few actors as we wanted, have music or silence, stage movement or stillness, etc. With so many options, narrowing down the choices proved a real challenge!

In the end, however, the two groups created a wide variety of opening sequences (as well as transitions and movement pieces) that would help to establish the environment and vocabulary of the play. Both Molly and David were very pleased with the choices and have already begun to shape a few ideas into more solid concepts that we will explore throughout the rest of the week. What a great process!