A Scholarly Stage
by Nancy Freiberg
When the curtains go down at a play on Broadway, the audience mills out of the theater and hopes traffic isn't too bad. When a play is over at Georgetown's new Royden B. Davis S.J. Performing Arts Center, it's also a beginning.
The center, scheduled to present its first production in mid-November, will bring high-quality performances to Georgetown while integrating an interdisciplinary academic component. This will enhance the experience of theater for faculty, students and staff, says Maya Roth, the center's artistic director.
"We have extraordinary faculty in a wide range of departments who use theater and performance as part of their teaching methodology," says Roth, an assistant professor of theater. "We want to incorporate their contributions into an integrative program of study."
Guest lectures, panel discussions, question-and-answer sessions, staged readings of new works and master classes are only a few of the offerings the center will provide to complement its theater productions, Roth explains.
A good example of this outreach to the community and the interdisciplinary focus is the center's first major production -- "Our Country's Good" by renowned playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker. The play is scheduled to begin in November. As Georgetown's Davis Visiting Professor for the 2005-2006 academic year, Wertenbaker is teaching a related interdisciplinary seminar called Peace: History in Drama this semester. In the spring semester, she'll lead a series of master classes and give a public lecture. Roth, whose scholarship has focused on Wertenbaker's work, will direct the play, collaboratively produced by students in an advanced course called Theatrical Ensemble. The course teaches students to blend critical and creative research. Michael Philippi, who designed the lighting for the Broadway revival of "Death of a Salesman," is a resident artist at the center. He's teaching and also designing for "Our Country's Good" and Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale," scheduled for a February performance in the Davis Center's Gonda Theatre.
And new faculty member and nationally recognized artist Derek Goldman will direct "Winter's Tale" and take part in a panel event at the center that includes artistic directors in the Washington, D.C., area.
"Through theater, we engage the world, ideas, social movements and different periods of time and different cultures," Roth says. "So I don't think of the center as a space that is exclusively theater. Most universities have a production season that is separate from their academic wing. What we're doing here that is rather distinctive is integrating those two areas. We'll be offering rigorous creative and academic opportunities."
Roth says a new, reconfigured theater major (only a minor is offered at present) is in the works. And she notes that more than 350 students take theater program courses or participate in productions each year.
"The arrival of the Davis Performing Arts Center ushers in a new era for theater at Georgetown, one which will offer a crucial gathering point for theater appreciation and learning," says Sarah Krokey (C'06). "It's not just a theater -- it's a learning environment ... introducing an academic rigor to a discipline that, at Georgetown, hasn't always been associated with intellectual challenge."
Krokey will serve as assistant scenic designer for "Our Country's Good," as well as help design the student-run Nomadic Theatre's "The Machinal," which will appear in Walsh BlackBox. Christina Ciocca (C'05) directed "Still Life" at Georgetown for her senior thesis. This past summer she served as a managing director's assistant at the Atlantic Theater Company, an off-Broadway theater co-founded by playwright David Mamet and actor William H. Macy. She's studying at Oxford with a Healy Scholarship this fall.
"As a new Hoya alumna, I'm thrilled that the next generation of Georgetown theater students, as well as current and new professors, will be able to make such a beautiful, resource-rich building their home," says Ciocca, co-valedictorian of the class of 2005. "I'm a little jealous -- but the Davis Center will give me one more excellent reason to come back and visit Georgetown."
Every production that takes place at the Davis Performing Arts Center will be faculty-directed or directed by a professional guest artist, Roth says, in keeping with College Dean Jane McAuliffe's mandate.
"The performing arts have a long and inspired tradition at Georgetown College," McAuliffe says. "[In the center], we have a facility to match the talents of our exceptional students and faculty, allowing them to share their knowledge and creativity with each other and with the broader university community in an beautiful and appropriate space."
Located in the center of campus at the site of the old Ryan Gym, the new building includes two theaters, four traditional classrooms, and three lab spaces, including a scene shop and a theater art design space, a box office, faculty offices and green rooms for actors. It is designed to incorporate live performance in theater, dance and the spoken word.
The center is named for the late Royden B. Davis, S.J. (C'47, L'49), a much beloved college dean who oversaw the formation and early expansion of the fine arts at Georgetown during his tenure from 1966 to 1989. Davis, who died in 2002, also made his own art -- sculptures that will be part of a small exhibit in the new center as a tribute to the late Jesuit. The Gonda Theatre, which seats 230, is a gift from the family of Lou and Kelly Gonda, whose son, Eli, graduated in 2002.
It has a high-tech stage; a retractable orchestra pit that may be converted to a seating area; state-of-the-art sound, lighting and projection systems; and other features. Its "fly space" (the height of the ceiling in the stage area) allows for a more flexible range of production settings, backdrops and multimedia, Roth says. The Devine Studio Theatre, which can accommodate 100 people, has seating areas, sound and lighting equipment, and performance configurations that can be rearranged to fit each production. This theater was endowed by the family of Brian K. Devine (C'63).
"We did wonderful things with what we had before," Roth says, "but now we have a stage where students can really learn design, we can stage productions in a wider range of ways and we can be more visibly involved in the liberal arts community at Georgetown."
Roth estimates that at least 2,500 people in the Georgetown community will participate in the center's first season -- students, faculty, staff, artists and audiences. The university's Office of Campus Ministry, the Sam Eig Jewish Studies Initiative, and the Program for Jewish Civilization are sponsoring the Davis center's second major production, "Dr. Korczak and the Children" by Erwin Sylvanus. A collaboration of the university's theater program and Nomadic Theatre with funding from the Faino Family Foundation and Georgetown's Jewish Chaplaincy, the play is set in German-occupied Poland and focuses on the Jewish orphanage set up by Janusz Korczak, a children's writer and educator. Korczak, whose real name was Henryk Goldszmit, was forced to lead 200 children through the ghetto streets to the train that they were told would take them to a resettlement area, but was really headed for the Nazi's death camp, Treblinka. Professor Karen Berman will direct the play, which will be presented in March 2006 as the premier production at the Devine Studio Theatre.
"We've talked with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, so we'll have some Holocaust survivors speaking," Roth notes. "And the university's Program for Jewish Civilization is helping to plan an exhibit with the Polish Embassy. This is the epitome of the way we're reaching out on campus and beyond campus."
The theater season's final major production, which takes place in April, is "Schoolgirl Figure" by Wendy MacLeod. Roth is the adviser for Jen Rogers (C'06), who is directing the play for her senior thesis, and visiting professor Natsu Onada serves as designer. Onada, who most recently was a resident artist at the University of Chicago's Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture, will teach a performance art course for theater and a play analysis course in the fall; in the spring semester, she'll teach courses for the English department. Roth says she and her colleagues have set up the Davis Center to embrace and collaborate with student-run theater groups.
Poulton Hall will continue serve as the performance hub for the Mask & Bauble Dramatic Society, which once was led by the legendary Donn B. Murphy, a professor emeritus of theater. Murphy is now president and executive director of the National Theatre Corporation. Walsh BlackBox will remain a place for theater and dance performances by student clubs. And groups such as Mask & Bauble, Black Theatre Ensemble, Georgetown Players and Nomadic Theatre will continue to receive both technical and artistic advice from theater faculty members.
"The center is adding, not detracting from these student activities," Roth explains. "But now these groups will be supported and have access to the center's scene shop and costume shop."
Ciocca also believes the center will help both students and faculty members achieve their goals.
"While the academic theater program as well as [the student] clubs have brought vibrant, exciting theater to Georgetown's community for years," Ciocca says, "the Davis Center will solidify the importance of performance and theatrical thinking to a well-rounded, integrated and interdisciplinary liberal arts education."
