Archive for category: Theatre

Professor David Burke began our tour two days before opening night for the production Brigadoon behind the set itself. I introduced myself and went to shake his hand.

“Oh I shouldn’t,” he said, holding up his hands so I could see how they were covered in shades of black, green and gray paint.

I had interrupted him while he was working on the set piece for the production of Brigadoon that would run from Thursday to the following Tuesday.

He lives for set building.

“I was a college drop-out for about five years,” he said. “For those five years I was not in college, I became a carpenter. I moved to Idaho as a hippie.”

This reminded me of my time in theatre, how when you show up to auditions there were times when you were cut from a show and had to take a break from the stage. While other times, you got the comedic role and the next you were the one to bring the audience to tears.

Burke has constant humility in his leadership and the willingness to even do the clean up required to prepare the stage for that night’s dress rehearsal. But beyond that, he has become a mentor and leader to many of the students in the department.

“He’s like a father figure to many of us,” Noah Leake, senior accounting major, told me after curtain call of the opening night of Brigadoon.

He has guided many of the students, even the students who are not theatre majors, but who have been drawn to the stage.

“If I ever skipped a chapel I was always in his office talking to him, just about life,” Leake said.

Burke is not a man of few words, but as we sat in the audience looking at the set that they created he finally told me, “We are not praising God for saving us, we are praising Him for creating us.”

God was the first creator, and to be more like Him, you need to learn to create, to allow yourself to be molded like clay into what God has designed you for.

Ultimately, that means listening to God when He calls you in a different direction. Burke told me that his plan was to retire when he was 70 and had been around the theatre for 35 years. The Lord had different plans because of his heart condition that caused him to need a double bypass open heart surgery.

“God, I will stay as long as you want me to stay, and I will only go when you clearly tell me it’s time to go.”

It was when Burke was in the hospital recovering from the surgery that he heard the Lord tell him that it was time to take his bow, move aside and allow someone else to lead.

Since February 1, 2019, the cast and crew along with a team of outside volunteers have worked to design and create the sets and costumes from the ground up, just as Burke had done with Union University’s theatre program when arriving here 34 years ago.

When he arrived at Union University in 1986, he told me there was a stage that was about 20×20, made up of platforms that were all different heights. “They had taken carpet and stapled it over the top of it so people wouldn’t trip.”

Since then, he has built platforms for the chairs in the audience, purchased the chairs and lighting and recentered the purpose of the department. A purpose not only to entertain but to enlighten, to teach and to glorify the Lord in all things.

Now it’s show time. The costumes have been finished and the ticket ripped at the door.

Brigadoon. Burke’s first musical in college as a performer, when he played the role of Jeff Douglas, is now his last show as director.  

Within moments the audience will be laughing and sitting at the edge of their seats. With all the accents, all the costumes and the 50 ft wide and 13.5 ft tall set, the audience is immediately thrown back to a land that will bring sacrifice, love and maybe a little magic.

By the end of Act One, the audience is ready to join the chorus.

“It makes me want to pull out my kilt,” Michael Horton, senior psychology major, said once the lights came up.

Brigadoon will throw the audience through all forms of emotions, whether it’s laughing with or at Jeff Douglas, played by Timothy Fletcher, or crying along with Fiona MacLaren, played by Grace Runkle, who gives a wonderful performance and pulls at the heartstrings of the audience. This is a show that draws on all of Union’s talent to bring such a professional performance.   

As Burke takes his final bow and prepares to say goodbye to his role as director on March 19, 2019, Brigadoon is something that shouldn’t be missed by anyone.

This article first appeared in the Cardinal and Cream Website.

It was February 2017. I was a senior in high school. I was on Union’s campus for a Scholars of Excellence weekend. I had no idea what I was doing, but this was the weekend when I needed to at least pretend like I knew what I was doing.

It was a Friday night. I guess I had checked in, and I don’t know what else I did that night. It was one of those events where you get a name tag. You know, the ones that make you stand out—the ones that take away any chance of you passing as a Union student.

On the back of my name tag, I found a schedule for the events of the weekend. This is exactly what I needed that weekend. I could casually look at the back of my name tag and have the details I needed in order to look like I knew what was going on.

“Improv show- Barefoots Joe,” I read on the schedule for Friday night.

I had no idea what that meant, but I am sure that I asked my only friend on campus that weekend if she was going to the show. I didn’t know what I was going to, but at least I had something to do and someone to sit with.

Looking back, I think that I was expecting more of an open mic type of event. I hadn’t heard of an improv team before, so senior me was just expecting people from the crowd to improvise. I’m not really sure what I expected, but it was probably something along the lines of people from the crowd just going on stage and doing whatever they wanted. It sounds silly now, but I just didn’t know.

That night I crowded into Barefoots with a bunch of nervous high school seniors (and some overly confident ones), as well as many current Union students. I sat on the floor at the left corner of the stage and laughed—like the whole show.

This was not what I had expected, but this is what I needed. I needed something else to think about other than the scholarship competition coming up the next day. I needed a reason to laugh instead of worry.

* * *

“They pay us with macaroni,” said Clark Hubbard, captain of Union’s Blank Slate Improv team.

Everyone laughed…again.

The show was in Barefoots again. It was Halloween night 2018. It was a Wednesday night. I had homework due the next day that I had not started on. The show started after 9 p.m., yet there I was sitting in Barefoots.

I looked around me. Extra chairs had been brought in to comfortably accommodate all the students.

“Why are there so many people here?” I thought.

It was a school night. It was late. It was Halloween, yet there were people sitting all around me. I was surrounded by laughter.

“Why do we keep coming out to these shows? What’s so funny?”

These were the questions running through my mind as the show got started.

Maybe it’s because everyone has this desire to be funny, and we live vicariously through the Blank Slate Improv team.

Maybe it’s because our friends are the ones on stage, and we feel like we have an inside track with the team.

Or maybe it has to do with the way improv looks at issues, stereotypes and Union culture from a unique perspective.

Whatever it is that makes people come—that draws people in—I think it ultimately comes from our need for laughter.

College is great. College can also be stressful. Blank Slate Improv provides the campus with a period of time simply to laugh.

Sometimes it doesn’t even take words. One person in the crowd starts laughing at a simple gesture or expression by one of the team members, and suddenly everyone in the crowd is laughing. There’s just something about laughter that can be so contagious.

It’s funny because no one knows what to expect—not even the team members. It’s funny because that’s not the voice he normally uses. It’s funny because the team members have to think on their feet and feed off of each other even if they have no idea what another person is thinking.

It’s funny because we need to laugh.

I mean, who would have thought that a room full of college students would have laughed so hard when a tall guy said, “They pay us with macaroni”?

It was all of the little details of the scene that made the room laugh.

It was all of the little details of the whole show on Wednesday night that made the crowd verbalize their disappointment when captain Ben Johnson said, “Alright guys, we only have one more game.”

***

If you were one of the ones expressing your disappointment at the closure of the show on Wednesday night (or if you are now expressing your disappointment in not attending the show), you still have a chance to join Blank Slate Improv for another show this Saturday, Nov. 3, at 7 p.m.

Blank Slate will be opening for Anthem Lights in the G.M. Savage Memorial Chapel.

Doors open at 6:30 p.m., so pick up tickets in advance at Union Station and be there early for the show on Saturday.

After all, they say laughter is the best medicine.

Image courtesy of Tamara Friesen

This article first appeared in The Cardinal & Cream website.

Professor David Burke began our tour two days before opening night for the production Brigadoon behind the set itself. I introduced myself and went to shake his hand.

“Oh I shouldn’t,” he said, holding up his hands so I could see how they were covered in shades of black, green and gray paint.

I had interrupted him while he was working on the set piece for the production of Brigadoon that would run from Thursday to the following Tuesday.

He lives for set building.

“I was a college drop-out for about five years,” he said. “For those five years I was not in college, I became a carpenter. I moved to Idaho as a hippie.”

This reminded me of my time in theatre, how when you show up to auditions there were times when you were cut from a show and had to take a break from the stage. While other times, you got the comedic role and the next you were the one to bring the audience to tears.

Burke has constant humility in his leadership and the willingness to even do the clean up required to prepare the stage for that night’s dress rehearsal. But beyond that, he has become a mentor and leader to many of the students in the department.

“He’s like a father figure to many of us,” Noah Leake, senior accounting major, told me after curtain call of the opening night of Brigadoon.

He has guided many of the students, even the students who are not theatre majors, but who have been drawn to the stage.

“If I ever skipped a chapel I was always in his office talking to him, just about life,” Leake said.

Burke is not a man of few words, but as we sat in the audience looking at the set that they created he finally told me, “We are not praising God for saving us, we are praising Him for creating us.”

God was the first creator, and to be more like Him, you need to learn to create, to allow yourself to be molded like clay into what God has designed you for.

Ultimately, that means listening to God when He calls you in a different direction. Burke told me that his plan was to retire when he was 70 and had been around the theatre for 35 years. The Lord had different plans because of his heart condition that caused him to need a double bypass open heart surgery.

“God, I will stay as long as you want me to stay, and I will only go when you clearly tell me it’s time to go.”

It was when Burke was in the hospital recovering from the surgery that he heard the Lord tell him that it was time to take his bow, move aside and allow someone else to lead.

Since February 1, 2019, the cast and crew along with a team of outside volunteers have worked to design and create the sets and costumes from the ground up, just as Burke had done with Union University’s theatre program when arriving here 34 years ago.

When he arrived at Union University in 1986, he told me there was a stage that was about 20×20, made up of platforms that were all different heights. “They had taken carpet and stapled it over the top of it so people wouldn’t trip.”

Since then, he has built platforms for the chairs in the audience, purchased the chairs and lighting and recentered the purpose of the department. A purpose not only to entertain but to enlighten, to teach and to glorify the Lord in all things.

Now it’s show time. The costumes have been finished and the ticket ripped at the door.

Brigadoon. Burke’s first musical in college as a performer, when he played the role of Jeff Douglas, is now his last show as director.  

Within moments the audience will be laughing and sitting at the edge of their seats. With all the accents, all the costumes and the 50 ft wide and 13.5 ft tall set, the audience is immediately thrown back to a land that will bring sacrifice, love and maybe a little magic.

By the end of Act One, the audience is ready to join the chorus.

“It makes me want to pull out my kilt,” Michael Horton, senior psychology major, said once the lights came up.

Brigadoon will throw the audience through all forms of emotions, whether it’s laughing with or at Jeff Douglas, played by Timothy Fletcher, or crying along with Fiona MacLaren, played by Grace Runkle, who gives a wonderful performance and pulls at the heartstrings of the audience. This is a show that draws on all of Union’s talent to bring such a professional performance.   

As Burke takes his final bow and prepares to say goodbye to his role as director on March 19, 2019, Brigadoon is something that shouldn’t be missed by anyone.

Performances of Brigadoon will run in the W.D. Powell Theatre through Tuesday, March 19. You can purchase your tickets at http://www.uu.edu/theatre/.

This article first appeared in The Cardinal & Cream website