Student Work
The Department of Theater Arts is active in the Northwest Drama Conference and the American College Theatre Festival. Recent awards and honors for University of Oregon students include best lighting design, best scholarly paper, and first runner-up in acting.
For senior Teresa Koberstein, studying theatre in London was a huge step toward actualizing her dreams as an aspiring director and performer. The program, based in the internationally renowned Hampstead Theatre, was specifically designed to immerse a small group of UO students in London’s vanguard theatre scene. Teresa saw forty contemporary plays, conducted an independent study of five women playwrights, and practiced performance techniques with instructors from the esteemed Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.
Teresa’s goal is to create “physical theater that creates friction between the performers and the audience in order to open up avenues for political and social change. The theater I hope to create is not meant to be an illusion of reality; it is meant to incite change in how people think and feel.”
Jana Schmieding took her first theater arts class as a freshman. Jana so enjoyed Presence and Resistance—an acting class in which students explore clowning techniques to learn how to become more comfortable taking risks—she enrolled in another of Professor John Schmor’s acting classes the following year.
Now a senior, Jana is working on her final project with John’s guidance. A Lakota woman who grew up in Oregon, Jana’s one-woman show involves the portrayal of Native American women throughout history and incorporates issues of abuse, identity, motherhood, and the importance of family and community.
Selected Faculty Work
Professor Robert Barton is the Head of the Actor Traning Program. “I expect my students to use the art of acting not only to rediscover playfulness and wonder but also to gain the tools—no matter what they choose to do for a living—to improve themselves,” Barton explains.
Professor Sandy Bonds teaches courses in costume design, history, and construction. She also designs productions for University Theatre. Her major research interest is Asian theater, especially the costumes of the Beijing Opera.
“I approach all students as though they might be the next famous and successful costume designers,” Professor Bons says. They learn design theory and practice, rendering skills, the cultural context of costume history, patterning, and construction. In addition to these professional skills, students learn responsibility, discipline, and collaboration.”
An Assistant Professor and UO alumnus, John Schmor came to the UO theater arts department in 1999. In 2003, he won the prestigious Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching. He teaches the graduate sequence in Production Theory, and seminars in Devising New Works, Postmodern Theatre(s), Queer/Camp Theatre, Play Direction, and two acting courses. In addition to teaching and directing each year for the University Theatre’s mainstage season, John is also a performer/collaborator with Creative Material Group in intermedia productions such as FAUST/FAUSTUS, which toured venues in Eugene, in Portland, and in London and Kings Lynn, England in July, 2000.
“I hope my students will learn from me that skepticism without faith can become destructive, that history is a kind of ongoing moral responsibility we inherit from the people who came before us—and it can become a very real and innovative agency once a student gets past the false separations of theory and practice or thinking and feeling. I hope my students will come up against something in the material we study that requires of them some risk, some endangering of comfortably narrow or systematic attitudes.”
Career Prospects
Some pursuits are obvious. You might become an actor or a director or a choreographer. Maybe you will continue to design sets for local productions and move on to bigger theaters. Job skills for academic and professional theater include costume design, shop management, cutting, stitching, dyeing, and wigs. But theater arts has many broader applications. It encourages confidence, grace, and vitality—qualities that are valuable in all aspects of life, including elementary school teaching. You might apply your skills to productions with “a cause,” maybe health, environmental, or cultural issues.
You might choose to develop theater arts programs in communities with limited resources. The theater is an important and timeless part of our culture. Majors in this discipline carry on a valuable cultural tradition.