This season the Department of Performing Arts will perform two musicals, "Cabaret" in October and "Kiss Me Kate" in March, as well as the Shakespeare play "Much Ado About Nothing" in February and numerous vocal and instrumental concerts throughout the year in the newly created Greenberg Theater.
The DPA consists of undergraduate programs in music, theater, and musical theater, with graduate degrees available in dance and arts management.
Department chair Gail Humphries believes it is important for students to learn about the bonds between music, theater and dance.
"There is the academic experience and training for each discipline, but the cross-disciplinary training is very rich," Humphries said. This learning is a necessity for performing arts students, according to Humphries. However, ability is as necessary as desire to learn for success. One of Humphries' favorite parts of her job is "the quality of the faculty and the interaction of students so dedicated to the artistic process," she said.
The artistic process has been made easier now that the DPA has a modern facility to use, the Greenberg Theater.
"[The theater] is designed to support all of our needs," Humphries said. The theater, named for Harold and Sylvia Greenberg, features more than 300 seats, a production shop, costume shop and a lighting and sound booth. Performers can take advantage of the spacious dressing room, complete with piano, which is quite a step up from the broom closet dressing rooms in the former venue, the Experimental Theater, a lecture hall turned performance hall on campus.
A state-of-the-art arena directly relates to quality learning and performance opportunities.
"A student going through training needs a facility in which to experiment," Humphries said. "This is how growth occurs." Many involved in the DPA hope the new theater will open students up to the performing arts.
"Every time you do theater, you're dropping into a different world," director of theater Caleen Sinnette Jennings said. "I hope the audience can spend a short time in our world, and bring it to their lives."
Jennings is currently directing her self-written production, "Perf 101," a play about first-year DPA students to be performed Sept. 19 and 20 in the Greenberg Theater.
Jennings hopes that other patrons, not just students, will attend as well. "We want this to be a theater for the community," Jennings said, noting that the department has sent out more notices of upcoming events to people living in the neighborhood.
However, some say the Greenberg Theater is more than just a way to draw in community patrons; it's a wish fulfilled.
"This is my twentieth year at [AU] and I feel as if I'm living a realized dream," Humphries said. To her, the DPA can be summed up as - "terrific people, a cause I believe in, and now a space to support it ... the enthusiasm of the students is unrivaled."
For more information about the upcoming season visit www.american.edu/perf_arts.
