Preparing Pippin

It takes dedication, skill, and teamwork to produce URI Theatre's annual holiday musical.

Cast members Sarah Autumn Feeley and Jeff Smith in the Will Theatre dressing room.

Pippin stage manager Alvin Dizon and student production manager Cat Smith

Preparing Pippin

By John Pantalone '71Photos By Nora Lewis

On a Saturday afternoon in mid-November while the football team tried its best at Meade Field, 40 or 50 other students gathered at the Fine Arts Center's Will Theatre to hone their own form of precision teamwork and create a winning combination of moves.

This team was composed of theatre students poised for action two weeks before URI Theatre's opening night of a modernized staging of the '70s Broadway hit musical Pippin.

Singers, dancers, actors, stage managers, set designers, lighting designers, costume and makeup people, technical designers, prop managers--they were all there. And so were their coaches: director Paula McGlasson, chair of the Theatre Department; choreographer Michelle Gonya; music and orchestra director Lila Kane; and several others.

The players warmed up, then practiced small scenes over and over, analyzing details of dance routines countless times, testing the training they had received from vocal coaches, and trying out movement techniques they had learned in class. And they listened closely to one another and to their coaches.

As they moved through the rehearsal, covering the entire first act of Pippin, the performers paused for advice and praise. "Why are you singing that line?" McGlasson asked Andrew Lidestri, one of the principals. "You're showing no indication of what that line means. Think about the line."

A short time later McGlasson would move actor Angel Castro two steps upstage for a scene that lasted only a moment in the show. "You can't stand there, Angel," she cautioned. "You're in the audience's way. You see these people," she continued, pointing to Will Theatre's rows of empty seats. "They're your parents. Move back so they can see you."

A little later, Daniel Houle, who played Charlemagne, tipped back too far in the swivel office chair that served as his throne. During a break he headed directly for production stage manager Alvin Dizon, who has worked on dozens of URI Theatre plays.

"Is that the actual chair we're using?" Houle asked Dizon.

"Yes," the stage manager quickly replied. "Oh, maybe. What? I'm not sure."

"It will make a difference to my timing," Houle cautioned.

"I'll find out," Dizon promised.

It was indeed the chair that appeared in the show. It might seem a small matter, but this detail reveals the precise collaboration that the students, working with URI Theatre faculty and visiting theatre professionals, brought to this high tech version of Pippin, which included student-made music videos, elaborate sound tracks, and high energy music and dancing.

In a line towards the end of Act I, Pippin--the play's hero and the son and heir of Charlemagne--hopeful of leading a revolution toward a just society, tells a group of reluctant rebels, "I admire the dedication and courage that has brought you here." Shortly after, the rebels comically abandon him.

His words, however, describe the truth of URI Theatre, which requires dedication and courage from all participants along with flawless team work that is achieved through endless practice. To judge by enthusiastic audiences, the Pippin cast's professionalism shone through all seven days and nine performances of the show, which was URI Theatre's December holiday production.

"It's similar to athletics in many ways," says McGlasson. "The students learn by doing--it really is an experiential model. We try to have what takes place in the classroom and what takes place in production complement one another. In theatre classes you're up every day in class presenting scenes. You can't hide in the back buried in a notepad."

The students echo McGlasson's observations. Says Sarah Autumn Feeley, a junior theatre major who has aspirations for a film career, "You carry technique from the classroom to the shows. And you receive a lot of individual attention here."

"The older actors set the standard of behavior in rehearsal for the younger ones," Alvin Dizon remarks. "Everyone understands how important it is to work together."

URI's Theatre Department--whose graduates include playwright Tom Griffin '68, TV actor Eric Lutes '91 (Del in Caroline in the City), and the late film actor J.T. Walsh '68, Hon. '98, (A Few Good Men, Good Morning Vietnam, the Grifters, Hannah and Her Sisters, among many others)--grew from a single course offered in the English Department in the 1920s by English Professor Helen Peck.

When Robert E. Will, for whom the theatre at the Fine Arts Center is named, arrived to teach English, he guided the program to new heights. Starting in 1948, he directed students in four main productions a year, a tradition the department continues today for its 80 theatre majors and 20 minors.

Under Will's leadership, theatre achieved department status in 1957, first as part of speech communications, then, in 1967, as a full status department of its own. Four years later the department moved into the new Fine Arts Center with its excellent stage and well designed auditorium that allowed more ambitious productions with larger casts.

While most theatre majors choose the department's acting track, some--like Alvin Dizon--prefer the technical side. Still others choose to study on two tracks. Senior Catherine Johnson chose a directing track and a theatre management track. "My experience here has all been applied learning," she says. "I've worked on many shows in many different capacities, working with all kinds of people from my fellow students to professionals."

Twenty-four-year-old senior Jeff Smith of Lincoln, Nebraska, came to URI on a soccer scholarship but quickly discovered that he preferred acting to athletics. He changed majors from political science in his sophomore year, took three years off school to work and save money, then returned to URI as a theatre major. Since then he has appeared in six main stage shows and two student directed productions.

"What happens in the theatre program is that you stumble across other interests," Smith says. "Every theatre major has to participate in a certain number of shows both on stage and in technical areas. I'm in the acting track, but I discovered when I helped paint sets that I really like set design--it really helped me understand the illusion of theatre better."

Smith's experience is not unusual. The theatre program constantly stretches and expands the talents and experiences of student participants, making them among the most well rounded and versatile of University graduates.

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