Auditions Scheduled for Summer Performances of “South Pacific”

Cast members are needed for the Fairmont State University Town & Gown Summer Theatre production of “South Pacific” at Prickett’s Fort State Park this summer.

 

Auditions will be held Tuesday, May 1, and Thursday, May 3. There will be roles for men and women ages 17 and older and two children ages 7 to 10.

 

Available roles include the following: Nellie Forbush, late 20s-early 30s (soprano); Emile de Becque, mid 40s-early 50s (high baritone); Bloody Mary,  mid to late 40s- early 50s (alto); Luther Billis, late 20s-30s (baritone); Lt. Joseph Cable, early 20s-30s (tenor); Capt. George Brackett, U.S. Navy, 50s (bass); Cmdr. William Harbison, U.S. Navy, 50s (bass); Ngana and Jerome, one girl and one boy, both ages 7-10; Liat,  late teens; Henry, Emile’s assistant, 50s; Bloody Mary’s assistant, 30s. Also needed are various young men (sailors, seabees, Marines, etc.) in their late teens to 30s and various young women (nurses) in their late teens to 30s.

 

Singing auditions will be 6 to 10 p.m. on Tuesday, May 1, and Thursday, May 3. Those interested in auditioning for a role should sign up for one of the two audition days by calling (304) 367-4219.  Those who audition should prepare 16 bars from a song of their choice, bring sheet music that is clearly marked for the accompanist and avoid singing songs from “South Pacific.”  Those who audition are encouraged to choose songs from the Rodgers & Hammerstein songbook or from other writers from the golden age of musical theatre from 1940 – 1950.  Rehearsals will begin on May 24. Performance dates will be July 6-8 and 12-14.

 

“South Pacific” is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The plot draws from James A. Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning1947 book “Tales of the South Pacific,” combining elements of several of the stories in that book. The musical centers on an American nurse stationed at a U.S. Naval base during World War II who falls in love with an expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A second romance concerns a U.S. Lieutenant who falls in love with a young Asian woman. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most pointedly in the song, “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.”

 

“South Pacific” is considered to be one of the greatest Broadway musicals. The musical premiered in 1949 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950. Several of its songs, including “Bali Ha’I,” “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outta My Hair,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Happy Talk,” “Younger than Springtime” and “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy,” have become popular standards. The Broadway production won 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Libretto, and it is the only musical production ever to have won all four Tony Awards for acting. The show was a critical and box office hit and has since enjoyed many successful revivals and tours, spawning a 1958 film and other adaptations. The 2008 Broadway revival was a strong success, winning seven Tonys including Best Musical Revival. 

 

Auditions Scheduled for Summer Performances of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”

Audition Notice:  The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Fairmont State University

Directors: Troy Snyder and RJ Nestor

Dates of Performance: Sept. 21. 22. 23 and 26. 27. 28. 29

Rehearsals may begin before classes start in August

ACTING AND SINGING AUDITIONS
Wednesday and Thursday, May 2 and 3
Wallman Hall Location to be announced.

Music Preparation:

1.) Up-tempo, 16-32 bars, modern musical theatre piece
2.) Ballad, 16-32 bars, (at Musical Directors’ discretion)

Acting Preparation:

Character driven, serio-comic monologue* required
–(* serious to the speaker, perceived humorously by audience)

Headshot/Resume: Please bring each.

8 ROLES AVAILABLE FOR STRONG SINGERS AND GOOD SPELLERS, AGES 16 AND ABOVE.

CONTACT TROY SNYDER IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS
troy.snyder@fairmontstate.edu

School of Fine Arts recognizes students at awards ceremony

All Fine Arts award recipients

(by Marian Hollinger): On Sunday evening,  April 22, the School of Fine Arts held its second independent Awards Ceremony to honour its students and their accomplishments. 

Scholarship winners were introduced for art, music and theatre departments; also introduced were students who have School of Fine Arts scholarships.  

Music Department award recipients

For Music, these are:  Anthony Errigo, David Allen, Rachel McIntire, Kayla Keefover, Andrew Kirk, Michael Robinson, Logan Sindledecker, Sarah Balderson, Julianne Beckett, Anna Carpenter, Amy Farson, Jonathan Harden, Christopher Mastrorocco, Zachary Pelikan, Brian Reed and Emily Watkins. 

Communication and Theatre Arts Department award recipients

Scholarship students in the communication and theatre department are:  Kayla Alred, Morgan Davis, Tyler Kovar, Jay Lindsay, Loralee Simpson, Cetara Hefner, Pamela Chatman, Katie Groover, Madison Whiting, Ami Queen, Kathryn Shields and Catherine Fiorini. 

Art Department award recipients

For the art department, the following are scholarship students:  Kitty Dixon, Kelechi Ejimofor, Laura Walker, Aaron Queen, Leyna Bansbach, Beverly Diane Criswell-Furr, and Paige Buckhalter.

Visual Art Award recipients are: Cassandra Abel:  Outstanding Senior in Art Education;  Tyler Bray:  Outstanding Senior in Studio Art;  Corey Staub: Outstanding Senior in Contemporary Fine Arts Technology;  Leyna Bansbach: Leadership Award for Visual Art and Tyler Bray:  Excellence in Gallery Management

Music Award recipients are: Jay Leeper: WVCMEA Chapter 315 Outstanding Music Educator ; Anthony Errigo: Winner of FSU Concerto Competition; Anthony Errigo: Outstanding Music Research Award; Rachel McIntire: Music History Achievement Award; Matthew Morgan: Theory Achievement Award;  

Kayla Keefover: Outstanding Freshman; Logan Sindledecker: Outstanding Sophomore and Michael Robinson: Outstanding Junior.

Communication and Theatre Arts Award recipients are: Lillian Gaylord: Excellence in Theory and History; Bruce McGlumphy: Excellence in Acting;  Loralee Simpson: Excellence in Directing ; Matthew Snyder: Excellence in Design; Cora Childress: Excellence in Design; Kate Thompson: Excellence in Education;  Madison Whiting: Freshman Leadership award;  Tyler Kovar: Sophomore Leadership award;  Kayla Alred: Junior Leadership award; Eliza Huff: Outstanding Theatre Artist and Kathryn Shields: Outstanding Communication Student.

The event drew faculty members, alums, parents and family members, in addition to the scholarship and award winners.

“What the Butler Saw” — mad farce, raucous romp & the perfect antidote to finals week

Sami Dull as Geraldine Barclay & Jay Lindsay as Dr. Prentice

Need a release from the pressure-cooker of finals week?  Come on down to Wallman Hall Theatre for an evening of zany, sexually-charged, door-slamming farce, with the entire cast in a constant state of half-dress, cross-dress & undress, and enough black satiric barbs thrown in to ensure unrelenting mortification for all.  What could be better?

Not that there’s a hint of any of this as the play opens.  We see a beautifully arranged office interior— a chic black & white confection of Art Deco & 60s Mod, the very embodiment of lightness, reason and calming reassurance.  What could possibly go wrong in such a well-ordered professional setting?  What indeed!

Just ask pretty Geraldine Barclay (played with pert perfection by the ever-versatile Sami Dull).  Wide-eyed and clueless, Miss Barclay wanders haplessly into the lair of one Dr. Prentice (portrayed with frazzled near-hysteria by Jay Lindsay),  seeking a secretarial position in what she has every reason to assume is a respectable psychiatric practice.

Tyler Johnson as Nick & Cecily Collins as Mrs. Prentice

In the lecherous conniving hands of Dr Prentice, however, Miss Barclay finds herself in very short order hiding naked behind a curtain just as Mrs Prentice (played by a wickedly hilarious Cecily Collins) enters the room, fresh from an illicit liason with Nick the bellboy (pluckily portrayed by Tyler Johnson), who will in turn attempt to blackmail her with revealing photos of their tawdry tryst.

But to continue, when his wife inopportunely enters the office,  Dr Prentice scrambles to cover his tracks with one frantic lie after another (and to cover Miss Barclay with whatever he can find), but with every new effort and fantastic fib,  he only digs himself in deeper.

Walter Cyphers as Seargeant Match & Brandon Lee as Dr. Rance

Now enter Dr Rance (played with imperturbable suavity by Brandon Lee), a Government Inspector who can make or break careers with a single report, the Guarantor of Order & Professional Standards, who in reality is a walking catastrophe & purveyor of chaos. He’s going to put things to rights, gets it all wrong, and couldn’t care less.  Under his professional guidance, poor Miss Barclay, all the while pleading the unadorned truth, is strapped in a straight-jacket and shorn of her hair.

And if that weren’t enough, yet another complicating figure enters the fray, an earnest, inept, London bobby (played with a classic rolling swagger straight out of Gilbert & Sullivan by Walter F. Cyphers), who, on Official Business, is in search of a fine set of brass genitals stolen from a statue of Winston Churchill.

Wind the whole production up to a frenetic pitch, with swinging doors, gender-switches, lost lingerie, mistaken identities, sexual deviance, preposterous coincidences, false arrests, suspected homicide, accidental incest, misdiagnoses, shameless hustling (& hussies), solid brass balls, split-second timing, everyone caught in flagrante delicto with everyone else, and the only thing lacking is Harpo Marx running around honking a bicycle horn.

From that point onward, everything and everyone just basically fall to pieces, from Sgt Match (drugged into a stupor by Dr Rance) careening & crashing about the stage like a drunken bear— to Mrs Prentice plunging headlong from society matron to lascivious souse, pulling out bottles from one impossible place after another (mostly on her own person), and finally crawling from under a table in a state of complete disarray— to the veritible Dr Rance himself, plunging a narcotic-filled hypo into his own thigh (physician heal thyself! )

For playwright Joe Orton, a world run by experts— all wearing white lab coats and sharing the first name of Dr— is a sure prescription for Bedlam.  The two principle protagonists, Dr Prentice & Dr Rance, who, as fully credentialed and duly authorized experts on human nature and its aberrations, are society’s Guardians of Reason and Order, diagnosing breakdowns and prescribing their cures.  Except, of course, that the good doctors Prentice & Rance are fully as weak, corruptible and nuts as everyone else.

Combine corruption, authority & questionable expertise, stir well, and the results are reliably disastrous (just look around).  When Dr Rance’s extreme diagnosis of Miss Barclay, concocted from the flimsiest of evidence, is called into question, he complacently explains that “civilizations have been founded and maintained on theories that refuse to obey facts”, and in that single barb the very keystone of our contemporary culture of expertise is exposed for the rubbleheap that it is.

But never mind all that.  If you’ve had your fill of weighty ideas & pompous professors and sworn off all ideas & thinking for the duration of the summer— if all you want is a couple of hours of raucous hilarity, irreverent zingers and nubile beauties discarding their dresses, then What the Butler Saw is the play for you.  You can leave all that mordant subtext for those who like that sort of thing, and settle in for a happily mindless evening of classic farce.

Director John O’Connor has assembled a tightly-choreographed, crackerjack cast for this impossibly complicated production in which athleticism and split-second timing are equally crucial.  That they pulled it off on opening night without a hitch is cause for wonder, and was due in no small measure, not only to the direction of Dr O’Connor and his veteran cast, but equally to the polished teamwork of set designer Troy Snyder, lighting designer Todd Wren, light & sound board operators William Redd and Madison Whiting, costumer designer Kelly Blake, sound designer Morgan Davis, stage manager Lillian Gaylord and prop master Morgan Davis.

What the Butler Saw continues in Wallman Hall Theatre on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings (April 26, 27 and 28), at 7:30. For tickets, call the box office (304) 367-4240 or visit www.fairmontstate.edu/tickets.  Suitable for mature audiences only.

Saxophone Quartet to present spring concert on Mon, Apr 30, at 8 pm, in Wallman Hall

At 8:00 p.m. on Monday, April 30, in 229 Wallman Hall, the FSU Saxophone Quartet will present its spring concert under the direction of W. Randall Hall.

Members of the quartet, Cecil Lopez (soprano and alto saxophone), Bryan Foley (alto sax), Brandon Haggerty (tenor sax), and Rachel McIntire (baritone sax), will be joined by Emma Carpenter (electric bass) and Michael Robinson (drums).

The program includes selections by Gershwin/Cappuccio, “Blues Theme” from “An American in Paris;” Lennie Nelson’s “Sir Sax;” J.S. Bach’s and Voxman’s “Bourree;” Warren Barker’s “Sailor’s Hornpipe;” the traditional “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” arranged by Jack Gale; Lennie Niehaus’ “Uptown Waltz;” and Duke Ellington’s and Michael Sweeney’s “Satin Doll,” and will conclude with Bill Holcombe’s arrangement of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”

The concert is free and open to the public.

2012 Juried Student Exhibition winners announced

(by Marian Hollinger)   On Tuesday evening, April 17, the Art Department of Fairmont State University held the opening reception for its annual Juried Student Exhibition.  The juror, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was artist and former gallery curator Ryan Ward.

Awards were presented during the reception.  Winners were: Merit Awards, Tyler Bray, painting and Christopher Schultz, printmaking; Travis Pudder, Third Place, Two-dimensional Art, video; Aaron Queen, Second Place, Two-Dimensional Art, painting; Erin McKown, First Place, Two-dimensional Art, drawing; Erin McDaniel, Second Place  Three-Dimensional Art, ceramics; Kass Lloyd, First Place, Three-dimensional Art, ceramics; Emily Harki, Best in Show, mixed media drawing; School of Fine Arts Dean’s Award, Erin McKown, drawing, and Fairmont State University President’s Award, Travis Pudder, painting.

This year’s Timothy Clayton Memorial Award, in its sixth year, was presented to Tyler Bray for painting.  Each year, the award is given to the student whose work seems best to embody the spirit of the work of student T. J. Clayton, who was killed by a drunk driver May 18, 2005.

The exhibition will be on display in Brooks Gallery of Wallman Hall through April 27.  Regular Gallery hours are Monday – Friday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.  For special arrangements, please call or e-mail Curator Marian J. Hollinger (304) 367-4300; mhollinger@fairmontstate.edu

Christopher Schultz, "That's the way she goes . . . "

Tyler Bray, "Rock Lobster"

Travis Pudder, "Seven Pilgrims"

Emily Harki, "Shining through the Darkness"

Aaron Queen, "Bright French Woman"

Erin McKown, "Model"

Kass Lloyd, bowl

Erin McDaniel, dinnerware set

FSU Wind Ensemble to present final concert of the semester, “Voices of the Past”, May 3 at 8 pm, in Wallman Hall Theatre

The FSU Wind Ensemble will present their final concert of the semester on May 3, 2012 in Wallman Hall Theatre at 8:00 p.m., and is free and open to the public.  The theme for this concert is “Voices of the Past”.  The connecting thread is that all the pieces performed on the concert are based on either a hymn tune, spiritual or folk song.

 

Opening the concert, Dr. Valarie Huffman will conduct Clouds that Sail in Heaven, a fanfare based on the hymn “All Creatures of Our God and King”, followed by Luigi Zaninelli’s Remembrance, which contains a setting of the Phillip Bliss hymn “It is Well With My Soul”.  Matthew Schoonmaker will next conduct Brant Karrick’s They Shall Run and Be Free.  This piece depicts a slave escape during the Civil War and is based on the spiritual “To Freedom”.

 

Following Mr. Schoonmaker, David Allen will conduct Frank Ticheli’s setting of Shenandoah.  Mr. Allen is from Middlebourne, WV and will graduate in the spring of 2013 with a degree in music education.  Concluding the concert, Dr. Huffman returns to the podium to conduct Reber Clark’s Hymn of St. James; a contemporary setting of the hymn “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” which is frequently sung in the Episcopal Church.

 

Continuing with the Band’s effort to raise funds for new marching band uniforms, donations will be accepted at both concerts, and are appreciated.