As the new academic year comes upon us, we thought it fit to share a great article from a few months back by Carey Wallace about the importance of discipline in the life of a creative person – not just working hard at your art, but having discipline in all aspects that can affect your art (sleep, studying, diet, exercise, social interaction, and certainly your spiritual life).
We are glad to be hosting guest artist C. McNair Wilson during the second weekend of this year’s Belhaven Theatre Festival, for a performance of his one-man show From Up Here on Friday, April 15 at 7 pm. Wilson is a sought-after speaker and performer, a director and author; a former Disney Imagineer and is the co-founder of IMAGINU!TY Unlimited. He will be visiting our classes and sharing with the theatre students during our weekly departmental meeting, as well as leading a creativity seminar open to the Belhaven community on Saturday the 16th. For more info on McNair (and to check out his books and videos) visit his website or his blog.
Actor Rich Swingle will be joining us during the first weekend of the upcoming Belhaven Theatre Festival to share his one-man performance of Beyond the Chariots, the story of Olympian Eric Liddell (whose life story served as the basis for the film Chariots of Fire), on Saturday April 9. He has presented this piece Off-Broadway, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and in the cities of Beijing, Vancouver and Singapore during the Olympic Games. Rich is the theatre program director for the MasterWorks Festival each summer, is on the board of directors for Christians in Theatre Arts, and was on the planning committee for Media and Arts at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelizatio
n in Cape Town, South Africa.
Rich will also be guest speaking with several of our class sessions, instructing a workshop in SocioDrama, and presenting at our weekly Departmental meeting on his experience with the Ivy League Congress on Faith and Action.
Visiting with us Sept. 20-22 will be guest artist Paul D. Patton, playwright of Lifting the Veil, which will premiere on September 21. Lifting the Veil is based on the true story of the runaway wedding of evangelists Katherine Kuhlman and Burroughs Waltrip, as they struggle to divine the will of God in their hasty marriage.
Paul is the author of over 30 works for the theatre and was the founder of Trinity House Theatre in Detroit. He is the co-author of the recently published “Prophetically Incorrect: a Christian introduction to Media Criticism”.
Paul has lectured on topics such as “The Idolatry of the Cult of Celebrity” and “God Talk: Lessons in the Manipulative Use of Religious Language.” He is an associate professor of Communication and Drama at Spring Arbor University in Michigan, where he lives with his wife, Beth.
Paul visited Belhaven previously in 2007 when we produced his play, Kurt Gerstein, winner of the 2007 Christians in Theatre Arts New Play Contest.
Paul will be guest lecturing at several classes, including our Scriptwriting course and performance classes, and will make a special presentation at a whole department gathering on Tuesday afternoon.
Ben Cameron is an arts administrator, giving a short talk to the people at the TEDxYYC conference about the power and importance of the live performing arts; particularly in an era dominated by the internet and constant easy access entertainment.
Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ” proved to many Hollywood executives that there was an untapped market of people looking for specifically Christian material. In the years since, a handful of films out of Hollywood have attempted to reach that market with varying degrees of success – which has still left room for the independently produced Christian films, such as the ones produced by Sherwood Baptist Church (Facing the Giants, Fireproof, etc). But with dollar signs in their eyes, the dream machine of the mainstream film industry has yet to fully tap into that audience. Here is an article from the New York Times that addresses this issue.
Zap Props – the go-to place for all kinds of films, television, music videos and theatre works happening in the Chicagoland area, was featured in the following article in the Chicago Times.
This is an article about actor Neil McDonough (recognizable from Desperate Housewives and Band of Brothers), who has faced challenges as an actor because of the stand he’s taken on filming love scenes because of his religious beliefs.
We are pleased and blessed that this fall we will be welcoming a new Specialty Instructor in Technical Direction, Mrs. Rebekah R. Bert.
Rebekah has just completed her Master’s work at Binghamton University, SUNY, and will be managing our scene shop and technical support for productions, as well as teaching our Stagecraft and Technical Resources courses.
Rebekah has worked for several theater companies, including Tri-Cities Opera, Endicott Performing Arts Center, The Cider Mill, and a few other local theaters in the Binghamton area. She has had the opportunity to work as a scenic and lighting designer, stage manager, and even director for shows throughout undergraduate school at Grove City College. Her most recent work was done at SUNY Binghamton where she designed the main stage production for Shakespear’s Henry V. She is currently working on the scenic design for a show during 2011 spring semester at SUNY Binghamton of Noises Off by Michael Frayn. Rebekah has a passion for theatre and looks forward to the new opportunities she will have at Belhaven.
Rebekah, her husband Luke (and their two cats) will be moving from New York to Mississippi at the end of June/ early July.
Emmy Award winning writer Keri Grayson Horn visits the 2010 Playwriting class
On April 8, 2010, our Playwriting class had a visit from Keri Grayson Horn, who won an Emmy Award in 2009 for her contribution in writing for the PBS series Between the Lions. She shared with us about the process of writing for television, the 30-second page format, and stories about the Emmy Awards process itself.