Student Blog: JMU Studio Theatre; Student Lead, Produced, and Directed Theatre

JMU’s School of Theatre and Dance is the place I’ve called home for the past two years. It’s full of supportive faculty and eager students who are just as passionate about theater as I am. One of the ways this is seen is in our Studio Theatre. This 200 seat black box theater has been housing student produced, written, designed, and directed work for years now. It can transform into a traditional proscenium setting or can be a black box that allows for multiple creative seating and design choices. The possibilities are endless and it’s one of the reasons I chose to come to JMU in the first place. It allows students to experiment in various design positions or production roles in a controlled environment full of experienced student and faculty support. I myself am jumping back into the Studio Theatre this fall as an actor in our production of Anne Washburn’s Mr Burns, A Post-Electric Play. To get more information on the Studio Theatre and its supporting organization Stratford Players, I sat down with two of my collaborators and close friends. Stella Shoemaker (pictured left), the president of Stratford Players and the sound liaison of the Studio Theatre, and Jamie Guest (pictured right), the Studio Theatre production manager and vice president of Stratford Players. We chatted about its history, how it uplifts and supports student work, how the work gets produced, and some of the rewards and challenges that come with the job. 

M: How did the Studio Theatre get started?

J: Before there was Forbes, the building, STAD (The School of Theatre and Dance) operated in “The Turkey Hatchery”. This off campus, catch-all space were all the theater happened and before there was even a theater major there was Stratford. Stratford kind of formulated all of the theater that happened. Forbes has come out of that and the studio space itself has now been given to the experimental theater that was started by Stratford.

S: Stratford is turning 110 this year! We have outlived Queen Elizabeth II and Betty White so, we’re very old. We started back when JMU was just a women’s college as a Shakespeare literary club and transitioned into doing plays of other people who are not just Shakespeare. When the theatre program became a thing, Stratford Shows, our season, is solidly a part of the curriculum here. Students get class credit for our shows and there’s a lot of support from the systems in the program. We do a lot of fun, independent things like social events and is all student run. It feels very independent and like a fun little community while still having that support from our faculty if we need it. 

M: This goes perfectly into my next question which is, what is Stratford Players?

S: Like I said, it’s very old. We are the oldest [organization] on campus and the longest running. We kind of do 3 things. The biggest thing we do is the Stratford Players Season. This semester we are doing four shows so by the end of the year we should have six or seven shows that we’ve done. We run, produce, and help organize the season for students who are showing their work in our black box venue. We also are just a normal student club! We host social events like apple picking called Strapple-Picking and a thanksgiving called Strats-giving. We provide resources for students like last year we did a free headshot day. The third thing we do is be the student council of the theatre department. Our execs are welcome and invited to faculty meetings and we host town halls with the faculty.

J: When I think Stratford I think community and you have that a lot in theatre to begin with but I think at a university where the organization started as the only source of theatre, we really aim to be helpful to everyone and make theatre, getting involved in it, and getting excited about it accessible to everyone. Whether that’s through playing trivia and winning tickets to shows or just supporting your fellow artists and friends in what they do.

M: So anyone can join Stratford?

J: YES! Everyone can join Stratford.

S: Anyone can join Stratford. Everyone should join Stratford!

M: You’ve talked about the role that Stratford has within the School of Theatre and Dance. I know from being a student how works are selected for the season but, how are works selected for people who don’t know?

J: The exciting thing is that students get to propose things that they can direct, stage manage, and design for. The way that it happens is that everyone separately comes up with these awesome ideas, checking in with faculty members, and making sure that it will work for the season. We then have this really awesome meeting every semester called Proposal Presentations where everybody can kind of pitch their idea. I think it’s a really cool experience because how professional theaters choose their seasons is a very big part of how theater gets made. The fact that we get to do that on a smaller scale with our friends and have a say in what theater goes on in our spaces is really awesome. 

S: Another thing that’s super cool about what we do is that our season is open to student-written works. We have workshops here as well which also focus on incubating student new works. After they go through a workshop, they have the opportunity to propose to be in our season which is a really amazing experience to see a play that your peers have written, directed, designed, and are performing in. It’s super awesome! 

M: Now, students propose the piece. Are there any requirements and prerequisites needed to propose a piece? Can anyone propose a piece? Do they have to be a theater major? What’s up with that?

J: I would say the main requirement is going to come into play when we talk about our budgets. We have a Lab budget and a Studio budget. The Studio is going to have a little bit more money to it which means that students who are going to apply for that have to have taken our directing course. You have now been educated on how to kind of work with that kind of budget and situation and going forward are now able to take that on. That’s the only requirement but you can still propose a Lab without having taken directing. 

S: I’ll just shout out Joaquin last year. He was a business major and he was one of the directors of our shows and he directed The Last Five Years which was super beautiful. Any person of any major can propose a show. It helps to have been doing things in Stratford but yeah, it truly is open to anyone.

M: I’m gonna pivot a little bit here and ask about designing in the studio. Do you have to have any prior experience in designing? Is it helpful to have any prior experience? What are some of the things people should know about designing in the studio?

S: I focus a lot on design. A lot of the things I’ve done have been design focused. I went into my first design position in the studio with like one show that I had been runcrew for under my belt, and that was it. It really truly is open to everyone who wants to do it. People will say “Oh but I don’t have any experience” and we’ll go “Great, that’s the whole point”. Of course our season isn’t just open to people who are new to design. It’s also open to people who have experience and want to come back to our black box because they enjoy the season or they really like the venue. I’ll let Jaime talk about The Studio Team because they are a really big part of the support for first-time designers.

J: My first show I ever did here was scenic design for Dog Sees God. The way it happened was that there was an interest form for designers and I filled it out saying that I had done props a couple of times but was open to anything. The stage manager and director reached out to me and said we want you to be our scenic designer. I immediately felt that kind of imposter syndrome of “Do they understand how unqualified I am? I’m just a little freshman. I know nothing” but I was just welcomed with open arms. Getting into the studio team! The Studio Management Team is a group of currently eight student employees, production managers, technical directors, and a whole bunch of different area heads that are able to assist, guide, and mentor students. So when I was scenic designing, our technical director kind of took me under his wing and I was able to have that guidance.

S: During my first show, I was also a freshman, and the studio team was really fundamental to me feeling comfortable and capable in the space. I had a lot of different questions, concerns, and surprises with my process. Having the studio team who not only were very qualified but have also been in my same position two or three years before was super awesome. I will say I am also the sound liaison so I do everything I can to reach out to the sound designers of the season, reach out to them, and make myself available to help them in any way I can.

J: Stella and I have both had the privilege to have worked on the Stratford board and the Studio Management Team. This will be our second year together. The surprises and mishaps that you go through as an artist is some of the best educational material. I don’t know if you’ve [Stella] coined this term but “failing upwards” is a thing that we’ve been talking about. The idea that the big messy dress rehearsal you had along with how crazy it felt was actually a really amazing thing for everyone in that process. You learned something new and you came out with new things on the other side. A privilege in being able to lead these groups is to see, help, and encourage people through those failures.

S: The Studio Team for me is the perfect place to come to as a student for two reasons. One, that it’s okay to fail. There is no expectation that you are going to succeed because what is success when you’re making art. There’s no reason. We want to create a culture that challenges the notion that everything needs to be exactly right, perfect, and the way I want it to go. My first time designing didn’t go the way I wanted it to go. I felt very stressed and overwhelmed but it took that first experience that I can “fail” to learn that not everything is going to go the way that I expect it and everything is still going to be okay. Taking that lesson of leaning on others and trusting the process has helped me with every single process that I have been in because I have NOT been in a process that goes the way that you think it goes. That’s just not the way things work. 

M: You guys have both mentioned that you are on the Studio Management Team. What are some of the challenges and rewards that come with the position? 

J: It’s a really special thing. The opportunity to be a production manager of a space in a building where I live and work. It’s a really cool opportunity that has been put in place. That being said, of course it’s going to draw up some complications when students are in such leadership positions. I think it’s really a transparency thing. It’s that balance of independence and responsibility that in college you are naturally grappling with. I think we’ve continuously been able to lift each other up and say “Actually, you do know a lot about lighting and you are qualified to be leading in this space”.

S: It has been really REALLY cool to get a behind the scenes look at how everything works. We make the calendar for the season and I make a lot of the rep plots and resources for the sound designers. It’s really cool to see all of the random logistics that you would not have expected, coming together and being able to apply them. It means a lot when students see other students leading them. I can say to a sound designer one year ago I was in your position. I knew nothing. Now I’m helping teach you how to do this for the first time. Us coming from that perspective is super super awesome. Like Jaime said, there’s gonna be challenges. It’s a super weird thing that we do. Talking to other people at other schools, their theater programs do not have such a self-sufficient student program. We could move to a totally different building and we would be a full program of people who make theater. I think that is always weird. Also just having two different seasons in one building is gonna have some logistical challenges. The Studio/Stratford Season and our Mainstage Season both have different goals and success is based on diversity. If you’re not diverse, then if your one goal falls through you have nothing else to lean on. Having these two different perspectives in the same building is going to make us stronger artists. Being able to experience both, this first-time, experimental, no-failing, kinda weird, get funky-with-it experience in the Studio and our Mainstage which is more based on what is typically seen in the industry, is making us stronger.

J: I think that a lot of the obstacles we face as a studio management team and as a student-made theater program come from this idea of expectations. What the idea of success is. What we are expecting going into this. This is going to happen when you have multiple seasons that have different scopes happening in the same building at the same time. But I think we’re moving in a very positive direction where we’re letting go of some of those expectations and being able to trust ourselves in the messiness and weirdness that can be college-made theater.

S: Pretty much everyone in this department has the goal of graduating, going into the industry, and being a theater maker for their career. If they don’t have that goal then I’m a little confused. By being able to have this space that isn’t tied to the customs of how it’s usually done that might hold us back in the industry, we have the opportunity to create something that is totally new, different, and fun. Before we have to worry about paying rent it gives us the chance to start experimenting with “What if I did this with my production process?”. Before we have to worry about providing food for ourselves and all of the other stressors that come with being outside of college, we get that opportunity to experiment and find what makes us passionate without someone telling us how art should be made because that’s not a thing that exists.

J: A place to play and experiment. I think that’s really the heart of it. You can just be free and make it with your friends. There’s this really cool experience when you have a student director who maybe hasn’t directed anything before, direct you. They are so much more open to what you might say or do as an actor because, we don’t really know what we’re doing. Accepting that leaves the expectations outside the room which is freeing.

M: To end it on an exciting and personal note, do you have a favorite studio experience or moment that stays with you?

J: I’m going to use last year’s experience that I had collectively as the assistant production manager. I always wanted to be a director. Director, director, director. That’s what I was supposed to do. I really believe that I have this knack for admin and management that I didn’t want to believe or accept. To be able to have that experience of a paid position in undergrad where I can find my niche in the niche I’m already passionate about in a new way, learn how to fully manage a season, all while going through the craziness with my friends and come out the other end of it was so rewarding last year. Proving to yourself that you can do something that you didn’t think you could do. Which I think sums up the Studio experience for a lot of people. Surprising yourself and teaching yourself new things because you had to. Because you signed up for a thing, you didn’t know how to do it, and you figured out how to. 

S: I have two moments for me that are definitely more in the movement I was kind of stressed but looking back it was a defining moment for me. The first was during Kaleidoscope which was my run crew job where I was sound board operator. We just had the entire sound system fail as I was pressing the first que of the show. Like the pre-show music stopped, the house lights went down, I pressed the first que and it stopped working. A lot of the studio management team happened to be in the audience. Our faculty production manager, Brian Smallwood, was there. This was a month into my freshman year. The audience loved it! What we ended up doing was playing the sounds through a different laptop through a Bluetooth speaker that was next to the godmic that still worked. After 30 minutes of troubleshooting, that was the best we could get. Coming from that experience and wondering “What can I do to make it so that when that happens for someone else, because things are going to go wrong, that they feel supported like I did by the studio team. What can I do to make sure they feel heard? Along with what different systems can we put in place to make sure that it doesn’t happen again if it doesn’t have to”. The other thing that I think about is my first show. There were a lot of licensing things that were stressful, the sound system again wasn’t working well and I was in there with Alison Spangenberg, the Studio production manager at the time, who was doing sound and we were just looking at the patch bay and just not understanding what was going on. It was a moment of sharing that even though we were in this tough situation that was stressful, that we were experiencing it together and that we were here for each other. It was necessary for me to be able to keep going with that show and for me to end up where I am today. I think my most fundamental positive experience is seeing the work that all of my friends are doing. I go into shows that I haven’t been working on and I see what they're doing and I get so impressed and proud of everyone in this department. Even the sound designers who I help and mentor, seeing their work coming to life and thinking “This is so cool”. Every single show that I’ve ever seen here, especially last year, has been mind blowing.

J: I actually do have a specific moment for you so I’m going to share that. This past May, we did this thing called Stratawards. It evolved from this banquet we used to have and was an end of the year celebration. But, we wanted to make it bigger than that. So we held it in the studio on the same day as our Alpha Psi Omega theater honors service fraternity formal. It was kind of like a Tony awards and then the Tonys after party but, make it Stratford. It was this really beautiful accumulation of theater where we had a play, we had a pseudo-devised piece, a musical, a new work, and another straight play. A completely diverse season of amazing artists where we were able to lift each other up, laugh, and celebrate. It all came together really amazingly. Not much has to go into something if you have enough people who support you and are excited about it.

S: I’m glad you brought up the Stratawards because I think it is such a specific thing that speaks to how much the students in our program really do care for each other. This award show is entirely student run and voted. Jaime printed off all of the certificates. I feel like that is rife with a lot of possibility for toxic gossip and it never has. The students here in this program, the studio theater, and the Stratford season are really here for each other. They celebrate each other and are so proud of when their friends are succeeding. I think a lot of theater programs can be competitive. It’s what happens. You compete with the other people for the same thing which we do have here but also have a really great understanding and connection with each other that is super awesome and that I’m super proud of. 

If you want to keep up with Stella or Jamie, you can follow them on Instagram @jamieguest_ and @stellaa.shoemaker. If you want to follow the JMU Studio Theatre, check them out on Instagram @jmustudiotheatre for behind-the-scenes looks, season announcements, and general information. If you are interested in following The Stratford Players, follow them on Instagram @stratfordshows. If you are interested in the JMU School of Theatre and Dance, check out their website! If you are in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area and are interested in tickets for Studio or Mainstage STAD productions, you can visit the Forbes Center for the Performing Arts website for information on booking tickets, season subscriptions, and other events.