{"id":62348,"date":"2021-03-31T16:04:30","date_gmt":"2021-03-31T23:04:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/?p=62348"},"modified":"2021-03-31T16:05:09","modified_gmt":"2021-03-31T23:05:09","slug":"nau-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-theatre\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU Theatre closes unique season with tale of monsters, imagination and healing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alexis Gibbs\u2019<\/strong> year in NAU\u2019s Department of Theatre has included some unusual choices for an actor. The characters she\u2019s portrayed have greeted loved ones and fought with enemies at a distance of six feet, lines have been shouted through a mask and audience members have been everywhere but the red velvet seats of the Clifford E. White Theater in front of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it has helped all of us to appreciate the past and that we can still produce theatre in times like today,\u201d she said of the COVID-19 precautions that have been a part of all four productions this year.<\/p>\n

Gibbs began her senior year with a role in the first production, \u201cEast of the Sun, West of the Moon,\u201d and concludes it in the lead role in the final production, \u201cShe Kills Monsters,\u201d <\/em>which will be livestreamed April 8-11<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Alexis Gibbs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gibbs plays Agnes, a 24-year-old woman grieving the loss of her sister and family. While cleaning out her sister Tilly’s room, Agnes finds her Dungeons and Dragons adventure and decides to play it, going through many journeys and self-discoveries throughout the play.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe chose this play because it offers our students an ensemble-based show with strong female characters who fight and dance-battle their way to awesomeness,\u201d said professor Rebecca Whitehurst<\/strong>, who is directing this year\u2019s final production. \u201cIt also provides wonderful opportunities for our student and faculty designers\u2014from lights and sound to costume, makeup and media. Oh, and because it’s fun!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe Kills Monsters\u201d will be the fourth full production put on by the Department of Theatre this academic year, along with a festival of one-act plays, all through a pandemic that has kept many theatre companies and schools closed. The department has tackled issues ranging from keeping cast and crew safe to navigating the copyright issues of putting on a show for an audience on the Internet rather than in-person.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheatre is a live, synthetic and collaborative art form,\u201d Whitehurst said.<\/em> \u201cWith the challenges of COVID-19, we have had to creatively discover new ways of supporting these three pillars for our students and patrons. But such imaginative problem solving is the bread and butter of what we do as interdisciplinary theatre artists. And so, we play on!\u201d<\/p>\n

Department of Theatre chair Kathleen McGeever<\/strong> sees the current way of doing performances as so different, it verges on a new medium altogether.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been students of a new artistic form, and have experimented and imagined outside of our comfort zone\u2014faculty and students and staff, side-by-side, embracing the new without throwing out the collaborative, live, dynamic art of theatre making.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the year has been an opportunity to learn and rethink so many aspects of what theatre is, McGeever looks forward to a chance to bring the art form back in front of audiences and make choices out of artistic license and not necessity.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if our audience is small, the dynamic exchange of audience to artists during live theatre is the final element of what we do as theatre artists. While we have told wonderful stories, we long for the exchange that can only be felt in real-time and together\u2014a community of humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Gibbs, she\u2019s ready for her chance to enter the professional theatre world and return to more normal productions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am so ready to finally be able to touch my fellow actors on stage when we finally return back to normal theatre, but I am just thankful we still even get the chance to perform in times like these.\u201d<\/p>\n

NAU Department of Theatre presents \u201cShe Kills Monsters,\u201d 7:30 p.m. April 8-10, with a 2 p.m. matinee April 10-11. Ticket prices and more information can be found online<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Northern<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Zachary Ziegler | College of Arts & Letters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alexis Gibbs\u2019 year in NAU\u2019s Department of Theatre has included some unusual choices for an actor. The characters she\u2019s portrayed have greeted loved ones and fought with enemies at a distance of six feet, lines have been shouted through a mask and audience members have been everywhere but the red velvet seats of the Clifford…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":62349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-happenings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}