As Artists and Educators in Theatre, Dance, and Performance we
unequivocally condemn the historically rooted and pervasive
racist murders of African Americans and other people of color by
police in the United States and globally. We acknowledge these
most recent examples are not unique. We acknowledge this plague
is systemic and extends beyond the police. We cannot function as
a society, nor as a learning institution, in a context where
people of color cannot walk, jog, drive, talk, or even sleep in
their homes safely without fear of being murdered by the state.
We certainly cannot teach our craft, which is by its very nature
a living and breathing engagement with all people, without
denouncing this violence, and the hateful rhetoric that fuels it.
Prior to the recent presidential election, Professor Larry Bogad,
Department of Theatre and Dance chair, spent the fall
spearheading the creation of Delivering Democracy, a cohort
of dancing mailboxes first deployed in Pennsylvania in order to
encourage voting by mail. His efforts along with those of other
arts activists are the focus of “The People’s WPA Isn’t Waiting
Around for a Future ‘New Deal’” featured on the KQED
website.
Graduate student Jennifer Grace is among the actors, who have
played the iconic role of Emily Webb in Thornton Wilder’s “Our
Town,” interviewed in a New York Times article.
Undergraduate student Stephen Miller, who left in 1985, has
returned to UC Davis to complete his bachelors degree. As a
student in Granada artist in residence Jacqueline Goldfinger’s
class, Principles of Playwrighting, Miller recently submitted a
proposal to Sacramento
Theatre Company’s New Works Play Festival which was
accepted and will be produced as a staged reading.
Growing sick of the gay dating scene, a man volunteers to go to
Mars in the comedy “Small Steps,” written by Davis native
Briandaniel Oglesby. The play is being presented by Catalyst: A
Theatre Think Tank through the UC Davis Department of Theatre and
Dance in collaboration with Bike City Theatre Company. Free
virtual performances will be streamed on Jan. 21-23 at 6 p.m.
(PST).
Genetic engineering and its promise of flawless children forms
the basis of “Perfect,” a new play by Jonathan Luskin. The drama
will be presented as a table reading by Catalyst: A Theatre Think
Tank (C3T) in collaboration with the UC Davis Department of
Theatre and Dance and the Jan Shrem and Maria
Manetti Shrem Museum of Art on Feb. 17 at 6 p.m.
The Department of Theatre and Dance and Catalyst: A Theatre Think
Tank (C3T) present ”A Bee in a Jar,” a play by Andrew
Nicholls, on February 19 and 20 at 5 p.m. The virtual
production is free.
In the play, three men with very different temperaments try to
figure out why they were seized a month earlier and locked
together in a featureless room.
A multi-sensory performance piece, “FOOD” will be performed March
4, 5 and 6 at 7 p.m. as the Department of Theatre and Dance
winter quarter production. The production is devised and
directed by Geoff Sobelle, Granada
Artist-in-Residence.
The performances will be free and presented in a virtual format.
Links will be available in early 2021.
A Shakespearean tragedy gets a contemporary musical comedy
makeover when the UC Davis Department of Theatre and Dance
and Catalyst: A Theatre Think Tank (C3T) present “Juliet and
Romeo.”
Developed in a special collaboration with Southern Utah
University’s (SUU) Department of Theatre and Dance, the musical
will be performed in June 2021.
