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Five students earn summer gigs at six-week festival

July 15, 2008
By Zanny Marsh

When Rob Gander joined the University faculty in 2007, he hoped to bring fresh eyes and new ideas to the Department of Speech Communications and Theatre, and he succeeded. Gander has pursued unique collaborations to enhance academic and performance experiences for theater students and patrons throughout the region.

Last February, the associate professor of theater directed the play “Charm of Preparedness,” a post-modernist experiment and collaboration that brought together a playwright-in-residence with a group of actors to serve as each other’s muses. “Charm” restaged playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortinas’ original work with the University’s Nevada Repertory Company. The play was first performed at Denison University in Ohio, where Gander held a tenured position.

Gander’s experiment succeeded, but it’s his most recent accomplishment that is creating buzz throughout the performance community.

The theatre division of the University signed a formal agreement in May to collaborate with the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival (LTSF) during the 2008 performance season, which kicks off this week with the delightfully impish immortals in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The collaboration represents a milestone for performance, academic quality and artistic direction.  

“There are certain experiences that any university theatre department cannot provide its students,” Gander said. “For instance, we rarely do plays in rep (that is two or three shows rehearsed at the same time and performed on alternating nights), but our students are having that experience with the festival.

“Outdoor theater is very popular around the country in the summer months, another experience the department doesn’t offer. Students working with the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival this summer brush elbows day in and day out with professional Equity Actors,” he added. “They have a chance to absorb skills and knowledge about the business of being a working actor that we just can’t teach all that well in the classroom. These internships broaden the kind of education we can provide.”

The six-week festival, which draws audiences of more than 35,000 per season and has been held at Sand Harbor since 1976, has created five internships for University theater students for the 2008 season. Students were required to audition for their internships before department faculty and Jan Powell, the festival’s artistic director.

“Not everyone was chosen, but I have a strong feeling that some of those who were not cast this year will intern in upcoming years as their skills grow,” Gander said.

“As assistant stage manager, my main job is to give line cues to the actors as they are memorizing their lines. You would think this would be a simple job, but you would be wrong. It is surprisingly difficult,” said Brian Annis, Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival student intern. “But I’m glad to know that I am learning here with people who are supportive and kind. I really enjoy these people and I am looking forward to spending the next few weeks with them.”

Lynn Lombardi, stage manager of the festival’s new musical, “CAMBIO,” also interviewed several students for technical positions.

“We have the entire stage done and now we’re working on the set pieces. They are gigantic, and have to be changed every night…woo hoo, fun! I love working in the shop,” Lombardi, a senior theatre major and Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival student intern. “I’m not that experienced, but I’m learning. It makes me feel like a tough and capable woman.”

The interns will be housed at Sierra Nevada College dormitories in Incline Village. “The capacity to be so near their performance site allows students to concentrate on developing their performance skills as opposed to spending long hours commuting back and forth on the Mount Rose Highway,” Gander said.  

“This is an intense experience,” he added. “Students have been rehearsing shows for eight, nine and even 10 hours a day. During one rehearsal, the director was working with one set of actors, the choreographer was working with another group, the fight director was staging a battle, and the vocal coach was teaching the dialect. Our budgets on campus simply don’t allow for that many artistic personnel. We do good work with fewer resources, but it’s nice to expose young artists to what they should expect in the professional arena.”

Gander sees the burgeoning relationship with the festival as an excellent recruitment tool.

“I expect we will be able to recruit high quality students from across the country,” Gander said. “The ability for an undergraduate to work with a professional company is rare. To be able to do it on the shores of Lake Tahoe…well that’s something the best conservatories in New York can’t offer.”

The collaborative agreement will return additional dividends throughout the summer and beyond. Powell will serve as guest director of “Much Ado about Nothing” with the Nevada Repertory Company in November, allowing her to work with students on the University campus. Powell is a Shakespearean scholar and new this season to the LTSF. 

The University provided use of its costume shop and workshop space on campus for the construction of sets and props this festival season.

The partnership has created synergy. Matthew McKinney, Nevada Repertory Company technical director, will assume that role for three productions at Lake Tahoe this summer and Gander will serve as assistant director of “CAMBIO.”

In addition to “Richard III,” the nationally recognized festival’s schedule this summer includes productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and “CAMBIO,” a musical based on the Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The regular schedule of nightly performances lakeside runs through Aug. 17.

“This collaboration is an excellent example of how we can maintain quality education even during a time of budget restrictions,” Gander said.

“We have found a way to benefit both organizations without creating a financial burden for either,” he added. “The Shakespeare Festival has saved its resources because renting a shop or putting one together is highly expensive. We have all those items which we use during the school year, but they are underutilized for much of the summer. Folks at Lake Tahoe could have gone somewhere else. They wanted to support the local university and community. I respect them for it.”

Zanny Marsh is a communications director in University Communications.

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