England provides perfect backdrop for theater students
A picture is worth a thousand words, but a real-life experience is worth a lifetime of memories.
The Utah State University theater department is helping some students to step outside the classroom and get hands-on experience. Between July 8 and Aug. 13. Students will be able to study abroad in England at the University College Northhampton with USU faculty.
“It’s like being in a painting as opposed to looking at a painting, or being in the movie as opposed to being in the audience of that movie,” said Lynda Linford, a theater arts professor.
Linford is not the only professor attending the study abroad trip. Robbin Black, Nancy Hills and Dennis Hassan will be traveling to Europe along with students. Unlike the students, they will be teaching instead of learning.
The professors will be teaching three different courses at the University College Northhampton. According to a brochure about the trip they will be teaching Acting-Enchanted April, Understanding Theater, and Civilizations: The Creative Arts.
The classes taught by USU professors are not the only classes offered by the study abroad program. There are also courses on crime and punishment, management and invertebrate animals.
“We teach in the classroom for three or four days during the week and the fourth and fifth day we actually take a trip so we may be studying about the Renaissance and we go into Stratford-upon-Avon,” Hassan said.
Hills said, “We’ve got summer school field trips and our own three courses have another set of field trips. You have weekends to yourselves and you can go into London, or you can go up into Scotland or Paris.”
During the five-week course, four of the weeks are spent at UCN studying and taking field trips to several famous sites. A brochure about the trip states that the field trips will include Stratford-upon-Avon, Brighton, Warwick, Blenheim, Hampton Court and The Globe Theatre. During the third week of the course they will travel to Florence, Italy.
“I would like this to be an intricate part of what we offer,” Hills said. “We would like to be able to say to freshmen that you need to plan on this during one part of your education.”
USU has been participating in the summer study abroad program at UCN for the past three years. Every year they have about 12 to 15 students. This year they are hoping that they get at least 15 students to attend. By going and being a part of the study abroad program there is more to learn about than just theater.
“We really want to encourage our students who are a little more cloistered up here and we’d really like them to experience this world,” Hills said. “We are a global economy, a global society now and we need to embrace that and understand that and our students need to get out and see it and experience it.”
Black said, “It’s amazing to watch the transformation that students go through. They get quite a bit of confidence by the time we leave they are ready to go places on their own. That kind of growth is just not something that you can get in a classroom.”
Credits earned from studying abroad are fully transferable to USU. Students can earn six credits on this trip.
Learning is not the only thing on the to-do list while in Europe. The professors plan on having a lot of fun as well. The excitement shone on their faces while they all talked about their favorite parts of Europe.
“I love to travel…it really does open your eyes to what England is really like,” Hassan said. “I love to visit their palaces and their cities. They have zoning laws so when you go into their cities, like Stratford, it’s all Tudor style, even the new buildings.”
Black said, “It’s either original or it’s made in the manor of the original. It’s like walking back 400 years.”
The historic stories that encompass the sites that the program is going to visit are world-famous. Hills said, “you’re walking through a history book.”
Aside from seeing the famous theaters like The Globe Theatre, students will attend plays and even put on their own production. As part of the trip they will be attending the Royal Shakespeare Company.
The culminating event of the summer school will be the production of “Enchanted April.” The play will be cast at USU and will be rehearsed and researched in England and Italy.
“The last night, the play is the capstone of the summer school experience, not just for us but also for the rest of the summer school,” Linford said, who is directing the play.
“I think that it’s one of the reasons that we’ve been asked back. The summer school sees us as a real cultural addition to their program.”
Over the past three years the study abroad program has performed two other plays: “Pride and Prejudice” and “A Woman of No Importance.” These plays are not just performed at any stage but in on-site manor estates.
“In my knowledge we are the only university that mounts a period production in an on-site manor home estate,” Linford said. “I think that in that respect we are unique.”
Having the experience to see, touch, smell and hear the sights that dot the landscape of England is an education that goes beyond the textbooks.
The study abroad trip is not just open to theater majors or people who are aspiring to be actors, but to everybody.
An open house will be held at the theater arts department in the seminar room Friday, Feb. 6, from 7 to 9 p.m. To receive more information about the trip. A $350-down
payment is due by March 3. For questions about the trip call Black at 797-0087 or e-mail at robbinb@hass.usu.edu.
-rbarlow@cc.usu.edu
The cast members of Oscar Wilde´s “A Woman of No Importance” pose in their period costumes on the steps of the Kelmarsh Hall in Northampton, England (Photo courtesy of USU Theater Department)
Lady Stuttsfield (LeeAnn Kay-Nield) and Lady Caroline (Joyce Howell) look longingly out of the ballroom window during last year´s study abroad trip for the Utah State Theater Department. (Photo courtesy of USU Theater Department)