Hampshire College's Theatre Program

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Hi, my name is Anna and I'm a student at Hampshire College! In this video, I'm going to interview Fianna, who is also a Hampshire student about our theater department. Hi, I'm Fianna, I use she/her pronouns and I'm a Div III at Hampshire.I'm studying the intersections between ecology, theatre, storytelling methodology, and as a non-indigenous student, indigenous studies andNative American Studies within the Five Colleges. I've worked with theater program pretty much since first year and I knew was interested in theater and I worked with Julia at the costume shop from first year as well.And just like a student and in some acting classes throughout the Five Colleges, directing quite a bit of just like everything, trying to get an idea of all the different entry points for storytelling this way. Yeah, I love the theatre program a lot. And I've also sat on Theatre Board and we're also in this space here, which is um, we have an open mic space. So you start out with that question: What can a creative space be? Then it's just the evolved from there to be like every person who comes to the space has the opportunity to have like chalk and draw and write whatever they want. So yeah, there have been five weekly uh, open mic nights where a lot of students are coming in and sharing their work. There's just been a lot of energy in this space. I would say the most unique part is that it's a very student driven, like much of the other parts of The College. You have a Theater Board, which I mentioned before and that's one of the longest student run organizations on campus, as far as I know. Um, and they decide like as a board, what productions will be put up and supporting all the production. Um, so, all budgets, coordination of space, costumes, all those different things with the support of the faculty and staff. And I think that's really unique in terms of other colleges where it's more focused on like what the faculty and staff want to do and then the students do that. So, I mean, it's pretty similar to all other the other features of Hampshire. Lauren, the facilitator goes around and everybody, like, introduces themselves: names, pronouns, andthen what position they hold on the Theatre Board, and, then also like some kind of fun, check-in, and then obviously like all the business and stuff. I obviously work in the costume shop, so I have a great affinity with the costume shop and also to Julia. It'speople coming in just to pull costumes for shows. People love coming to get costumes for Halloween, um, make costumes, like, use the sewing machines in there. Students have done like more involvedpieces where they are actually constructing costumes. A lot of students have come in just kind of learning quite a lot about, so how to sew, everything from curtains for somebody's window to Halloween costumes and catching different pieces and more sculptural pieces. So a lot of different ways, sort of more of the wider community involvement and also specifically to support costume designers for production. In this space particularly, I've seen like a lot of different ways. Um, it's been used for X9, which is production, I guess just before Covid. Um, and then inside the whole space became like an interactive spaceship type of space. So, there's all kinds of walls be able to do everything. So it's a very, like, versatile space.because it can be taken down to the bare bones and then built back up again. It's been used for a huge variety of, like, unslotted and slotted productions. Um, Peter's classes using a lot for like the light grid and working with lighting design in this space, um, as well as, the Main Stage space. There's a very cool bands piece that I saw on here and for bringing like dance and pure elements. Um, where people, it's called NPC Emotion that people build like an enormous structure of a house that they could, it was all welded together and they can mull around. Yeah, I've seen so many different productions here really, really incredible. Um, the bigger black box theater space has been used for productions and even more, they have larger audience participation.It is such a special place. I love it, I lovethe smell. I love it and it's a silly thing. But like, I just really like this space. I think,yeah, maybe another part that's really important to me is, like, the commitment to social justice in here.