For Immediate Release:
 
UT Theatre Department Head
Elected President of
University/Resident Theatre Association
 
Calvin MacLean, Department Head of Theatre at the University of Tennessee and Artistic Director of the Clarence Brown Theatre recently was elected president of the University/Resident Theatre Association (URTA) by a unanimous vote of participating URTA member universities. MacLean will assume responsibilities as president in July 2010 for a two-year term.
 
“Cal takes on the presidency with considerable knowledge about URTA. He also has this terrific leadership background of both an important training program at Tennessee, and a major professional, LORT theatre in the Clarence Brown.  This linkage between training and professional theatre perfectly reflects URTA¹s constituency and central interests,” said Scott Steele, URTA¹s Executive Director.
 
MacLean has been with the University of Tennessee for four years.  Under his leadership, the Clarence Brown Theatre has experienced a renaissance, with increased ticket sales, increased corporate sponsorships and revitalized Board support.
 
“Cal’s leadership has energized the entire arts community. Subscriptions are up. Sponsorship has grown and the productions have been outstanding. We’re proud that he has been elected president of URTA and hope all the members will come to Knoxville and see, first hand, what a great theatre program he has created,” said Townes Osborn, Chair of the Clarence Brown Theatre Society Advisory Board.
 
Marrying the professional theatre with the Theatre Department¹s academic program, MacLean has improved an already outstanding graduate training program and revitalized undergraduate theatre education.
 
Previously, he was Professor of Theatre and Head of Directing at Illinois State University for fifteen years, and Artistic Director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival.  Active in Chicago, he earned numerous awards as a director, most notably for his production of Joshua Sobol’s “Ghetto,” which won four Joseph Jefferson Awards including Outstanding Production of a Play and the first-ever Michael Maggio Award for Outstanding Direction. Other professional credits include Chicago’s Tony Award winning Victory Gardens Theatre, the Connecticut Repertory Theatre, and Indiana Repertory.
 
URTA is the nation’s oldest and largest consortium of professional, graduate theatre training programs and associated professional theatre companies.
URTA advances theatre by connecting educational theatre programs with professional theatre and performing arts industries, promoting professional practices and artistic excellence in higher education, and assisting students with their transition into the profession.
 
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The UT Department of English will sponsor a lecture “Greek Theater and Democratic Thought: Arendt to Rancière” by Richard Halpern, Professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. The lecture will be held on Thursday, March 18th, in 1210 McClung Tower, from 4-5. A short reception with the scholar will follow.

On Friday, March 19th at noon, in 1210 McClung Tower, Professor Halpern will lead a seminar on his recent essay “Eclipse of Action: “Hamlet and the Political Economy of Playing” (in Shakespeare Quarterly 59.4 [2008]). Graduate students are especially encouraged to attend, though others are welcome.

At both talks, Professor Halpern will speak about his current book project “Eclipse of Action: Tragedy and Political Economy,” which traces the dilemma of modern tragedy to an economic context that elevates making or production over doing or action, and uses this context to cast a retrospective glance over the history of tragic drama from Aeschylus to Beckett.

Professor Halpern’s research interests include sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, especially drama; Shakespeare; modernism; literary theory, especially Marxist and psychoanalytic; aesthetics; science and literature. He is the author of Shakespeare’s Perfume: Sodomy and Sublimity in the Sonnets, Wilde, Freud and Lacan (Penn, 2002), an exploration of relations between sexuality and aesthetics. His most recent book is Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence (University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Professor Halpern has taught at Berkeley, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Yale. He won an NEH Fellowship in 1993-1994 and is currently on the editorial board of English Literary History.

Richard Halpern’s visit is part of the 2009-2010 Visiting Speakers Series sponsored by the Department of English.

The lecture and seminar are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Mary Dzon (mdzon@utk.edu).
 

Roger’s show photographs from The Clarence Brown Theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors (running in the Carousel Theatre through November 15) are now loaded onto my flickr account.

Click here to view the Little Shop of Horrors slideshow.

Click here if you’d rather view the set in raw form.

And of course you may access all my CBT show photographs from the Photos menu item on this intranet. 

As I gaze out my office window I see, fittingly, lovely orange plastic temporary fencing separating a small construction area on the Joe Johnson and John Ward Pedestrian Mall on the campus of the University of Tennesssee.  (A portion of it is even nicely framed by the now empty show poster holder on the plaza outside the Clarence Brown Theatre…)

Rumor has it that a statue of some sort is to be erected there, at the center focal point of the Pedestrian Mall (or where the ”A&A” leg of the Mall joins the “Andy Holt Avenue” portion of the Mall to make a “Power T”).  A circle of paving stones has been removed to provide for the statuary base, possibly with a rumored circle of flowers, to break up the monotony of the straight Andy Holt Avenue leg and make it less convenient for walkers. 

Actually, in addition to the circle, there is a little rectangular “key” that juts out from the circle, oriented roughly to the East (to spark conspiracy theories), or perhaps aimed at the McClung Tower, Humanities Building, or, probably, toward Neyland Stadium.

As I understand the “metal” statue has been completed, and I did not sit for it, someone else must have been honored.  Not sure if it is Dr. Johnson or John Ward, or if it’s perhaps Dolly Parton, Layla Kiffin, Manny Ramirez, Oprah, or Nick Bonacker, or perhaps another?  Do you know???  I have heard that the statue was donated, so it’s All Good.

The place is buzzing with anticipation.

June Adamson has passed away.

Ms. Adamson was a longtime faculty member in the School of Journalism at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville — I met her in class!  I was a Broadcasting major and not really that interested in the (newspaper oriented) News Writing course I was required to take, but I came to appreciate from her how carefully choosing words can make the difference between copying a police report and telling a meaningful story about people, no matter what the medium.  I also appreciated her sharing some of the tough times in her own life.

After I returned to UT to work at the Clarence Brown Theatre, I was happy to find that she was a season subscriber, although she was not able to attend recently.

She will be missed, but remembered.

Here’s a story about her in the UT Daily Beacon.

It’s been a difficult year for UT Athletics, given the disappointing football season leading to a change in leadership, both basketball teams making early exits in postseason play, and the baseball team struggling in SEC play.

But there’s good news:  a UT Student has won Top Ten honors relating to Athletics — broadcasting, that is…

UT Junior Roger Hoover has placed eighth nationwide in the STAA (Sportscasters Talent Agency of America) All-American Program, which

recognizes the most outstanding collegiate radio sportscasters in the country and encourages collegiate sportscasters nationwide to strive to achieve their best. Each June, the nation’s most outstanding collegiate sportscaster will be presented the Jim Nantz Award.

Hoover happens to be the son of Roger C. Hoover of the Clarence Brown Theatre, who pens these blogs, but Roger the Elder isn’t at all prejudiced — his boy is very talented and certainly going places.

Hoover the Younger is majoring in Journalism and Electronic Media.  He is the recipient of the Edwin C. Huster Scholarship for Athletic Broadcasting and works with the UT Athletic Department in Internet Communications, writing and voicing reports on utsports.com and utladyvols.com.  In addition, he is co-host of the Vol Network’s Inside the Orange television program and is the public address announcer for UT Baseball at Lindsay Nelson Stadium.  He also serves as emcee for UT Baseball’s Bullpen Club luncheons (as shown above).

Last summer, he was the play-by-play announcer for The Kingsport Mets of the Appalachian League, and this year is moving to the broadcast team of the Class-AA Tennessee Smokies.

When that day comes when he signs a lucrative contract with a major league baseball team (hopefully the Chicago Cubs!), Roger will most certainly reward his parents richly for the sacrifices they have made for him through the years…

Undergraduate Theatre students at The University of Tennessee are reminded that the deadline for filing applications for theatre scholarships is March 6.

Free money, but you have to claim it…

For answers to your questions, contact Linda Robinson at the UT Department of Theatre Office.  Telephone 865-974-7063 or email her at lindar@utk.edu.