Finding Beauty Next Door
By Melody Murphy | How Ocala Civic Theatre found inspiration through their neighbor, the Appleton Museum of Art, leading to a unique collaboration on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Disney’s…
A New Era of Stage Management
By Matthew Aaron Stern | The world has changed. A global pandemic, the rise of Black Lives Matter and social justice movements, and the intensifying climate crisis have altered how…
Ali Stroker ‘Anything Is Possible’
By Tom Alsip | ‘This award is for every kid who is watching tonight who has a disability, who has a limitation or a challenge, who has been waiting…
Rosemary Harris ‘A True National Treasure’
By Keith T. Martin | In presenting celebrated theatre actress Rosemary Harris with the 2021 Distinguished Career Award, SETC President Maegan McNerney Azar (she/her) astutely noted that the recipient “has…
Biggest Mistakes Students Make When Seeking Financial Aid
Professors and other experts share their advice on researching and negotiating the best possible financial aid.
Professors and Other Experts Share Advice on Financing Your Theatre Degree
By Amy Cuomo | The challenges that students face begin long before they step on campus. One of the biggest mistakes that Steven Roten, a theatre professor at Meredith College…
Yes, and… Moving Racial Equity and Justice from the Page to the Stage
By Derrick Vanmeter | “Theatre is a verb before it is a noun, an act before it is a place.” – Martha Graham In the wake of renewed calls for…
Reimagining the Classics
By Zackary Ross | I often tell my students that the greatest gift a playwright gives an actor is a pause written into the stage directions. A pause offers actors…
Parent’s Guide: Supporting Your Theatre Student’s Future
How did you find your theatre training program? This was a question recently posed to the SETC staff by our coworker Debi Belanger. For some, their theatre training begins at…
10 Lessons From 2020 About Theatre and Stage Management
By Matthew Aaron Stern | Over the last year, we have experienced historical challenges that cannot be understated. A global pandemic, intense political division, a rising social justice movement, and…
Best Practices to Make Theatre Classrooms Inclusive
Written by Sharrell D. Luckett | “White people seem paralyzed,” I said to a colleague. “What?” she asked. “Some of them seem confused,” I continued, “and I’m not sure why….
Acting Empathy Applied to Health Sciences
Written by Erik DeCicco & Bill J. Adams | All of us in theatre understand the necessity of being able to walk in someone else’s shoes to develop good characters,…
Getting a Job through SETC
Over the years, SETC News, the bi-monthly newsletter of the Southeastern Theatre Conference, has collected success stories of professional audition candidates. Check out some of the recently featured stories below…
Need to Create a Realistic Fire Effect? Build a ‘Humid-A-Fire’
Special theatrical effects can be so much fun to work on, but they can break the budget if you aren’t thinking imaginatively. Among the most challenging are those that incorporate…
How Do You Reach Children’s Theatre Audiences in a Pandemic?
Written by Deanna Thompson | Mill Mountain Theatre Creates, Presents Digital Production on Broadway on Demand When the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible for Mill Mountain Theatre to present its…
New Plays to Make Us Laugh
Written by Zackary Ross | When I started planning this column a short time after the coronavirus shut down theatres, my first thought was to include plays that somehow addressed…
So, What Really Happens When You Try to Open a Theatre in the Middle of a Pandemic?
Written by Deanna Thompson | Southern Theatre followed up with the six theatres featured in our Summer 2020 issue that either had opened or hoped to open for summer seasons…
Tips and Tricks: Producing a High-Quality Audition Video
Written by Mark Catlett | Creating a High-Quality Self-Taped Audition Is Key to Getting a Job in Our Socially Distanced World Prior to March 2020, video auditions, or “self-taped” auditions,…
We’re listening. Black theatre artists tell us what needs to change.
Introduction by Marci J. Duncan | With the recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, everyone is listening. Listening to the cries that have now turned into full-on screams of…
How Theatre Makes Its Comeback: Producing Shows in a Pandemic
Written by Stefanie Maiya Lehmann | As the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the U.S., the majority of theatres across the country remain closed. According to Americans for the…
3 Questions to Guide You in Reopening
Written by Stefanie Maiya Lehmann | Broadly thinking, there are three major questions theatre companies must ask when considering whether or not they are ready to reopen. Each of these…
10 Reopening Tips: A Stage Manager’s Perspective
Matthew Stern, longtime Broadway stage manager and producer of the Broadway Stage Management Symposium, shared 10 changes that he believes will be necessary for theatre practitioners to safely return to…
The Digital Stage: An Interview with Padraic Lillis
Two productions at the University were affected, both with ties to Padraic Lillis’ The Farm Theater. The first piece was Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, directed by Lillis. The interruption occurred…
The Piano Man
Jose Simbulan holds the keys to success for thousands of auditionees. At most of SETC’s Professional Auditions for the last 25 years, he has been the unflappable pianist at the…
Stone Cloth Create Rocks with Aluminum, Muslin and Glue
Few projects are as challenging as replicating items found in nature. Creating a realistic tree or, in this instance, a stage full of rocks, can be a costly and timeconsuming…