The Spring 2025 Theatre Newsletter

Rebecca Lingafelter, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Theatre, Lewis & Clark College
Dear Fir Acres Theatre Community,

I am thrilled to be writing to you on this last sunny day in April to share the extraordinary work of our students, faculty and staff over the past semester. Really! I feel so lucky to be learning, growing and creating amongst these amazing humans!

Our Spring Mainstage was a horror- inspired adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. We dug deep into the genre of folk-horror and generated movement, song/sound, design and event to tell the story of Shakespeare’s vicious and despotic king. On a personal note, this was one of the most gratifying productions I have gotten to direct at Lewis & Clark. I really enjoyed both the process and the resulting production and revelled in Shakespeare’s poetry in relation to the world we created. The production featured four senior theatre majors, performing in the production as their Theatre Capstone; Ruby Guzman, Anna Kulbashny, Seb Lockhart, and Percival Walter all brought an enormous amount of talent, heart and passion to this process and created remarkable renderings of each of their characters.

Fir Acres then presented our first ever resident performance by a dance company, inviting Tiffany Mills DanceCompany to perform the West Coast premier of their production; The Viola Trilogy at Lewis & Clark. The performance also included the work of 10 Lewis & Clark students under the direction of Tiffany Mills, our Director of Dance. I had the opportunity to attend opening night, and sitting in the sold out Fir Acres Theatre, witnessing world class performance and then watching our students not only meet the professional standards, but exceed them - Ack! “Proud” doesn’t even begin to capture how I felt. It was our program at it’s finest; supporting students to become the best that they can be, and laying the groundwork for their life in the arts.

We closed out the season with our Theatre Thesis Festival, featuring the work of seven senior Theatre Majors. The Festival ranged from re-interpretations of a Sondheim classic with a full band, to solo shows grappling with joy in the midst of tragedy and tragedy in the midst of a comedy act, our first ever dance concentration major dancing in original choreography by a group of alumni, a bitter-sweet meditation on animals and grief and a comic journey through an actor’s nightmare. For the first time ever, we converted the Mainstage into a kind of black box, lowering the grand drape and bringing the audience and the performances together onto the stage. We were thrilled with the outcome and plan on staging future festivals here! All Seniors also wrote extraordinary written thesis mentored by Professor Meera.

I also want to highlight the accomplishments of a few of the incredible staff and faculty that make Fir Acres the magical dreamland of theatre that it is! Assistant Professor Suhaila Meera taught Playing at the Border for the first time this semester; a class which examines how migrant and refugee stories are told in film, theatre, and visual art, providing students with opportunities to engage directly with Portland’s immigrant communities. Professor Meera also recently received a prestigious American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship to support her research during her sabbatical next year finishing her book project “The Child at the Border”. Speaking of sabbaticals, Professor Štěpán S. Šimek has been on sabbatical for the last year and produced work around Portland including Veronica in Bed at Shaking the Tree and a trio of Chekhov Farces at 21Ten, both of which enjoyed sold out houses and critical acclaim. Finally, our incredible new admin, Jessica Foote, has catapulted our little program into the spotlight through thoughtful and effective communication of our stories through social media and the press. We have had the largest audiences we have enjoyed in decades due to her expertise and hard work.

Finally, finally… (whew! There is so much to tell you about!), the Lewis & Clark faculty approved a NEW concentration for the Theatre Major: Art for Community. This new concentration assembles courses in our program that live at the intersection of applied theatre, performance studies and theatre for social change including Professor Meera’s new class and our Inside/Out Autobiographical Performance course. We are excited to start to be able to offer this curriculum to students this fall. AND we are offering our first ever Immersive High School Theatre Intensive (ISTI!)for two weeks in June. The program director is local Theatre star, Isaac Lamb, and will feature faculty from some of the regions top theatres including Meredith Kay Clark and Julana Torres.

I didn’t even mention our trip to bring performance to Willamette View Senior Living or our partnership with Bag and Baggage Productions on a new play residency hiring six of our students to work on a professional workshop production or our exciting 2025-26 season including guest director Tracy Francis and a collaboration on a devised dance theatre piece between myself and Tiffany Mills! So I’ll just leave all that here as a tease to check in with next year’s letter.

If you read all the way to here - thank you! And you must be a real fan… SO consider spreading the word about our little (mighty) department. If you have young people in your life interested in Theatre connect them with us through our High School Immersive Summer Theatre Program or get in touch with admissions for a tour and a meeting with the chair.

Have a great summer and see you next year!

Love,

Rebecca Lingafelter
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Theatre
Lewis & Clark College

PS: I’ll be away in the fall with the New York Fine Arts Trip, where I will get to spend a semester with 15 students learning about and exploring the culture, history and artists of New York City. But don’t worry, I’ll take lots of pictures and we’ll post updates to our “abroad” blog on the website and Štěpán S. Šimek will be holding down the fort as Chair!!