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Lights, Camera, Action.

April 19, 2010 # 10:18 am # Campus, Features, Music # No Comment

By Kathryn Przybyla

It’s a pretty early day. There are a few students sitting along the small tables lined up perfectly in the Center for the Arts Atrium. Soft music plays from a laptop in the corner. The natural light from the ceiling is starting to brighten up the long, lean room, filled with artists.

Anyone can spot a dance major. They’re the ones with leotards peeking out from underneath their sweatpants, hair pulled back into tight, neat buns on the top of their heads. They are performers and this is their home.

“I loved performing at school just for my sheer love of performing,” says Shannon Mullen, a recent graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in musical theatre. “I was granted some great opportunities that helped me to grow as a person, and allowed me to be better prepared for what was to come my way.”

The theatre and dance department at UB is like no other. Students don’t just study from a book—they’re constantly engaged in hands-on learning. This style of teaching is apparently working. Mullen has not only recently graduated, but is currently on the national tour of “Hairspray,” playing the role of Tammy and understudying for the role of Amber VonTussle. Writing from California, Mullen credits real life experience as the best training for her field of study.

“I would have never been able to learn what I have learned in an academic setting. It has been the greatest experience of my life,” she says.

Most recently at UB, Mullen performed in the widely popular performances of “Rent” last semester. Combining intense acting with great vocal ability, she had the audience’s heart from the first song. It may not have been Juilliard, but UB provided her with a great platform.

“I was granted some great opportunities that helped me to grow as a person and allowed me to be better prepared for what was to come my way,” she says. “Overall, the best thing that I got out of the [theatre and dance] program was my amazing voice teacher, Nancy Townsend, and working with guest director Gary John LaRosa.”

Mullen might be fresh out of college, but that has not stopped her from dreaming big. “I will be on Broadway by the time I am 25 years old,” she says. “That is my goal.”

While the audience tends to focus on the stage when it comes to theatre and performance, there is a whole crew working behind the scenes to help make the actors look good. That great spotlight showcasing a single actor on stage is not a coincidence. Every light, sound and musical accompaniment is planned and decided.

“It’s a lot of fun to play around with different ideas and explore the space in different ways,” says Chris Van Patten, a sophomore fine arts major with a design and technology focus. Currently the sound designer for “Our Town,” which was performed last week, Van Patten has some great ideas for the theatre atmosphere.

“We want to make it sound like you’re in the town, as opposed to hearing sound effects,” he says. Van Patten has studied light design, sets, projections and sound, and may study costuming in the future. “I am very happy about how the program works and where I am.”

Students in the department don’t have to wait until junior year to find a great internship opportunity in their major. They’re part of the productions right on campus. Van Patten is just halfway through his college career, and he’s already been able to make a name for himself in theatre production.

“ ‘Rent’ was the hardest. I wasn’t originally supposed to design ‘Rent,’ ” he says. “The original designer decided to drop the show for personal reasons, and I was asked to step up. It was good to be pushed into the pool to learn how to swim.” As a sophomore student, that was an incredible opportunity.

“I had never done this before since I had only been through my freshman year. I took the set design class last semester while I was designing ‘Rent,’ ” he says.

With an incredible scaffolding set that reached new heights in the CFA, “Rent” was just as visually appealing as it was musically. “For me personally, as a set designer, I sat in on every rehearsal. I was there from the beginning right until the show. I was there with the actors as the process unfolded,” Van Patten says.

Getting the responsibility to visually design the theatre production of such a popular show is something not many other majors can compete with. You’re not trusted with a real company’s finances in your first year of business school. They don’t ask you to represent a defendant in your first year of law school, either.

Although he still has a lot of time to think about it, Van Patten has some idea about what he would like to accomplish after graduation.

“There’s a part of me that wants to go to grad school. But there’s also a part of me that wants to be a director. And you can’t go to grad school for directing. They want to see experience before they let you in. We’ll see where that takes me,” he says.

The department is filled with an engaging faculty that wants to see their students succeed, he says. Whether the star or backstage, all of the students bring just as much heart and dedication to what they do.

“We talk a lot in the [design] department about developing a process, in the way that you as a designer have to document. As you go from show to show, you refine that process until eventually you will get to a point that in two years or 10 years, where it will flow really well without any hiccups along the way,” Van Patten says. “I think it’s what every designer strives for.”

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