In the HopKins Black Box, Sept. 18 marks the first guest performance of the semester. The audience will sit, traditionally, facing the performer but that isn’t always the case — sometimes they surround him or her, sometimes the performer will change positions throughout the show and at other times there isn’t a conventional stage at all.
Such is the way of life inside a black box theater, a marked departure from a more traditional theatrical structure. Dr. John LeBret, who directs the theater, and sits on the Advisory Board that approves the shows each season, said a black box as a device that “came out of the ’60s, when there was lots of experimental theatre going on, both in America and Europe.”
“The HopKins Black Box is a performance space as well as a classroom, and we think of it as a laboratory as well,” LeBret said. The space is dedicated to Dr. Mary Frances HopKins, whose efforts brought the Black Box into being in 1992, and whose outstanding work the space was renamed for in 2002.
Demonstrating a continued effort to collaborate with departments at other universities, HopKins will play host Thursday to Nico Wood, a performance studies Ph.D. candidate at Southern Illinois University. Wood, whose dissertation looks at experimental art forms, especially in film and theater, will be performing her one-woman show, “Sideshow,” first staged at Southern Illinois while she was still in coursework.
“This show tells the story of my great-great-grandmother, the trapeze artist; my great-grandmother, a burlesque dancer; my grandmother, who was a jazz dancer; and my mother, who traveled with a carnival sideshow,” Wood said, citing the work as primarily being an exploration of her own cultural background.
“I definitely never knew the full extent of the story. From just a few scraps… I’m kind of piecing together an entire story,” she said.
LeBret praised Wood’s show.
“When you think about one person, standing there talking about her family, you would think it’d be boring, but… it’s phenomenal,” LeBret said.
For University students and faculty, the process required to produce a show in the Black Box can be taxing, as they must first make a presentation to the Advisory Board.
“Usually, because it is a lot of work, candidates who present their work are faculty, but in the past we have had undergraduates present and eventually produce their work,” LeBret said.
Notably, this season will be the first at HopKins Black Box to include a holiday show, titled “On a Snowy Evening,” which LeBret will directed.