As a top drama school, Texas State’s theatre department strives to push the boundaries of performance. From wholly devised pieces held in the student theatre to immersive audience experiences in the Patti Strickel Harrison Theatre there is a lot of playing room for faculty and students – MFA and undergrad alike – to play with.
Maybe it is this desire to push past the norm and the freedom to experiment that allows Texas State Theatre to miss the mark time and time again.
In my four years as a TXST theatre student, I have seen my fair share of interesting theatre. Texas State loves its concepts is a phrase often repeated after a show season announcement, undergrad students criticising the choices and ideas of our faculty and grad students. Typically, though, students are pleasantly surprised by the creativity of our department. This Fall season, however, many students left performances of the highly anticipated Sweeney Todd disappointed.
When the show – and its concept – were announced last year students rushed to find explanations for the… unique execution. The most popular rumor being that, due to Governor Abbott cutting funding, we no longer had the budget for a fully costumed period piece. Not the best thing to hear your students say about their program, we’re too broke to ACTUALLY do Sweeney!
Before I say anything else, I want to emphasize how phenomenal the cast and design teams were on this production. Stage theatre is, in its nature, a transformative art. I have seen the Patti as a storybook, as the streets of New York City, and even once as a giant rock. The work these designers and technicians put into creating a world out of thin air is no joke – even when it’s Edwardian England… during a 1970s Canadian dinner party.
I saw this production opening night and was blown away by how gorgeous the set was and how fascinating the actors’ pre-show costumes were. However, I couldn’t recognize this world as Sweeney Todd. I wasn’t expecting a Burton-esque Gothic slum as popularized by the film, but I was expecting some familiarity. Audience members were instructed to arrive early for a “can’t miss pre-show” which was an added scene setting up the dinner party container. In this scene, party guests are singing folk songs in goofy New Foundland accents until a storm hits and the power goes out. The party then decides to “spin the tale of Sweeney Todd”. This container, while interesting, is immediately abandoned. The lights do not come back up, the fate of the dinner party is never disclosed. The scene, while fun, felt sloppily done and more like a spoon fed justification for the concept than anything substantial.
As the ensemble began the opening number, I hoped that I would finally be in the world of Sweeney Todd. At least my ears were.
The cast did a phenomenal job telling this story and convincing the audience – for a moment – that they are the characters they are playing. Unfortunately, Sweeney in bellbottoms and Tobias in Converse drew me out instantly. It is hard to create a convincing environment when your puzzle pieces – actors & designers – don’t mesh. It is my belief that an actor’s job is to tell the story and a designer’s job is to fulfill the director’s vision – which this cast and crew did phenomenally. The only issue seems to be an overly ambitious director with a vision they should have looked twice at.
I don’t mean to be scathing or critical of my department – I love this theatre program. I have received excellent training from professors I’d love to work with again and again, but it is because of that training I notice when productions are in over their head. I admire how out-of-the-box our faculty is but when ideas become inside jokes among students, I think it’s time to take a step back and consider – does this need to be reimagined?