by Nicholas E. Sheets, dramaturg
Now that the production crew held their post-mortem, Cymbeline is officially over. What a fun ride this has been, especially as you have interacted with the show via the 4thWALL, in schools, at BYU and the many other locations we took this show. I hope you see how committed we are to bringing quality theater to our community and I personally hope you felt that we tried hard to help your voice be heard through blog postings, interacting with the actors and all the wonderful feedback we’ve received.
In our post-mortems at BYU we discuss the several aspects we felt were challenging and engaging, and then provide our thoughts as to what could make our shows even better next year. In these meetings we have various faculty members who oversaw us students, and after they discuss their viewpoints, we join them at the table. This is a great opportunity to reflect on the past show and everything we went through to provide quality theater experiences to our community.
As dramaturg, I was especially grateful to create teachers packets for the schools to use before we arrived. It was interesting to tackle Common Core Standards as I looked for ways to legitimize my material for an elementary/middle-school classroom. I also wanted students to see how much fun theater can be. I couldn’t have done any of this without help from the director, Teresa Love. Also, I was super grateful to see the autograph sections of the study guide used to such a great extent that many children were able to approach the actors and find inspiration in theater. My time at BYU is now at an end, but I hope you will always know that BYU’s Theater for Young Audiences, as well as all future dramaturgs, are committed to you, the community.
Thank you again,
Nicholas E. Sheets
