University of South Florida

School of Theatre & Dance

College of Design, Art & Performance

Theatre Honors Productions Gallery

2015 Honors Students Centerstage: Much Ado About Nothing (adapted and abridged)

Production Design: Ryan Finzelber
Faculty Mentor: Marc Powers

Two characters look on in shock while a man in a suit holds the hand of a woman in a wedding dress holding flowers, who also appears shocked.

2014 Honors Students Centerstage: The Money Tower

Based on works of The Living Theatre from the 1970s
Production Design: Ryan Finzelber
Faculty Mentor: Marc Powers

Six characters lay on the ground in a circle, all dressed in black, with arms outstretched toward coins scattered in the middle of the circle.

2013 Honors Students Centerstage: 2 Contemporary Plays

Directed by Leonardo Cirigliano and Christopher Hough
Scenic Design: Ali Ballentine
Lighting Design: Cynthia Horst
Costume Design: Dana LoBuono
Sound and Video Design: Leo Cirigliano and Christopher Burgos

A man is in a cage surrounded by other characters on boxes, some characters are dressed as soldiers while others in the background are wearing solid green. A woman is watching the man in the cage.

2012 Honors Students Centerstage: 3 Contemporary European Plays

Terminus. Interwoven stories of soul stealing bargains, fantastical rescues and brave determination.  Three stories, told by the characters in stunning soliloquy, take place over the course of a single night in Dublin. Directed by Theatre Honors student Mary Spurlock.

Painkillers. Three women, all friends, all looking at life from different perspectives. All of them wanting to be okay, but searching for something to numb them. Directed by Theatre Honors student Lisa Letterle.

Herjólfur Has Stopped Loving. Enter the mind of a man who is coming to grips with the fact that he has stopped loving. Is this reality or fantasy? Is the scandal and violence he commits real or a window into his mind? Directed by Theatre Honors student Lauren Allison.

Scenic & Costume Design: Shannon Dunbar
Lighting Design: Kristen Geisler Easterling
Sound Design: Anthony J. Vito

Two men are wearing suits and sitting in chairs, one man is staring at the other with pity while the other is looking back at the first with concern.

2011 Theatre Honors: Women Beware Women

By Thomas Middleton
Directed by C. David Frankel
Scenic Design: Cody Lorich
Costume Design: Julie Carr
Lighting Design: Anthony Vito
Sound Design: Ryan Crowther

An older woman is smiling while holding a younger man in her arms, as if they were in an embrace.

2010 Theatre Honors: Animals and Plants and Melancholy Play

Animals and Plants
by Adam Rapp
Directed by Tia Jemison
Scenic Design: Andrew Cohen
Costume Design: Christine Pena
Lighting Design: Lauren Libretti

Melancholy Play
by Sarah Ruhl
Directed by Erin Morris
Scenic Design: Andrew Cohen
Costume Design: Kelsey Platkin
Lighting Design: Lauren Libretti

A man in a suit is crying while curled up on a couch. A woman wearing a housedress and pearls while holding a notepad is looking up with a concerned look on her face.

2007 Theatre Honors: Local Habitations

The University of South Florida’s 2006-2007 Theatre Honors students presented Local Habitations, an original work based on the writings of two-time Poet Laureate (2004-2006) and Pulitzer Prize winner Ted Kooser.

A group of four women are on stage in front of chairs, the two spotlighted in the center are smiling at each other.

2005 Theatre Honors: Remembrances: The Ophelia Project

The Theatre Honors Project for 2005-2006 was organized around a historical study of what has been made of the ‘myth and madness’ of the character Ophelia from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. For nine months students researched the topic under the guidance of Dr. Denis Calandra. Several won grants to travel to New York for research. The group of ten created an original script and with financial support from the Office of Undergraduate Research produced their play in May 2007 in THR (Theatre 2). Dance, music, and unusual visual design enhanced the well-received production. For their accomplishments four students won monetary prizes in the annual Von Rosenstiel undergraduate research competition.

2004 Theatre Honors: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

Topic: Jacobean Revenge Tragedy
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Tis Pity She’s a Whore

Topic: Points of View: Politics and Ideas in the Theatre
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST:
Professor Denis Calandra, along with three USF Honors students (Jonathon Cho, Christina Julius and Soolaf Rasheid) traveled to Atlanta to see the premiere of Maria Kizito by Erik Ehn, at the 7 Stages Theatre.

A man and woman are standing across from each other while holding each other’s hands from a distance, each staring at the other.

2003 Zastrozzi, Native Speech, Crimes of The Heart

A man in a top hat and trench coat is holding an umbrella over a well-dressed man who is holding his hat while sitting on a stool and painting on a canvas.

2001

Topic:
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Ellis Island

2000

Topic: Physical Theatre
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: UMO – The Making of GONE WITH THE WIND, A Buffoon’s Tale

1997

Topic:
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Dancing at Lughnasa

1995

Topic:
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Suitcase written by Kobo Abe and Escurial written by Michel DeGhelderode

1994

Topic: Contemporary British Drama
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: On the Razzle by Tom Stoppard

1993

Waiting for Godot
Director: Christopher Steele
Scenic Design: Barton W. Lee
Lighting Design: G.B. Stephens
Costume Design: Christine McDowell

1992

Topic: The Physiology of Theatre
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Barnes' It's Cold, Wanderer, It's Cold and 'Lucy Does a TV Commercial, Vitameatavegamin

1991

Topic: 'Elizabethan and Jacobean Theatre Practice
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Much Ado About Nothing

1989 - 1990

Topic: New American Dramatists (Playwrights Eric Overmyer, Jeff Jones and Gary Leon Hill held workshops for the Honors students)
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: 70 Scenes of Halloween by Jeffrey Jones
A real yet strange play that seems to tell itself through many different stories like a many-sided coin that keeps changing its face. It is a fairy tale of itself, flipping back and forth between an outer focus and an inner focus of the realities of the world of the play and of the world of the actor. The words scratch and claw to a surface sometimes finding gentleness. And.. the demon in me is the demon in me.

1988

Topic: Popular Theatre
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: San Francisco Mime Troupe’s Offshore
Offshore examines issues vital to American Life in the last years of the 20th century: free trade, Asian investment and immigration, the immense possibilities for cross-cultural enrichment, and the reality of interracial conflict.

1988

Topic: Popular Theatre
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Poor of New York by Dion Boucicault.
San Francisco Mime Troupe’s director, Daniel Chumley directed TheatreUSF students in this melodrama. The play spans a twenty year period of the 19th century, centering around the bank collapses of 1837 and 1857. Exploring the social impact of the wealthy’s devastation, the playwright provides timely comment on the great leveling effect of financial disaster.

1987

Topic: New German Theatre
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Bildbeschreibung by Heiner Muller

1986

Topic: 'Popular Theatre'
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Steeltown

1985

Topic: Contemporary German Drama
PROJECT/PRODUCTION/GUEST ARTIST: Student productions included Franz Xavier Kroetz's Michi's Blood and Friedericke Roth's Piano Play and Harald Mueller's Flotsam and Jetsam.