When the multipurpose room exploded with laughter at her first joke, she was hooked. She convinced her teacher to stage a production of “Hansel & Gretel” as a star vehicle for herself as Hansel. She spent years as a member of the Take 5 Comedy Troupe founded by her husband, Jeff, another local stage fave and last year’s Best Supporting Actor according to the RTCC thanks to his turn as Polonius in Quill’s “Hamlet.”Ĭlevenger’s passion for acting started in the third grade. I work from my body I'm a movement-first person." Clevenger honed her physical adeptness doing improvisational comedy. "Some come from their heads, others from their hearts. "Actors work from different places," she says. In "Swim Club," Clevenger gained accolades - and a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Richmond Theatre Critics Circle (RTCC) - for throwing herself into the physically demanding role of accident-prone Vernadette. They'd tell us, 'these characters are so similar to my friends growing up.'" Four of the leads in that production, including Clevenger, will be starring in "Girls." "We had no idea how popular 'Swim Club' was going to be," recalls Clevenger, "but then groups of women would come back again and again. "Girls" is another "southern ladies" comedy from Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope, and Jamie Wooten, the playwriting team of that created "Dixie Swim Club." That bittersweet comedy was so popular for the Mill in 2014 they revived it last summer with the same cast. Over the past couple of decades in Richmond, Jennifer Frank Clevenger has epitomized that term, playing key roles in everything from Shakespearean tragedies to the campiest of comedies, and she's currently one of the stars of Swift Creek Mill's breezy summer romp, "The Hallelujah Girls." In baseball, "utility infielder" refers to a player who may not be a big star but whose ability to do well in a variety of positions makes them vital to the team. I don’t like using sports metaphors when describing theater, but sometimes they can't be avoided. From a 2014 Swift Creek production of "Dixie Swim Club": (From left) Georgia Rogers Farmer as Lexie, Jennifer Frank as Vernadette, Jacqueline Jones as Jeri Neal, Joy Williams as Sheree, and Jody Stricker as Dinah.The CollectionĪn inventory of what is in the University Archives can be found in the finding aid for the State University Theatre Records. Plays and productions have been held in over 14 different facilities on campus, with the most recent being the Doner Auditorium and the Oscar Larson Performing Arts Center. State University Theatre eventually became a branch of the Department of Communication Studies and Theater but is now the Theatre and Dance program in the School of Performing Arts at SDSU. Summer theater productions were established at SDSU in 1956 and Rabbit Rarities and Vaudeville shows were also introduced in the 1950s. In 1956, Broadway musicals entered the theater repertoire of SDSU, with their production of South Pacific (as one of the first non-professional group to ever run it). Starting in 1953, SDSU students were eligible to receive college credit for participating in plays. The first designated technical director of plays at SDSU was Lawrence Stine in 1952. The council oversaw all plays in conjunction with the State Players Dramatic Club (founded in 1949).Ī chapter of Alpha Psi Omega was officially organized in 1949 on the SDSU campus and was extremely active in the 1950s. By 1939, plays on campus were officially under the supervision of the Forensics and Dramatics Council in the Speech Department. In 1930, a new club called the Footlight club became the prominent dramatic society on campus. These early societies organized various farces and plays, and instituted theater traditions such as the Senior Class Play. The history of theater at South Dakota State University began with the formation of eight literary societies in the 1880s that eventually merged into a short-lived dramatic club in 1923.
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