The Through Line - Spring 2014

Lisa Jackson-Schebetta doesn’t remember exactly what she said at her first UW ASTR dinner. Since 2007 – her first year in the PhD program at the University of Washington School of Drama – Dr. Jackson-Schebetta has attended every annual dinner hosted by Professor Odai Johnson, head of the PhD program, during the American Society for Theatre Research conference. “I know what I’m going to say in Baltimore, though,” Jackson-Schebetta told me when I asked her how she has answered Professor Johnson’s yearly questions: From where you are now in your career, what things come easy to you and what are the things you struggle with? At the 2014 conference in Baltimore, she’ll tell the group that intellectual risk-taking comes easy to her now.

“The UW program has a huge capacity for intellectual risk-taking, and that is very unique,” explains Jackson-Schebetta. “There’s rigorous scholarship, yes, but there is also the ability to take huge risks.”

She made the decision to pursue a doctoral degree while completing her MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University. The MFA program there incorporated historical and critical perspectives, and she found herself interested in the critical conversations around production. When looking at PhD programs, she looked for one that could train her to be a scholar. “I had done my practical stuff. I wanted to be trained to be the best scholar I could be.”

She arrived at the UW thinking she knew the topic of her dissertation, but found...

This month, our undergraduate acting students take to the main stage in the UW School of Drama’s production of Vaclav Havel’s The Beggar’s Opera. In the capable hands of guest director Wilson Milam, the cast of 19 is working through Havel’s absurdist and potent script.

“It’s a joy to come back to Seattle, and to bring my outside experience to the work here with these young actors and designers who are defining their course in life and learning their craft,” says Milam, a Tony-nominated director who has worked nationally and in the United Kingdom. Milam’s Tony nomination came for his direction of Martin McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which he brought from London to Broadway. He has also directed several plays at Seattle Repertory Theatre, most recently God of Carnage during the Rep’s 2010-2011 Season.

“He holds us to a very high standard,” says senior Hannah Ruwe of working with Milam. “As students, it’s a really good challenge to operate and push ourselves to a higher, more professional standard.”

Spencer Hamp, another senior Drama student, is quick to add that not only is Milam pushing the cast to higher standards, he’s acutely aware that part of his role as a director at the School of Drama is to be an educator. “He’s equipping us with skills that we can use when we don’t have a director who is as careful and cares as much about his actors as Wilson does,” says Hamp...