theater
September 4, 2025
Mounsithiraj pursues theater dreams
Joseph Mounsithiraj had a full summer: in April he graduated from Goshen College with a B.A. in art and a theater minor. Then he capped off his undergraduate career by taking the college’s Arts in London course — attending lectures, galleries, theater and music performances. After that he stayed in Europe to attend the Anabaptistm 500 Conference in Zurich, Switzerland. Finally, from June 2 to July 21 he worked at Hope Repertoy Theatre as one of two assistant heads of electrics. Hope Repertoy is a theater company that uses the facilities of Hope College in Holland, Michigan. The bulk of...
February 6, 2025
Carson Kreitzer brings art and activism to GC
Carson Kreitzer, an award-winning playwright, hosted Goshen College’s Umble Master Class in Speech and Theater on Tuesday evening, drawing a crowd of students, staff and community members alike. Kreitzer talked about the craft of playwriting and the complexities of historical storytelling. Kreitzer earned a bachelor’s in theater and literature from Yale University and a master of fine arts from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. A playwright for over 20 years, her plays have garnered recognition and been produced internationally. One of Kreitzer’s newest works, “Lempicka,” is a musical she co-wrote and lyricized alongside...
January 23, 2025
GC students celebrate more milestones at KCACTF
Goshen College’s theater department may be small but it is filled with talented people, as seen by the program’s recent participation in the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. KCACTF is a five-day event where several GC students were able to participate in multiple competitive semifinals and finals for scholarships. Aysia Adkins, a junior music major, was a semifinalist in the musical theater intensive. She recalled, “It’s a lot of people… I’m not actually sure the number, I feel like it was a hundred or something [people] on day one that I auditioned.” She explained how the number of people...
November 24, 2024
Working on stage with ASL interpreters
Goshen College’s fall play “She Kills Monsters” was performed the last two weekends by a cast determined to bring the story to life. The presence of American Sign Language interpreters on Sunday Nov. 10 was also a part of the efforts to ensure that deaf and hard of hearing individuals could enjoy the performance just as much as their hearing peers. “Every play in GC had ASL interpreting which I think is very unique to GC, but it shouldn’t be. More actors should be able to work with interpreting,” said Fatima Zahara, senior theater and music major who played Agnes...
November 14, 2024
‘She Kills Monsters’ ‘slays’ on the Umble stage
Umble Center’s stage lit up with glow-in-the-dark dragon masks and dramatic fight scenes for the first time on Friday, Nov. 8. “She Kills Monsters,” a production by Qui Nguyen, tells the story of Agnes Evans, an average girl living an average life. Her world is turned upside down when her parents and her younger sister, Tilly, die in a tragic car accident. The play follows Agnes in her attempt to reconnect with Tilly through her love for Dungeons and Dragons. Brenton Abram-Copenhaver, technical director at Goshen College, came on as the director of this production after two failed attempts to...
September 5, 2024
A new face in the theater department
Goshen College begins the 2024-25 school year with over 37 new employees, one of whom is succeeding Jacob Claassen as the theater department’s technical director. Brenton Abram-Copenhaver is the newest member of the theater staff. He grew up surrounded by performing arts — his parents owned a visual and performing arts school. “They taught art, music, drama and dance,” Abram-Copenhaver said, “that was my after-school and upbringing.” Throughout high school, Abram-Copenhaver continued to work in theatrical productions. He volunteered at community organizations and he performed in high school plays. Following school, he made his way to Chicago, where he studied...
February 1, 2024
Theater department operates with one professor
Ever since associate professor Anna Kurtz Kuk left in early 2022, professor Amy Budd and theater technical director Jacob Claassen have been the only employees in the Goshen College theater department. Only in late 2022 did GC start the process of recruiting someone to complete the theater professor’s team. Unfortunately, the search was not successful. Ann Vendrely, academic dean, said that the school held a search for a new faculty member but could not find a qualified one. Instead, Budd hired an adjunct that agreed to return next year. “We are hopeful that we will have funding to support a...
October 5, 2023
Experimenting with bilingual theater
This homecoming weekend, Goshen College will be putting on the one-act play “A Comedy Renaissance (Un renacimiento de la comedia).” The show is co-directed by Amy Budd, assistant professor of theater, and Cristóbal Garza González, associate professor of Spanish. It seeks to bring the Spanish language, Spanish speakers and diaspora traditions to GC’s stage. It was important to Budd to make this incorporation as organic as possible. “There’s not a clear way forward — or an industry best practice — for me as a white woman within an HSI, doing this work,” she said. “I thought: ‘what’s the next step...
March 23, 2023
Preview: A look at ‘Into the Woods’
This weekend, Goshen College’s theater program will open the spring mainstage musical: Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.” The last time the show was done at GC was in 2003. The show reconsiders who really deserves the title of hero or villain in a fairy tale while involving storylines from “Cinderella,” “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “Little Red Riding Hood” and “Rapunzel.” Director Amy Budd described it as being primarily a story about “the importance of caring for your neighbors.” The actors began rehearsals in January to prepare for opening night. Fatima Rhana, a sophomore music and theater double major playing the...
January 19, 2023
Students attend Kennedy Center theater festival
On the same day GC students began their classes for the semester, many students, including myself, went to the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival at the University of Michigan-Flint. A five-day event, the festival is a giant celebration of theater with college students, working professionals and casting organizations gathering from across the Midwest. The festival included workshops such as “Acting Through The Microphone” and “Consent In A Knife Fight.” A challenge of the festival was not being able to attend everything, so one had to plan out their day very carefully. We also saw many incredible performances and captivating...
November 11, 2022
‘Everybody’: 1:5 odds in a Powerball of a play
The fall mainstage, “Everybody” by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, will feature something uncommon in theater productions — an onstage lottery to determine which actor plays which character. Among the cast, five out of the ten actors have taken on the task of learning five different parts instead of just one. Daniel Stoltzfus, Kate Bodiker, Meredith Blossom, Fatima Rhana and Jocsan Barahona Rosales will take turns playing the titular character, known as Everybody, as well as a host of other characters named after various virtues. Among all the characters, Everybody has been the most challenging to get comfortable with. “We’re getting to a...
March 31, 2022
Review: ‘The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee’ is a wild ride
As the first spring mainstage with a live audience since before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” sets the bar up high for all future musical shows at Goshen College. The show opened in the Umble Theater with an enthusiastic judge, a pining vice principal, a parolee, and six young spelling bee contestants (alongside four pre-selected audience participants). “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” is a wild ride from start to finish — the script is full of witty banter, relatable characters dealing with difficult life situations, and ridiculous song breaks. The tone...
March 17, 2022
Monologue cast bonds over sharing stories
A group of female-identifying individuals performed in the eighth annual Goshen Monologues on Saturday. Beginning in 2014, this performance, which has become a tradition at Goshen College, is meant to put forward stories written by female-identifying and queer students and performed by their peers. This year, over 20 students from a variety of majors and backgrounds performed in Monologues, presenting pieces about a variety of topics. The performance was held in the Church-Chapel, which was decorated with simple but elegant scarves. After the introduction, a variety of pieces were performed. Some were lighthearted in themes, such as the piece “Don’t Talk...
February 25, 2022
Two seniors share personal stories through theater shows
The Goshen College theater department began its spring season on Feb. 16 with two plays written and presented by seniors majoring in the field: “An Ode to Blackness” by Gloria Bontrager-Thomas and “Behind the Curtain” by Tobias Garcia. These shows started off as projects that theater majors are required to present by the end of their senior year. “They can be originally written stories or an adaptation of a stage play,” said Fatima Rhana, an actor in Bontrager-Thomas’s play. “You can choose whether to direct or act in it, just as long as you put your idea onto the stage...