October is a busy month for all of us in the School of Theatre & Dance. We just closed our first show, Water by the Spoonful, and are in rehearsal for our Fall Dance Festival and our first musical of the season, The Threepenny Opera, directed by Bill Gelber.

That, alone, is a cause for celebration.

We haven't staged a Brecht production since Dr. Gelber's Mother Courage and Her Children almost a decade ago, and Threepenny follows the release of his excellent critical study, Engaging with Brecht.

Perusing it yesterday, I was struck by how Dr. Gelber uses the version he staged at Texas Tech of Mother Courage as one of the central examples in the book, and goes to great length proving how much Brecht believed that “theatre could be an agent for change, a vehicle for opening the eyes of the spectator to the possibilities for a future society by pointing out the flaws of the current social environment rendered by the people in power as the natural and unchangeable order of things.” Gelber goes on to explain that “this was because he [Brecht] believed people's consciousness was determine by their social existence, rather than the reverse.” [Incidentally, if you are a fan of Brecht, or even theatre in the 21st century, I recommend Dr. Gelber's very approachable critical study.]

Theatre as an agent for change.

Those of us who have dedicated our lives to the stage not only implicitly understand this, but, whether it's on the forefront of our actions or just intuitive, our community producing theatre and dance hope that performance always is a catalyst for change. While we struggle to attract audiences to theatre, especially post pandemic when so many theatres are finding numbers are down at least 30%, we continue to believe wholeheartedly that plays and dance concerts can indeed inspire transformation.

Shakespeare first introduced the idea that theatre “holds a mirror up to nature” when Hamlet addresses the players whom he hopes will shock his Uncle Claudius, now King, into admitting that he was responsible for the death of Hamlet's father—a literal confession forced by a theatrical production and a means of trickery to achieve a goal. Hamlet's motive, then, may have been self-serving, but those of us in love with theatre have borrowed that line to justify the importance of the hours put into rehearsal.

Admittedly, not all theatre achieves such a grand goal, nor should it. We are a nation that craves entertainment, and often, we want to leave a night at the theatre having forgotten our own troubles for a few hours, to be transported to places we don't recognize. We are a nation of storytellers, and while each of us has a favorite genre—horror, science fiction, drama, farce—we are bound together by our affection for sharing tales.

Brecht certainly holds that mirror up to reality, sure, but he's also a playwright who often distorts reality, while reminding us in a play that we are indeed seeing a play. For him, recognizing the artifice of the event helps us to learn. If we get too emotionally involved, Brecht believes that we don't stop to ponder, analyze, or truly consider the importance of what is conveyed on the stage. Many of his works, then, work against our being totally immersed.

Fascinating, right, that storytellers invent so many fascinating methods of sharing not only their stories, but also their life philosophies?  If I have learned anything about performance in my twelve years leading this program, the glue that binds us in Theatre & Dance is our desire to elicit a response from you!

Whatever performance means to you, I promise you will find something to like in our 2023-24 fall season, be it the comically dark and ominous environment of The Threepenny Opera or the unique and provocative choreography by our dance students in the Fall Dance Festival.