In April 2006, Western Carolina University communication students videotaped the last scenes from the Theatre in Education Company’s performance of “Young Cherokee” in the Department of Communication television studios, concluding a year-long theatre initiative that captured attention at national conferences and connected university students with the Cherokee people.
Glenda Hensley and Claire Eye, visiting assistant professors in the Department of Stage and Screen, designed the program so Western students could create and perform quality theatrical productions that also are educationally relevant. To explore diversity and help promote cultural understanding, WCU students in the theatre program focused workshops for middle school students and a play for elementary school students on the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
As the theatre group designed costumes and rehearsed Kathryn Schultz Miller’s play “Young Cherokee,” Western students worked with the WCU-Cherokee Center, its director Roseanna Belt, and community elders and artists such as Davy Arch, who produced hand-carved masks for the show.
Working in conjunction with Eye and Hensley was Pat Acheson, assistant professor of communication and Western’s director of television studio operations. Acheson said that the project was “a great opportunity for communication students to get to work with actors in the studio and see how a theatrical performance translates into a television show.”
Acheson went on to say that “it is one thing to present a play in front of a live
audience; it is an entirely different experience for the actors and studio crew to
do the play in segments and without the audience reaction in the studio.”
The program’s students and directors have presented their experiences at national
conferences to convey how Theatre in Education has helped link college students with
younger people in the community and create opportunities to experience literature,
theatre, art and music.