Shenandoah Performing Arts Students Collaborate In Radical Experiment
Student Performance Week Breaks New Ground
Being a leader doesn’t mean you have all of the answers; it just means you know how to find the people who do.”
Jenna Barricklo ’21 | Musical Theatre Major & Leader of the Student Performance Week project “NICU Lullabies & Nursery Rhymes”
Barricklo’s project was part of a revolutionary experiment at Shenandoah Conservatory: Student Performance Week (SPW) a full week in which classes were canceled and students collaborated on a wide variety of student-led creative projects.
Student Performance Week is the only such week of its magnitude and scope offered by a university performing arts program in the United States.
The week then culminated in an extraordinary event: the Dec. 1 Festival of Arts, Ideas & Exploration, which featured 27 performances and five presentations, one being Barricklo’s, in which she called upon music therapy and music production & recording technology students for their assistance.
During the festival, students performed a play while also signing the dialogue in American Sign Language; performed a ballet with accompaniment by a wind quintet and piano; improvised songs in student Ewan Noblet’s “CIRCLESONGS”; delved into Investigative North Korean Dance; learned the musical saw; performed in works that melded dance, movement, live music and the spoken word; wrote and performed a sketch comedy revue; blended music, marching and dance for Shenandoah Wind Theatre experience, much like seeing a small marching band perform indoors; explored Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning album, “DAMN.” and so much more.
I am so proud of the students; they OWNED this at a level that can make us all very proud. Students were heavily invested and revealed great creativity. Some works were SIMPLY STUNNING.”
Michael Stepniak, Ed.D. | Shenandoah Conservatory Dean and Professor of Music
Such a week has occurred for a number of years at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London, where student participation is required, and at Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff, Wales, where student participation is voluntary. The conservatory’s SPW Taskforce visited both earlier this year, and brought back its findings about holding a similar week at Shenandoah, which the conservatory voted in favor of for the fall 2018 semester.
It’s simply radical that an entire school would turn things over to students for such a long stretch within an intensive semester. No arts school that we know of in the USA has done this.”
Michael Stepniak, Ed.D. | Shenandoah Conservatory Dean and Professor of Music
Shenandoah’s initial SPW was a resounding success, with more than 600 wristbands distributed for the festival, which offered a dizzying array of performances and presentations in music, theatre and dance at 12 stages across Shenandoah’s main campus.
Everyone around me was so excited to see new art and were forgiving of flaws, receptive to feedback and so loving. I was so excited all day. I think as a conservatory, we beat ourselves down very hard every day, pushing ourselves to be better and perfect, but with this, this let everyone just CREATE and devote time to do it.”
One Shenandoah Conservatory student said of the week
The vast majority of students (99 percent) said they would love to see it happen again.
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SPW provided Jack Murphy ’20 and fellow Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre major Bailey Baker ’20, with invaluable time to devote to their work-in-progress musical “Lilac,” which explores LGBTQ+ issues. They could rehearse the piece with their actors then work on it themselves for 10 hours a day. While the duo wrote the first 12 minutes of the musical last year, they added to it significantly during SPW. “None of the actors had any material before this week,” said Murphy, who oversaw a workshop performance of the musical for the festival. One song, he said, was written just three days before the festival. The goal is for a full reading of the musical to occur in March with Liminality Theatre Company, a student theatre company with its goal to produce art created outside of the idea of traditional theatre.
Barricklo presented to Winchester Medical Center during SPW, receiving a positive response. Over the course of its development, the project morphed from a compact disc of music and poems to be played for babies to a piece that gives parents tools through which they can bond with their babies, Bachelor of Music in Music Therapy student Morgan Potter ’19 said. The project is not music therapy, Potter noted. If clinical music therapy is needed for the infant, that’s when a professional should be contacted for their services. Once the recording is finalized, it is hoped that it, along with an accompanying handbook, also assembled by Barricklo, will be distributed to expectant parents. Barricklo was incredibly open to understanding music therapy research, framing her project to follow a route that was responsible, ethical and beneficial, said Bronwen Landless, ’04, ’13, M.M.T., who was the faculty mentor for the project.
The students’ love for the experience was evident, as were the learning outcomes.
It’s not about perfection. It’s not about product. It’s about process.”
Courtney Reilly | Conservatory Performs Managing Director and Artistic Director of Performing Arts Live
The week’s success depended on a number of factors. “We had the exceptional talent and creative energy needed not only on the student side, but also on the staff/planning side,” Stepniak said. Additionally, he said he couldn’t offer enough thanks for the Student Performance Week Taskforce, for its leadership, the Dean’s Circle for critical funding and support, and Courtney Reilly and her extraordinary staff and team of volunteers.
The Student Performance Week Taskforce included:
- Assistant Dean for Student Learning and Associate Professor of Theatre Carolyn Coulson, Ph.D.
- Assistant Dean for Recruitment, Conservatory, and Associate Professor, Instrumental Bassoon/Music Theory Ryan Romine, D.M.A.
- Bachelor of Music in Music Production & Recording Technology student Josh Frey ’19
- Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance student Adrienne Elion ’20
- Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theatre student Chris Goodwin ’19
