Finishing the Theatre Project

Today I mounted and hung my final series for the Theatre Project. I put five 11X14 prints in the Ratt and there were seven 16X20 prints in the gallery showing at the Orange Crate Gallery in Cedar Rapids. They will be hanging there about one month and then they will be framed and moved into Cornell’s Theatre building at the end of April. I am really excited to have them in permanent display in a building where I learned and grew as a theatre major. The images were very well received by the people that I talked to. Even some of the people that came to the gallery opening who knew nothing about me or my work were pleasantly surprised and really liked what they saw there. Then when I told them that they were taken with an old 4X5 film camera and that I was the one who processed everything they were amazed about what I had accomplished in such a short amount of time.

This is a project that means a lot to me as a fellow theatre major; at the end of my college career it becomes a retrospective look at the people around me who affected me. Though it does not include everyone who influenced me, it really shows those who took a similar approach to the theatre major and has walked a relatively similar educational path. As a fellow major I know my subjects fairly well and this led to some images that really capture the essence of the person. I meant for this project to show the subjects for who they are and how they relate to the department. It is interesting to see who chose to be in the theatre and who chose to be away from the theatre and to think if this means anything about their commitment to their major and also how much a major can really define who you are in a collegiate setting. Everyone who I took pictures is pretty involved in the department, whether it is through the department or student groups, so it is not to say that anyone is not committed, it is just an interesting comment that developed in this series. This series really demonstrates how easy and willingly students become so involved in their major that they start to become their major. It is something that one looks for when deciding a major, you really have to think about what it means to be a “theatre major,” “math major” or “French major” and this helps you decide if you want to become that infamous “theatre major” or not. So this series really becomes about what a “theatre major” is and how that can, or can’t define you in college. Overall, this series is meant to capture a moment in my personal history, but it is also set up as a series that shows others who Cornell theatre majors are and can help to get past the stereotypical ideas of what it means to be a theatre major.