Dancing at Lughnasa at SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge
by M.R. Smith

Theatregoers in the Hudson Valley have it pretty good here most of the year. Bard, Vassar, SUNY New Paltz, Shadowlands, Boscobel (to name just a few) all provide a premium quality of thespian activity, while numerous NYC-stage and screen ex-pats call Dutchess and Ulster counties home, occasionally lending talent, encouragement, and expertise.

Lately, there’s been talk of a resurgence of young collegiate theatre at SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, largely based on the success of November ‘07’s The Foreigner, by Larry Shue. (Discerning attendees from this very magazine gave it raves.) The reason for this: a new state-funded two-year arts program for the theatre arts and its new director, Jerry Bradley. The result of this? Eighteen majors, up from three, and full theatre houses, mostly by word of mouth.

But some might wonder: what’s the point? Let’s be honest. College students aren’t really encouraged to go the theatre route these days; it just doesn’t pay the bills. But maybe they’re being misinformed. The ability to speak well and make a point, to use your body to communicate effectively, and understand the well-written word still has a real value in this modern age, maybe more than we’d like to admit. The great theatre pieces are the great stories of history retold, with a deeper understanding of the human condition available therein. Cooperation, trust, and teamwork are essential to even the smallest performance. Maybe a theatre major makes sense after all.

Jerry Bradley certainly thinks so. He knows he’s teaching more than just a theatre curriculum. “It’s life management skills. If you want to be in the arts, you have to be able to manage your own time. You’re not working for someone who tells you how to do that. You’re constantly in the business of selling yourself, marketing yourself, and you have to have a clear idea of what your product is, and you’ve got to know whom you’re selling to. You have to have a business head.” While he says this in reference to his students, this statement can apply to any student, in any discipline.

Jerry should know. A well-groomed gentleman scholar with a genial twinkle in this eye—one of those actor-types whose age is impossible to nail down—he’s been in the business, both professional and academic, long enough for two careers. After graduating with his MFA from the University of Virginia (the state he was born and raised in), he got into the journeyman regional theatre life, working all around the country: Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana—before ending up in New York City, doing mostly off-Broadway.

During a stint with Virginia’s prestigious Barter Theatre, the president of nearby Emory and Henry College offered Jerry a position as a visiting instructor, with the opportunity to direct. Like many actors, he couldn’t resist, and found himself on a new life-track. Further positions at Cornell, Marymount Manhattan, and finally Oswego State filled in the resume blanks with experience in all aspects of live theatre, including management and administration. Then, the SUNY Ulster position came up, with a new 2-year program which is essentially designed for students that want to go on to a major 4-year program elsewhere, or just directly vie for an entry-level spot with a professional repertory company. Jerry started last August, with a new program, new funding, and fresh students considering a career on stage and screen.

But the stardom myth is still hard to punch past. During a recent business fair, with professionals and students from all over the area in attendance, there was a spirited discussion about the necessity of having the degree to have a good stage and screen career. Jerry laughs, “They (the kids) didn’t want to hear our advice! Everyone on the panel advised them to stay in school, and at least get a bachelor’s degree, if not go further. I could tell they were expecting us to say: follow your dream and throw caution to the wind! Fly to LA, or get on a bus and go to NYC.” Even with a lucky break in the biz, “they have to know: the odds are that it will be only for a short time. Most people I meet aren’t ready for that kind of pressure.”

Most of Jerry’s students, as talented as they are, are freshmen and sophomores. “At this age, in a year they grow so much, mostly in maturity and discipline. I really have some that I’m impressed with, especially with how much they’ve grown in working on one production [The Foreigner], and having one semester of classes.”

Most successful theatre seasons start with a comedy, and follow with a classic drama. Jerry’s upcoming show, Dancing at Lughnasa, by Irish playwright Brain Friel, had lengthy runs in Dublin and London, went on to score a Tony Award on Broadway (1992), and was made into a 1998 movie starring Meryl Streep. This story of five unmarried sisters who live in a small Irish town, as reminisced by the grown child of one of them, takes place in a particular three-week period in August of 1936, during the pagan festival of Lughnasa, when there was much Celtic music and dancing around fires. The household is visited by rarely-seen drifter father of the boy (then seven years old), an uncle who has been a missionary preacher in Africa for 25 years, and a new wireless radio, which provides the sisters with a somewhat distorted view of the outside world, and musical accompaniment to their otherwise uneventful and impoverished existence.

As Jerry describes it, “I like the theatricality of it, it’s got a lot of dance, a lot of music—for a play that’s very language based, it has lots of twists and turns, it uses a narrator, plays with time, going backwards and forwards. It’s never predictable, and yet it’s a very realistic play.”

Next up on the schedule is a staged reading of Dickens’ Great Expectations on April 26 (7 p.m.) by visiting artist Donald Brenner, who will also be directing the next major production: Lerner and Loewe’s classic My Fair Lady, (June 27-July 6, open auditions for actors and techs May 2/3). When asked why this particular musical, which requires no less than a cast of seventeen, costs almost twice as much for permission royalties than most other musicals, and generally requires a full orchestra, Jerry replies simply, “I believe my students should be exposed to the best material I can choose for them.”

He has also located an excellent adaptation for two pianos, secured musical assistance from Bard’s James Fitzwilliam, and also has excellent technical and design assistance from fellow educator Max Lydy. But, My Fair Lady will require some assistance from the community to be a success, and Jerry wants to make it clear: auditions are very much open to all actors, singers, dancers, and anyone interested in the technical side. Jerry is also sponsoring an audition workshop for anyone wanting to tone up their audition pieces, be it textual or musical (April 19, 1 p.m.), with a panel of local theatre pros on hand to offer constructive criticism and advice.

With the preponderance of unskilled entertainment available onscreen thanks to YouTube and “reality” television, it’s good to know that good performance traditions are still alive, being taught, and being sought after. It’s also good to know that a school like SUNY Ulster, rather than slashing arts budgets to pay for science, math, and sports scholarships, recognizes the value of theatre programs in shaping and improving the life skills of students. And there’s a lot to learn, and plenty of classic material to explore. Jerry says, “A lot of our students don’t know the plays of Arthur Miller, of William Inge. They hardly know of Tennessee Williams past The Glass Menagerie. Yes, there are some innovations or new ways of looking at something, but essentially we’ve been re-telling the same stories.”

Dancing at Lughnasa will be performed at Quimby Theater, SUNY Ulster, Stone Ridge, Th-Su 4/10 through 4/13 (Th-Sa, 8 PM; Su, 3 p.m.). The Audition Workshop will be held Fr 4/19, 1 p.m. Donald Brenner’s Great Expectations performance is Fr 4/26, 7 p.m. Open auditions for My Fair Lady will be May 2 and 3. Please contact
www.sunyulster.edu or the box office at 845.688.1959 for additional info and times.