Baylor Theatre 2019-2020 Season to Debut Green and Gold Series

Media Contact: Terry Goodrich, Baylor University Media and Public Relations, 254-710-3321
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by Brooke Hill, student newswriter, Baylor Media and Public Relations

WACO, Texas (Aug. 19, 2019) — Baylor Theatre’s 2019-2020 season includes a sixth show and will be divided into a gold series and a green series. The gold series denotes the production size and design complexity that audience members are used to seeing from Baylor Theatre. The green series productions will be minimalistic to train students to strengthen creativity.
Lisa Denman, director of Baylor’s directing and acting undergraduate program, said Baylor students are used to experiencing performances with healthy budgets and support from designers, which is more akin to high-level professional theatre.

“But what we know is that many of our students leave here and they’re working at much smaller professional theatres to begin with, where maybe they’re acting in the piece, but maybe they’re also doing public relations, or maybe helping with the lights, where it’s just not as well supported, both financially and with staff,” Denman said.

“We started talking about maybe having a couple of our shows each year model that atmosphere,” she said. “It may be that one show is supported with a terrific lighting designer, but the director may be doing the set design that’s mostly going to be pulled from what we already have, which is what happens in smaller theatres when you don’t have a large budget. We wanted to expose our students to both kinds of theatre since they’ll be out there doing that, and to help them understand how that works.”

Denman said because of the cutbacks associated with the green series, they were able to add a sixth show to the season.

“We’re always careful to choose a nice mix of plays for our audience, but also for our students, so that in four years, our students have pretty much tackled at least one play in as many genres as we can get,” Denman said.
The theatre arts department also is excited to welcome more students into the audience as part of Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences new Cultural Events Experience (CEE). The CEE is part of the college’s unified core that will begin this fall for incoming students — meaning that students pursuing each of the four degrees will have the same core requirements. The CEE requires students to attend two approved campus cultural events during each of six semesters. Among those events may be art and museum exhibits, theater productions, concerts and poetry readings.

The 2019-2020 shows will be:

• Matilda the Musical (gold)
• Antigone (green)
• Rhinoceros (gold)
• Yerma (gold)
• Enjoy (green)
• Hay Fever (gold)

For more information Baylor Theatre Arts and the 2019-2020 season, visit www.baylor.edu/theatre.

ABOUT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY
Baylor University is a private Christian University and a nationally ranked research institution. The University provides a vibrant campus community for more than 17,000 students by blending interdisciplinary research with an international reputation for educational excellence and a faculty commitment to teaching and scholarship. Chartered in 1845 by the Republic of Texas through the efforts of Baptist pioneers, Baylor is the oldest continually operating University in Texas. Located in Waco, Baylor welcomes students from all 50 states and more than 90 countries to study a broad range of degrees among its 12 nationally recognized academic divisions.