After 10 years Lance Marsh, artistic director of TheatreOCU, is stepping down.
The move is to allow Marsh to focus on creating the Center for Excellence in Classical Theatre Training.
Marsh is still the head of performance for TheatreOCU and is slated to be the conference chair and editor for CECTT.
“Lance is the best teacher I have ever had, and an even better representation of what the School of Theatre is all about,” said Travis Huddleston, acting junior. “He will be missed as artistic director, but the new CECTT program he is heading up is going to bring a whole new level to the school and OCU as a whole.”
The center will be a partnership between universities across the nation.
“We are partnering with a couple of other academic institutions: the classical studio at NYU, the graduate classical directing program at University of South Carolina and with a number of professional Shakespeare festivals to create this organization,” Marsh said.
Once a year, CECTT will invite dignitaries and master teachers from around the world to come to Oklahoma City for a weekend to teach classes, he said.
The first conference will be for about four days in April 2017 at OCU, where a production of classical theater plays will be accompanied by a keynote speech, a series of workshops, roundtables and paper presentations, according to the CECTT brochure.
The conferences will all be videotaped and archived to preserve lessons from master teachers and have them available, Marsh said.
“Our idea is to eventually move beyond simply a conference and start doing some producing work,” he said. “We want a show that would tour; start here and tour to hopefully the Shakespeare Globe in London eventually.”
The Shakespeare Globe is not an official partner as of now, but CECTT is in talks to partner with them in the future.
Another goal for CECTT is to make an American version of the British show Playing Shakespeare, Marsh said.
“Our goal is to start raising money now and within the next five years launch an American Playing Shakespeare program that would be modeled on the one in the 80s,” he said.
Playing Shakespeare was a television miniseries in which English theatrical director John Barton hosted classes in how to play Shakespeare using famous British actors as examples, according to the Internet Movie Database.
CECTT has identified a number of local entrepreneurs who care about the Oklahoma City area and see this program as a benefit to the state. Those people see this as an admirable way to do some of their philanthropic outreach, Marsh said.
“It’s obviously not as big as bringing the Thunder here, but bringing culture of an international level and creating a center of excellence in something that is as highbrow as classical theater in a place like Oklahoma City gives Oklahoma City a kind of lift in cultural status,” he said.
During the next five years, CECTT is set to expand to partners in Russia, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Germany, according to the CECTT brochure.
“We’re excited about getting started,” Marsh said. “In the end, I think this is going to highlight something we feel very passionate about here. It seems like building on a strength we already have.”
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