The University of Northern Iowa's theater department will host the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage as part of the College of Humanities’ Arts and Sciences Hearst Lecture Series. Ms. Nottage will deliver a free, public fireside chat at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center at 7 p.m. on March 8, 2022. Nottage has won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama for her plays “Ruined” and “Sweat.” Her plays have been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.
A new partnership between UNI’s Department of Theatre and its Classic Upward Bound program is helping prepare low-income and first-generation Waterloo high school students for college, by using the skills gained through acting and improvising.
When senior Drama and Theatre for Youth major Hannah Smith was selected for a summer internship at The Rose Theater in Omaha, the Waterloo native was thrilled to get the chance to live in a bigger city while pursuing her passion of teaching a new generation the joys of theater.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed those plans but the internship for Smith, whose professor has dubbed her a theater-teaching “rock star,” went virtual. It wasn’t what Smith had planned, but the internship has been a beneficial — and unique — experience, she said.
Abby Chagolla slouched over in a chair in UNI Assistant Professor Amy Osatinski’s office, doodling in her binder, trying to find the right question for the answer she was desperately seeking. The senior theatre performance and communications studies double major was struggling to figure out her role in the upcoming Theatre UNI production of “Cabaret.” She hoped her meeting with Osatinski, director of this production of “Cabaret,” would help her find clarity.
