Ann M. Shanahan, who started this fall as a professor in the Department of Theatre and Drama and as the artistic director of University Theatre, embraces the power of theatre for making change in the world.
Shanahan met with Kari Dickinson, a contributing editor of Learning Connections, to speak about what brought her to UW–Madison, her vision for University Theatre, and more. Following is an edited transcript:
You describe yourself as a “scholar-artist.” What does that mean?
As an art form, theatre has the unique capacity to embody theory. A scholar-artist toggles back and forth between theory and practice, using theatre spaces as laboratories to learn, in collaboration with others, more of what it is to be human in community. I would also add “teacher” with a hyphen there. From the time I was an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, I was excited about a career connecting the art and scholarship of theatre with the teaching of it. I couldn’t then — I still can’t — imagine anything more meaningful and fun to do with my life.
What brought you to UW–Madison?
I was excited by the reputation of the institution and the department, having known colleagues from my previous experiences in the Big Ten consortia, most recently at Purdue. I was impressed with the rigor of UW–Madison’s research identity and its history of progressive thought and civic engagement. I was also excited about the situation of the Department of Theatre and Drama within the School of Education. As someone who understands theatre for its unique potency in education, I saw wonderful opportunities to connect deep research with social justice and teaching.
What is your vision for University Theatre?
I truly believe theatre has unique potential to progress, heal, and teach us culturally. That potential is particularly exciting at an institution like UW–Madison. Theatre is inherently interdisciplinary — combining all art forms, and engaging potentially with all fields, including the humanities, social sciences, natural and health sciences, and engineering. It is also, importantly, an embodied art form, gathering communities in a shared present moment. We can reckon together with the most urgent questions of our time through this embodied, live form.
My hope and my goal is to work with students, staff, and faculty here to embrace that potential. What happens on stage has such power and potential to affect lives in small and large ways. We are rehearsing new realities, new myths. Equity, diversity, and belonging can be advanced in real ways.
What factors are most important when developing a season and deciding what shows to produce on campus?
The season is chosen by a committee of staff, faculty, and students who are passionate about what we do. Involving students is central to the success of season planning in my experience. One of the first things we did was develop a set of shared goals. As theatre is an interdisciplinary art form with several different intersecting fields of study, the training of students across interdisciplinary areas has to be our primary focus. We also centered diversity of race, gender, ethnicity, and ability as core values — important to the profession, and our world. We’re using the stage as a laboratory to forge and foster social justice by the choices of the stories we tell and who is telling them.
Any hints to what we can expect next year?
My colleague Baron Kelly is working on another project that’s similar to what he did with August Wilson’s “Fences” in 2022. He wouldn’t want me to jinx it by naming a title, but it’s really centering the work of Black authors and using research support to enhance student learning by engaging with guest artists at a level that straddles professional and university performance.
We’re interested in doing plays that have social implications in the midst of an election year, and also that bring joy to audiences. There’s interest in doing a musical. The musical adaptation of “Twelfth Night” this fall was such a wonderful show to begin with as artistic director, expressing the joy and talent of our students. We had a lot of really talented graduating students, but also a lot of really talented first- and second-year students, in “Twelfth Night.” It’s exciting to plan with them in mind.
And what about the rest of this season? What can we look forward to?
Last season the committee centered women’s voices for 2023-24. We’re starting the spring semester with “Wine in the Wilderness,” by Alice Childress, directed by Mark H (running March 7-17). It is an important play of the 1960s, but it was never produced on Broadway. Childress is a major voice in American theatre but hasn’t had her due in terms of professional production.
And then I’m directing “Orlando,” which is an adaptation by Sarah Ruhl of Virginia Woolf’s feminist classic. It’s a fantasia about a poet named Orlando who begins in the early modern English period — in the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth — writing a poem about an oak tree. And he travels through history and through centuries, trying to write this poem, turning from a man into a woman and exploring the role of gender in writing, of gender and theatre. It’s an exciting spring and I’m looking forward to working with the students.