Rogue Theater Earns National Award

Westmont Professor of Theatre Arts Mitchell Thomas received the Arlin G. Meyer Prize in the Performing Arts, given annually by the Lilly Fellows Program in the Humanities and the Arts at Valparaiso University. He accepted the award, which recognizes work that exemplifies Christian artistic vocation, at a ceremony at Seattle Pacific University Friday, Oct. 10.

Thomas’s work directing “Rogue,” a portion of “The Saint Plays” by Erik Ehn that Westmont commissioned and produced in 2006, was selected by a committee including Bonnie Brooks, chair of The Dance Center at Columbia College, Chicago; Gary Sloan, head of the graduate acting program at The Catholic University of American, Washington, D.C.; Rick Snyder, a member of the Steppenwolf ensemble in Chicago; and chaired by Michael Stauffer, co-director of the Arena Theater at Wheaton College. The Meyer Prize is given in a different artistic category each year to a full-time faculty member at a college or university in the Lilly Fellows Program National Network.

“The script is brilliant and original,” writes award coordinator Michael Stauffer in a letter notifying Thomas of his award. “The director and his team created a world which was artistically and emotionally inspiring. This is the kind of educationally creative process that so wonderfully embodies the intention of the Meyer award as it seeks to support a committed sense of vocation in the work of the Christian artist.”

“I was thrilled to see Mitchell representing Westmont,” says Lisa DeBoer, assistant professor of art history and Westmont’s representative for the Lilly Fellows Program. The Meyer Prize includes an award of $3,000.

“It was very encouraging to receive this national award,” Thomas says. “The perceived boundaries of theatre made by people of Christian faith can often be very narrow, from both inside and outside the church. This piece was very expansive in its approach to form and content, and was formative for me in my development as a teaching artist here at Westmont.”

Westmont worked with Ehn to create “Rogue” as part of his series of plays exploring the lives of saints. The production weaves together the stories of St. Vincent de Paul and Shakespeare’s Hamlet as told by a descendant of Hamlet and Ophelia in present-day Oklahoma. Thomas directed a cast and crew of students in a highly visual world premier of the play in Westmont's Porter Theatre in February 2006. Ehn is the dean of the school of theater at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif.