Theater-by-the-Grove, the performance ensemble of IUP’s Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance, has announced a season of theatre productions designed to foster interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration between different fields of study on campus.
TBTG Artistic Director Carrie J. Cole, who led the season selection process, underscored the critical need for this concept. “We have students who double-major, minor, and electively study everything the university has to offer, from STEM to humanities, and understand that theatre shouldn’t exist in a bubble for its own purposes. As theatre faculty, we know that performance is a nexus for skill-building. While learning specific theatre-related tasks, they also deepen vital skills in critical thinking, collaboration, and, of course, creativity. This season was created to prove that.”
When the Student Advisory Board and Season Selection Committee of IUP Theatre met in the spring to deliberate what plays to produce this year, that mandate was on all their minds. Students and faculty pitched plays and argued for their interdisciplinary impact, while also keeping in mind the complicated challenges present in all theatre seasons, like artistic opportunity, resource management, and student engagement.
“Theatre works best when it isn’t treated merely like an entertainment product,” said Visiting Professor of Theatre Joshua Kelly, who pitched the 2026–27 interdisciplinary season theme to theatre faculty and students. “Everything we are here to do—from preparing students for the professional world to creating a community performance space—is enhanced by seeing theatre as a way to expand, explore, and engage with everything else.”
After much deliberation, IUP Theatre students and faculty arrived at a season of four productions: Kander and Ebb’s classic and well-loved musical Cabaret, Karen Zacarias’s new comedy The Book Club Play, Sophocles’ ancient yet perpetually relevant Antigone, and, in repertory performance with this Greek tragedy, Madhuri Shekar’s Antigone, Presented by the Girls of St. Catherine’s, a contemporary drama exploring the agency of young women.
Cabaret is set in Berlin during the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Third Reich, at a time when artistic scenes in the German capital and the marginalized communities that comprised them were on the brink of totalitarian erasure. The Book Club Play, despite its comic bent, radically examines the purpose of literacy in the lives of young Americans and questions our mediated connections with one another. Antigone, being one of the most philosophized and politicized works in Greek drama, dissects whether natural or man-made laws deserve our compliance, while Antigone…St. Catherine’s explores what the answers to those questions mean for young women at the lower end of a power dynamic in today’s world.
For each production, IUP Theatre’s goal is to create intellectual partnerships with professors and scholars of relevant departments to serve as expert advisors and active collaborators in the productions, as well as lead lively audience discussions about the challenge of staging questions central to other fields, and how scholars outside the arts see theatre as a method of pursuing answers. The challenges and opportunities for the Theatre program itself are also of note this season. Visiting Professor of Theatre Marty Savolskis, who prioritized student collaboration and experience during show selection, also focused on the complicated technical demands of repertory shows in the spring (two different shows performing on alternating nights), and will design a set intended to give both continuity and variation for all four productions, while serving the aesthetic and intellectual needs of each. Professor of Costume Design Nancy Pipkin-Hutchinson saw the same ideals and possibilities this season and is curating a group of talented, eager students ready to step up into the roles of lead designers, stage managers, and assistant directors for the shows, giving them valuable leadership and practical experience as well as providing her own artistic oversight.
“We’ve already started making connections with professors in other disciplines,” said Cole, who will direct both Cabaret and Antigone. “I’m delighted that Dr. Heide Witthöft, associate professor of German, is our language and culture expert for Cabaret. We’re building a year of work that will have the scholarly and creative contributions of many colleagues both inside and outside the Theatre program.”
IUP Theatre hopes to go further than breaking the invisible walls between disciplines. For Kelly, who is directing both The Book Club Play and Antigone, Presented by the Girls of St. Catherine’s (as well as writing the new adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone), there are opportunities to build community connections beyond the production itself. “We hope to start a massive book drive or similar activity around The Book Club Play, for instance, where audiences can bring, exchange, and discuss books in the lobby before and after the performance,” he said. “We can create good theatre on a given topic, but a play can also generate an entire event, discussion, perhaps even a community about it at the same time. So, we should.”
Students and community members can attend an informative meeting in Waller Hall Main Stage on the IUP campus on Monday, August 24, at 6:00 p.m. and learn how to audition, build, crew, or otherwise be a part of these productions. Auditions themselves will take place on August 25 in Waller Hall at 6:00 p.m., with additional singing and dancing auditions on August 26 and 27. Students and volunteers do not need to be theatre majors to take part, and there are many opportunities to be involved in these productions regardless of skill or schedule. Those who are interested or have questions are encouraged to email Carrie J. Cole at cjcole@iup.edu.