McDaniel College Freshman Brittany Ensor of Finksburg, Md. Performs in "Intimate Portraits," an Original Ensemble-Devised Work

2013 Mar 18

McDaniel College Freshman Brittany Ensor of Finksburg, Md. performs in "Intimate Portraits," an original ensemble-devised work. Free and open to the public, performances are Wednesday, April 17 – Saturday, April 20, 7:30 p.m., in WMC Alumni Hall at McDaniel College, 2 College Hill, Westminster, Md.

"Intimate Portraits" has been created by students in the "Devised Theatre" course under the direction of Gené Fouché, a part-time theatre arts faculty member. The course is a collaborative, group-oriented approach to theatre making and uses various creation techniques, including composition, viewpoints, improvisation, found text, adaptation and group writing.

This play utilizes non-linear storytelling, which Fouché said, "unleashes the artists' creativity and allows us to explore ideas through song, movement and other non-narrative ways."

Students researched ancestral traditions and looked at these beliefs from a global, cultural and family perspective. The play is a collage of the topics that the students found most interesting.

Although titled "Intimate Portraits," according to Fouché, "this is not an autobiographical piece." She said, "We've gathered stories from the community, done a great deal of individual research and framed our findings in creative and, hopefully, interesting ways."

For more information, call 410-857-2448. Visit www.mcdaniel.edu/theatre for more information about the college and the theatre arts department.

McDaniel College, recognized nationally among 40 "Colleges That Change Lives" and U.S. News top-tier liberal arts colleges, is a four-year private college of the liberal arts and sciences offering more than 70 undergraduate programs of study, including dual and student-designed majors, plus 25 highly regarded graduate programs. Its hallmark faculty-student collaborations in research,teaching and mentoring plus hundreds of leadership and service opportunities enrich a lively learning experience that is rooted in a personalized interdisciplinary and global curriculum. Innovative January courses take students to points all over the world while McDaniel's degree-granting European campus offers a unique opportunity for international study at the only American university in Budapest, Hungary. A diverse and close-knit community of 1,600 undergraduates and 1,560 part-time graduate students, McDaniel also boasts a spectacular 160-acre hilltop campus in Westminster, Md., an hour or less from Baltimore, D.C., the Chesapeake Bay, an Amtrak station and BWI international airport.