Features

Club Spotlight: Theater Club

By Molly MacGregor (mmacgregor@css.edu)

December 13, 2024

     Last April, the administration at the College announced that the Theater Department would be cut, meaning no budget for directors, costume shop employees, set builders and the multitudes of people it takes to put on a production. This came as a surprise to many students, including senior Emmie Hinnenkamp who has been in two productions at CSS, and sophomore Ben Brach, who hoped to audition for a show this year. “The lack of communication between Administration and students was kind of heartbreaking,” Hinnenkamp said. “I was lucky enough to be a part of Rabbit Hole, the Spring production, and personally, I thought we had a good run. And then I heard the news that all of the student employees in the costume shop got fired, and we were all like ‘What the heck.’ None of it was talked about with us. And not that it’s our decision,” she added, “but if there’s a problem in our department, why not let us know so we can at least try to help it.” 

    And try to help it she did. After finding out about the news, Hinnenkamp immediately began organizing students to speak out against the decision. “I was not about to just sit with that news and be okay with it,” she said. Instead, she gathered over 300 signatures on a petition in support of keeping theater alive at CSS and hosted a sit-in on the first floor of Tower Hall that drew the support of UMD students as well as the attention of local news outlets. 

     Hinnenkamp and other students, like Brach, also set to work on reviving the theater club, which has had a number of iterations in the past few years. There used to be both a Drama Club and an Improv Club, which joined forces last year to become Dramaprov before dissipating just months before the end of the theater department. 

     The newly imagined Theater Club currently has about 100 members on SaintsLife, and about a dozen students that attend the biweekly meetings. Brach explained that at their meetings this semester, they’ve watched recordings of musicals and shows, hosted a Halloween costume contest and filled the Mitchell auditorium stage with props for a rummage sale which drew crowds from campus and the Duluth community. “It was fun to let them pick through our history,” Hinnenkamp said. “And we were able to fundraise quite a bit.” 

     Some of those funds are going to go towards bringing in local theater professionals to host workshops next semester. They also have other exciting plans in the works for Spring. Although still in the early stages, they are talking with a local director, Matthew Singletary, who is excited to work with the club to direct whatever show they dream up. 

     While it sounds like there may be a Scholastica show next semester, three CSS students had the opportunity to participate in “The Wolves” last month, a production hosted at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Early in the summer, Hinnenkamp reached out to the theater program at UWS and asked if CSS students could audition for their production. Superior responded “with open arms and said “‘yes, of course, please come and bring as many people as you can.’” Saints made up a third of the nine cast members. 

     Both Hinnenkamp and Brach are disappointed in the way the administration has handled the decision-making process regarding theater at CSS, but they also gave a remarkable amount of grace to the people in charge. “We’ve come to realize that it's not our decision, and we have no say in the decision. With how unfortunate it is, we do understand that this is above our heads and out of our hands and that we’re just lucky to be involved when we can be,” said Hinnenkamp. 

     Despite all of the blows to the theater program, there’s still wins to be celebrated. Hinnenkamp said: “We’re really appreciative of the college, however it may seem. At the end of last year, the theater program was cut entirely, but through the work that we’ve done throughout the summer and beginning this semester, we have been granted an operations budget back so we can have the opportunity to put on a production. It's definitely not the same as it was last year, and it's not going to look the same, but the opportunity to have a production is all we can ask for right now.”