BY: JERRID ROLFE
Staff Writer
In the year and a half of virtual semesters, nearly all of the clubs and extracurriculars at Meramec were forced to shut down. However, this semester has seen the rebirth of many of those programs, such as the Theatre Club.
The plan to restart the Theatre Club began last summer when the current President, Alexis Hoffman, reached out to the Theatre Department chair and Club Advisor Professor Michelle Rebollo.
However, it wasn’t an easy process. The first few weeks of the Fall 2021 semester came and went before the Theatre Club finally began to take shape and regain membership.
As Rebollo explained, “We had lost a lot of our leadership, and students had graduated and moved on … we were starting from zero, from scratch.”
However, now that the club officers have been elected, Rebollo and the club’s leadership is ready to dive into the primary focus of the club, assisting Meramec’s theatre program.
“We will be producing work in person,” said Rebollo. “We’re in the process of being in rehearsal for three short comic plays and we’ll be performing them and presenting them in HW 102 in the choir room.”
The two other pillars of Theatre Club, Rebollo explained, are service and community. In the past, the club would often visit the Forest Park and Flo Valley Theatre Programs, but, due to the restrictions on travel this semester, the club hasn’t been able to.
“We’ve had to think outside the box in terms of what we’re doing on campus,” said Rebollo. Hoffman explained that the club’s members come from a wide background of experience.
“We have some people who have a whole lot of knowledge of how theatre works, how the Meramec Program works … [We also have] a few people who are brand new,” Hoffman said. “They haven’t done anything yet and they wanted to see how it works.”
The theatre program at Meramec has also been hindered due to the collapse of the stage last April, and have instead used the choir room for rehearsals. Professor Rebollo stated that, “If we’re lucky we’ll be able to use the stage in the coming fall of 2022, but there are no guarantees.”
In spite of the setbacks, the Theatre Club has plenty of plans for its remaining meetings this semester, such as working with an improv instructor, reading and analyzing a script, practicing audition and cold reading techniques, as well as work with props and costumes.
The Theatre Club meets twice a month on Fridays from 1:00-2:00 in the Humanities West Green Room. Hoffman offered an open invitation to anyone interested in theatre, “from an acting standpoint, from a technical standpoint, or to watch theatre.”
Their remaining meetings are on November 5th and 19th, as well as December 3rd. Anyone who is interested in joining the Theatre Club or learning more about the Theatre program can contact Michelle Rebollo at mrebollo@stlcc.edu or Alexis Hoffman at ahoffman61@my.stlcc.edu.
