People generally associate Dartmouth's strong alumni network with finance, but the recent formation of the Vox Theater Group is challenging this stereotype.
Thom Pasculli '05, Kate Mulley '05 and Matthew Cohn '08 established Vox Theater, an alumni theater troupe, in February 2012. They hope the organization will become a network of Dartmouth alumni in the theater industry, from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York City, Pasculli said.
Vox Theater currently plans to stage a production in New York City, and its creators hope to collaborate with Dartmouth students and alumni in the future.
"There is a sense in the Dartmouth community that there are a lot of alums in the field," Pasculli said. "But for whatever reason, there wasn't a clear path or support system for graduating students to get together. This will be a great way to have a formalized group of artists to reach out to as you come out of Dartmouth."
Additional members include Sagine Valla '05, Hannah Chodos '06, Andrew Dahl '05, Courtney Davis '09 and Amanda Jones '97.
Pasculli said that WiRED, the annual play festival that began in 2002, inspired the creation of Vox Theater. Pasculli, Mulley and Cohn all participated in WiRED a manic cycle of workshopping, staging and performing a play in 24 hours while students at Dartmouth.
The idea of "sprinting towards production," was appealing, Pasculli said.
The founding members of Vox Theater spent a week in residence at the College in February 2012 and recreated the WiRED experience, but they extended the writing, casting rehearsing and performance process into a week rather than 24 hours.
"The idea was to workshop the productions in Hanover fostering a professional artistic relationship with the faculty and a mentoring relationship with the students," Pasculli said.
The members of Vox Theater spent the first part of the week analyzing the structure of the play and letting Mulley, the playwright, rework many of the scenes.
They devoted the second half of the week to staging the play, "The Reluctant Lesbian."
The group plans to perform "The Reluctant Lesbian" in New York City in August.
The members of Vox Theater returned to Dartmouth for the second time this June.
While on campus, they visited Theater 65: Drama in Performance, a class taught by theater professor Peter Hackett '75.
They discussed their performance material and their careers in a short presentation to the class, according to Hackett.
"It was a fantastic opportunity for the students," he said. "It's like being in a laboratory with people doing their research."
Diane Chen '14, a theater major who attended the presentation in Hackett's class, said that the members of Vox Theater are "very open to communication."
"It was really reassuring, because as a theater major, you are not exactly at the top of the list for having a job after college," Chen said.
Chen attended the group's most recent performance, "Buy So Falling," as a photographer. She said that the play was "about a lot of things yoga, aliens, Thoreau." The troupe applied the same WiRED-inspired format to the play's creation.
Chen said that from the time of the dress rehearsal to the play's final performance, parts of the play had already changed significantly, Chen said.
"The up-in-the-air aspect is kind of exhilarating," she said. "I think it's a good model for the real world."
Hackett said he was grateful for the sense of entrepreneurship Vox Theater demonstrated to his students.
"Theater is an incredibly competitive enterprise," he said. "It's important to take initiative, create your own work and your own opportunities."
Hackett has been at Dartmouth since 2005, and Pasculli and Mulley were members of his first class of seniors.
"It's so exciting and rewarding to see my former students back, to see how they've grown and developed new techniques," he said.
Pasculli said he appreciates Vox Theatre's work with the College theater department.
"They've been so generous, and their willingness to get us there has helped galvanize our enthusiasm," he said.
Vox Theater has also been a way for alumni to reconnect to Dartmouth, according to Pasculli. Before their return in February, most of the actors had not been back on campus since their graduation. "Being back here allows us to draw on nostalgic inspiration," Pasculli said.
Hackett said that the students' time away from Dartmouth contributes to the unique composition of the group.
"What's interesting is that each member has been out for a significant amount of time and took a different path," he said. "But what brought them together was their Dartmouth experience."
Vox Theater will return to Dartmouth for a larger workshopping festival in spring 2013 as part of the Year of the Arts celebration. More immediately, the group is looking to expand on the success of "The Reluctant Lesbian," as part of the New York Fringe Festival in August, a multimedia performance event in New York City.
