Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
KyAnne Reeves
Nestled in Roanoke County lies the beautiful campus of Hollins University. If you are trying to locate an inclusive Liberal Arts program in the state of Virginia, Hollins is where you will find it. Sitting down with Todd Ristau, Assistant Professor and Program Director of the Playwrights Lab at Hollins, we take an in-depth look at some of the upcoming theatre events, happening on and off campus. Todd is a graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop, has an extensive theatre background, founded the Playwrights Lab at Hollins in 2007 and founded No Shame Theatre in 1986.
Todd, give us some background on the Hollins Playwrights Lab.
The Playwrights Lab is a really unique MFA program in playwriting because you complete the program by doing these six-week summer sessions that are really intense, immersive and intentionally multi-disciplinary. You’re writing so much, so fast, that you don’t have time for the luxury of self-doubt, but you’re also getting hands-on experience in every aspect of the medium you’re writing for by also acting, directing, designing, and doing tech work. Over the years our students have won awards, gotten published, produced and in some cases even started their own theatres dedicated to producing new plays. The success of our students is the best measure of the success of the program.
How has the program evolved in your time at Hollins University?
Just like a play, the program is constantly evolving, because the people who are in the program are constantly growing and changing. When we started, we were a scrappy handful of faculty, guest artists and students who were literally inventing the program as we went along. When things worked, we kept it, when things didn’t, we changed them. There is no false hierarchy and peer mentoring is emphasized. The program is built around a spirit of collaboration, not competition. We’re reaching a diverse range of students as our reputation grows across the theatre world.
KyAnne Reeves
How can the Hollins Arts Community become more involved with the Roanoke Arts Community?
Integrating with the local arts community has always been one of my priorities, and the partnership with MMT has really helped with that. I hate the “town vs gown” mentality and the partnership really helps us get rid of that by having events and even classes sometimes right in the heart of downtown. Every year we hold a unified local audition at Mill Mountain Theatre and not only are local actors invited to attend, but we invite local theatres to sit in and watch so auditioning in the summer gets you seen by our students and faculty, but also other local theatre artists who might cast or hire you. We always have local folks for Overnight Sensations, and we invite people who don’t normally get cast to be part of it, like local newscasters, donors, arts board members, and politicians. It is a chance for them to experience the arts from the inside, not just from the audience seat or a fundraiser. We really want Hollins to be seen as a resource, not a competitor.
When did the partnership with Mill Mountain Theatre begin?
There were Hollins theatre faculty involved in the founding of Mill Mountain Theatre (MMT). Before moving to Roanoke in 2003, Jere Hodgin had taken his entire artistic staff to Charlottesville where I was living to see a Best of No Shame event at Live Arts and was blown away by the creative ways No Shame brought so many different kinds of artists from the community together to meet each other through the work they were sharing. Jere asked me to start a No Shame chapter at MMT, and that became the cornerstone of their alternative programming called Underground Roanoke. When I was designing the program at Hollins in 2006, we were already looking for ways to have it be connected to our region’s most important professional theatre. When MMT went into their reorganization period, Ginger Poole and I collaborated to make the partnership a bit more formal by producing a winter festival of new works every year to kind or replace the NSFNW. We’ve kept doing those productions ever since and continue to collaborate on things like Overnight Sensations, our summer festival of readings, the Monday Night Guest Speaker Series and more.
KyAnne Reeves
What are your hopes for this year's Playwrights Lab?
That everyone has fun, because if it isn’t fun, we aren’t doing it right. I also want our students to go away excited about continuing the work, and I hope that our guest artists who are discovering Hollins and Roanoke for the first time go away eager to tell everyone they know about the really cool stuff that’s happening here.
What is the Hollins Playwrights Festival?
Festival consists of eight staged readings of new, full-length plays by Hollins MFA playwrights that were submitted in April. It’s also an opportunity in the process for the playwright to perfect the script with feedback from guest respondents. The selected plays represent the broad and diverse range of voices and interests in the program. We want the public to expect the unexpected! It kicks off on July 19, runs through July 21 and is being held at the Mill Mountain Theatre Waldron Stage.
Can anyone audition for the festival plays?
Absolutely! And you don’t need to be good, and it doesn’t need to be memorized. The idea isn’t to get anyone discovered, the idea is to come together excited to learn a few things about how to do the things we love even better. Information on the upcoming Unified Auditions being held June 22nd and 23rd can be found here https://www.facebook.com/hollinsplaywrights/events
How else can the public get involved?
Show up! The best way to get involved is to start by coming to an event and introducing yourself.
Where can the public find more information about upcoming events?
Courtesy of Hollins Playwrights Lab
The best place to find information is our Facebook event page, which is continuously updated through the summer, and after each event you can leave comments to tell us what you thought.
Be on the lookout for some of the upcoming events, free and open to the public:
Monday Night Guest Speakers: Guest speaker series, at 7:30 pm every Monday held at the Mill Mountain Theatre Waldron Stage. The dates are June 24, July 1, July 8, July 15, and July 22.
Wednesday Night Lab Readings: Developmental orchestra readings done in the Upstairs Studio at Hollins University at 7 pm on June 26, July 3, July 10, July 17, and July 24.
No Shame Theatre: An "anything-goes" event where people can perform original pieces that are under five-minutes and don't break anything, including the law. Held at 11 pm every Friday in the Upstairs Studio at Hollins University. The dates are June 21, June 28, July 5, July 12, July 19, and July 26.
Overnight Sensations: A short-play festival in which every piece is written overnight and performed the next day. Our reception where names are drawn is at 7:30 pm on July 5, and the event itself is at 8 pm on July 6 held on the Hollins University Main Stage.
Hollins Playwrights Festival: Festival consists of eight staged readings of new works by Hollins playwrights. Sixteen guest respondents respond to the plays and conclude the festival with a panel from our guests. The dates are July 19 - July 21 and is being held at the Mill Mountain Theatre Waldron Stage (due to limited seating, tickets must be reserved through Producing Manager Gwyneth Strope at stropegm1@hollins.edu).