History

In 1986, Rylan Brenner was hired by the College to create a Theatre Transfer Program and found a resident acting company - BCC THEATRE REP. Since his arrival, the company has performed over sixty productions, almost all of them produced and directed by Brenn, including four Shakespearean plays, ten original movements/theatre works created by Brenn, and members of the company, and a wide range of plays selected to build strong modern hands-on program, trains students in cutting-edge acting techniques designed to prepare them for the top professional training programs, New York studio theatres, high-level four year colleges, and work in regional theatres.

Our selection is also created around the desire to bring a strong varied season, including dramas, comedies, movement pieces, modern and classical works, with an occasional musical thrown in, to our audiences. We hope to move our audiences to laughter and tears with a bit of the new and unusual mixed with some standard old chestnuts so that the theatre can shine in all of its incarnations and our students can experience the full life of the stage.

Many of our sixty productions exist on videotape and can be viewed at the Eileen T. Farley's Learning Resource Center. Some highlights include: The Bald Soprano, set in a post-nuclear time and climaxing with a nuclear explosion; The Bacchae, an outdoor revel with masks in Greek tradition, with Oriental influences set on our campus under a full moon; The Three-Penny Opera, a German expressionist musical under the switchblade of Mack "the Knife;" Blood Wedding, the poetic world of Garcia Lorca inflamed with Flamenco dance and Spanish songs; four Shakespeare plays including a street gang version of Macbeth, a gangster interpretation of Othello, a lyrical bare stage with magical lighting Midsummer Night's Dream, and a Tempest with a double Ariell carrying out our female Prospero's spells; and almost ten original works including an adaptation of War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, called Worlds at War, an antiwar movement piece, Fireflies, set to original music composed by our faculty member, Anne Watson Born, and First Fires, a work exploring creation of the world drawn from myths of many cultures.

We ask that you view these works (of varying video quality) not as the plays themselves, but as records of a fertile company. As you know, theatre is meant to be performed in the immediate present, with the fire of experience burning.

To continue our strong traditions we will be inviting guest directors to our stage in the interest of keeping a sense of diversity in productions and a sense of relevance in our choices.

As always, we intend to bring our audience top quality, thought-provoking, entertaining theatre that stretches our students. After fourteen seasons, including over twenty student produced and directed studio plays, audiences will long remember a theatre rich with the influences of many cultures, dressed in colorful fabrics; alive with movement and laughter; woven with deep dramatic exploration. This theatre is forged with the devotion, commitment and fire our students and faculty in the spirit of bringing relevant statements with contemporary themes to our loyal and loving audiences. It is the tapestry steeped in the arts that breaths the spirit of creation at BCC and brings us the immediacy of the world.

Our students have in the past put together the CALLBOARD, a monthly newsletter mailed to twelve-hundred people. It is not in operation at the current moment. Our students have also worked and participated in a Mentor Program, wherein they teach theatre to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders from local visiting schools. One of our students, Joe Serpa, won the national All-American Community College Student Award sponsored by USA TODAY and presented by former President Clinton. Many of our students continue their studies and theatre work at top training colleges in New York and California.

To continue our strong traditions we will be inviting guest directors to our stage in the interest of keeping a sense of diversity in productions and a sense of relevance in our choices.