President Young Goes Behind the Scenes of She Kills Monsters | Episode 1

 

Dr. Kirk Young:
All right. Well, welcome everybody. We're excited to have you here with us today. This is our new podcast series that we're doing here at Western Wyoming College. My name is Dr. Kirk Young. I'm the president here at Western. I've been here now for about two and a half years, and this is something that's been on our radar for quite some time, and we're grateful and excited about the talent that we have here at Western and the opportunity to show that talent off.

To keep our community — and again, not just maybe the local geographic community, but the Western community wherever you are — involved and engaged with what's going on here at Western.

And so we're going to be talking about any number of topics throughout this podcast series, meeting with some of our students and some of the programs from our theater program or from any of our academic programs here on campus. We'll be talking about speakers that we're going to be having come here on campus and speak to us and some of the awesome opportunities that are here at Western.

So, as the president of Western Wyoming College, it's my pleasure, and really I'm excited to invite all of you to join us for this podcast. But then also, please come on campus. Come see what's going on here at Western. Share with us your perspectives. We're open to any suggestions that anybody has about any podcasts. But we look forward to this and hope you'll join us as we go throughout the year with this series.

All right. Well, welcome. It's nice to have you both here, Anthony and Joe. This is our first podcast, and so we're excited to sit down and have an opportunity to talk about what's going on at Western.

Right now, we've got a show coming up, so we want to hear all about that. But first, really, if you just take a minute and introduce yourselves to us. Anthony, why don't you go ahead and give us some of your story?

Anthony Romeo-Adcock:
My name is Anthony Romeo-Adcock. I'm an assistant professor of musical theater with an emphasis in dance here at Western Wyoming College. I grew up in Pennsylvania, got my BFA from Pennsylvania State University, did a couple of national tours, then moved to Florida, dance instructor for a while, and now I'm out here in Wyoming teaching and directing and loving life.

Dr. Kirk Young:
That's awesome. That's awesome. Joe, your story?

Joe Glightly:
Joe Glightly. I'm the theater scene shop manager. I've been working here for 10 years. I was alumni here, so I was a student here and then kind of took over as a scene shop manager when that position opened.

I also do designs for the shows, like set, lights, and sometimes sound or projections. For this one specifically, it's kind of my first time doing projection, so just doing some small stuff first before I get into the big kind of projection stuff.

Dr. Kirk Young:
Well, that's great. That's great. Okay, so we've got a big show coming up: She Kills Monsters. Tell us a little bit about that.

Anthony Romeo-Adcock:
Yeah, She Kills Monsters. It's a lot of fun. It's a play. It is not a musical. It revolves around a young woman by the name of Agnes who loses her entire family in a car accident.

As she's cleaning out her family home, she stumbles across her younger sister's homespun Dungeons & Dragons module. So she takes that to the local game store to find out what's going on and decides to play the module.

Through that, she ends up learning more and more about her sister. The show takes place between the real world, which takes place in 1995, and this fantasy world based on traditional Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.

So it's really a lot of fun. We go back and forth, and we really get to discover a lot about family versus found family and those kinds of themes. It's really great.

Dr. Kirk Young:
Yeah, that's cool. Takes us all the way back to the 1900s.

Yeah, look at that. I know. That's kind of crazy.

Well, I'm excited. That's been one of the highlights of my time here at Western. I've been here now for two and a half years. I'm working toward three years. It's crazy to think that it's been that long.

The theater, the things that we offer through our theater program, have been some of the biggest highlights for me here at Western. That's been kind of a major added bonus to the experience that I've had as a college president.

I find here in Rock Springs especially, we're in a rural setting and there aren't opportunities to access a whole lot of cultural experiences. For people to be able to have the opportunity to come and experience what we're doing here at Western is always a ton of fun.

I absolutely love the arts, and I'm grateful to be at a place where we have an opportunity to take part in so many great productions and to interact with such great students.

I was telling a story the other day about a couple of experiences that I had that just strengthened that love affair that I have with the arts. A lot of it happened when we lived in New York. I came from Buffalo. We were living just south of Buffalo. That's where I was before we came here.

COVID was rough, right? We all went through COVID, and it was just a tough experience. As we were kind of coming out of COVID, the traveling production of Hamilton was coming through Western New York, and they were playing there at Shea's Theatre.

Shea's Theatre is this famous theater in downtown Buffalo that's been there forever. You go into the theater and it is absolutely gorgeous. There are these chandeliers that are just beautiful, these multicolored chandeliers. They have what looks like stained glass on the walls and everything.

I did some research about Shea's later on, and it turns out that all of that was designed and installed by the Tiffany family. The Tiffany family are the ones that designed all of that kind of setting there in Shea's Theatre in downtown Buffalo.

So just think of that setting, right? It's so cool to be there for that. We got to go to Hamilton. I remember I took my daughter. She was 10 years old, and it was the first kind of Broadway-level production that she'd ever been to.

I still remember we went, we're sitting there, we had our masks on and everything. It was after COVID and you still had to be cautious with all of that.

I just remember they came out and started that first number, and my little 10-year-old daughter leaned over to me and she just said, "Dad, I love this."

That was one of the most fulfilling experiences that I've ever had. You just feel it, right?

I think back to probably the first Broadway-level production that I ever saw. It was in Salt Lake City when Joseph came through and Donny Osmond was performing. I just remember how moved I was by that.

I thought, "Holy cow, how can somebody use a talent like that that just moves people?"

The story continues. My daughter — I challenged her to read. I wanted her to read books and everything else. So as motivation, I said, "All right, if you set a goal and you reach your reading goal, I'll take you to Broadway."

That was all it took.

She has a goal to read 10,000 pages this year. When she reaches that — and she told me the other day, she's like, "Hey, get your money ready," because she's like, "We're almost to December and I'm going to get there."

I had gone to a conference when I was in New York in Syracuse, and I was at this old — it's a Marriott now — but it's an old downtown Syracuse hotel. I'm in the hotel and they've got this display of all this Wizard of Oz stuff.

I was like, "Well, what the heck? What is that?"

I went over and looked at it and asked the people, and they said actually L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard of Oz, was originally from Syracuse. He then moved to the Midwest later on in his life, but the witch's castle in the original kind of drawings in the book of The Wizard of Oz was based on that hotel.

They're so proud of this Wizard of Oz heritage that they have there in downtown Syracuse.

When we were living there in New York, we'd go to Buffalo and then take the train from Buffalo to New York City, which was a ton of fun. It's a long, long ride, but you get to see all of upstate New York, and it's so cool.

So the plan is, if and when she hits this goal, we're probably going to fly to Buffalo. We'll take the train. We'll stop in Syracuse. I'll go show her the hotel. We'll spend the night there in that hotel, and then she wants to see Wicked. So then we'll jump back on the train and get down there.

I've had these experiences throughout my life with the arts, and especially the performing arts, that I just absolutely love.

I love to see the caliber of students that we have here going through our program, the work that they do, the performances that they put on.

I do joke and tell people — I've said this often as I've gone out and spoken around our region — you all had me last year coming in to welcome, I guess it was Seussical, wasn't it?

It was one of the shows where the place was packed with elementary school kids, and you had me come in and do a welcome to them.

I've told everybody, I'm like, if I could speak to an audience like that every time I speak, then I've got it made, because that was the coolest thing. They cheered about whatever. They were up on their chairs cheering.

I think they were pretty pumped that Seussical was coming and they were pumped to see it and wanted to get me out of the way.

So anyway, that's pretty cool.

But let's talk a little bit. Joe, you literally have had a behind-the-scenes kind of perspective. Tell us how you're setting the scene for this play that we're going to be seeing here.

Joe Glightly:
Since the show is mainly about D&D, I have a bit of a background. I play with a group of friends almost every single week on Sundays for, like, the past eight years, I think.

Dr. Kirk Young:
So you call it market research. Is that what that is?

Joe Glightly:
A hobby, really.

We play every single week, so I know rules and stuff. I know settings. I know characters. I know classes. I'm not necessarily well-versed, but I know enough to be like, I kind of know what I'm talking about.

So I take that kind of knowledge and try to design around that. Just kind of knowing what our DM goes through in preparing a story for us.

We're currently on our fourth story, I believe, of just our group. These stories can take somewhere along eight months, once a week. I think our last one was close to two years.

There's a lot of prep, like characters, motivations, character backstories, what we as a group for the campaign are trying to accomplish, who's the enemy.

Our DM also asks us questionnaires at the end. He's like, "What did you guys like? What did you guys not like? What do you want to see more of?"

He's very thoughtful about that kind of thing.

Bringing that kind of design into the show, you have to read into the script and be like, okay, we'll need this for this, or certain items, certain weapons, certain monster looks and silhouettes and all that kind of stuff.

You have to know even the small details because this is based in D&D. There's a lot of lore stuff. They even mention the creator in the play as well.

A lot of this has to be based on original illustrations or descriptions, like certain colors or sizes. You have to pay attention to that, and then I apply that to my designs.

Dr. Kirk Young:
So, a couple of things. For those of us who are not steeped in the D&D world, tell me what a DM means.

Joe Glightly:
A DM is Dungeon Master.

Sometimes they're called GMs, like Game Master. They take control of the narrative a little bit to either guide you in the right direction or bring out details or certain things, like descriptions of rooms or characters, what characters are doing, or what their motivations are.

In the game, you roll dice essentially with ability scores that allow you to determine whether it's athletic or wisdom-based — like, are you wise enough to know this history?

There are a whole bunch of different attributes that your character can have, and then your DM from those specific rolls will tell you, "Oh, you do know this," or, "No, you don't really know. You've never seen this kind of thing," or, "You're just not strong enough to lift that rock," or something like that.

That's part of the whole fun of D&D. The randomness from the dice tells the story.

Dr. Kirk Young:
One of the things that has been so fascinating to me, having more access to a theater production just through being here on campus and checking in with you all as you're preparing for a show or maybe dropping in on a rehearsal, is that all of my experience prior to being here always was just going and seeing the finished product.

It has really been enlightening to me to see when I show up for a dress rehearsal — what do you call it? It's not a walkthrough.

Anthony Romeo-Adcock:
Like the read-through, or then we have the invited dress rehearsals and our stumble-throughs.

Dr. Kirk Young:
Stumble-throughs. Yeah.

Which, I mean, there are a whole lot of life lessons there, right? We know we're going to make mistakes, but that's why we do that.

That's what probably leads to the perfection or the art that we see when they're on the stage and performing.

Just knowing all of the work that's going on behind the scenes and in preparation to lay out the story. We'll come and see a 90-minute performance without necessarily realizing the hours and hours and hours that go into that.

Anthony Romeo-Adcock:
Yeah, it's a lot of work.

Joe does a lot of work to make sure all the behind-the-scenes stuff goes really, really smoothly. Our cast puts in so many extra hours even outside of regular rehearsals to make sure they're memorized and they're off book.

I do my fair share outside the rehearsal room as well, making sure I understand a lot of the stuff going on in the background and the time period and making sure that we're being accurate.

It's a lot of work, but it's good work. It's fun work. We enjoy it.

Dr. Kirk Young:
So tell me more, Anthony, on why this particular play is a good fit for Western and what you're trying to accomplish here in our theater program, and why it's a good fit for our community and our region.

Anthony Romeo-Adcock:
Absolutely.

We offer an AA in Musical Theatre Performance here at Western. Whenever we're choosing our shows, we're trying to make sure that we're choosing selections that are going to work not only for how our students can immerse themselves educationally and get out of it what they need to be successful outside of these four walls — be it immediately going into the profession or transferring to a four-year BFA or BA program — as well as what types of shows our community is going to want to come onto campus and see.

One of the things I've kind of been saying a lot recently is, we may have taken "community" out of the name of the college, but we didn't take it out of the heart of the college.

Everything that we're doing is still here for the community, but it needs to be for our entire community.

There are definitely some themes in the show that are not right for a younger audience. However, what we have coming up in a month is Frozen.

We want to make sure that we're doing the types of material that everybody has a chance to be able to come onto campus and see something that they enjoy.

This is a technical marvel of a show. We're doing a lot of things with technology that we haven't really done before, including giant puppets and some of the projection work that's been done.

We're doing fight choreography — really intense fight choreography — which is something our students don't get very often, using real swords and real weapons, which can get a little scary, but they've been doing a great job.

We're asking maybe a subset of the community that normally wouldn't come onto campus — part of the community that is interested in Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering or role-playing video games — to come onto campus and say, "Look at this great work that we're doing."

We're also doing it Halloween weekend. We're partnering with Student Life, so we're doing a 10:30 p.m. show on Halloween night that'll be happening at the same time as the haunted house, and that's a benefit performance for the Student Storehouse.

We're trying to work with the rest of the college, work with the community, and make sure educationally our students are getting what they need to be successful as they move forward.

Dr. Kirk Young:
That's one of the things I really appreciate about what you're doing in the program. You're providing different performances that meet different audiences and providing opportunities for a wide range of purveyors of the arts.

You mentioned opening night really is just around the corner, October 29.

What would you say that you are most looking forward to sharing with the audience?

Anthony Romeo-Adcock:
I'm really excited for audiences to come and see a show that is a little more grounded in reality through the eyes of fantasy, if that makes sense.

I know that sounds really weird, but because of this giant fantasy world, the themes that are relating back to the real world are really, really prevalent.

I think audience members are going to be able to come and make connections.

A lot of times, especially when we watch plays, because there isn't the song-and-dance factor of it, we sometimes can lose sight of what's happening and our brains can kind of disconnect.

But with this, because we're jumping back and forth between the fantasy world and the real world, it allows us to continue to make those connections between the two worlds.

I also need to say something I haven't said yet. Timothy Clyde, who is an alumnus of here, wrote an entirely original score for this production.

So there is music. It is underscored. There's no singing. All the fight sequences have music behind them, lots of underscoring happening during scenes and during set changes.

All of that was actually written by an alumnus of Western, and he also just happens to be Joe's brother.

Dr. Kirk Young:
That I didn't know.

I see him around quite a bit, but that's great that he'll still be involved and helping out. We've seen him involved and engaged with the program ever since he left. He's really worked hard to stay engaged.

Joe, what are you most looking forward to sharing with audiences?

Joe Glightly:
I just think it's going to be fun to showcase and share what I envision.

Sometimes there are limitations in your design, so it's not exact. You can't make it exactly what you have envisioned in your brain when you're role-playing at a group table and listening to the descriptions of your Dungeon Master.

You just can't bring that one-for-one from your mind onto the stage, but we can get a very similar likeness to that and bring a magic.

I like to use the word "whimsy" a lot. So there's a lot of whimsy to what we're trying to bring onto the stage and just make it really cool and enjoyable to watch.

Dr. Kirk Young:
Well, that's wonderful. We're looking forward to it. Thank you.

Well, hey, here we are continuing our conversation about our upcoming play. We've got two of our students that are starring in the play, Harper and Emma.

Why don't you both take a minute and introduce yourselves to us? Tell us who you are, where you're from, and what you're doing here.

Harper:
I am Harper. I am from Rock Springs. I was born in Rock Springs, but I lived in South Carolina for a few years before moving back over here to go to college.

I play Lilith in She Kills Monsters, and after college I'd really like to still do acting.

Dr. Kirk Young:
Great. That's great. Emma?

Emma Lash:
I'm Emma Lash. I'm also technically from Rock Springs. I don't think it counts, six months being born somewhere else.

I play Tilly in She Kills Monsters, and I'm also going to try to get a BFA in acting after I'm done here.

Dr. Kirk Young:
Well, that's great. How have you felt about the program here?

Do you really feel like it's helping set the stage — no pun intended; sorry, I didn't even do that on purpose — but to set the stage for both of you and where you want to go?

Do you feel like you're picking up the skills and the knowledge?

Harper:
Absolutely. I really, really love our program.

Our faculty is phenomenal. They have really cool credits and cool stories, and they're always really great at encouraging us to keep going and helping us find where we need to keep working and pointing us back to what is working when we're growing and supporting that.

I really, really love our program.

Emma Lash:
I really like our program as well