Founded in 1960, USITT promotes dialogue, research, and learning among practitioners of theatre design and technology and is the leader in life-long learning opportunities for the entertainment design and technology industry. The organization's annual conference is an important resource for students across the United States and is regularly attended by School of Theatre and Dance students and faculty. USITT’s networking events provided great opportunities for conference-goers to engage and make up for lost face-to-face time over the past two years.
Honesty also chaired two star-studded sessions for the scenic design commission. The first session was with Disney imagineer, Dan Brookwell. Through questions that were vetted through Walt Disney Entertainment, she moderated a conversation about Mr. Brookwell’s experience as a production designer and Walt Disney imagineer for Walt Disney Entertainment and Theme Parks. The second session was a two-part session with the award-winning production designer, Kristen Adams, called “Making Books into Movies.” This exceptional presentation was about using the storytelling roots of a theatre degree to manifest a career as a music video, game show, Emmy® award-winning daytime talk show designer, as well as how to develop novels into feature length films. Each of these sessions had close to 200 people in attendance.
As a member of the USITT I.D.E.A.S. committee (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Social Justice), Honesty led the Women in Theatre session, which was a session of 200+ women and allies who tackled the topic of “Lift and Be Lifted: How to Define Both Our Goals and Our Community.” This session focused on defining ways we can recognize when we are elevated and how we can be more thoughtful about boosting others through group work at tables to cultivate a network of support by meeting new people.
Souza also led a very well attended panel entitled "Costume History - New Strategies in Teaching." In this session she and three others presented methodologies for examining costume history through a lens that is both feminist and anti-racist, methodologies for RE-constructing costume studies, finding intersections between indigenous cultures, materiality, (post)-colonialism, and gender theory and presented case studies of successful methodological shifts as experienced in the classroom. The panel included 鶹Ƶ’s assistant professor Grace Cochran Keenan. Keenan presented the work she had done to the School of Theatre & Dance's course, History of Costume & Textile for Theatre, which covers a global clothing history while focusing on the learning objectives that are most useful for our students, such as learning how to research a specific time and place, both the society and cultural that existed as well as the clothing as that is a large part of the process of research for a production. The panel was extremely well-received by the professionals, educators, and students in attendance.
Seo has been a co-chair of the Lighting Graphics Recommendation Practice at USITT with Gregg Hillmar since 2016. As a co-chair Seo has been working to collect various lighting and drafting examples and paperwork from lighting designers who work in Broadway, touring, concert, regional, and community theatre companies. This learning process on how various lighting designers have been drafting their plots and sections will lead to a recommendation practice to give guidance of theatrical lighting graphics.
Another highlight was that School of Theatre and Dance faculty and students were able to connect with many alumni from 鶹Ƶ, such as Islay Reed (pictured with Tamara Honesty), Tetta Askeland, Alex Barnhart, and Steve Sawicki.
For more information on USITT visit .
Photos, top to bottom: MFA Students Jaemin Park, Kathalina Thorpe and Travis Williams in attendance at the USITT Conference; Associate professor Tamara L. Honesty and School of Theatre and Dance alumni Islay Reed at USITT; Assistant professor Michelle Souza; Assistant professor Grace Cochran Keenan; Associate professor Jakyung Seo
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Media Contact:
Joni Koneval, 330-672-0116, jkoneval@kent.edu