In academia, itâs known as âpublish or perishââreferring to the pressure to publish work for a professor to secure a tenure-track position.
But in the Departments of Music and Theatre, that pressure can also be referred to as âperform or perish.â
Credible
âIf weâre going to be credible at all with our students, we need to be pursuing creative activities in the professional realm,â says Susan Stackhouse, an actress and acting professor in the Department of Theatre. She teaches voice and speech classes for second (THEA 2840), third (THEA 3810) and fourth years (THEA 4830), as well as Speak with Confidence (THEA 2841), a class for non-theatre majors.
She recently performed in two productions at Neptune Theatre: as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and the mother âNatâ in the searing Rabbit Hole, for which she won a Merritt Award for best supporting actress. You can also hear her warm, rich voice on the radioâshe plays the role of Anna Dobchuk in the CBC Radio drama series Backbencher.
âIt helps us to stay in tune with student needs and what theyâre grappling with. If we donât practice ourselves, we can become numb to having that crisis of confidence when youâre waiting backstage waiting for your cue to come on or when the words you know inside and out suddenly evaporate into thin air.
âAnd letâs face itâ she adds, âthereâs a lot of research and perfection of technique that goes into making what we do look natural.â
Rob McClure, who also teaches acting, works on his art each summer. As classes wrap for the summer, he relocates to Ontario where he is a regular with Drayton Entertainment, which has playhouses in St. Jacobs, Grand Bend, Drayton and Penetanguishene. This summer, he'll be playing the role of Frank Foster in Alan Ayckbourne's How the Other Half Loves.
'Right back in the classroom'
âWhat we do on the professional stageâand learn during the rehearsal processâabsolutely comes right back in the classroom,â says Prof. McClure. His classes include Intro to Acting & Performance (THEA 1800), Acting II (THEA 2800), Acting IV (THEA 4800) and Advanced Performance Techniques (THEA 4840).
It wasnât always so. Prof. Stackhouse explains that when she arrived at HÂț» in 1996, the expectation was that academics in any department needed to publish. And indeed she does as a voice, speech and dialect specialist; she collects dialects for the worldâs first online dialect and accent repository, the . But then the department, and the faculty, changed to realize the importance of the professorsâ creative pursuits as well.
âI am an actress and Iâm happy to say my colleagues listened. FASS listened,â she says. âPeople are realizing what a practical artist has to accomplish to be perceived as equal to an academic for tenure and promotion.â
An eight-season veteran of the Stratford Festival, Margot Dionne has also appeared on stage at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa and the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. Sheâs also narrated a number of audiobooks, including Margaret Atwoodâs The Blind Assassin and Mavis Gallantâs Montreal Stories.
Road trip
She shares that her entire third-year class took a road trip to Montreal to catch her performance when she appeared in Ibsenâs An Enemy of the People at the Segal Centre in Montreal a few years ago.
âItâs a different set of muscles, acting muscles, and itâs so important to keep them limber,â says Prof. Dionne, who teaches Introduction to Acting and Performance (THEA 1800), and the third-year (THEA 3800) and fourth-year acting classes (THEA 4800). Her students also turned out to see her when she portrayed Madame Arcati ââa hilariously physical performance,â according to The Coast âin Neptune Theatreâs Blithe Spirit earlier this year.
âThereâs a lot to learn by watching a performance. And youâll never have a more penetrating audience than acting students.â