“Welcome to the Theatre—to this business we call SHOW!”*
Liz Carlin Metz and her team in the Theatre Department are constantly engaged in almost minute-by-minute problem solving, navigating interpersonal relationships, challenging comfort zones, empowering collaboration, and taking risks to discover new horizons as they and their students create something for the stage. Liz says that it may not be magic, but it definitely is magical!
Her work with costume designer Allison Smith Hahn ’10 and theatrical designer Craig Choma ’93 represents the intersection of her academic theatre and professional theatre lives, as both artists have designed for her professional company in Chicago, Vitalist Theatre. What Liz does professionally informs what she does academically, and the inverse is true. Several of the costumes and the set models in this photo are from Vitalist productions.
*Applause. Book by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, lyrics by Lee Adams, music by Charles Strouse. Concord Theatricals, 1970.
1. Former Knox student Allison Smith Hahn ’10 engaged her curiosity and passion for costume design as a student designer, costume technician, and intern for Vitalist Theatre, Liz’s professional company in Chicago.
2. In collaboration with an actor, a costume can bridge the distance between the wearer and the viewer, and make the most fantastical character familiar to the audience.
3. Part of Allison’s “uniform” is a tape measure, of course! Somehow, by the end of most work
calls, she ends up with a collection of them around her neck!
4. Liz Carlin Metz became a professor so that she could share the legacy of and be involved in what takes place on the stage every day of her life.
5. Notice the glasses on Liz’s shirt? She generally has a pair of readers close to hand.
6. Liz says that we embody all of human experience and thought on the stage—it doesn’t get much more exciting than that.
7. Craig Choma ’93 is a theatrical designer, which is both a scenic designer and a lighting designer.
8. Several of the costumes and the set models in this photo are from Vitalist productions, Liz’s professional company in Chicago.
9. Craig always designs his sets with an understanding of how they will come alive through the application of light. Through light and shadow shape and form are revealed.