An ocean away, documenting a rare discovery on camera

In 2017 Joe Stephenson, who’s a Culp Distinguished Professor of English at ACU, discovered a never-before-seen play from the 1600s in the archives of the Boston Public Library titled The Dutch Lady. Stephenson, who wrote his dissertation on Dutch characters on the English stage, had never seen or heard of the play, and he could find no record of it in any prior scholarly works. He quickly realized he had made a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.

Two years later, Globe Education, a division of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, exhibited the play as a performance for the first time as part of its Read Not Dead series, which exhibits rare plays as stripped-down performances with minimal production.

The 2019 reading of The Dutch Lady took place at Gray’s Inn in London, the very place where Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors was first performed more than 400 years earlier. The Learning Studio’s Kyle Dickson and Nathan Driskell were there to capture footage of the performance and rehearsals, as well as Joe Stephenson’s lecture on his research into the history and suspected provenance of the play. They were also able to conduct on-camera interviews with global experts from The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and The Shakespeare Institute.

The resulting short video gives audiences both at ACU and around the globe a chance to travel to London with Joe, and to witness a moment that would only ever happen once: the unveiling of a historic play that, in its 400-year existence, had never before been performed by actors in a live setting.

New LS videos showcase student trips to NYC

Over Spring Break, a small team from the Learning Studio traveled to New York alongside ACU students and faculty in the departments of Art & Design and Theatre, to document their experiences on film. The result is a series of three short videos we’ve titled “ACU in New York” that show prospective students the high caliber of experiences these programs offer beyond the classroom.

Video Storytelling for ACU’s Presession

For this year’s ACU Faculty Presession, the Learning Studio was tasked with spotlighting Summer Shakespeare in the Department of Theatre, and the NEXT Lab in the Department of Engineering & Physics. The resulting short videos gave our faculty audience a window into a couple of the campus’s recent successes.

Dead Day Karaoke

We love rock ’n’roll, and what better way to celebrate the final countdown before you beat it than by showing the campus your true colors.

This Dead Day, we’ll host 1980s video karaoke upstairs in the Learning Studio, filmed in glorious Standard Definition. All you need is a USB thumb drive and a favorite song from any decade (air guitar and backup dancers optional).

We’ll kick things off with some rock star professors who are bringing big vocals and big hair back into fashion, so stay tuned.

We know it’s a manic Monday, but we’ll be rocking upstairs in the library, with or without you.
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Don’t Adjust Your Set

For the week we’ve upgraded the High Definition video you expect from the One Button Studio in Stage 1 with an old-school VHS camcorder to capture all your 1980s moves in glorious Standard Definition (that’s SD instead of HD). So if the recordings we’re sharing this week look a little funny, just pop in a videocassette mixtape of your favorite MTV music videos and sing along.

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Faculty Highlights

Watch: The Wisdom of Lettering Artist Simon Walker

In the third installment of On Design, the Learning Studio’s joint collaboration with ACU Art & Design, we sat down with the lettering artist and designer Simon Walker.

You’ve probably seen Simon’s work—his eye-popping lettering adorns the cover of a recent Brené Brown book, as well as plenty of magazine spreads and many of the food and drink labels you’ll come across on a casual grocery store run. Before going into business for himself, Simon got his start as a designer at the Austin agency GSD&M.

Following a recent lettering workshop with ACU Art & Design students, Simon was kind enough to sit down and share his wisdom with us.

Learn more about the On Design series »

On Design: Randy Hunt

On Design: Jeff Rogers