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Three years after Black Hawk College (BHC) and Mockingbird Theatre Company’s first partnership performance, the duo is back to collaborate on Arthur Miller’s 1949 capitalist and social-class Broadway production “Death of a Salesman,” performing in the BHC Theatre on Aug. 20-22 and 27-29.
Through the partnership, all community members are welcome to join whether they attend BHC or not. The cast of the upcoming production features students from BHC, Augustana College, and other community members.
Leading up to the production, director, co-founder of The Mockingbird Theatre Company, and BHC alum, Tristan Tapscott sent an email to the College with another partnership in mind, eventually relaying the information to executive director of the play and professor of psychology and sociology, Dr. Traci Davis, who is also teaching Introduction to Theatre Arts this fall.
Like anyone able to participate in the production, the event remains an opportunity for the public to see. Ticket sales have a “pay-what-you-can” cash model method, so everyone has the chance to witness and experience the arts.
“I don’t ever want theatre to become a top 1 percent thing [as it’s happening in New York]. Unless you are in that certain echelon of vanity, you cannot afford to go,” Tapscott said.
Davis was first introduced to theatre when she took a class during her senior year of high school. The community and connection are what drew her attention. For that reason, she said nothing since then compared to the feeling of walking into a theatre space.
“There is something when you first walk into a theatre: the lights are off and the smell, and they all have it. It doesn’t matter where you’re at… I don’t feel that way anyplace else,” Dr. Davis said. “The BHC theatre is special to me because it was the first place where I stepped out on my own as an undergraduate to perform, and it was magic.”
Tapscott and Davis both said that productions are an opportunity for audience members to gain diverse perspectives.
“It is about the decay of the American dream and how the promises of that American dream are not exactly kept. You can also look at it and be like, ‘They made a lot of bad decisions, and that’s why they are where they are,’” Tapscott said. “It’s such a fascinating piece because of that dichotomy.”
After hope-driven emails for this partnership to come to fruition, Death of a Salesman has turned into a fully realized production, giving both BHC and the Mockingbird Theatre Company a chance to see how the space and people work together in practice.
Leading up to the upcoming production, the stage is set, and they are ready for the audience to experience the production with them.
“We’ve been just figuring out functional things. How do you get the doors open? Who puts the lights together?… testing the boundaries between each other. But the respect that’s here about this as an idea is greater than I ever thought it could be,” Davis said. “Honestly, they were late one night rehearsing, and when I came the next day, the janitor was like, ‘I almost called the cops on them.’ And I was like, ‘You almost called the cops on them?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, because I thought they were actually having a fight. Everyone’s really good,’ he said. And I said to him, ‘You should come.’”
Check out the show Thursday, Aug. 20-Saturday, Aug. 22 and Thursday, Aug. 27-Saturday, Aug. 29 in the Black Hawk College Theatre building 1 from 7:30 p.m. to 10:15 p.m. Tickets can be purchased at the door with the “pay-what-you-can” cash model method, using cash or Venmo.