Odessa College Theatre Director Aaron Ganz is a man with big plans — some of which he has already put in place. He wants to make OC’s theatre program the best in the country, start a film festival, increase the number of shows staged each year, start a scholarship named for Marjorie Morris, a local teacher and Shakespearean scholar, and bring in guest artists.
The main stage productions, understudy program and student shows are getting ready to launch in the fall. The film festival is going to be in the spring and a performing arts festival is planned for the late summer or early fall. The guest artists range from actors to choreographers to lighting designers.
Ganz has already started a Fear Festival right around Halloween, a monthly cabaret where people can read poetry, sing, dance, play instruments, do stand-up comedy or nearly any other artistic expression. He has expanded the environments of theater productions beyond the Globe Theatre to the Anne Hathaway Cottage, the amphitheatre, the Black Box Theatre, the courtyard of the Globe Theatre and even the Meteor Crater and the Stonehenge replica at University of Texas Permian Basin.
“Everything needs to start with taking those significant experiences that people had in the past with the Globe and being able to reignite it here in the present and wonder about what that means for our future. In the year and a half since I’ve been here, looked at some of the pieces that I think are important for what we’re building, and trying to start putting those in place. I think it all breaks down into three things, which is training, performance and community,” Ganz said.
“I think any performing arts community, any performing arts institution, any place that is serious about not just doing good work, but being an artistic home for their community, has to talk about growth; has to have a plan in place to take the artists that are there and give them the avenue to move forward in their discipline … There needs to be these significant, magical moments where we come together, main stage productions and do something that is a testament to why we built this in the first place, to why it matters that we have this over here,” he added.
Next season, Ganz said they are going to launch a whole other series of productions.
“We have our main stage shows that are the beacon of the professional work that we want to be known for. We’re also going to institute one in the fall and one in the spring, student productions, productions that are specifically geared for our students. You don’t have to be a drama student. You could be a student who’s in the welding program, or in the nursing program, but it’s a show made up of people who are absolute students over here. If we ever were to add somebody who wasn’t a student, it would be an alumni of the program who would come in and serve as a mentor.
“We want to create this cycle of mentorship of people who find a freedom, who find clarity through the training and the growth, but that they feel that impetus to give that on to the next generation, to that next person who is in their shoes. It’s a teaching feeder mentality. It’s a generosity of spirit muscle, and I think it’s one of the things that help a person be able to adapt to new collaborators all throughout their career and always to be a solution where, if there’s somebody who’s up in a challenge, they feel personally tied to that ensemble experience of moving people forward,” Ganz said.
There is an upcoming production of “Cymbeline,” believed to be one of Shakespeare’s last plays. Previews are April 10 and 11, and it closes on April 19. It will be staged at the amphitheatre and at the Globe.
“’Cymbeline’ is the first time since I’ve gotten here where I’ve been able to introduce an understudy program. Understudies sound like backups to the rest of the world, but like everything else I do, I’m striving to be innovative in terms of the theatrical realm. For us, understudies are not a place where you’re simply somebody who is there in case somebody can’t do it, and you will fill in. You’re the backup, you’re the second string, but rather, you’re the first string of you. In art, there’s no one who can unlock the Romeo that actor is going to play, other than that actor if he fulfills his potential, he gets to hit the gold medal-winning performance of that Romeo and another actor has to strive within themselves to unlock their gold medal-winning performance.
“There’s no competition that’s just fully realized in their own unique artistry. We want to use the understudy program as a place for opportunity, for people who are willing to put in the work and want to dare to be able to stretch those muscles and be given roles or opportunities that they never have before. There are students right now who want to move forward in stage combat, and we’re bringing in folks from Los Angeles who are at the highest level guest artists, who move our production forward, but also elevate our professionalism.
“What they’ve offered is for any of our fight captains to be able to come study with them in Los Angeles, to offer them a scholarship to be able to take that training forward. So similarly, if somebody’s hungry to be able to grow in a certain direction, I want to be able to give them that opportunity as a teaching theater, where, if they put in that work, they get to realize it. Our understudy program culminates in a full on performance during opening weekend. Thursday and Friday are always the previews that we have for our new shows. We open on a Saturday night; we’re making that Sunday night performance of opening weekend, the understudy performance so all that hard work … gets to be realized, and that full cast gets a chance to be seen for themselves,” Ganz said.
He added that he thinks people will look at the OC program as something they can trust. Parents can tell whether their child is talented and they want their child to be successful in life, but they also worry that they won’t have a fallback.
“I think it’s imperative that anybody who gets a degree from Odessa College, as in the drama program, also graduates with another degree in something that’s technical, that will open up a door for them to start working right away” to have something to fall back on, Ganz said.
Alex Garcia, an OC student in his last semester, plans to graduate with his associate degree in theatre arts. Hopefully after that and with Ganz’s help, he hopes to get in contact with people in LA and work more with theatre programs. But his main objective is film and TV.
Ganz said Garcia is in “Cymbeline” and the understudy program.
Garcia said he’s excited. He’s always wanted to learn how to do fight choreography or stage fighting.
Ganz said he gets to play a lot of different characters and work on fight scenes.
“He’s under studying the character of Guiderius, who is a prince that got stolen from the king’s nursery when he was a little kid. Someone was mad at his father, the king, and stole him and raised him in the woods and the jungle. We see him in this story, coming into his own, that even though he was raised away from the palace, that he has this princely quality to him. There’s this very significant moment where his family is threatened, and there’s a one on one sword battle with him and this person who has lost their mind. It’s thrilling. Alex is going to get this opportunity now to work intimately as the understudy for that character and learn that very significant, broad sword battle. If you can imagine looking around the globe over here, that battle is going to go into the audience, we’re going to have a war that has over 20 people swinging broad swords,” Ganz said.