By Savannah Mitchell
CCC Journalism Program
BLACKWOOD – Camden County College’s theater program suffers from lack of student and community awareness and a proper space to put on their productions. With student productions taking place in Lincoln Hall’s black box performing arts theater, they look for more professionalism, wider student audiences and access to more training in wider areas of performance.
The performing arts program focuses more on productions that they can make work and make look right with what they are given rather than putting on huge musical theater productions that most performers sometimes search for. While many think budget is the issue, this is not the case. What the theater department needs is more space and a true black box theater that can be reconfigured to its full potential for their performances as well as more student awareness to come and recognize its art.
Members of the community in Lincoln Hall expressed perspectives about this issue. Head of the theater program, Marjorie Sokoloff, said, “We don’t have a participation problem. It’s not participation. It’s awareness. It’s the college viewpoint and I would also say, where the money comes in, is in how much I can make this theater work.”
As to how they can make this work, they are referring to Lincoln Hall’s black box theater. Sokoloff explained, “A black box theater is a theater, not only that’s completely painted black, but that it is moveable, that you can put it in a million different configurations, so this truly isn’t a black box, because you can’t move that.”
The black box at CCC has a stationary technical booth that is not moveable, which makes this space hard to work around and makes the ability to do certain shows a little more difficult.
Liberal arts major at CCC, Damier Mills, raised another issue that he and other students believe add to the lack of student awareness of the performing arts program. He stated, “I think it’s the amount of people that get involved in the events at the Little Theatre. With Lincoln Hall, it’s kind of hard to get people there because it’s a bit cut off from the rest of the main campus.”