Setting the stage

Did you know that more than half of Southern Utah University’s live theatre is produced by a group made up entirely of undergraduate students? Second Studio is a theatre organization at SUU run by a board of directors composed of current students and a faculty advisor. The program has a legacy of over two decades that strives to showcase quality theatre on campus and teach students the important skills needed to do so themselves.

Second Studio’s productions are directed, stage managed and designed by students, and at the low cost of five dollars per show — or three for showcases — SUU students can watch their peers’ work live on stage.

First formed in 1995 as a club under the name Stage 2, Second Studio was created to fulfill the very purpose it still serves today: to allow student directors, performers, designers and choreographers the opportunity to stretch their artistic muscles.

“The original purpose back in 1995 was to provide additional opportunities for students to explore their craft,” said Scott Knowles, Second Studio’s current faculty advisor.

Knowles performed in Second Studio shows during his time as an undergraduate student before joining the theatre, dance and arts administration faculty. He believes that in a theatre program that is as big as SUU’s, it is vital for organizations such as Second Studio to exist.

“We have so many students that want to be involved in the creation and making of theatre, and we do not have the facilities, time, faculty or money to produce enough shows to give all of those students some kind of theatrical experience,” said Knowles.

Second Studio puts on four shows per academic year in addition to their monthly variety show SUU Live and a semesterly 24-Hour Theatre event.

After its founding in 1995, Stage 2 continued to grow as a club in conjunction with other clubs on campus. Then, in 2011, Stage 2 joined forces with two other performing arts-based clubs, Masque Club and Vaudeville, to create the Second Studio that SUU students know and love today.

“At that point, they basically realized they were working on a lot of cross purposes, and they’d get more done and more consistently done if they just combined everything into one club,” said Knowles.

After that, Second Studio operated successfully as a club on campus until the fall of 2018 when it officially became a university-sponsored organization instead of department club, as it wasn’t using money from the Clubs and Organizations Committee on campus.

“You can apply for cash to do certain things, and they never did that because [the department] paid for all their rights,” said Knowles. “They were able to make enough money that the budget balanced out.”

Faculty soon realized that Second Studio was providing a service to the department and the school, and they wanted to do even more to help. Being a departmentsponsored organization meant that Second Studio was officially receiving all of their funding from the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Arts Administration.

This was something they were already doing for the most part, but making it official opened more doors for funding.

“[The faculty] realized that it’s really helping us provide a JV team to get more training and more experience for our actors versus the full season that the faculty directs,” said Knowles.

There have been times over Second Studio’s almost thirty-year existence where its continuance was in question, but group members always find a way to stay passionate about their mission: to keep creating quality theatre.

“Whenever that kind of rumbling or talk happens, there’s almost always somebody, usually a group of students or a single solitary student, who says, ‘But I want to put on a show,’ and then Second Studio’s purpose is kind of reenergized,” said Knowles.

Second Studio also gives students on the administrative side of theatre the opportunity to learn leadership and management skills. Not only do board members have to perform their specifically designated roles, they must work as a team to solve any problems that may come up in the process of putting a show together, and they must do it relatively unassisted.

“They are left to their own devices in a lot of different cases, and that’s also valuable because it helps them get out of the mindset of ‘everything must cost a lot of money’ or ‘everything must be overproduced in order to be good,’” said Knowles.

SUU’s theatre program is one of the school’s main draws, and people often choose to attend the school because of its prestige. Though on the surface it may seem to be a small part of SUU’s legacy, Second Studio is and will always be a vital part of that lifeblood.

To stay up to date on Second Studio’s show schedule, follow them on Instagram at @2ndstudio

-Written by Tessa Cheshire