What I Did With My Summer Vacation

“Summers off.” It’s what leaps to mind when considering the perks of teaching. Long, summer days spent sipping iced tea from a backyard hammock. But that’s a far cry from Professor Chrissy Steele’s summer.

A member of the College’s Theatre and Dance Department, Steele spent almost her entire summer in workshops and classes or planning her upcoming abroad. First, she headed to New York for a six-day intensive workshop at the Kristin Linklater Center. The workshop focused on voice, body, and textual analysis, all leading to a deeper understanding of Shakespeare’s works.

“[We were] looking at the text in terms of the grammatical structure as opposed to the verse structure,” Steele explains, animatedly describing the different messages conveyed by alternate readings. “Shakespeare gives us so much information if we pay attention to it.”

Steele then returned to the College, where she took part in the first alumni dance retreat, which she describes as “an amazing week of classes, new friendships, and performances.” She also shared some of the ideas gleaned from her Linklater seminar in two workshops on Shakespeare that she and English professor Heidi Snow gave during that reunion weekend.

Next, Steele left on a two-week planning trip for the upcoming England abroad that she and Snow will co-lead in the fall of 2012. Asked about her travels with Steele, Snow responds, “It’s like traveling with the Energizer Bunny! She’s a great colleague because she’s continually creative. In any situation, she sees so many possibilities. And she’s got the energy to implement them.”

After the trip to England, Steele returned home for two days—during which time she worked with the theatre and music departments to select Principia’s next musical—before leaving for Goddard College in Vermont to begin an MFA program in interdisciplinary arts. “My focus will be looking at the intersection of voice, movement, and text in performance,” Steele explains.

Once back from Vermont, Steele found herself in Chicago for two more days of Linklater voice study. For the moment, she’s back at Principia, prepping for the start of fall quarter—one of the few things that can keep her in one place for ten weeks!