THEATRE DIRECTOR HITS THE STAGE

When you work in the theatre business, a lot can change over the years. The performing arts are a competitive platform: That’s just show biz, as they say.

That evolution of theatre is the reason Mace Archer, MHCC artistic director and theater instructor, decided to finally take a year off from teaching. Beginning in Fall Term 2019, he will take a sabbatical to focus on professional acting and directing – diving straight into competing himself for an acting role in a current play.

Traditionally, a sabbatical is a period of leave granted to a university or college instructor so that they may conduct research. In Archer’s case, he believes it is important to reinforce the information he is teaching to theatre students.

This will the first sabbatical at Mt. Hood for Archer, who until now has been on a decade-long hiatus from auditioning. Now he will be going through the process he teaches to his students, that of finding auditions and obtaining roles.

Since many theater companies are already casting for shows in 2020, Archer has already begun the process and auditioned for seven shows so far. For a recent audition, he flew to Memphis, Tennessee for a national casting call. The competition included 90 different theatre companies, representing roughly 900 actors. Each actor was given 90 seconds a piece to impress producers with their chosen monologue-and-song combination.

So far, Archer has received two callbacks in the Portland area, and another two for productions of “Mamma Mia!” he said.

A lot of people think of acting and immediately associate the term with Los Angeles. However, since he is a live theatre actor, Archer predicts that if he does have to travel for a role he will likely end up in Chicago or New York. Ideally, he would like to stick closer to home.

During his sabbatical, Archer’s Mt. Hood classes will be taught by substitute teachers and professional guest artists. The productions that will be presented by the college’s theatre students next year have already been selected. Directing a musical or play can be challenging, and having a specific direction in mind can be helpful. That’s why Archer would prefer to land more roles in PDX, so he can be on campus at times to help those people filling in.

Meantime, the pay in professional theatre has changed; the most popular shows have changed; and gender-bending casting is back with zeal. Archer has noticed during his recent auditions that although theatre is constantly evolving, the audition process is “remarkably the same” as it had been for him over a decade ago. During the next academic year, Archer will find all those updates and consistencies in the industry to help strengthen MHCC’s already robust theatre department..