UT College of Visual and Performing Arts Applauds Student Successes

Department of Theatre & Film students capture national attention, land important jobs

Frankie Teuber

Katie Thomas

Meg Sciarini

The University of Toledo College of Visual and Performing Arts is especially proud to announce the important recent hires of three of its students: Meg Sciarini, Frances “Frankie” Teuber and Katie Thomas. Meg Sciarini, who graduated Fall 2010 with dual bachelor’s degrees Film and Art, will become a projection technician for MGM, working with the Las Vegas Cirque du Soleil. Her first show will be “Viva ELVIS.” She begins her new job March 28.

Frankie Teuber, a Theatre major with a concentration in set design, will go to work for The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey this summer as a graduate level intern in Set Design after she graduates this spring. “I will be the Assistant Designer on several shows and will be the lead designer on one of the smaller shows. It really is a huge opportunity. They provide workshops and classes at night for the interns. These can lead to making important contacts because out of that you get to write, direct, perform or design your own work for industry professionals who will review your project as a way of scouting for talent. So it’s a very exciting opportunity for me.”

Frankie’s good news doesn’t end with the summer. She has also received a graduate assistantship with the University of Houston, which begins this fall. She will receive full tuition and a stipend for three years. Frankie had not even applied to the school but met a representative from the school at a conference who was impressed with her portfolio and her grade point average. She will graduate magna cum laude in May.

Theatre major Katie Thomas, an accomplished stage manager and master electrician on many UT productions, was offered a position as Master Electrician for Toledo’s Valentine Theater. Katie is known for her friendly and unassuming leadership style as well her rock-solid attention to detail. Most recently, Katie was Stage Manager for the Spring 2010 production of “Creation/Doomsday: Selections from the Chester Mystery Cycle.”

Department chair, professor James Hill said, “It really is exciting to see our students achieve this level of recognition. We know they’re great, but it’s especially gratifying when you see students who have worked as hard as Meg, Frankie and Katie, get hired by truly outstanding companies and organizations. It’s a tremendous source of pride.”

Meg Sciarini credits her success to the proactive faculty in the Art Department and the Theatre & Film Department, and her own work ethic as an artist. Even before she came to UT as a college student, Meg was on campus as a high school student, doing art installations. She received a lot of support for her ideas from faculty in the Departments of Theatre & Film and Art, and that encouraged her to study at UT. College of Visual and Performing Arts Dean, Deb Davis, a digital media artist in her own right, was a member of the Art Department faculty when Meg was a UT student. Meg said, “She showed me how to experiment with projecting images, that it didn’t have to be flat, and look like a big TV screen. That I had more options than I might have realized.”

Dean Davis remarked, "Meg was always ready to challenge herself. Her ability to push herself beyond the basic requirements of a given course made her an exceptional student. I am very proud that students in the newly formed College of Visual and Performing Arts are landing career positions of such stature. It is testimony to the dedicated faculty and excellent programs students encounter in the arts at UT."

Some of Meg’s work has been a part of UT play productions such as “Machinal” (Fall 2009) and most recently “The Labyrinth” (Fall 2010), in which moving shadowy nude figures projected onto cloth became ghostly characters trapped in the labyrinth. It was precisely this type of projection work that intrigued the management of MGM, which hired her for Cirque du Soleil. “Artistic projection of video and film is very much a part of live shows right now. So they were very interested in the work I did here at UT.”