Visiting theater lecturer Andy Vaught begins MC tenure with Susan Glaspell’s ‘Trifles’
Oct. 20, 2022
As far as first productions go, “Trifles” fits comfortably in Andy Vaught’s wheelhouse.
Vaught, a visiting lecturer in the Maryville College Theatre Department who is one of 10 new faculty members this academic year, is helming the Susan Glaspell-penned drama, which will be staged by MC students for a three-night run beginning Friday, Oct. 28, in the Haslam Family Flexible Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts.
It’s a play, Vaught said, that touches on the social commentary that informs so much of his work, but it’s also a fascinating and enjoyable murder mystery first staged more than a century ago.
“It’s an older play, but the more ‘whiskers’ they have, the more inviting they are to us,” Vaught said. “It’s a lesser-known show, so it gives you a little bit of room for surprise and maneuvering, and it’s a short play, so we got to take our time with telling it. It was really nice to work with the actors and let this show breathe as much as possible.
“It is a politically relevant show — I wanted my first play, in some way, to focus on highlighting and talking about the role and the plight of female citizens in this country — but it’s not preachy. It’s a murder mystery, and there’s a lot of real joy in the unraveling of this situation. The actresses we have leading this company are very strong, and the way they unravel this mystery is very engaging.”
Student success and opportunities
The play centers on the efforts of two women (played by Jenni Cate Rhodes ’24 and Sasha Hoenie ’26) who work to solve a murder while authorities stumble their way through the crime scene. What they find, according to the play’s synopsis, “forces the women to choose between the law and each other.” Other MC actors in the production include Alexis Collins ’23, Eric Hartless ’24 and Trevor Morency ’26.
Vaught, whose position at MC was made possible when long-time theater professor Dr. Heather McMahon was named assistant dean for academic success, comes to East Tennessee from Hendrix College in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he served as a Murphy Visiting Fellow. He sees “Trifles” as a launchpad to bigger and better things, especially given the resources now at his disposal.
“One of the things that was so amazing when I interviewed here was walking into the Clayton Center,” he said. “I ran a theater company for 12 years, and I’ve performed all over New Orleans, and walking into the Clayton Center, I was really impressed by the quality of the institution, and as somebody who has traveled a different road in terms of performance, it was hard not to see it immediately as a gift.
“It’s a wonderful opportunity to grow and do great work in, I don’t think students elsewhere have this unique opportunity. I tell them that honestly, getting to work in this amazing facility is probably better than the facilities they’re going to work in for the next decade, and when you combine that with the fact they’re very strong and talented and enthusiastic and have a lot of potential, I saw my job as an opportunity to build an ensemble, to build our own language together, and to begin creating a body of work that’s meaningful to us as artists and to people of the world.”
Theater as social commentary … and entertainment
Theater, Vaught believes, should be entertaining, but it should also be thought-provoking. A native of Covington, Louisiana, he earned his bachelor’s degree at Kenyon College in Ohio before moving to Philadelphia in 2005. Ten days after his arrival, Hurricane Katrina decimated his home state, and he felt called to move to the Crescent City to establish a theater company that would address the struggles of a unique culture affected by natural disaster on an unfathomable scale.
“I started Cripple Creek Theatre Company in 2006, and we produced works of cultural, historical and political significance in order to provoke the public into social action,” he said. “Most of my drive to do theater has been aligned in some way with that mission: what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in the community the work is happening in. We brought in a lot of new, invested partners and did a lot of free shows, used a lot of non-actors, performed Shakespeare in prisons and made our work as accessible and relevant as possible to what was going on.”
After the completion of the Murphy fellowship at Hendrix, Vaught was drawn to the mission and traditions of MC. His experience as both a student and a faculty member at liberal arts colleges made the position immensely appealing, Vaught said, and “Trifles” seemed like an ideal springboard from which to launch his career as a Scot.
“Coming to Maryville, I was really excited to be at a school with a mission that matched my own, and at a school where the commitment to social justice is so strong and so pronounced,” he said. “For my first show, I wanted a little bit of time to gel with people and see how things work on the technical side and with the artists, and while the themes are just as relevant now as they were when we chose it a few months ago, I’m excited for patrons to see a lesser-known work from a bygone era that is utterly too prescient about what is going on right now.
“I want theater to become a gathering place for people to engage with what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. For the spring, we’re talking about doing ‘Revolt of the Beavers,’ which is about a beaver labor strike. While it does have a certain perspective, it’s ultimately a fun show about beavers, so I hope people who need the connection and community of theater will see it, but that it will also be light enough for people who aren’t regular theater-goers to come and laugh and have a good time at.”
“Trifles” will be performed at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Oct. 28 and 29, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 30. Tickets are $10 for adults; $7 for seniors and students; and free for MC students, faculty and staff with ID. For more information, call the Clayton Center box office at 865-981-8590.