Theatre professor: Actors adapt, even to pandemics

“Theatre is a versatile artform that adapts to whatever’s going on,” said Lisa K. Hermanson, the New Mexico State University Theatre Department’s visiting instructor for musical theatre. “We’re used to pivoting when things go wrong and figuring it out.”

And despite state public health orders that have made live theatre performances almost impossible, Hermanson and her colleagues at NMSU are continuing to make theatre happen.

Hermanson wrote a stunningly beautiful song that concludes the department’s original production of “Letters to the Future,” which premiered in September. She wrote and directed another original production, “Stay Home for the Holidays: A Holiday Cabaret,” which streamed earlier this month.

While it was strange for Hermanson to be watching the holiday production on computer in her living room instead of attending a gala opening-night live performance at the ASNMSU Center for the Arts, streaming the show meant that her parents back home in Seattle got to see it, along with other people across the country, she said.

Hermanson said she’s already at work on next year’s “Broadway on Stage” fundraiser for the department.

“Her skills seem endless,” New Mexico State University Theatre Department Head Wil Kilroy said about Hermanson, who joined the department in August 2019 and is hoping to become a permanent staff member.

“From writing original songs for productions to musical direction, vocal coaching and playing keyboards for a production, our students and our audience members have been able to benefit from Lisa's impressive work,” Kilroy said.

And, with a degree in theatre pedagogy, Hermanson has, in addition to musical theatre, taught classes in playwriting and theatre history, Kilroy said.

“Lisa was very kind in offering to teach an advanced playwriting independent study for me this semester and it's been wonderful learning from all of her experience,” said NMSU theatre student Samantha “Sammi” Armstrong. “She's an amazing addition to the NMSU theatre family and I feel lucky to have her here.”

Hermanson also has a master of fine arts degree. Her thesis at Virginia Commonwealth University included writing a one-act musical called “The Golden Door.”

Set in 1923, the show is “an exploration of how much immigration has really changed” in the past century, Hermanson said, “specifically looking at it through the lens of Ellis Island,” the point of entry to the United States for Hermanson’s grandparents.

When she wrote the musical, Hermanson said she had no idea she would soon be moving to Las Cruces to experience its unique position so close to a different border with many of the same issues.

After a few months of face-to-face interaction with students in a normal classroom setting and rehearsal process, Hermanson and the entire NMSU Theatre Department had to find new ways to teach classes and direct shows when COVID-19 hit last March. (Hermanson was musical director of NMSU’s production of “The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which was interrupted by the pandemic and was the Theatre Department’s last on-stage production for a live audience to date.) 

Since then, she said, musical theatre has been an “exceptional challenge” for students and staff, partly because Zoom doesn’t allow two performers to sing at the same time. But she and other staff and students are “making theatre still happen,” Hermanson said.

And, one advantage of “Zoom theatre” she has discovered is that it lets her watch her students in a different way.
“I can only see them from the shoulders up” on Zoom, Hermanson said, and that has allowed her to focus on developing students’ micromovements. Zoom has also meant transitioning from the impromptu decisions that all actors make in live theatre to the extra time and effort that must go into preparing a recorded performance. And once the pandemic is over, it will mean helping students return to the one take of live theatre.

“Lisa is one of the most kind, caring, lovely people I have ever had the privilege of meeting,” said student Molly Schafer. “These traits make her invaluable as a professor. Her kindness is surpassed only by her ability to teach, and NMSU would be crazy not to hire her as a full-time professor.”