Download Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement
of John Seidensticker
I grew up around a college theatre program which was a unique experience and gave me great
insight into what I wanted to do in life. I was in a show as young as playing the changeling boy in a
production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. I remember watching a production of Macbeth, and falling in
love with the battle scenes, and acting as a young child as Bob in A Doll’s House. After being drafted to
play a sailor in South Pacific, I became involved in a local community theatre program. When I moved
into a high school theatre program, I moved into technical theatre where I developed my appreciation
for making the physical world of theatre come to life.
My favorite experiences in theatre have been from creating immersive set environments which
immediately pull an audience into the world of the play. My earliest experience was when I was seven I
was in a play called Thunderstruck in Possum Grape. The set was a house of one of the residents of the
town of Possum Grape. It was a two story house with a wraparound porch, and they put down sod
inside the theatre to allow you to be on this front yard. When you entered the theatre you would smell
fresh grass and it just smelled like fall. The seating allowed you to sit on the porches of the other houses
in Possum Grape or the other seats which were located in the town junkyard; my favorite was the
mattress in the old bathtub. It is a moment I will never forget because it demonstrated how visceral and
enthralling theatre could be, and how you could make magic happen on the stage. So when I
approached the show Evil Dead the Musical as the Technical Director, I wanted a comparable feeling.
The show was done in a large store front where we had to shape the entire space to make it useable for
theatre, we had to clean, create lighting positions, move the old theatre seating into position, and
create a small cabin in the woods. We moved actual trees into the space, and the audience would have
to walk through the interior of the cabin to reach their seats. This allowed us to create a little cabin in
the woods and to immediately immerse the audience into our world of the play.
I love to create moments in a play that can stand out and create vivid memories for the
audience. In a production of Oklahoma I created a fake bird. When Aunt Eller fired the gun into the air
to stop the big fight, I would drop the bird a beat after the gun shot so before anyone could say anything
the bird would hit the ground. This always elicited laughter from the audience, and became one of the
most talked-about elements of the show. I was also tasked with flying a kite in the Little Women
musical. The director wanted to have the kite to fly over the audience, while Beth was visiting the beach,
so that when Beth passed away the kite would fly away over the head of the audience. We managed to
fly the kite with the use of two fishing poles which allowed us to make it move as if it were flying in an
energetic breeze. When Beth died and let go of the kite it would sail away showing her spirit moving
onto the next world. Both of these moments accentuated the scenes they were in, and helped the
audience connect more with the world of the play.
I tried to give examples of some of the things I have experienced and why theatre is so
important to me. The world-building of theatre is such a unique element that I wish to explore and to
make it a more enthralling process. I have a desire to work with a space and shape it to do what I want,
to make theatre happen where you wouldn’t expect it to happen. I consider myself a humble servant of
the arts, and I don’t know how to say how much I have genuinely enjoyed doing and working in the
world of theatre. My ultimate goal is to increase my talent and experience through education and
working professionally. I will work hard and hope to prove myself an asset to the program that chooses
me.