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Dramaworks
Welcome to the Dramaworks Collection.
Please click an image thumbnail below to see all materials from a specific show in the collection.
When Florida Junior College opened its doors in August 1966 it had neither a theatre program nor a stage to perform on, but by the end of its first term students with a flair for the dramatic had organized themselves into a group called the Masques. In Spring 1967 the Masques performed publicly for the first time in August Stringberg’s The Father, directed by a student veteran named Alan Justiss who would go on to become known as Jacksonville’s unofficial poet laureate. Fall 1967 saw the College offering its first theatrically-minded course, which technically wasn’t a theater class at all: MSC 111 was a Music Workshop open to those interested in either music or theater, and which promised to launch a new production each term. A bare year after the Masques’ debut saw them performing Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn in the Little Theatre of Jacksonville’s Civic Auditorium, followed swiftly by the MSC 111 student’s production of Lerner and Lowe’s Camelot, from whose sold-out opening night 150 people had to be turned away.
By Fall of 1969, FJC offered an Intro to Theatre class and a Drama Practicum which focused on the technical aspects of production in addition to MSC 111; by 1971, the College decided to expand its program and hired Prof. Sue Moore to launch a fledgling theater department at South Campus. Moore would go on to act as faculty advisor to the student theatrical group, known by 1972 as the FJC Players, for more than a decade in the 1980s-90s.
In 1981, theater returned to Kent Campus when Prof. Marilyn DeSimone’s theater class performed Murder on Center Stage during the Winter term, giving birth to a group calling themselves Troupe de Kent. Despite lacking a dedicated budget until 1991, both the Troupe and the Players managed to put on plays each year, with students building sets on weekends while Moore personally sewed costumes and DeSimone drummed up free local media for their shows. In April 1987, the Players in conjunction with the music department presented Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma at the Civic Auditorium, and a partnership between the College and Theatre Jacksonville allowing students to use the San Marco space lead to a 1990 collegewide production of Man of La Mancha which was nominated for FOLIO theatre awards in best choreography, best overall musical, and best set design, with a win for the latter.
The College broke ground on its $20 million performing arts center, which would eventually bear the name of District Board of Trustees Chair Nathan H. Wilson, in April of 1994. By the time the Wilson Center – which includes an art gallery, a main proscenium theatre with 500 seats, and a studio theatre designed for productions with smaller audiences – opened in the summer of 1996, the College had reconfigured its handful of theater classes into programs for an Associate of Arts in Theatre Performance and an Associate of Science in Theatre and Entertainment.
With the rise of the new facility and degree program, the FJC Players and Troupe de Kent were replaced by FSCJ Dramaworks, the production component of the College’s academic theatre programs. Dramaworks stages one major show each in Spring and Fall, plus an annual student Acting and Directing Showcase. Since launching in the 1990s, Dramaworks has produced over fifty theatrical productions, and has been recognized both regionally and nationally by the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival.
This collection brings together posters, programs, and photographs from Dramaworks productions throughout the years. If you have information regarding additional materials not represented here, please contact Jennifer Grey at jennifer.grey@fscj.edu. Many of these productions have also been captured on video, and can be accessed by FSCJ faculty and staff in Canvas Commons. If the show is available for viewing, it will be noted on the individual record. Directions for how to access performances in Canvas can be found on the FAQ>.
Pages
- Title: 12 Angry Jurors
- Description: In April 2010 FSCJ Dramaworks presented Sherman L. Sergel’s 12 Angry Jurors, also known as 12 Angry Men. It is the story of twelve jurors locked in a stifling room faced with the stark challenge of deciding whether a young man accused of murder should be found not guilty, or guilt...
- Title: 30 Neo-Futurist Plays
- Title: A Patch of Earth
- Title: A World Distanced
- Title: Almost Maine/Shame TV
- Title: American Dream/Stereotypes in Stereo Sound, The
- Description: In February of 2013, FSCJ Dramaworks presented The American Dream: A Literary Collage, a one-act play conceived, compiled, and directed by Prof. Harolyn Sharpe. This compilation of prose, poetry, drama, images, and music reflect on the American Dream. It includes powerful stories pulled fr...
- Title: American LaRonde
- Description: In October and November of 2019, FSCJ presented American La Ronde, a work based on the 19th century play Reigen, considered to be one of the most controversial plays of the late 1800’s. The play was later translated into French and retitled La Ronde. In Seattle playwright Steven D...
- Title: An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein
- Description: In February 2009 FSCJ Dramaworks presented a Readers Theatre version of An Adult Evening of Shel Silverstein, ten brief pieces that welcome audiences to Silverstein’s darkly comic world, where nothing is as it seems and where the most innocent conversation can turn menacing in an instant. F...
- Title: Blood Brothers
- Title: Book of Days
- Description: In April of 2012, FSCJ Dramaworks presented Book of Days by Lanford Wilson. The play tells the story of a small Missouri town forced to reconsider their world and values after a violent death. Dublin, Missouri is dominated by three institutions: a cheese plant, a fundamentalist church, and a ...
- Title: Carousel