Adrales’ directing credits include performances in several cities written by a diverse group of playwrights. She most recently helmed the world premiere of the Obie-winning production of Qui Nguyen’s Vietgone at the Manhattan Theatre Club. Before that, she directed Rajiv Joseph’s Letters of Suresh and Chisa Hutchinson’s Somebody’s Daughter at the Second Stage Theater in Manhattan. These followed productions in venues such as the Actors Theater of Louisville, Milwaukee Rep, and Chicago’s Goodman Theatre.

In 2013, she was featured in a New York Times article about “new power players of Off-Broadway” who were challenging a historically male-dominated field.

A graduate of the Yale School of Drama, Adrales, who is also now an assistant professor of theatre and visual arts, also brings a wealth of experience in the academic realm. She has directed and taught at Juilliard, Harvard/ART, New York University, and Bard College, and served on the faculty at the Yale School of Drama and Brown/Trinity’s MFA program. She served as the artistic director of The Lark, an international play development think tank and laboratory. From 2006 to 2009, as an artistic associate, she spearheaded the Shakespeare Lab at New York’s Public Theater.

In 2010, she directed a production of Mrs. Packard by Tony-nominated director, playwright, and screenwriter Emily Mann for Fordham Theatre’s Mainstage Season, and the experience stayed with her, she said.

“I was impressed with the caliber of students, and the passion and the commitment that they brought to the craft. It was also my first collaboration with Emily Mann, who has been such an important mentor and advocate for me in my career,” she said.

Adrales said she also admired the scope and imagination of Fordham’s mainstage productions, and the participants’ willingness to interrogate tough questions. That’s key to her vision of theater as a self-described “citizen artist.”

“Theater is a unique art in that it is a social art form. It exists in community; it exists in dialogue. Even a solo performance only exists as a dialogue with the audience. That makes it the platform for social change,” she said.

“I think that we all endeavor into this art form as citizens. We participate in a dialogue, and that act of building a stronger citizenry is one of the goals of this program.”

In addition to teaching a class in the fall, Adrales is returning to the departments’ mainstage season this spring, to direct aulis, by Christopher Chen.

Adrales noted that is an especially important time in history to think about ways to truly be inclusive. As a first-generation immigrant from the Philippines who grew up in the small coal-mining town of Covington, Virginia, she understands what it means to be an outsider.

“How do you truly create radical accessibility in theater? How can we really make the vision of equity, access, and inclusion vibrant in all aspects of what we do?” she said.

“Those are those bigger questions I have been struggling with since before I got here, as an artist. I take the responsibility in leading the program to really try to find tangible, workable solutions for how to bring that vision to fruition.”

As a director, she embraced that vision by championing works of new artists—and embracing the power of a good chuckle. In September, in an acceptance speech for the Andrew R. Ammerman Directing Award from the Arena Stage, she noted that all of her work has been rooted in a “mischievous desire to make good trouble,” an echo of the late civil rights leader John Lewis’ call to action, with a twist.

“The most powerful political work I’ve ever done has been comedies. Comedy is a tool that we use to zero in on our foibles,” she said.

“It’s a way for sparking recognition, and of course, if you recognize yourself in any situation, you start to build empathy. It’s mischievous in that way. It’s telling a message through comedy and telling a story through visual beauty. If you’re seeing something beautiful or haunting, that image is going to stick with you, and you’re not going to feel pummeled with a political message.”

The past few years have made clear how important resilience has been, and how important the art of storytelling is, she said. The pandemic also inadvertently revealed how some groups, such as those with disabilities, were being left out of the theater world before technologies such as Zoom opened new opportunities for them. This will be foremost in her mind going forward, she said.

Ultimately, success in her role, she said, will be seeing the spark for a young person that really finds their voice for the first time.

“That happened to me around this age, and it was those moments that really shaped me as the citizen artist that I am. I know that all the students here will do amazing, fulfilling things for themselves, and I hope to be witness to that journey,” she said.

“It’s about the ripples that the program will create rather than the big prizes at the end of the day.”

Adrales herself has received numerous prizes for her work, including the TCG Alan Schneider Directing Award, the League of Professional Women’s Josephine Abady Award, and the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s inaugural Denham Fellowship. She has been awarded directing fellowships at New York Theater Workshop, Women’s Project, SoHo Rep, and the Drama League.

For the theater faculty, Adrales is a welcome addition whose vision jibes perfectly with efforts already underway.

Elizabeth Margid, a professor of directing and the person who chaired the search committee, said it’s exciting to have someone who will have the time and space to take the long view.

“She has the ‘vision thing.’ She’s that kind of person. She dreams big, and because she’s so warm and leads with love, and is so articulate, she’s the kind of person that people want to work with,” she said.

Chad McArver, a professor of lighting and set design and chair of the department of theatre and visual arts, said he expects Adrales will help facilitate the ongoing transformation and conversation that the department has been engaged in since the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

“We’re moving into a social justice focus with our anti-racism work that we’ve been doing, so she’s like the capstone for all that,” he said.

“The way she’s been thinking and working as an artist is perfect for us.”

He also embraced the label of “citizen artist.”

“We want to make sure that we are educating students who have been empowered as artists, and will be upright, leading citizens wherever they land,” he said.

In Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play, the final production of Fordham Theatres’ mainstage season, the answer for survivors of an apocalyptic event is an episode The Simpsons. In particular, the strangers bond over a retelling of Cape Feare, which first aired in October, 1993 and focuses on the family’s flight to escape the wrath of Sideshow Bob, a reoccurring character voiced by Kelsey Grammer.

Written by Anne Washburn, the play debuted in 2012, and enjoyed a three-month run at New York’s Playwright Horizons in 2013. Elizabeth Margid, head of directing at Fordham Theatre, saw it then with lighting and set design professor Chad McCarver, and was immediately smitten.

Each Act Like Its Own Play

Part of the appeal was the play’s unconventional format. The first act is set in an unspecified moment in the future after an event that has knocked out all power and plunged the country into chaos. The second act is seven years later, and the final act takes place 75 years after that.

“The first act is quite naturalistic, and the second starts to incorporate some elements of sit com acting and commercials, because the characters who meet in the first act form a theater that goes from remote outpost to remote outpost to perform Simpsons episodes. Seventy-five years later, we’re in a completely new theater company that’s turned this episode into a mythic, almost like Medieval pageant play,” she said.

Margid describes that final act as a “mash-up of Greek theater, Medieval pageant play, hip-hop, and music video.”

“It’s jaw-droppingly theatrical. And odd. And I was grabbed by the style, the form and the themes of the piece. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen next in this crazy piece, and I loved that. It was unlike anything I’ve seen before,” she said.

Reimagining Classics for Current Times

The material will be familiar to anyone with a passing familiarity with the show, but hardcore Simpsons’ fans will be disappointed if they’re expecting a simple live-action re-enactment of Cape Feare. Because it’s set in a time when no one has access to television anymore, recollections are subject to characters’ memories.

“It’s a game of telephone over 75 years. So what you end up with is a memory of a memory of a memory of a memory. The theater company that creates this piece also decides to merge the plot elements with the apocalyptic disaster of the meltdown of nuclear plants that happened 75 years ago when the grid went down,” Margid said.

Just as works of art from the past are reinterpreted with current cultural concerns, so too is Cape Feare transformed into a mythic story about survival, going so far as to replace Sideshow Bob with Mr. Burns, another reoccurring character and owner of a nuclear power plant, as the main villain.

Channeling a Character’s Growth

Ella Stoller, a junior at Fordham College Lincoln Center who plays a survivor in the first two acts and a chorus member in the third, studied the play last year in a text analysis class. A big challenge for her is imagining how her character might evolve during the seven-year interlude between acts one and two. The stakes are much higher in the second, and yet at one point, the survivors take a break from rehearsing to debate how many cans of Diet Coke still exist.

“On the page, it’s this hilarious bit. Like, are they really gone? Who knows? But then you dig into it, and like there’s all the subtext about the different relationships and the fact that we’re in Oklahoma, it’s 3 p.m., we’re in a warehouse and it’s 90 degrees. And if we don’t get this show put together by the end of the night, our show tomorrow will fail and we won’t eat and we might not be safe or have a place to sleep,” she said.

To prepare for their roles, Margid also had two of Stoller’s colleagues watch the episode Homer the Heretic. While they faced the screen, she sat with her back to it, and was only allowed to turn around periodically to watch it, for ten second intervals. The point was to appreciate how fickle memory can be.

“Jenny and Matt got to watch the whole thing, so they had bigger chunks of it, but there were moments where I heard something that they hadn’t picked up on because they were watching it, so I got a word or a phrase or a sound effect that neither of them remembered. That drove forward our act,” she said.

Post Apocalyptic Fashion Trends

Staging is unique to the play as well, especially the clothes and masks used in the third act. Costume designer Siena Zoë Allen, FCLC ’15, worked with Margid in 2016 on the mainstage production of White People, and returned again to work with her alma mater.

Since there’s no way to know how much of society has been rebuilt 75 years later, it was decided that plastic—in the form of sheets, bags, bottles and wrappers—would be the backbone of their sartorial choices. Suffice to say, there are few manuals for making clothes with that material.

“If you iron a bunch of plastic bags to make a very long sheet of fabric and clothes, it doesn’t behave the way normal fabric should. When you put it on a body, it doesn’t bend, it doesn’t fold, it’s not graceful. So it’s been a very large learning process for all of us,” she said.

“It’s very different than fitting for a normal show, where if pants don’t fit, we can let them out with fabric that already exists. We are in charge of making the fabric, fitting the fabric, and making sure it matches the rest of what’s already been made. We can’t just start from scratch, so we do have to sort of adjust. It’s been fun.”

For Margid, the takeaway from the play is that art in general, and story-telling in particular, is not a luxury, but is in fact deeply entwined with the survival of the human spirit.

“At the absolute core of this piece, is a kind of Valentine to the power of theater to bind us together in dark times and to provide a place for collective emotion and reflection,” she said.

Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play, runs at Pope Auditorium April 10, 11, 12, 24, 25, 26 at 7:30 p.m. and April 27 at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available at the theatre website.

Members and former members of the Fordham Theater community turned out for a faculty fundraiser on March 29 to help raise money for the annual Fordham Alumni Theatre Company production, held on the Lincoln Center campus each summer.

Theatre faculty acted on stage while former students aped their favorite (or least favorite?) faculty members in a roast that was all in good fun. Displaying a unique talent, Elizabeth Margid, teacher of acting, took on student challengers in several games of ping pong, and emerged (largely) victorious.

Performing from some of their favorite plays are, from top to bottom: Chad McArver, director of design and production, reading from “I Am My Own Wife;” voice teacher Elena McGhee and acting coach Tina Benko, doing a scene from “Top Girls”; Eva Patton, teacher of acting, in an original autobiographical monologue, and; a faculty ensemble featuring George Drance, S.J., artist in residence, Patton, Margid, and Matthew Maguire, chair of the Theatre Program, in a scene from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” (Photos by Kate Melvin)

J.S.

Elizabeth Margid did not set out to teach college students about theater directing. But shortly after completing her master of fine arts degree at Yale, she directed a couple of shows at Fordham and, as an adjunct, taught a course or two.

“I fell in love with the place,” said Margid, assistant professor, head of theatre directing and chair of the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts at the Lincoln Center campus. “I didn’t go into theatre directing assuming I would teach; it just found me.”

That doesn’t mean that Margid’s audience is limited to students. In fact, she has never stopped directing or producing plays and musicals since she earned her degree from Yale. In addition, Margid has served as a dramaturge, which means she was a consultant to a theatre company and its writers.

“I was working with writers—in a sense almost like an editor—on their new work or work they were adapting,” Margid said.

Last summer, however, she moved to the other side of the table and authored a musical adaptation of the Ray Bradbury’s 1950s science fiction novel The Martian Chronicles for Fordham’s new Alumni Theatre Group. The musical, which hit the stage in August, featured various puppets—from 12-foot rod puppets to small marionettes.

“The Martian Chronicles is a project that I’ve had in mind for a while and decided to try my hand at actually adapting myself,” Margid said. “It was also a piece, I thought, that really lent itself to puppetry because it’s about the clash of two different civilizations—Martian and Earthling.

The Martian Chronicles is a collection of short stories that chronicles humankind’s colonization of Mars.

“It’s about two very different cultures encountering each other for the first time. Using both puppets and human actors to tell this story gave me a way to embody the theme of “otherness.”

In Margid’s adaptation, the alien changed in each scene depending on the point of view from which the story was being told.

“And that character was embodied by a puppet, which is something that the audience would respond to as an ‘other’ or alien,” Margid said.

Margid wrote a draft of her adaptation on a faculty fellowship in 2004, and raised outside grant money to produce her idea on stage. Fordham provided a research grant for the production, and she was able to commission someone to write the musical score. The materials used to make the puppets were bought with funding from the Jim Henson Foundation.

“I would say that this project represents the culmination of research I’ve been doing for the last 10 years into developing new work with puppetry and music,” she said.

Why puppets? Because they offer a theatricality that humans can’t, Margid said.

“Puppets are like us, but they’re more than us because they have liberation of movement and are free from gravity,” Margid said. “Puppets make a wonderful choice for certain types of characters and certain kinds of actions that are larger than life or fantastical.”

Margid began exploring puppetry about 10 years ago, when she helped develop a musical theatre piece called A Visit From the Footbinder based on a short story by Emily Prager.

“I’ve done a lot of creation of new musical work for the stage, but that was the first time I began to integrate puppetry,” she said. “Two springs ago, I directed the production of [William Shakespeare’s]Pericles, which also blended puppetry and music.”

Margid collaborated on Pericles and Martian Chronicles with a puppet director whose job it was to teach the cast and crew how to work with the puppets. Practically all of the alumni cast members were new to the experience.

“All the people that we cast were people that moved well, yet none of them were puppeteers,” Margid said. “We used a range of puppets—everything from a 12-foot puppet on rods to hand puppets, miniature marionettes, and shadow puppets.”

Margid plans to continue her focus on new script development while helping the Fordham Alumni Theatre Group stage productions.

“I don’t necessarily know that [my work]will always have puppetry in it, but I do think I’ll continue to focus on writing because I enjoy it very much,” Margid said.