| Campus
“Stages were dark.”
That's how Dr. Jeff Frame, director of Trevecca’s theatre program, recalled how the worlds of both professional and educational theatre were affected by the 2020 pandemic. “The storytelling world of conventional theatre, as we know it, had to reinvent itself for a while,” Frame said. “And we did!”
Trevecca’s theatre program has steadily rebuilt momentum through intentional season planning, culminating this winter with the production of “And Then They Came for Me”—including a meaningful return to hosting matinees on campus for school-aged students.
This past month, Trevecca hosted more than 300 middle schoolers from Davidson, Maury and Hickman counties for morning performances. Many of the students have been reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” as part of their school curriculum. Some visiting classes also participated in a brief post-performance talkback with members of the production team and cast.
“Schools have been coming to us asking for matinees and in the past it’s been the other way around,” Frame said. “That seems to suggest that people are excited about theatre as a storytelling medium again.”
That spark is present within Trevecca’s campus as well. “I’ve seen a resurgence of excitement and enthusiasm about theatre from our students here at Trevecca,” Frame said. He noted the growth of Trevecca’s theatre program and how it “just boomed this fall.”
Frame also reflected on what COVID-era disruption revealed about theatre’s broader purpose, and the ways Trevecca students found new approaches to storytelling during that season. “It forced all of us to rethink what theatre is supposed to do,” he said.
During that time, Trevecca leaned into applied theatre projects, including online performances and story-sharing work with residents of Trevecca Towers. Through these efforts, students used theatre in unconventional, service-oriented ways — collecting personal stories, transforming them into scripts and returning those stories to the community. This reflects the heart of Trevecca’s applied theatre minor, which focuses on using storytelling as a form of service and ministry for communities that may not otherwise have access to traditional theatre. “It's nothing we ever would have done probably if it hadn't been for COVID,” Frame said. “So I feel like it was the perfect opportunity to do that.”
As the program continues to grow, Frame believes Trevecca’s distinctiveness comes down to the people at the heart of the work as well as the live nature of theatre. “I think about how collaborative it is,” he said. “It's communal and it's evanescent. It’s live. It’s only going to happen that time, that night, with that audience. And there’s something special about that.”
For Frame, that community-centered approach also shapes the program’s mission-driven identity. “We think about how storytelling through theatre and serving others through ministry can work together,” he said. “There’s a big opportunity for us to change the trajectory of people’s lives in a good way.”