Faculty Q&A: Mendy McMasters

McMasters received Outstanding Lecturer Award for her work in Theatre Department

By California State University, Bakersfield

September 20^th, 2023

What is your role here on campus? What classes do you teach?

I am an entitled lecturer — what I teach depends on the semester. In the past three years, I have taught nine different classes. This year, I am teaching beginning and intermediate acting, voice and speech, American College Theatre Festival [ACTF] Prep and dynamic leadership through improvisation.

How long have you worked at CSUB?

I have worked at CSUB for over 20 years.

What do you love most about teaching theatre at CSUB?

I love teaching here at CSUB because our theatre majors are amazing. Before new actors can understand what it means to develop a character, they first have to understand what it means to be themselves. Actors have to explore and consider how they see and interact with the world before they can even hope to understand how their character sees and interacts with the world. It is a joy to see our majors not only find the characters that they play, but also find themselves in the process.

You recently were awarded The Outstanding Lecturer Award. What did it mean to you to receive that recognition?

To receive the Outstanding Lecturer Award is an honor and my goal is to continue to inspire our students to be curious, to be brave, and to be energized by the complexity of life as they work on their art.

Tell us more about some of your upcoming projects, or what you’re looking forward to most in this academic year.

I’m currently working on the fight choreography for our fall show "The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs," directed by David Melendez, translated by Diversifying the Classics from Valor, "agravio y mujer" by Ana Caro Mallén de Soto. I hope the campus will come to see this recently translated play.

The Courage to Right a Woman’s Wrongs:

Thursday, Oct. 26 - Saturday, Oct. 28 | 7:30 p.m.| Doré Theatre
Sunday, Oct. 29 | 2 p.m. | Doré Theatre

Something a lot of people might not know about you and your work is that you teach dynamic leadership through improvisation. How can they sign up, and ultimately benefit the campus community as leaders and professionals?

We need more leaders who are trained in emotional intelligence: Leaders who exhibit self-awareness and empathy and who know how to collaborate and communicate effectively. Teaching dynamic leadership through improvisation has allowed me to help students explore their leadership potential by working on improvisational skills such as saying “Yes”, collaboration, listening and, of course, thinking on your feet. There are sections of the class offered every semester (THTR 1019) and anyone enrolled at CSUB can take the class.

How can the community and campus best support your area of study and your efforts at the university?

Attend our plays! Here at CSUB, if you are a student, faculty or staff you get a discount when you buy tickets to our shows. Most theatres offer a student discount. Attending theatre is a way to support the art and talent in your community but it is also an enriching experience for the audience member. You get to experience a story being created right in front of you: A story that is unique to that moment in time, never to be repeated in the exact same way. That’s pretty exciting. In a world where AI can create anything for us at a moment’s notice, seeing live theatre offers us a chance to connect with human nature through live human beings: through their emotions, their movement, their language and much more.

What do you think is the biggest misconception about theater or the theater department?

The biggest misconception is that theatre only involves getting onstage. I don’t think the average person understands that when you major in theatre, you’re majoring in everything. When we produce a play we have to understand the time period of that play; so we have to be a historian. When we build the set for that play we have to understand how to use a drill and basic building practices and we also have to understand architecture and math. When we work on lights and sound we have to understand how light plays on different surfaces and have some electrical skills. When we work on playing a character we need to understand psychology and motivation. And the list goes on and on. Studying theatre is studying all elements of the human condition.

Is there anything else you feel people should know or that we might not have addressed?

A theatre degree is a great start to many other career opportunities. People who plan to go into any occupation which has an emphasis on personal communication, oral presentation and being persuasive will benefit from a major or double major in theatre.