Devising the Future of Theater

“There really isn’t an undergraduate program that lets you have the freedom to explore and create and use your own artistic voice as much as the contemporary theater program does.”
—Alex Leondedis

Since its inception in 2015, Boston Conservatory at Berklee’s contemporary theater program has attracted students who are multi-talented, deeply creative, and looking for something more than a traditional undergraduate acting program. They are innovative theater artists "who are going to change the nature of the industry, creating work that we haven’t yet imagined,” according to Professor Theresa Lang, Ph. D., who teaches in the contemporary theater program.

The program’s ensemble-based curriculum is committed to generating innovative and personally driven theater. As a result, it draws students from vastly different backgrounds, with a broad range of creative skills. And yet, contemporary theater students and alums share some distinctive characteristics, Dr. Lang says. They are generous collaborators who are motivated by artistic curiosity and eager to make theater that reflects their own experience.

“These are folks that are not content with how things are,” Dr. Lang says. “Even a lot of students who don’t necessarily know experimental theater or they don’t know this other way of doing things, they know they are looking for something else.” 

Thus far, the contemporary theater program has launched four graduating classes, beginning in 2019. These alums have devised plays for the Boston Center for the Arts, the Minnesota and Orlando Fringe Festivals, and the Emerging Artist Theatre’s New Work Series in New York, among many others. They have secured acting roles in a variety of productions—from Shakespearean plays to contemporary musicals—at prominent venues including the Huntington Theatre Company, SpeakEasy Stage Company, American Repertory Theater, and St. Ann’s Warehouse. They’ve assistant directed and acted in television series and independent films. And they have launched new theater companies, collaborating with peers to make original, innovative work on their own creative terms. They’ve also continued their education at places like the National Theatre Institute’s Advanced Directing Intensive, and worked as playwrights, teachers, costume designers, and models.

Alex Leondedis (B.F.A. '22) says he was drawn to the contemporary theater  program because it gave him the opportunity to explore all aspects of theater arts. “I was always someone who was like, I love so many parts of this that I don’t want to focus on just one thing,” he says. “There really isn’t an undergraduate program that lets you have the freedom to explore and create and use your own artistic voice as much as the contemporary theater program does.” 

Since graduation, Leondedis has built an extensive resume, assistant teaching a directing class at Harvard University, working as a teaching artist at Wheelock Family Theater and Boston Theatre Company, and serving as an artistic and literary fellow for SpeakEasy Stage Company’s 2022–2023 season, where he assists with play reading—among many other responsibilities.

“The degree really has helped me to look at theater in so many different ways,” he says—which has been particularly useful when it comes to play reading for SpeakEasy because “I can look at it from the actor perspective and the director perspective and the playwright perspective and the dramaturgy perspective.”

Leondedis and fellow alum Kennadi Rae Wells (B.F.A. '22)  are also in the process of forming their own theater company, From the Basement. They aim to build a community of young theater makers in the Boston area by providing creative feedback and fostering an environment in which to develop all facets of new work.

“I’m really trying to take as many opportunities as I can,” Leondedis says. “I love to spread myself out and to be able to act and direct or assistant direct and also teach and also make stuff. I want to be able to do everything.”

Shreya Navile (B.F.A. '19) had no formal training as an actor when she auditioned to join contemporary theater’s inaugural class in 2015. But her years of studying Indian classical dance had prepared her well. Because Bharatanatyam dance is a storytelling artform, Navile was able to draw from a broad range of gestures, facial expressions, and body movements, easily adapting them to theatrical exercises during her audition.

“We had to create a physical movement sequence that narrated a story... And that was a moment where I was like, wait, I can do this. This is what I know how to do,” she says.

Her audition experience convinced Navile that the contemporary theater program was the right fit. “This was a space where I understood that my individual creativity and my ideas would have air,” she says.

“I always tell everyone—no matter what set I’m on or wherever I’m at—BoCo has given me the facilities to feel confident in my own work as an artist, as well as challenge myself and put myself out there."
—Shreya Navile 

After graduating in 2019, Navile traveled to India to assistant direct and act in a Bollywood movie. “It was like, immediately, dreams coming true,” she says. She followed up with roles in the feature film Month of Madhu and the Hulu/Disney+ series Parampara. This spring, she will serve as a swing for the cast of Monsoon Wedding, to be staged at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York City, under the direction of Mira Nair, renowned Indian American filmmaker and one of Navile’s personal idols. 

“I always tell everyone—no matter what set I’m on or wherever I’m at—BoCo has given me the facilities to feel confident in my own work as an artist, as well as challenge myself and put myself out there,” Navile says.

Like Navile, Susanne McDonald (B.F.A. '20) says the contemporary theater program helped her build confidence and versatility—in ways she could not have imagined at the outset. When she arrived at the Conservatory for her first year, McDonald initially struggled with the experimental nature of the program.

“I was this structured, classical actor. It was one way, and that was it,” she says. Devising theater felt outside her comfort zone, at first. She missed the predictability of working with a traditional script, “because in structured, ‘normal’ plays, you rehearse but nothing ever changes,” she says. Over time, she discovered that it was flexibility, not structure, that gave her confidence and eased her anxiety as a performer. Not only was she able to adapt to the unpredictable, she found that she thrived on it.  “The CT program opened my mind to all aspects of what it means to be a theater artist and not just an actor,” she says.

Shortly after graduating in 2020, McDonald got the opportunity to work with her favorite hometown theater company, PURE Theatre, in her native Charleston, South Carolina. “They immediately brought me on as an assistant director, which was crazy,” she says. “I had never really assistant directed anything; but then I realized, within devising theater, I was assistant directing all the time. It’s just that we have different words for things.

McDonald has worked on a broad range of projects since that time. She helped devise a movement piece for FoolsFURY’s virtual devising theater festival, BUILD FORWARD, alongside Conservatory musical theater alum Lama El Homaïssi (M.F.A. '19). She assistant directed two plays at the Chain Theatre Festival in 2022. And, she has branched out into filmmaking, directing her first short film in 2021 for PUSH Pregnancy, a nonprofit dedicated to ending preventable stillbirths. This summer, McDonald will assistant direct two films: the short, Hero, and her first feature, Shredded, both of which address themes of mental health.

“The contemporary theater program opened my mind to all aspects of what it means to be a theater artist and not just an actor." 
—Susanne McDonald

Taking the unconventional route, contemporary theater alums are writing the scripts for their own careers, Dr. Lang says. And she is thrilled by the early accomplishments of the program’s graduates. “The promise that they came in with seems to have been set on a good trajectory. It makes me feel like we’re on to something.”

Learn more about Boston Conservatory’s contemporary theater program and the accomplishments of its alums Shanelle Chloe Villegas (B.F.A. '19) and Sharmarke Yusuf (B.F.A. '20), currently starring in K-I-S-S-I-N-G at the Huntington Theatre Company.