HOW TO BE FABULOUS

A Fulbright Scholar, Blake Hackler, an actor, playwright, and associate professor of theatre at SMU Meadows School of the Arts, joins Dallas Theater Center’s Brierley Resident Acting Company.

BY TERRI PROVENCAL

lake Hackler is reading three books: My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell; How to Be an Artist by Jerry Saltz; and The Delicacy and Strength of Lace: Letters Between Leslie Marmon Silko & James Wright. “I have my morning, afternoon, and night readings—three books for three different times of day,” says the associate professor of theatre at SMU Meadows School of the Arts. This natural elasticity is what defines the actor, director, playwright, and instructor who was recently awarded a second Fulbright Scholar grant. This grant will allow him to teach Shakespeare and conduct research for four months in Romania; his first grant took him to Bulgaria.

And in a time when a glimmer of hope is what we need more than ever, Dallas Theater Center shared a second piece of good news: Hackler has been appointed to the Diane and Hal Brierley Resident Acting Company. “This has been the most unified and joyful response to bringing in a new member since we formed the company a decade ago,” says Kevin Moriarty, the Enloe/Rose Artistic Director of the Dallas Theater Center, with regards to selecting Hackler (along with his student Molly Searcy, a graduate of SMU’s 2020 MFA acting program) to join the company. “Anyone B

who has ever seen Blake on a stage or had a conversation with him is blown away by his depth of knowledge. He is a masterful teacher. He is an incredibly skilled director. He is an equally accomplished playwright.”

DTC has collaborated with SMU for many years now. “One of the many things that has been a strength and joy of our partnership with SMU—and has become deeply important to us—is Blake’s classroom,” says Moriarty. “The students that Blake is teaching in the classroom will also have the opportunity to watch him in the rehearsal room, and the opportunity to watch him build a performance. Former students will have opportunities to act opposite him. This is the way that theatre has been passed on for thousands of years. Artisans passing down skills, tradition… There is something great about how those experiences collide in a room.”

Moriarty describes Dallas Theater Center’s partnership with SMU as “a source of artistic strength and inspiration for both of our institutions and for Dallas audiences.” Samuel S. Holland, dean of the Meadows School of the Arts echoes this: “We are grateful for the opportunities Dallas Theater Center has provided over several decades to our students, alumni, and faculty, and for the chance

to give back to the Dallas arts community through this special relationship.”

Having cast Hackler several times in DTC productions, Moriarty recounts working with the actor in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night rehearsals with his signature zeal. “From the first moment of the very first reading he was able to make strong, clear choices with seeming spontaneity and abandon. He was able to take ancient words and experience them fully in the moment. The other actors would gather in the room and watch the rehearsal of the scene— normally they move aside and work on memorizing their own lines or dialect.… It was noticeable.”

As an actor, along with his work with the Tony Award–winning Dallas Theater Center, Hackler has appeared in productions on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in regional theatres throughout the country, working with acclaimed directors like Michael Mayer, Scott Ellis, Alex Timbers, and Mike Alfreds. In New York, he worked with such theatres as Playwrights Horizons, York Theatre, The Ohio, and Roundabout. He is also a company member at the nationally recognized Undermain Theatre.

Additionally, Hackler is a member of the esteemed BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Writing Program and an award-winning playwright whose works have been seen across the US. His recent play What We Were, which tells the story of three grown sisters impacted by a childhood of abuse, was a winner of the Ashland New Plays Festival, a finalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference in 2018, and received its world premiere in 2019. He returns to the state of Texas as a setting for his characters often. “There are fewer stories about people in the flyover states,” he says.

Hackler has been teaching at Southern Methodist University for nine years, joining the Meadows School faculty in fall 2011, where he serves as head of acting. He also holds a teaching appointment at Yale University, where he earned an MFA in acting. A venerated Shakespearean, Hackler’s grant will allow him to work with the University of Craiova and the National Theatre Marin Sorescu in the city of Craiova. “The Sorescu is also the producing institution for the acclaimed International Shakespeare Festival, which provides unparalleled access to work by many of the world’s most acclaimed interpreters of Shakespeare,” Hackler says. The residency will tentatively begin in the spring of 2021, depending on the continued impact of COVID-19.

Hackler’s project, “Embodying Shakespeare: A 21st Century Approach to Classical Acting,” will include teaching Shakespeare at the university and observing and working with actors at the National Theatre who, Hackler says, are immersed in Russian

Blake Hackler in Dallas Theater Center's production of Twelfth Night, featured with Liz Mikel. Photograph by Karen Almond.

Blake Hackler plays a poor, blind scholar in DTC’s Frankenstein, played by Kim Fischer. Photograph by Karen Almond.

physical theatre methodologies and exposed to a multitude of international Shakespearean performances. As an instructor this will give him “an indispensable laboratory to explore alternate theories about classical actor training outside of the American model.” He notes, “The methods [of teaching Shakespeare] are shifting in the major schools, but in many schools they are still sticking to these ideas that were taught in the 1950s. Students are completely changed since then, and students are coming to class with much more global information. We need to bridge that text work to embodiment.” He also hopes to conduct master classes in Bucharest and other Romanian cities. Hackler’s prowess with Shakespeare has taken him far. “The language can feel very far away and disembodied, and actors think they need a different voice. In my classes they learn about all the rhetorical structures that Shakespeare used.”

Hackler has many interests and is sensationally talented. He was originally accepted to SMU as a voice student, though he went to DePaul University, and ultimately received his BFA in acting from Roosevelt University. He then promptly packed his bags and moved to New York to begin acting before grad school at Yale. He plays the violin (and collects them), writes plays and poetry, and still sings, of course. “One of the gifts of being an artist is that there are real opportunities for people to do more than one thing.” Hackler says. “Yale emphasized the idea of being active creators and being able to do more than one thing.”

With the current pandemic all of Hackler’s classes have been

moved online for the time being, which has proved to be difficult for his students. “Acting is an incredibly physical practice. Acting really happens in the space between two people.”

Dallas Theater Center has not furloughed a single employee since the crisis began. Moriarty attributes much of this to an outstanding board that quickly initiated the Dallas Theater Center Bounce Back Fund and “an incredibly generous community,” Moriarty says, continuing, “Invest in your people and your people will pay off in meaningful ways.” Though not working on staged productions during this time, DTC has been busy. “The production team has been using the time to get technical certification for very specific things. Many staff members are taking Spanish classes, and the costume shop is busy sewing and distributing masks.”

Of the future of theatre Moriarty says, “We have work to be done that we care about and believe in.” He looks forward to observing Hackler’s interpretation of Scrooge develop for DTC’s longstanding December production of the Christmas classic. “Scrooge will be a great role for Blake. His love of theatricality. The truth of that role, which has pain at its center—it is sentimental and bitingly funny—he’ll do fantastic with it.”

Meanwhile, Hackler is proceeding with creation and caution personally, and in his classes he’s preparing his students for the market they are moving into. “Theatre will survive,” he says. “What are we all doing at home? We’re watching content. And who is making that content? Actors!” P