Spotlight on…

The College of Arts and Behavioral Sciences

Jaden O’Berry

Theatre Major

Jaden O’Berry, who comes to SVSU from Flint, Michigan, has a passion for the stage, her theater courses, and her minors in literature and creative writing. And during her time at SVSU, her studies and successes as a writer have allowed her to assume multiple (pun warning!) roles director, lighting designer, dramaturg, published poet, Roberts Fellow, intern, and scholarship student to name just a few.

For O’Berry, SVSU has been a true place of opportunity. She credits attendance at a Michigan Educational Theatre Association (META) festival for high school students as leading to her decision to enroll here. While at the festival, O’Berry encountered Peggy Mead-Finizio, an SVSU assistant professor of theater, who told her about all the campus offered O’Berry thereafter applied for and won an SVSU theatre scholarship, and she began taking classes in Fall 2018. O’Berry, who is a twin and one of six children, has since worked on 19 shows while an undergraduate; there would’ve been more, had, she laments, the pandemic not struck. Despite COVID-related cancellations, the May 2022 graduate has found ways to stand out. She is the first SVSU student to direct a play (Fall 2021’s Lonely Planet) on SVSU’s main stage. She has been awarded internships at the Midland Center for the Arts and at the Great River Shakespeare Festival, as well asscholarships from LiveDesign International. She has also received a national awardfor lighting designfrom the KennedyCenter Associationfor an unrealized staging of She Kills Monsters by Qui Nyguyen

Beyond her work with staging plays in the Theatre Department, writing has also defined O’Berry’s time at SVSU. An avid reader and writer since childhood, O’Berry was often tasked in her classes with writing essays and reviews of performances done on campus, as well as synopses of plays she was studying. Her most notable writing accomplishment in the theater program stemmed from her work as a dramaturg: she created a 50-page packet of notes about Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls for the show’s cast and crew. She cites the opportunity to meet and work withJayTorrence,authoroftheplay Roustabout: The Great CircusTrainwreck, asanotherwritingand research-related highlight.

It hasn’t, however, just been about meeting writers or writing about others’ work. O’Berry wasalsofortunateenoughtohaveherownscript foraone-actplaybrought tolifeaspartofSVSU’s 2021 holiday show. O’Berry credits the emotional and writing support she received from MeadFinizio, whom she describes as a mentor, as crucial to this and her other successes. O’Berry says Mead-Finizio “consistently pushes me to keep going and to trust my instincts.”

Faculty in the English Department have also been instrumental to O’Berry’s development. O’Berry praises C. Vince Samarco and Chris Giroux, both professors of English, as nurturing her writing. Both instructors, she maintains, allowed “my creativity to run free, but provided me with ways to go further by pointing out valued and established writing traditions.” During her time as an undergraduate, she thus earned her first publication credits as a poet in Cardinal Sins and Still Life, both of which are SVSU publications.

The connection between her theatre and English classes, O’Berry notes, is that writing is just another way to create and explore other worlds. It is also a means of creating connections with others. Perhaps this focus on connecting explains why she hopes to get more original work published and performed in the future. Perhaps it explains, also, her upcoming studies at Illinois State University, where she plans on pursuing an M.F.A. in lighting with a focus on projection design and directing. That degree, O’Berry dreams, will ultimately land her in Chicago, where she will work to become a resident lighting designer and also establish a non-profit in the South Side That non-profit will, she hopes, provide art therapy to underrepresented youth. As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, she understands the challenges facing minority populations, and she knows how writing scripts, activities, grants will help her to help others.

O’Berry has come a long way from her seven-year-old acting debut when she played Fruit Juicedrinker, a spoof on the name of Luke Skywalker, but undoubtedly, the force of writing will always be with her.