The Blackburn Department of Music and Theatre is bigger than ever this year, with more students and more professors joining the ranks of the thespians. Among these ranks, a new theatre teacher has come to our school. Meet Prof. Andrew Stroud. Stroud was born in Howard City, MI and went to Illinois College in Jacksonville where he majored in economics and theatre. He used his theater degree to create his own improv company with his wife centered in Springfield, Illinois. Improv is the art of theatre without a script. Some actors have a vague outline of what they want to do, others play games with the audience providing the scenes and characters. He and his wife found that improv was scarce in Springfield and decided to start a troupe, which eventually turned into a full company called Capital City Improv, and is now performing regularly.
Stroud started theater in high school, where he discovered his passion for the stage. Stroud states that he only developed his passion for theater because he didn’t make the baseball team. “I had a terrible day, but it really didn’t matter because there was this huge support and escape I could have with theatre, and it made me really want to keep doing theatre.” His first theatre performance was “The Adventures of Tom Saywer and Huckleberry Finn”, where Stroud played the character of Reverend Sprague. He says, “It was a terrible role for me, but it made me really like theatre, and so I kept doing it. I remember I was very uptight, I didn’t move around very much and I looked like a stiff board.”
He continued in theatre well into college and now teaches theatrical improvisation among other classes here at Blackburn. Stroud says he plans to further his academic career as a theatre teacher here, and eventually wants to go back to school to get his MFA (Master of Fine Arts) and enter into a full-time position in theatre. Stroud teaches theatrical improvisation and movement for the stage, as well as serving as the technical director for the fall production. He will be directing one of the ten-minute plays during the festival as well.