We were lucky to catch up with Jennifer McCray Rincón recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jennifer , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
I have been Artistic Director of Visionbox Studio since our founding in 2010. The company was founded to help provide graduate-level training to actors in Colorado of all ages, levels, and backgrounds, but equally important has been the development of new intermedia performance work of social relevance. Our founding production was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Othello” that we call “The Othello Project” based on contemporary interviews with perpetrators and victims of domestic violence. I have had a long history of working on “Devised Work” in theatre beginning with “Expedition Six” by Bill Pullman and “The Laramie Project” by Moisés Kaufman. Devised work is to theatre what documentary is to film. A particular story or topic is told primarily through interviews with real people and then adapted and incorporated into a live theatre event.
Our most recent, and I think most meaningful, production is a new devised piece called “American Addict”. We began this project in January of 2023 by interviewing addicts in recovery and first performed the piece in a full production for the recent Denver Fringe Festival. While the interviews have formed the bulk of the script, I also wrote four scenes between a mother and son tracing the mother’s story from addiction into recovery. While there are many television and film projects looking at addiction and recovery, I had never seen anything on stage other than William Inge’s play “Come Back, Little Sheba” written in 1949. Alcohol and drug use is epidemic in our society today, perhaps a symptom of what we call the “Age of Anxiety”. Live theatre has the power not only to educate audiences but also help them find healing and hope. This project will be one of our primary productions in our next season of work.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I am 65 year old professional theatre director and acting teacher, and I have been working in professional theatre for 50 years now. I began as a teenager in NYC doing theatre and film acting and went to Yale University to study theatre under Nikos Psacharopoulos. Nikos was the founder of Williamstown Theatre Festival and he pushed me to pursue directing instead of acting. Because of Nikos I was able to work with and meet many leaders of the American theatre profession at the time including Gerald Gutierrez, a graduate of Group 1 of Juilliard founded by John Houseman. Gerry was an extraordinary director and I assisted him for 4 years in between college and graduate school working on productions On and Off Broadway. After those four years I was admitted to the Yale School of Drama Directing Program where I received the highest level of professional theatre training while also meeting artists of the next generation of American Theatre. I studied under the great acting teacher Earle Gister with people like Angela Bassett, Courtney Vance, Paul and Marcus Giamatti, Chris Noth, Patricia Clarkson, and the list goes on. After receiving an MFA in Directing I spent two years touring with the Juilliard Acting Company, directing and assisting on a Shakespeare production.
All of this to say, everything I know and everything I became since then, came out of professional training. Theatre artists may be born, but they are also made, and I would be nowhere without the education I was so privileged to receive. I then spent a year in Bogotá, Colombia on a Fulbright teaching and directing a play and it was there that I met my husband. For the past 32 years I have lived and worked in Denver, Colorado and raised three children. I came to Denver to be the Head of Acting at the only Masters Program in Colorado, the National Theatre Conservatory, and after it shut down I started my own nonprofit training program and new play development company with my longtime colleague actor Bill Pullman. Our studio was founded in the principles of the Group Theatre led by Harold Clurman in the 1930s, the company that brought Stanislavski’s training to the United States, while also developing new plays that focused on “the social and moral preoccupations” of their time. While the development of new work is the most important aspect of theatre today, none of it is possible without high-level professional training and an understanding of what came before us.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
During COVID, as we all know, theatre were shut down as well as rehearsal studios and classrooms. Visionbox converted all of our teaching, rehearsals, and production work to Zoom. I personally taught classes every night for about a year on my computer. We also created and produced three films using remote technologies. Our holiday production has often rotated between “It’s A Wonderful Life” and a musical adaptation of “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” with Broadway singer William Youmans. In 2020 we created a film version of the show in which 5 actors in 5 different locations were filmed with me directing on Zoom. The final edited film was streamed as our Christmas show and sold to the general public and our company supporters. To me this is a great example of the resilience of theatre artists.
Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?
I turned 65 this summer which for some people is considered retirement age, however theatre people do not retire and I have known many extraordinary artists who literally died backstage while acting in a play which for me would be the perfect way to go! I mention my age because at this point in my life my work is not ego-driven, meaning it is not about my name being on a production, but rather what drives me is the love of this art form and a desire to help younger artists get where they want to go. Or quite simply for them to get better at the craft of making theatre. I come from a generation that was very committed to technique and advanced training, most of the artists I grew up with went to graduate schools and received Masters of Fine Arts degrees. The better training programs did not only support the development of new works but focused on the study of older writers and literature from the history of what came before us. And it was by understanding the past that we created our future. I can continue to teach graduate-level technique to artists of all ages, levels, and backgrounds in order to help them create contemporary work as well as future work.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.visionbox.org
- Instagram: @visionboxstudiodenver
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VisionboxStudio/
- Twitter: @VisionboxStudio
- Youtube: @visionboxstudio8427