Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University
Rebecca Morrice Interview
March 6, 2025
Bailey Library, Slippery Rock University, Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania
Interviewed by Alana Colvin
Transcribed by Alana Colvin
Proofread and edited by Judy Silva
Reviewed and approved by Rebecca Morrice
AC: All right, so today is Thursday, March 6th, 2025, about 2:30pm, and I'm interviewing
Rebecca Morrice for the Rock Voices project.
RM: Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me here.
AC: So, yeah, if you could just tell us your name, date of birth, where you're from.
RM: Sure. Rebecca Morrice. I was born in 1971, so that dates me, right [laughs]? I'm originally
from Illinois; I grew up in the Chicago area. My education: I went to the University of Illinois in
Chicago for my bachelor's degree, where I started out in architecture, but finished in art history.
And then I went to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I got my Master of Fine
Arts in Costume Design, and that was in 1996; ‘93 was my B.A. and ‘96 was my MFA.
AC: Okay. How about here at Slippery Rock now, what's your affiliation? When did you get
hired?
RM: Yeah, so I started here in 1997. I was brought in, first as an instructor, in the Theater
Department. And the connection–I have a little bit of a connection here. A friend who I had gone
to grad school with had been hired here, and he reached out to me when I was living out in
Baltimore, working in professional theater. He reached out to me to say that there was a position
opening up that he thought I was really qualified for and wanted me to try for it. And I'll be
honest with you, at the time, because of my age, I wasn't sure I was going to do it yet. I knew I
wanted to teach, but I thought it was going to be some years down the line still. I thought, you
know, I'll give it a shot, I'll see what this is like. And I wound up really liking what I saw here.
And apparently they must have [laughs] liked me somehow. And, anyway, so 28 years later, here
I am. Did I miss anything?
AC: No, no. You're fine.
RM: Okay.
AC: Prior to getting hired at SRU what other positions have you held in in your field?

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RM: Sure. Well, I came here pretty soon after I got out of graduate school. I was somebody who
went right from undergrad to graduate school. And then I spent a year, out in Baltimore working
for Center Stage, which is a professional theater company out there. I absolutely loved the
company that I was working for. We were doing really interesting work, working with some
really amazing people. I was not a fan of Baltimore, which is not a popular opinion for some
people. But, anyway, I was not a fan of the city itself. I wish I could have picked up that
company and just moved someplace else, but I was doing professional costume work out there. I
was doing some film work as well, and I got the call to apply for this position. So, I was actually
only out of graduate school for a year before I started working here.
Other than that, I had worked while I was in graduate school. Some other professional companies
that I had worked for included the American Players Theater, which is a Tony-nominated,
regional theater company. I had been working there for a couple or few years, and I continued
that work during the summers after I started here as well. So yeah, but I started here pretty quick
afterwards, so I wasn't out in the big wide world for very long.
AC: Can you think of any factors that might have inspired your career choice?
RM: Sure, yeah. So when I was in high school, I really enjoyed – I had been taught to sew. My
mom and my grandmother had taught me – and I had been really interested in making my own
clothing. But I never really considered anything related as a career. Originally, I was going to be
a veterinarian, but that's a whole story for another time.
And then when I was in high school, I had the chance to take an architectural drafting class and
really kind of discovered a love of architecture. So when I started undergrad, I really thought that
my path was that I was going to be an architect. And there were a lot of things that happened in
that first year or so that changed that path. And one of them was working with the Theater
Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and I had the chance to work with a
professional costume designer while I was there. And by the end of my time working with her,
she told me, “You have some choices here. You know, you could do this as a career.”
I think most people don't know that it even is a career path, you know? And I definitely didn't
think of it at the time. And so I was really interested in her telling me that I could consider it as a
career path and that I should either go to graduate school or she would hire me as her assistant,
and I could get on-the-job training, essentially.
And my eventual choice was to go to grad school for it so that I could really get the school part
of what I needed. And that's really how it happened. It was kind of this organic process of
making my way through some majors. When I first left architecture, the natural progression for
me was set design, and part of the reason I went into the Theater Department was because I was
interested in exploring what does architecture look like without some of the rules attached, or
when you're actually using architecture for storytelling purposes.
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There was an interesting sort of–for me–there was a connection between architecture and kind of
the anthropology parts of things that I was interested in. And then eventually I segued off into
costumes because the sewing skills and all that kind of stuff became a natural way for me to go.
So, yeah, just a strange little path.
AC: Yeah, that's really cool.
RM: Yeah, I got here eventually.
AC: So back to your time at SRU, can you tell us what buildings you've worked in or how you've
seen the department change over time?
RM: So when I first started here, I was in Miller [Auditorium]–what I call Miller 1.0 because the
Miller that's there now we call 2.0. But the first iteration of Miller was where the Theatre
Department was really housed after it–I forget the exact year that the Theatre Department split
from Communication and became its own department. But really, that was our home, you know,
our offices were there, our classrooms were there. The theater that we performed in was there.
So everything that we did on campus was in that one building. What happened, and there's a
longer story to all of this, but what eventually happened is that the administration got behind the
idea that the building needed to be renovated and that there needed to be some changes to the
performing arts spaces. And there was a plan in place that eventually wound up getting scrapped
for a whole variety of reasons and had to be, you know, kind of rethought.
But when we left Miller, we had to move out in order for them to renovate the spaces. And it was
originally supposed to be two years that we were out of there. And where we were housed in
those two years was the University Union, what was called the old University Union, and is now
the Student Success Center.
And so we became initially one of the only people that was in that huge building by ourselves.
Eventually other people moved in. But what was supposed to be a two-year time turned into ten.
Because the original plan for the remodeling of the performing arts building and Miller Theater,
kind of fell through. There [were] a lot of things attached to that. And it took them a while to get
the ball rolling on that. And so two years became ten where we were in that temporary space.
And we made do. I think we did a lot of exciting work in there. But what we started to really
miss was we weren't in a real theater space anymore and our students weren't getting the kind of
training that they needed to get in order to, like, learn how to use a fly system and how to use
technology.
We had a makeshift scene shop. But we didn't really have the same kind of setup that we'd had
before.

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So, fast forward now to 2021, the year that we were finally given the keys to the new performing
arts center, which is two buildings now: the building that’s called the Performing Arts Center,
but Miller Theater is inside of it, and it got a big expansion. And then, of course, Stoner, which
used to be referred to as East-West Gym, and it's now called Stoner East and Stoner West – also
known as the Pearl Stoner Instructional Complex. And that's where we're at now. So our offices
and our classrooms are primarily over in Stoner. And then we perform the bigger shows that we
do over at Miller.
The other interesting thing that happened was we used to all be under one roof, so now we have a
scene shop that's in the Performing Arts Center and our costume shop is over in Stoner. So
there's a lot of interesting back and forth that we have to do between the two buildings.
AC: Do you think that limits efficiency or communication?
RM: Well that's interesting. I'm glad you asked that question. I think it actually does limit
communication quite a bit, because us being all underneath one roof meant that even when we
were passing in the hallways, you know, in the past there would be conversations about like how
we were solving certain things or what progress had been made on a certain part of the project.
Those little conversations kind of amounted cumulatively to a lot of communication happening.
So being in two separate buildings does present challenges that way. Our technical director is
primarily over at Miller. And so I only see him when we're in a meeting together, and very rarely
do we cross paths otherwise. That can be challenging. And, you know, we're working through it,
though. Every place has its little quirks.
But yeah, it's working out well. It's nice to be in facilities where the technology is up to date, the
space feels fresh. It's more inviting, I think, to students and to community members. So that's
been exciting.
AC: What were your first impressions when you came to SRU?
RM: That's a great question. Well, when I first came here again, my friend Paul Jennings was the
person who was here who invited me to come out. I had visited him before that, and he had
shown me around campus. One of the things I always liked about Slippery Rock, and part of
what made me decide to come here when the job was offered, was I really liked that the campus
was small enough to be walkable, but big enough to feel like it wasn't like this tiny little campus.
It's kind of like in some way, sort of a perfect size. I also liked how well it was taken care of.
You see that as soon as you compare it to so many other schools. But the care that was taken and
making the campus look inviting was something that, interestingly enough, came up a lot of
times when we were interviewing people for positions here.
One of the first things people would note was the landscaping and [pause] that they thought it
was a beautiful campus. And I didn't think much of that until somebody explained it to me once
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Morrice, Rebecca 5
that you can read a lot into, especially the financial health of an institution by how well its
grounds are kept. Right? And I never thought about that before. I thought it was an interesting
viewpoint that the first thing to go when you're having financial problems is the landscaping,
right? They’re not planting flowers; things don't look as nice. And I thought that was a really
interesting perspective that I hadn't really considered before, that it kind of gives you a snapshot
of the university as a whole.
And the other thing that I really liked is everything felt like a community, like a family. I came
from two [pause] very large institutions where the campuses were very big, sometimes in two
halves. Like in Chicago, it was split by a mile in between the two halves of campus.
There was a lot . . . and from departments too that were really big. So, like the department that I
went to for my master's degree, in total, there were I think 250 students in that department at the
time that I was there. Which, depending on who you are, you know, how you're defining it that's
small or big. For me, it was pretty huge. And what it meant was that a lot of people didn't know
each other and you didn't get to know your faculty.
And when I came here, it was very clear that the students get to know the faculty, that there was
a close working relationship that we had with them. It wasn't just a person who was standing in
the front of the room that you never saw otherwise. It was like everybody was kind of all hands
in. And there was something about that that I really liked. You know, theater is a lot about
problem solving. It's a very unique set of problems that you are working to find ways to solve, all
the way up until your performances. Getting to know the people that you're working with in a
way where there's almost like, I don't know, an unspoken language that kind of happens when
you're in a department that’s small enough that you can figure those things out.
AC: Right.
RM: So that's really one of the things, a couple of things, anyway, that really appealed to me
about this place in particular. Because before that, Pennsylvania was always–I was from Illinois,
we had relatives in New Jersey–Pennsylvania was the state that it took the longest to drive
through [laughs], right? So I didn't have a lot of frame of reference for Pennsylvania. And when I
came here, I just loved–you know, it's a beautiful part of the state. I like where we're positioned,
that we're close enough to the city, but still we get that kind of out in the country kind of feel. So
there was a lot of things.
AC: Have there been any big changes that you've noticed, for better or for worse?
RM: You mean the campus in general?
AC: Yeah, with administration or classrooms or anything.

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RM: It's interesting. There are some things that have stayed remarkably the same. And then there
are things that are totally different, like the residential suites. The residence halls that are here on
campus. Of course, that was just a field when I first got here. A lot has changed in regards to the
student housing part of the campus. And at the same time, Old Main, you know, almost looks
exactly the same. There's certain things that that look very traditional and things that have
changed.
There's a lot that's changed with my department. When I first came here, we averaged usually
between about 40 to 50 majors – 50 would be on the high end of things, but sometimes dipping
down into the low 30s. We're at 120 majors now.
AC: Wow.
RM: So that's been one of the major changes for us, is just how big the growth of the department
has been, especially in the last five years. That's a big part for me as well.
Town is, in so many ways, exactly the same. You know, there's not a lot that's changed about
town. Now, where Sheetz is [laughs] has changed! You know, it's funny when you tell people
that Dunkin Donuts used to be the Sheetz. So there's little things like that, but it's also
remarkably very similar to, like, when I first came here in ‘97.
The people, you know, it's interesting, I could say the same thing about the people. There are
some people that I've been here with the whole time. I find that really remarkable. And then
there's other people where there's just constant shift. I don't know, there's an old saying about
that, “The more things change, the more they stay the same." So there's a really kind of nice
blend, I think, of progress in the things that I think we need to see progress in, but then, also
some traditional things that stick around.
AC: Have there been any specific leaders, like presidents or deans or any unions have really
made an impression on you?
RM: Yeah. That's great. You know APSCUF is the faculty union, and APSCUF has been very
influential for me. You know, when I first came here I was 25 years old, and I had never worked
in a union before. I didn't really know all the ins and outs. And I think that I've had a lot of
education about that while I've been here. And I think that that group and the people in it have
been one of the biggest influences on me since I've been here, in a very positive way. A lot of the
leaders from that group, I still consider some of the most amazing people I think I've known.
Like Jace Condravy, who was the president of APSCUF several years ago, but is now retired.
Ben Shaevitz was another one. Our current, Jason Hilton, the current president of the union, I
think is an amazing human. They're really amazing leaders. And so I think that they provide
really wonderful examples to people. So that's been really influential.

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I would say that Robert Smith was probably one of the presidents that I've experienced that had
the most direct impact on me in my area, but also was just a very charismatic person. You know,
he was a president who not only, in my sense of how I saw things, got a lot done. But he also
was a very personable human. He was very approachable, very easy to talk to, so he was another
person as well.
There's been some other people throughout the years, a number of the colleagues that I have in
the Theatre Department have been huge–have had huge impacts on me. Ken Harris was the chair
of the Theatre Department when I first came here. He went on to be the mayor of Slippery Rock
after he retired.
And I wound up working with my friend Paul Jennings for a few years. Right now, one of my
colleagues is Aaron Galligan-Stierle. He's just another amazing human out in the world, making
the world a better place. But there's been a lot of people like that I can think of. Cindy LaCom is
another person who recently retired who was kind of influential in my way of seeing how the
university functioned. Patrick Burkhart, you know Patrick . . . it's always fun to be in a room
where Patrick Burkhart is speaking. So there's a number of people. Judy Silva has been a
constant for me for all these years and has been really helpful for our department. So there's a lot
of people.
I think one of the people that may not get enough credit in terms of their impact on the university
over the years is Carrie Birckbichler, who is one of the people in charge of finance for the
university, has been really helpful. When we were trying to grow our department by having a
BFA program, she was really instrumental in us being able to structure that process. So there's a
lot of people that I think kind of go unsung in a lot of ways. But, yeah, definitely been a lot of
people that have been influential.
AC: Are you involved in any other campus organizations or committees?
RM: Sure, yeah. Over the years there’s been a number. I think one of the first big committees
that I got involved in was the University Curriculum Committee. That was a really big part of my
education as a faculty member. I started out first as just a committee member, and I eventually
wound up being the chair and co – chair of that committee, with Jason Hilton. And I think if
there's any one committee that I feel like I learned the most about how the university works and
about how curriculum works, it was through that committee. Just seeing the different ways that
people would design curriculum, seeing the different ways that it impacted students, and how
that whole process kind of works was really helpful for me – especially when it came time for
me to create a new program. So that was really helpful.
I've worked on the Middle States Accreditation Committee. That was another really big part of
my time here. I've been on the Professional Development Committee. I've been on countless
search committees. So there's been there's been quite a few.
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We had an internal committee within the department for when we were creating the BFA
program. That was probably one of the most ambitious things that we've done as a department –
was to bring in and create a new degree program. And that's really what led to our growth, right,
is that we were trying to create a professional training program within the Theatre Department.
And that's what led to us being able to have a Concentration in Musical Theater, which has been
really popular.
Being involved in and being a member of APSCUF again, as I mentioned before, has been really
helpful to me.
AC: Could you talk a little bit more about the Middle States Commission? I know that was in the
last few years, the university was reaccredited, right?
RM: Right. So the Middle States Commission, I worked very closely with Mary Hennessy on
that. And it was a several year process of us doing a self-study where we were looking at all the
different criteria and standards that the Middle State Accreditation body holds and making sure
that we were meeting those standards. And it was, like I said, it was a good three years of taking
time to really look at all these different areas of the university. And it engaged – I wish I could
tell you right now how many people ended up being on the committee and a total – but it was
over 100 easily across the university. And it was a really remarkable thing because [pause]
there's no way to learn more about a university than being involved in the self-study. You're
looking at every aspect of what we do here, and [laughs] in the end the great outcome that came
from that was that not only did we gain reaccredited status, but we did not have any follow-up
actions that needed to happen.
AC: Oh, that's great!
RM: I couldn't tell you statistically how often that happens. I will say that it was a remarkable
thing for us to come away with that and not have any follow-ups that needed to happen. And so
I'm particularly proud of that project.
AC: Do you have any other accomplishments that you want to talk about?
RM: Yeah, a number of the things that we've been involved with in the Theatre Department,
they're so fleeting but they're so important – especially for the students that are involved. We
have partnered ever since I've been here with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, on
something called ACTF, which is the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. And
it's an opportunity for college and university theater programs to – I wouldn't say necessarily
compete with each other, but that through different regional bodies we get to see each other's
work. We get to respond to each other's work. We kind of get to see what's going on in all these
other like-minded or, you know, similar theater programs. And our students not only get the
opportunity to get feedback from professionals in the industry, but they also get to go to the
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Morrice, Rebecca 9
annual festival where they do get to compete for scholarships, where they get to see examples of
work because some of the shows travel to the regional festival. And I've had a number of
students over the years that I've been proud to mentor who have made it to the national level and
being able to compete at the Kennedy Center. That's one of the things I think I'm the most proud
of, is that work that I get to do with students one on one, where we really get to know each other,
and then they get to go and show the world what they can do.
And to have students make it to the national level is something that I haven't been able to do as
much of recently because I became chair in . . . I forget what year that was. I've been chair for, I
think it's eight years now? Wow, I should do the math sometime. But I've been chair of the
department for a while, and that does take up quite a bit of my time. So I haven't been able to
involve myself in that as much, and I'm looking forward to trying to reinvest myself with that.
But the time that I get to spend with students on things like Kennedy Center for the American
College Theater Festival, or – we actually right now had a group of students leave with my
colleague in the department to go to the United States Institute of Theater Technology
conference, where it's a group of about eight students who are going with one faculty member to
kind of go and immerse themselves in all the latest theater technology. Those are the things that I
really look forward to the most, because those are the things the students come back years later
and tell you how impactful those moments were.
There's another program that we do where we travel, sometimes just with a group of students,
but sometimes we travel an entire show and we take it over to Edinburgh, Scotland, and we
attend the Fringe Festival there. And the Fringe Festival is the biggest theater festival in the
world, and there's theater from all over the world that that travels to that space. And in Edinburgh
for the entire month of August, every year, the entire city turns into this theater haven. And
literally our students will come back to us now that they’re alumni, and they often talk about
their lives before Scotland and their lives after Scotland, because that trip where we spent two
weeks just kind of immersing ourselves in it is so impactful for them. And Covid kind of got in
the way of that trip and we're trying to get it back up on its feet again. But those kinds of projects
that we're working on where we get to really spend time with students and be impactful, those
are the things I really love being involved in.
AC: Well, can you think of any major events that happened while you were here, like cultural
events, or historical?
RM: I can tell you exactly where I was standing when 9/11 happened. I mean, that's one of those
things, I remember when I was little, people always like “where were you when John F.
Kennedy . . .” you know. And I was in Miller watching when that happened. And so that was
obviously a hugely unfortunate event, but I do very much remember where I was, and it was here
on campus when that happened.
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Some other things . . . I remember the strike really well. There was a, thankfully short, faculty
strike. That had some real impact and was an important event. You always wish you hadn't had
to have gotten there, but the faculty strike was another one that stands out. Of course, I was here
all during Covid, not only as it was happening, but then, of course that full year that we were
teaching completely online. And really that one was big because we had to redefine what we do.
I mean, we still have this obligation and responsibility for our students to still continue their
training. But how do you do that in a live performance art where you can't be live with one
another? And some of the work that I'm proudest of me and my colleagues for creating came out
of that, specifically because we had to reinvent it.
We created a piece called Making Melrose, which was a musical that we commissioned from
connections that one of my colleagues has, and it really was a filmed musical. But the interesting
thing about it beyond that was that it was filmed with the students being their own tech people in
their dorm rooms. We basically put together packages for the students that had all the technology
they needed in it, plus the costume pieces that had been created for them, and then sent those
packages to them. They set up their own filming studios in their dorm rooms, because it was then
in the thick of Covid when you couldn't go anywhere. And they became their own tech person,
cameraman, you know, and so we recorded all that and then made it essentially into a movie –
which is still on YouTube [laughs], by the way. But that was really remarkable because our
students learned so many things about unexpected areas of what we do. And we kind of created
this sort of new art form, I guess, in the midst of all of it. So that was a big event.
I'm trying to think of some of the other things. I mean, there was a time where there was a name
for it, but I can't pull it out of my head right now. But there was a windstorm that came through
here, and it probably was about 12 years ago, that had power shut down to the bulk of downtown
Slippery Rock for a week. And watching people kind of navigate – it was funny because on Main
Street, one side of the street had power, the other side of the street didn't. It was just interesting
seeing how people were solving those problems. But that was another interesting one as well.
AC: How do you think those big events impact the community at Slippery Rock as a whole?
Can you tell?
RM: I think a lot of things, I mean maybe not in the long term – I think it's hard to tell sometimes
because sometimes change happens in such a gradual way. I think one of the things that was
always interesting is just seeing, you know, how people come together to problem solve. When
these problems happened they didn't really keep people from doing the things they needed most
to do, but that they came together to do it. I know that sounds kind of cliché, but I mean, it really
was what happened. I think that's one of the main things I would say about it.
AC: So I'm going to ask you some fun questions, okay?

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RM: Okay, great [laughs]!
AC: Do you have a favorite class to teach and why is it your favorite class?
RM: You know, it's funny, I knew this question was coming, and I can name each one of them as
being a favorite for a completely different reason. So I guess it depends on what we're basing it
on, right? I would say that if I had to pick one, you know, just it kind of surprised me when I
came to this realization too. History of Theater Design and Architecture is an upper division
theater history course that I teach. And so, within our program, just as a very short explanation of
the course, in order to prepare our students for the possibility of graduate school in their futures,
one of the things that we want to make sure that they do is they not only have foundational
theater history, but they also have some kind of advanced theater history. It prepares them better
if they're going to go to graduate school later for theater.
And the class that we invented for the design and technology majors, again, is called History of
Theater Design and Architecture. And it's meant to look at theater history, not by just seeing
what different movements or kinds of theater – that's part of the class – but it's really looking at
how the architecture changed. And this is where I kind of got to go back and delve into my
architecture background. Because I was one of the people who created the course, and I was
given a lot of latitude to create it. And it's looking at theater history through a kind of different
lens than people are used to looking at it. We look at the theater spaces, like we look at what
theater buildings look like and how they've changed over time out of necessity and cultural
changes.
One of the reasons why I would name it as my favorite class is because this is the class that after
students have taken it will come back to me, sometimes years later, and they'll say, “that was the
favorite class I ever took.”
And part of the reason was because they recognized by the end not only that they learned, but
that it allowed them to make connections with so many other classes that they took on campus.
You know, so like a lot of students will tell me “Oh, I remember we learned about this in Ancient
and Medieval World” which is – I'm not even sure if we have that class anymore, but it was a
class a lot of people took because of the Liberal Studies/Rock Studies program. And that class
and this one and this one, and they were making all those kind of connections and relying on that
information that they had from those classes and kind of condensing it or synthesizing it in my
class.
But they felt the most challenged, but also felt the most – their final project, inevitably, is them
recreating something in a reasonably historic way from the past that could still be used in theater
today. And I think some of them wound up making these interesting discoveries about
techniques that they not only didn't know existed before the class started, but, “Oh my gosh, now

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I can do this thing and I'm going to take it into the next time I do a show, I'm going to use this
technique I used.”
You know, I've often told my students that I think some of the best learning opportunities that
you have – I go back to – I'll give you an example of the single biggest learning experience I had
in graduate school, which was when our teacher came in and, without all the details of what the
class was about, basically came in and, we had done a little bit of prep work, a little bit of
homework, getting ready for the class session. And she came in and she said, “Okay, now go do
it,” and walked out of the room and all of us were just so baffled. We were like, “Wait, she's not
going to show us what to do? She's not going to tell us what to do?” And her point was, because
of course she would, it’s not like she disappeared, or anything. But her point was, “You already
have the knowledge to solve this problem and to do the thing. Me holding your hand isn't going
to get you there at this point. It could, but it's not. I mean, yes, I could hold your hand, but if I let
you figure it out, knowing that you already have the building blocks, you're going to remember
this process more. You're going to learn more from it.” And of course, she was 100% right. You
know I think the most I learned from any single project in graduate school was from that
particular one.
And in some ways, my final project in that class does that a little bit. I don't let them completely,
you know, I don't give them the sense that they've got no help if they need it. But I also don't –
I'm not holding their hand the whole time. It is a 300-level history class, so there is an
expectation. But I think that's why I love that class so much, is because I have such close
connection with the students anyway, because most of them who take it have been with me for
two or three years. And then by the time they finish it and come back later and say, “That was
the biggest learning experience I had when I was at school.” That's pretty satisfying as a teacher,
you know? So I would guess I would offer that. But each one of them has a special place in my
heart for its own reason.
AC: Do you have any teaching philosophies that you try to incorporate?
RM: I try really hard to – but we do this in all of our theater classes, so I can't claim to be
original about this – but we really like the idea of creating unique artists in what we do. There's
some programs that I think are trying to cookie cutter a little bit. You know, they're trying to put
their stamp – their university, like their way of doing things – as a stamp on a student.
And one of the things I've loved about my department all these years is that we're really
committed to creating unique artists. And so whenever a student is in one of my classes, I try to
take the time to get to know who they are already so that we can serve that as a platform as
opposed to going in and like “This is how you'll do this thing,” right? I'm teaching a stage
makeup class this semester, and I can just give as an example that there's several different
students who are coming from completely different backgrounds and experiences in what they've
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Morrice, Rebecca 13
done in the past. And we've all kind of found this sort of fun place where they're each now
learning from each other because they're bringing all that collective experience to the table. And
I'm not interested in trying to stamp any of that out of them.
So without going into a lot of detail about it, one of my philosophies is to teach – I have to admit
that I'm probably stealing a little bit of this from Dean Bauer, Dean Dan Bauer – that you teach
the students you have, when you meet them where they're at, essentially. And that's one of the
things that I found really satisfying is that you have students who come in from all different
walks of life, students who come with all different types of experiences, and each one of them is
not behind or ahead of any of them. They're just all on a different path. And as much as I can,
and I've been lucky enough to be able to keep our class sizes small enough that I can still have
that individual connection, I try to use that as much as possible. So that's one of my biggest
philosophies, is teach the student where they're at. And try to lead them to discoveries that they
get to then make on their own.
I like to take them to the place where they reasonably are now going to figure this thing out
themselves. And I feel like that kind of teaching allows them to own it more and makes them
more likely to retain it. So that I try not to always just give them the answer, so to speak. I try to
get them close and then let them figure it out.
AC: Do you have any favorite productions that your department’s put on? I know you guys just
did Junie B. Jones, did that go well?
RM: Yeah, Junie B. Jones was a lot of fun! The colleague of mine who directed that, Dr. KariAnne Innes, she was really good about doing a lot of community outreach. And so we did seven
performances; two of them were completely for school kids who got bussed in. And then the
daycare here on campus, they brought all the little kids, it was so sweet, they brought all the
preschoolers over. And that was really satisfying, you know, having audiences that just were
absolutely in awe. For some of them, I know it was the first live theater performance they’d ever
seen. Those moments are pretty special, so Junie B. was a lot of fun.
Some of the ones that I've really enjoyed…we’re not in a theater space, so I think I can ignore
the superstition, but we did a production of Macbeth a number of years ago. That was really
unusual in that [pause] we try not to make it “your grandmother's Shakespeare,” is what one of
my colleagues has always said, right? We're not going to do it in Shakespearean times and
pumpkin hose and tights. And we're going to try to find a way to modernize it for a modern
audience that they can find something to relate to.
And the production that we did, which was directed by Laura Smiley, another one of my
colleagues in the department, was done in a cyber goth kind of world. And at the time I did not
know what cyber goth was; I had to go and kind of immerse myself and learn about it. And it
was a very, very interesting production that had all kinds of real fun discoveries in terms of
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Morrice, Rebecca 14
design. We did some really interesting special effects for that show. Including this – there was a
wall of – we used dry ice, and it was a wall of dry ice mist that would cascade down and that was
being projected on in order to create the different ghosts that were in the show. And it was so
eerie and so . . . anyway, it was so much better than I ever imagined it was going to be. For a lot
of reasons that show sticks out to me because of the unusual style, and it was some of some of
the best actors that we've, you know, there's always – every year I could say “oh, these were
some of the best actors.” Some of the really, truly talented actors that we've had in the
department were a part of that production. So that one.
I also – going back to what I said earlier, I did have a student who did the makeup design for that
show who wound up going to the Kennedy Center with that makeup design. So again, just a lot
of things that happened with that show that were pretty spectacular.
We've also done a couple, there's a musical – I will self admit that I wasn't always, in my early
years of doing theater, wasn't always a musical fan. I came to it over time. I came to theater more
through The Glass Menagerie, and Tennessee Williams, and Chekhov, you know that kind of
straight play sort of world.
So musicals were a little bit harder for me. But I've come to love a couple of them, one of them
being The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. We've done two productions of that since
I've been here, and it's a group of just the most lovingly misfit kids who are competing in – I
think it's the seventh-grade spelling bee, I forget if it's seventh grade – but they’re supposed to
be, like, seventh graders competing in this spelling bee. And they're just wonderful
representations of just the quirkiness that exists in all of us, you know? And it's just such a fun
musical. So that's one of my favorite shows as well.
We did a production of Cabaret, back in Miller 1.0 before we moved out. That was really
poignant. If you don't know Cabaret, the storyline behind it probably just needs to keep being
told. If I'm going to sum it up, in my understanding in a nutshell, it's “history repeats itself if we
don't keep reminding ourselves of the things that have happened in the past.” And Cabaret does
that in a very sad, kind of meaningful way. But it was a really impactful performance. So there's
so many shows that have a little space in my heart because of some certain aspect. Those are
some of the big ones.
AC: Have you noticed any new trends in performing arts, whether it's in general or just at SRU?
RM: That's interesting. One of the things that we've started doing at SRU lately that isn't
necessarily new in the world, but that we've started to embrace more is the idea of
commissioning new works, like being a new works incubator. Like a space and a faculty that
support the idea of being the people who bring the first version of a show onto its feet. And
we've had a long, a fairly long history of that. But in the last few years, that's ramped up even
more. Like Making Melrose was a piece that we commissioned. Grecian Burns was a musical
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Morrice, Rebecca 15
that we did two years ago that we wound up getting to travel that down to Pittsburgh and perform
it at [pause] one of the big theater companies down there, as part of the Kennedy Center Festival.
So commissioning new works is something that the Theatre Department is kind of renewing our
investment in. There's a lot of fun that comes in that, our students get the first chance to bring
certain characters to life. You know, we're the first people that are really sort of problem solving,
how do we bring this thing to an audience, what are the different aspects? There's a lot to that.
A couple of things that have that have become more important to me in the general theater world
over the years, I am a huge fan of the kind of storytelling that doesn't need words to tell a story,
like the kind of performance that – I mean dance already does this, you know what I mean? So
much dance is about telling – maybe not a literal step-by-step story, right? But bringing emotion,
bringing feeling, doing things without having to speak. I think sometimes we get lost in the
importance of our words, and we forget that sometimes you can say a thousand words and never
have to have opened your mouth once. There's a whole branch of theater that does that. And
sometimes I use this as an example, so many people have seen the movie Up. Have you seen it
too?
AC: I have, yeah.
RM: In that story, there's a whole sequence, a very sad, kind of heartbreaking sequence about the
couple, and what they've gone through in their adult life until they're now these older people.
And that whole sequence is so movingly done without a word ever spoken. There's some theater
that I've seen, especially when we’ve gone to the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, that does that so
well. I mean, I've never openly wept at a performance except for things like this where it just gets
you in a different place. I love that kind of theater. I love the idea of physical theater and not
spoken.
And then the other thing too, on the flip side, is that I love that technology, of course, is
constantly making leaps and bounds. And there's a lot of different people exploring the
intersection of film and live theater, you know, because so many people tend to think of them as
completely separate art forms. But they also have a lot in common.
And there are things out there these days that are trying to kind of find an interesting medium or
a middle between them, sometimes in the way that they're presented, sometimes that they
combine aspects of live performance and films or projections or something like that. But there's
also theater companies that are exploring different ways of presenting theater to people that
they're more involved in. There's a term that we use for it that's called “environmental theater,”
when you can't really tell the difference between where the actors are and where the audience is
sitting. Everybody is there together.

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Morrice, Rebecca 16
In fact, the first iteration of – there's a musical that was recently fairly popular. It was called
Natasha Peter and the Great Comet of 1812. The original production of that was done inside of a
tent where the actors, dressed in their clothes from the 1800s, were sitting at the tables with the
people who were there to see the show, and they were having drinks and having snacks and
everything. And you wouldn't know except for when the show started that these people were
kind of sitting amongst you in some ways.
That kind of theater I find really interesting: the idea of immersive theater where the audience
isn't just sitting in a seat politely, they're actually involved in what's being performed. It's hard to
pull that off, you know, it's hard to find a space that supports that stuff. But that's a trend I'm
really interested in as well.
AC: Has SRU ever done a production like that?
RM: So we've done some things that try to incorporate elements of that. But again, it's hard to
have a space that supports it because so many spaces we have direct access to are more
traditionally arranged theater spaces. You kind of have to have, it's funny in a lot of ways, you
kind of have to have what we had before, which is like just a great big empty room in order to
pull it off. But there's a theater company down at Pittsburgh called Quantum Theater that is
exploring these different kinds of shows where you actually, as an audience, walk to different
places to experience the show. You're not just sitting in a chair for two hours. So, no, I can't say
that we've done it. We've done small elements of that where you're kind of like diminishing the
separation between the audience and the performers, but nothing as full blown as what I'm
talking about.
AC: Do you have any words of wisdom for current Slippery Rock community members or
students?
RM: That's another really good question. Well, I think it's just, I guess words of wisdom would
be just keep listening to each other. I think one of the things that I've had a few experiences
recently, the challenge of navigating the situation was that people just weren't listening to each
other, right? And I think there's so many people here that have so many great ideas, that would
just be something I would say to everybody. In fact, I've said it to a couple of my colleagues
recently, that we just all need to sit down and hear each other out. And I think that would solve a
lot of the problems that we have.
But in terms of words of wisdom, I mean, I just think one of the great things about a university is
that we bring so many people from different walks of life together into the same place, and that
we should try to soak as much of it up as we can from that, not see it as an issue or a problem,
but that we should try to learn from each other in those situations. But, I think I would offer that.
AC: How would you like to be remembered at Slippery Rock?
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Morrice, Rebecca 17
RM: That’s a good one too. [Pause]. I think as far as being remembered, I just, you know, I try
really hard to do my job well. Having come from a theater background, everything is about
problem solving. And a lot of times it's problem solving with not a lot of the resources that you
wish you had. And always since I've been here, it's always about like, what's the best thing for
our students? I think that's the biggest thing I can say about wanting to be remembered. Because
I'm just hoping that most of the students that I've had experience with or have spent time with,
you know, that we've had some moment where, at least at a moment, if not more, where I had
some kind of impact on them.
And I think that having been here now for 28 years, and having had experience of lots of alumni
now, I think one of the greatest things that happens is when a student can relay back to you what
the impact was that you had on them. And I don’t need for it to be big; I'm not somebody who
has, like, a big ego. I'm a behind-the-scenes person, you know, I'm a costume designer. I don't
want to be on stage. But what means the most to me is when I offered a student either a learning
experience or just a moment that we spent together that really impacted them. And that's what
I'm hoping for, you know.
AC: Is there anything else that you want to add?
RM: No. As long as that was clear and you could hear it.
AC: Yeah! Thank you so much for doing this.
RM: Sure, thank you, thank you so much.

Rock Voices: The Oral History Project of Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania