Assistant Professor of Theatre and Drama Timothy X. Troy, '85, refers to himself as "a theatrical omnivore." The opportunities, he says, to express himself in many different facets of theatre -- directing operas, musicals, and plays, as well as writing -- are what he finds personally exciting and professionally invigorating.
A 1985 Lawrence graduate, Troy rejoined the faculty in 1997 after having previously served as lecturer in the theatre department from 1989-92. In the past year, he has found a menu full of opportunities to satisfy his theatrical cravings, including a summer buffet of Mozart. He pulled off an improbable artistic coup last July, juggling opera rehearsals by day and play rehearsals by night at the McAnich Performing Arts Center in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, where he directed five performances of The Magic Flute for the DuPage Opera Theatre and two weeks later directed a 20-performance run of Amadeus for the Buffalo Theatre Ensemble. In February, he directed Romeo and Juliet for the Milwaukee Shakespeare Company, a production that reunited him with John Maclay, '94, the artistic director of the company, whom Troy had cast in his first Shakespeare production at Lawrence.
On campus, he remounted a production of The Woolgatherer in Cloak Theatre, a play he first directed for the Boulevard Theatre in Milwaukee the previous year. He also directed Term I and Term III department productions of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and Molière's The Learned Ladies, respectively.
This past spring, he returned to one of his favorite, albeit unconventional, directing venues -- the nearby Outagamie County Museum -- for the "Plays on History" series, a community outreach project designed to bring several of the museum's permanent exhibits to life. The production, staged literally among the exhibit's artifacts, features a Lawrence theatrical trifecta of talent, combining Troy's direction of Lawrence students in short, one-act plays written by Fred Gaines, professor emeritus of theatre and drama.
Troy, who serves as community education artist-in-residence for the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, complemented his year-long whirlwind directorial schedule by writing the libretto for Samuel Barber's Excursions, Opus 20, a work premiered by the Wild Space Dance Company in a January concert in Stansbury Theatre. He also finished writing his latest play, Nobility Hill, a fictionalized drama set in Massachusetts during World War II that recounts real stories told by his father.
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