Try @ TXST

Giselle Kowalski (00:04):
Hi everyone, my name's Giselle and I'm the digital marketing strategist here at Texas State University. You're listening to Try at Texas State, and today I'm talking to the Texas State Opera. The Music Building at Texas State has a cozy, almost library-like feel to it. There's students roaming the halls with their instruments strapped to their backs. Some students hanging in the common area, practicing their scales before class. I can hear faded pianos and whistled tunes as I walk the halls towards the faculty offices.

Giselle Kowalski (00:39):
Choices. Okay. Well to start us off, can you both introduce yourself?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (00:44):
My name's Dr. Marc Reynolds and I'm the director of Opera Theater here at Texas State University.

Mikayla Wallis (00:49):
My name's Mikayla Wallis and I'm a junior here in vocal performance at Texas State.

Giselle Kowalski (00:52):
Can you describe to me, Dr. Reynolds, your daily routine here at the Music Building? I know that you run the opera, but what's a day in the life like for you?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (01:02):
Because usually I'm teaching a class sometime in the morning. We have two opera classes that I teach. We actually have three, but I teach two of them. And then we have rehearsal usually in the evening. In between there we have things like contacting designers and working with the people that are building the set and trying to prep all the other stuff that we gotta do to put on a show.

Giselle Kowalski (01:20):
Cool. And then Mikayla, since you're a student, you have a completely different worldview than Dr. Reynolds. Can you tell me what your day is like?

Mikayla Wallis (01:27):
Yeah, so my day is pretty hectic, especially during opera season. On days where we have opera rehearsals, I'm on campus from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. going classes like Music History, Opera Theater. I'm also in Diction, and this semester we're working on French pronunciation and English. I'm in Vocal Literature, but between all my classes I spend many, many hours in the practice room trying to get everything just right and prepped for lessons and recitals and performances every single day.

Giselle Kowalski (01:57):
There's so many different types of classes that you take. Mm-Hmm. and I was looking online, and there's so many different types of majors that you have. So to someone who doesn't know what the music program here at Texas State has, can you describe to me, Dr. Reynolds, the majors that somebody could get?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (02:11):
If you were to break 'em down? For the most part, there are music majors that are meant to train someone to be a music teacher. So those are music studies type of majors, and you have performance degrees, which are singers, instrumentalists, or otherwise, where their goal is to go out and be the next famous person. And then we also have a Latin studies major that focuses on things like mariachi and salsa, and a host of other things, which is really cool and unique about Texas State. They do an awesome job. They're super competitive. We actually had them in when we did our last opera, they came in and played some stuff in the middle of the opera and it was phenomenal. If I had to break 'em down, those are kind of the main majors. There's also a bachelor of arts degree, which is if you're just wanting to kind of get a general sense of things and have a degree without having to do all the teacher certification or extra performance work, you could go into kind of that track as well.

Giselle Kowalski (03:05):
So, Mikayla, you mentioned a lot of classes, and I know your life is very hectic, but since you've been here, and I know you told me you're a junior and you've been here for a minute, , can you tell me thus far, what is your favorite class that you've taken and why?

Mikayla Wallis (03:19):
So I actually am a transfer student, so this is my second semester at Texas State. And I would say my favorite class is either my voice lessons with Dr. Ramo or Opera Production because those are the classes where I get to apply everything I have learned into something that I'm going to do in my future. So for example, Music History, love it and hate it. It's a love-hate relationship for many music majors, but what I learned there, I'm able to learn more about the composers that I'm performing their songs and take that, apply it to my music and use that in my performances.

Giselle Kowalski (03:56):
Just like I asked Mikayla, what's your favorite class to teach?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (03:59):
So my favorite class to teach is Opera Workshop. That's the class where we introduce our singers and performers to how to perform on stage. It's kind of their acting 101 type of class for singers. It's really how to combine all that they're learning in their voice lesson with how to make it look right on stage and combine together.

Giselle Kowalski (04:21):
Our interns, Sam and Zoe, got to hop in on an Opera Workshop class with Dr. Reynolds a couple of months ago. The opera students had a lot of energy and welcomed them both with open arms, getting them warmed up with vocal exercises and some scenes from their new show, "The Bat".

Dr. Marc Reynolds (04:35):
Let's plug Sam and Zoe into this little bit. So for me, that's really where in my training, where I spend a lot of my time and focus, and I just love that part cause they grow really fast. They get these skills, and you can see their performing transform super fast, which as a teacher is the best thing ever, right, is seeing that progress and growth.

Giselle Kowalski (04:54):
What has been the like most valuable skill that you have garnered from being a part of this program at Texas State?

Mikayla Wallis (05:01):
How to work with others well, because you could be the best singer, you could be the worst singer, you could be the best actor or the worst actor, but if you don't understand how to communicate and work with the people in your scene in the opera you're working with or your teachers and professors, then you really are gonna just hit a roadblock when you get on to the professional world.

Giselle Kowalski (05:26):
That kind of leads me into my next question for both of you. What do you think is the biggest challenge in the opera industry?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (05:33):
Depends on whose perspective you're looking from. So for the singer, the hardest thing is to make a career out of it, to be able to make a living singing gig to gig. From an audience perspective or opera survival perspective, the hardest thing is to rebrand opera in the view of what America looks at opera as being as this stuffy, elitist, inaccessible, boring, long, miserable art form, right, that is historic and irrelevant. So to be able to change that and turn that around and to, no, it's a very relevant, not boring, accessible and enjoyable art form that anyone could show up and enjoy and have a good time at. That I think is the challenge before opera at the moment.

Giselle Kowalski (06:19):
How have you made it relevant for students here at Texas State?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (06:22):
Great question. We've made it relevant or tried to make it relevant in a few different ways. Number one is, for example, with this most recent opera that we did, we set it in South Texas and brought in mariachi. And even though the singing's in German and the dialogue's in English, and we have some Spanish stuff in there as well, it helps them figure out how these stories are universal, how they can be transformed and put into a present day situation. But in in general, what we're trying to do is help our singers tap into the humanity of the different people they're playing so that it doesn't just become about creating this performance, but it becomes about using the rehearsal process as a way to become a better human being. To be more empathetic with the people that you meet on the street because you spent at least a hundred hours in that character or someone like that character trying to explore what it would be like to be them. To me that would be the most potent thing that I think would hopefully make it feel relevant to our performers.

Giselle Kowalski (07:21):
You all just finished up "The Bat". Can you guys tell me a little bit about that? What was that about? What was that like? What was that process like for you Mikayla? What was your role in that?

Mikayla Wallis (07:29):
So I was Rosalinda, the wife to Gabriel Eisenstein. Eisenstein, sorry. The whole story kind of revolves around their relationship. I will say this was a very difficult role for me, vocally, extremely challenging. She's on stage a ton, but from the student side, it starts with learning the music, understanding the German, first of all, learning how to pronounce the German, what do all these words mean? And then you have to do character development because this was set in modern day and the opera was written for a long time ago, 1800s I believe. And there is a little bit of adjusting that has to be done. And so you have to take this character, figure out how they fit into this time period and this location, how they would act, what they would do, how they would dress, how they would do their makeup. You know, very detailed things to connect to this person and then memorize all the music and then continually throughout the process, even up until performance day, figure out and discover more about that character and what makes them them.

Giselle Kowalski (08:28):
So with that performance, what does it take to prepare for something so grand and so complex?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (08:34):
Usually our process starts about two years before we start talking about what we might do. And then as we get closer, more and more details become clear, we involve more people and set design, costumes, props, lighting, and obviously as a director, preparing everything that you see on stage is if it doesn't look good, then it's my fault. Right? And if it looks great, then it's the students’ thing, right? Which is great. That's how it should be. That's kind of the short version. We do a lot of preparation, and it just takes a lot of detail in working with the orchestra, and there's a lot of moving pieces to an opera.

Giselle Kowalski (09:09):
What has been the biggest life lesson that you've learned since being a part of this program here?

Mikayla Wallis (09:14):
You are capable of significantly more than you believe or than you think. And two fabulous or three fabulous examples of that are my professors, Dr. Reynolds, Dr. Ramo, and Dr. Leavitt. When I was given this role of Rosalinda, the three of them, I mean the opera directors talk about who they're gonna cast, but they also involve the voice teachers because the voice teachers work one-on-one with the students, right? So they have significantly more experience of what they're working with technically in their lessons and stuff like that. And I remember after I got this role, I was so overwhelmed, like beyond overwhelmed and my voice teacher and Dr. Ramo, Dr. Reynolds, and Dr. Leavitt all kept saying, “No, you can do this. Like, we wouldn't have given you a role if you could not do it.” By the end of the show, I was just astounded with how much growth I had. It's so wonderful to have phenomenal professors here that see that and challenge you to go beyond that growth that you think you're limited to, which you're not.

Giselle Kowalski (10:15):
Dr. Reynolds, what have students like Mikayla taught you?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (10:18):
Wow. Each student kind of brings their own lessons with them. One is that everyone's human. When we're interacting on stage, when we're in that rehearsal hall, we aren't just trying to learn lessons or have, do education or, you know, get this role done, that we really have to understand that this person is walking into the room and they have a life's worth of experiences that are going to play themselves out on this stage. So to be able to take a role, kind of re-reverse engineer through their lives and not just try to empower them to move forward, but to maybe even heal and process past is something that I find super exciting. Obviously I'm not a therapist, so that's not the, that's not the role I try to see myself in, but there is a lot of change that can happen on both sides when we both interact in a way that's focused on connection and on being authentic and real and just being human. That doesn't come if that's not there.

Giselle Kowalski (11:24):
We need more people like both of you after talking to you folks, . My last question in regards to the opera is what advice would you give to an incoming student and they wanna get into this, what would you tell them?

Dr. Marc Reynolds (11:39):
I would tell them do it. A lot of people are get really scared about it and how to make it work and how to make it happen. And there are good reasons for that. It is very demanding, it's very challenging. It takes a lot of work, but it is also extremely rewarding. And the career paths that are out there, you might not end up in the career path that you thought you were gonna end up at the end of it, but there are a lot of different ways to make this business work, especially now with all the different media outlets and ways to self-produce things and do a host of things. There's ways to make money and to make doing this thing that is your passion to make it work.

Mikayla Wallis (12:16):
Everyone is scared to a degree. So I would give advice that everyone's scared and just do it even if you feel a little dorky because the chances of it really looking dorky to everyone else is very low . So, and if people will be grateful that you're willing to do that, I mean that's, I think that's why I love movies and opera and plays. My favorite ones are when I can see the real human behind the character.

Giselle Kowalski (12:44):
Thank you so much, guys. This was awesome.

Giselle Kowalski (12:52):
A special thanks to both Mikayla and Dr. Reynolds for chatting with me and for letting me into the world of opera humans. They're like regular humans, but a lot cooler. And thank you for listening to this episode of the Try at Texas State Podcast. Make sure to tune in next time to learn more about something else you can try at Texas State. And remember to follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube at TXST. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State University Network represent the views of the hosts and guests not of Texas State University. Again, I'm your host, Giselle Kowalski, and I'll see you next time. Bye y'all.