Portrait of an Artist as a Theatre Minor (or, Five Questions for Sarah Shuren)

We wanted to get to know more about our Theatre Minors, so we are asking them each five questions. We asked student Sarah Shuren the questions and here’s what she told us.

What do you love about theatre? I’ve been involved in all sorts of art forms since I was a kid, and theatre pulls together a bunch of different aspects from all these other forms of art and combines them into a separate entity. I love being able to work with all these different art forms at once as well as experiencing the atmosphere around theatre. Every time I went to see a play or performed in one I was always so invested in the experience, it was always so moving and I could always relate to what was going on in some way. Theatre is a way to get a bunch of people together and reach out to others and help change lives, and I love getting to be a part of it

What's one show you would love to be a part of one day?One show I would love to be a part of would be HAIR. It’s my favorite musical, I’ve gone to see it multiple times. The music is one of my favorite part of the show, the costumes are another. The hippie generation is something I’ve always felt very passionate about and I’ve always loved learning about it. Being a part of a musical that was written then to make a point about how the country was going in the height of a war that was so controversial is something I would just love to do.

Sarah Shuren, fourth from left, in her senior play.

What inspired you to become a Theatre Minor?
I had been in my high school’s theatre department for six years, and when I went to college I missed it (in the photo I am in my last play senior year at my high school. My arms are crossed and I'm making a face as my character has seen a ghost and no one believes her). I decided to take a few theatre classes my second semester at Bloomsburg to get myself back into it. After another semester I decided to add theatre on as a minor instead of a second major so I could still graduate on time while still being able to be involved in the whole process.

What is your major? What made you first interested in it? My major is Mass Communications, and I originally picked it because I thought I wanted to be involved with radio. But as I got taking more and more classes I found that I enjoyed video editing more. Getting to go through a whole mess of footage and finding the best shots and arranging them all to tell a story is a lot of fun. It’s also very rewarding to see the final product of spending hours on end editing together a short clip.

If you were a fruit or vegetable, what would you be? If I were a fruit of vegetable I would probably be a strawberry. Strawberries are more of a spring/early summer fruit, and that’s my favorite time of year. It’s just starting to get warm and everything starts turning green, it’s just so beautiful that time of year. Strawberries are also my favorite fruit, so there’s some bias there.

To read about other Theatre Minors.