alum

Rachel Gilbert '11

History, Theatre Performance | Sykesville, Md.

Post-graduation plans:

I will be pursuing a master's degree in performance as public practice at the University of Texas at Austin. This is the study of how theater impacts the community and vice versa. I already have my first assignment, and I'm excited to be working in the company during my first year of graduate studies.

I came to Susquehanna because I was really impressed with how easily I could combine the history and theatre programs into what I wanted to do. Now I work as a student assistant in the history department. In my history methods class my sophomore year, I researched the rocky relationship in the 1920s between a Georgia movie theater and its film distributors. It resulted in a paper I presented at the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society’s 2010 Biennial Convention in San Diego.

At Susquehanna I’ve also acted in three shows, stage-managed a production and directed a one-act Ionesco play. That helped me get summer internships with the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival (BSF) and Baltimore’s CENTERSTAGE's Education and Community Programs Department. For BSF I served as a dramaturg—my ultimate career goal. I helped make sure that vocabulary and pronunciations were historically accurate. For Hamlet I was also responsible for weapons—lots of swords, lots of daggers, lots of death!

Susquehanna has opened up my horizons and made me a more confident individual, not only academically, but also in myself. For example, last year I served as president of Susquehanna’s Hillel, the campus Jewish organization. No matter what your religion, any student can come to Susquehanna because there’s always plenty of support. Our role in Hillel is to be here for Jewish students, to provide them with religious services and cultural events, and to talk to other students about what it means to be Jewish.

I worked closely with Rabbi Kate Palley, the university’s excellent first director of Jewish life. We also now have our own Hillel House, which includes a completely kosher kitchen, and we packed the cafeteria for a Passover Seder meal. Many of the students may not have known what they were getting themselves into, but it was really nice to see all these people not be afraid and to walk away with a really wonderful learning experience.