See our alumni at the theater this summer

It's fun to note, as you are getting your dose of theater this summer around the Puget Sound, that you are enjoying the work of Edmonds Community College Drama Department alumni (and some current students, too). 

Here are some of the shows (get out and see them!) featuring our alumni:

• Theater Schmeater's Pageant Play features "sexy, adroit" Sara Coates (read the review "'Pageant Play' is a hoot — full of Lone Star beauty-contest lunacy," and see the amazing leopard print pants Sara got to wear for the part, in The Seattle Times). Sara went on to graduate with a bachelor's degree in drama and communications from the University of Washington;
  
• Daniel Wood plays an Evil Genius (His experience at Edmonds CC must have prepared him well?!) in Theater Schmeater's An Inconvenient Squirrel (through Aug. 8);
• Last Leaf Productions (the company providing Shakespeare in the Park in Snohomish County) includes Korynn Lovitt, Andrew Villarama Flores, and Kevin Pugsley;
• Open Circle Theatre's Festival of Shorts features Ian Louis Wight, Nichole Barker, Gordon Coffey, Liam Cole, and Heidi Heimarck;
• Devin Thomas Badoo is working his routine at various comedy clubs; and
• Rebecca Fulford-Foster and Hillary Haynes continue their work backstage for The Phoenix Theatre.

If you're an alum or current student and we missed mentioning your show, leave a comment and let us know! Also, tell us what you have been up to: Share your alum story. 

The Drama Department has announced it's 2010-11 theater season. The first auditions will be Sept. 24-25 for The Member of the Wedding. 

Sign up for fall acting, theatre, technical theatre, and theater production classes now. Fall quarter starts Sept. 20.

A true specialist: stunning photos by our visual communications expert

Perhaps best known at Edmonds Community College for his work on programming for the local public TV channel, when Visual Communications Specialist Dan Dootson takes vacation he heads out with his camera. To capture the fall beauty of the Painted Desert in Southern Utah and the Colorado Plateau, Dootson has hiked 264 miles covering 17,257 feet of ascent and descent and traveled 545 miles by houseboat in temperatures ranging from 25 to 103 degrees. 

Over the past five years he's taken eight photo trips through southern Utah and Arizona. His photos capture the rainbow of colors in the layers of sandstone, mudstone, shale, salts, and limestone that are the result of 280 million years of sedimentation, uplift, and erosion. See Dootson's photos in the exhibit “Mother Earth Father Sky; Images 280 Million Years in the Making” through August 26 in the college art gallery.

Advice for students: Focus!

Find a way to focus your energies towards your goal and don't lose that focus. The work is always hard when you start, but it does get easier as you proceed. — Doug Lidz, Construction Management/Construction Safety 

Doug Lidz worked as a stagehand for 28 years (as a welder/fabricator for The Seattle Opera for example) before deciding to make a career change. "I had pretty much gone as far as I could go in showbiz. I wanted to find something that would help me support my family better," he said. He came to Edmonds Community College for the Construction Management program and is also earning a certificate in Construction Safety. While at the college, he earned a scholarship from the Seattle Vicinity Construction Safety Committee. After earning his degree, he'll look for work on large building projects (maybe the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement, he said) and is also considering pursuing a bachelor's degree at Central Washington University-Lynnwood.