2021 Award: Academic Excellence and Citizenship Award, Performance Concentration
Major: Theatre Arts (Performance and Tech Concentrations) & PR
Minor: Writing
Hometown: Weippe, ID
Extracurricular activities: Directing and Acting in Theatre Productions, Assistant Costume Design for Cabaret at Spokane Civic Theatre, studying Shakespeare.
More about Erin
Future plans:
I plan on taking a gap year and staying in Spokane for a year and then attending a graduate program in Europe, preferably at the University of Edinburgh. I am interested in directing, research, and intimacy coordination and would love to work professionally in the theatre field while pursuing a PhD, eventually teaching at a Jesuit University.
How has your major contributed to your professional or personal development?
Theatre has made me a more confident, well-spoken person, but it has also helped me improve in a lot of small, tangible ways. I can approach everything I do with creativity, I’ve learned to communicate my ideas with specificity, listen with diligence and collaborate with many different people. I feel like it has changed my way of seeing and opened my eyes to the small and beautiful things in the world that can spark inspiration, and has made me more empathetic to others.
What has been your proudest or most significant accomplishment during your Gonzaga career?
My proudest moment is an ongoing one. Creating art in COVID-19, especially collaborative art, sometimes feels like an incredibly difficult and draining thing. But I’m so proud to be directing a 10-person show called The Wolves that opens at the end of April. I am very proud to have worked so collaboratively with a cast and to bring forth art into the world during this difficult time when we need to be doing it and people need to be watching it. The piece also gives a voice and roles to young women, and it represents a variety of coming of age stories that other young women rarely get to see on stage or on screen.