With a Celtic harp slung over her shoulder and wearing all black, Sarah Thompson stands in the crosswalk beside HPU’s reflection pond and looks toward the curb.
“Alright everybody,’’ she says emphatically. “Move out!’’
A dozen actors in 18th century costumes sidle across the street like ducks crossing a busy road on a recent Friday night and turn a brick patio into Venice, Italy for another production of “The Servant of Two Masters.’’
Thompson, though, turns toward a spot along the brick wall. Her laptop and phone are by her side.
Thompson is the play’s stage manager. She watches every movement during the two-hour play, taking notes on her laptop and watching the time on her phone before stepping onto the patio for her own bit part – playing the harp.
This is nothing new to her.
During her four years at High Point University, she has become a pro at steering college actors and keeping them on time. She has worked as a stage manager on campus for a dozen productions and assistant stage manager for two.
Now, though, she has moves to a much bigger, glitzier stage.
She has been accepted into the country’s most prestigious drama department: Yale University’s School of Drama, the place where Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Paul Newman first honed their craft.
Now, Thompson will hone her own craft. She is one of four students worldwide accepted into this year’s MFA program for stage management – a move that may lead to guaranteed work, a ticket to Broadway and bigger things.
Thompson’s accomplishment further validates HPU’s Department of Theatre and Dance as a place where students excel and dreams do materialize.
She did it. And really, she didn’t think she could.
“They Saw I Cared’’
Four years ago, Thompson saw HPU as the beginning of an adventure. She was the middle child of three, the girl between two boys.
In the fall of 2011, Thompson came to HPU as a poised teenager who had fallen in love with the stage ever since her first role in first grade: the ringmaster wearing an oversized top hat in “The Circus.’’
She came to HPU as a Presidential Scholar. But she also was different than other theatre students – and not because she was a classically trained harpist or had a black belt in style of martial arts known as taijutsu ninjutsu.
No, HPU theatre professor Matthew Emerson saw something else.
“You could tell by her nerves,’’ he says. “She had a stronger understanding of the moment, and she knew that A, led to B, led to C. Most freshmen come into our program, stand still and think, ‘I hope something happens to me. Tell me what to do.’ Sarah, though, was like, ‘I’ll make sure I need to be doing something.’’’
Emerson hired her as the department’s assistant production manager at the end of her freshmen year and began nurturing her by having her sit with him during production meetings and saying, “See how it goes. Just watch.’’
She did, and she began to excel. As a double major in collaborative theatre and sociology with a minor in psychology, she made Dean’s List every semester and was accepted into seven honor societies.
Meanwhile, through her contacts at HPU, she worked for two straight summers as an assistant stage manager for the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. This summer, she’ll go back to work as the stage manager.
It’ll all be in her hometown of Ellicott City, Maryland.
It was the city where she sang in church, helped her friends produce a condensed version of “Macbeth’’ in her backyard and heard a high school teacher say, “I hope you continue to work in theatre.’’
Her mother was even more optimistic.
“This is where you try out your wings,’’ her mother said when Thompson arrived at HPU.
Thompson has. And she has soared. Emerson encouraged her to apply to Yale because he knew she could make it, telling her, “Apply! What’s it going to hurt?’’
And look what happened.
“When I got here, I didn’t know what I was doing,’’ she says. “But sitting in Matthew’s office, he made it more personal, and that was such a useful way of learning. I knew I couldn’t get that at a state school where they wouldn’t know my name.
“Here, they saw I cared. They cared to begin with. But I cared, too.’’
A Recipe For Reflection And Success
The Friday show ends beside the reflection pond, and the cast from “The Servant With Two Masters’’ exit their brick stage singing.
Two days later, the show ends. Cast members cry and hug one another. Thompson tears up, too. It’s their last show of the semester and the last show of her college career.
Next fall, she’ll be at Yale, and she’ll follow what she did at HPU – getting involved, making relationships, not being shy, being present in the moment.
That is her advice to any HPU student: Make it work for you.
“In college, it’s always the next day, the next day,’’ she says. “But you need to live in the meaning of it all. It calmed my anxiety, and it’s what you learned from that. Slow down. You’ll have more of a memory of it.’’