Prof. Jerry Etienne

Engaging the community and collaborating on artistic projects comes easily to Prof. Jerry Etienne, as was demonstrated by his research activities over the last few years. In 2016, Prof. Etienne collaborated with a local community theatre group to write the Corner Brook Ghost Walk, which was produced as part of the City of Corner Brook’s 60th anniversary celebrations. It was met with overwhelming success and received very positively by local residents and tourists. The show was so popular it was reworked and remounted the following summer by the professional theatre company Theatre Newfoundland Labrador (TNL). That same summer Prof. Etienne performed in Short’s Long Day, TNL’s adaptation of a short story by Corner Brook writer Tom Finn. Performed in community venues and outside in city garden spaces, this free production was in partnership with the City of Corner Brook with a view to bringing theatre to local residents and tourists.

In the fall of 2016 he was director and choreographer of Too Cool for School, a musical performance at Corner Book’s Arts and Culture Centre. At the same time, he played the role of Arthur Kipps in The Woman in Black by Stephen Mallatratt for Hard Ticket Theatre in the same venue. That fall he applied for and received a VP Research Grant to study at Shakespeare and Company’s month-long Shakespeare intensive in Lenox, Mass., in the winter of 2017.

Upon returning to Grenfell in the spring he immediately jumped into the fight direction of Theatre at Grenfell’s 2017 Harlow production, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). Once classes were officially over for the term, he moved out to Cow Head to direct Heroes, a comedy by Tom Stoppard, for TNL’s Gros Morne Theatre Festival summer season.

Over the course of the following year, in addition to directing Ring Round the Moon, Grenfell’s Harlow production (winter 2018), he performed the role of Capulet (and choreographed stage combat) for TNK Youth Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet. In addition, he performed PB Productions and College of the North Atlantic’s short film, Stephenville Theatre Festival and Maxim Mazumdar.

The summer and fall saw Prof. Etienne perform in a gala celebration of the work of Maxim Mazumdar, Maxim’s Dream, during the 40th season of the Stephenville Festival, as well as the writing and adaptation of George Feydeau’s Le Dindon that he titled Turkeys, Turkeys and More Turkeys, performed by his students in the fall season.