First-year theatre students stepping onto stage for ‘Snapshot’

Northwest Missouri State University's newest theatre students are performing in the 36th annual First-Year Student Showcase and reflecting on stories and memories that lie beyond the moment in time and space of a photograph.

The fall production, "Snapshot," is directed by Joe Kreizinger, a Northwest professor of theatre, with Remington Carter, a senior speech and theatre education major from Dearborn, Missouri, as associate director. Hannah Meyer, a senior speech and theatre education major from Omaha, Nebraska, serves as academic mentor.

Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Oct. 1-3 and 2 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 4, in the Studio Theater at the Ron Houston Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets are $6 and may be purchased by visiting Hometown Ticketing.

Commissioned by the Actors Theatre of Louisville in 2002, "Snapshot" is a thought-provoking, 90-minute comedy-drama consisting of a series of short plays and monologues depicting an assortment of playwrights who encounter and transform "Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1969," a compelling image of the monument by renowned photographer Lee Friedlander.

"I hope that through this series of 13 short plays, audiences will ask questions about history, identity, relationships, loss and the ways we choose to see one another," Krezinger said. "Snapshot uses monuments as a metaphor for all things we find sacred and worthy of commemoration."

Northwest previously staged "Snapshot" for its First-Year Showcase in 2010 as the United States was leaving behind the Great Recession and had inaugurated its first Black president. Kreizinger believes "Snapshot" resonates with audiences today as much as it did then.

"Like today, it was a time when Americans asked questions about what America was, where we had been as a country and where we were headed and, importantly, what America stood for," Kreizinger said. "We remain asking many of those same questions today."

The First-Year Showcase annually introduces Northwest audiences to some of the University's newest stage performers and crew members. It benefits first-year students by providing an opportunity to perform in a challenging mainstage play early in their first semester. Additionally, students receive personalized guidance toward a career in theatre from the day they arrive on campus.

"The First-Year Showcase provides a challenging but nurturing experience for students to develop performance, communication and social skills," Kreizinger said. "Throughout the production, we also utilize an academic mentor whose purpose is to emphasize the importance of academics so that our first-year students are successful not only in their first collegiate play but in their coursework as well."

Carter, who appeared in a Showcase during his first year at Northwest, is splitting scene work with Kreizinger and taking advantage of his first experience in a directorial capacity. He hopes to one day join the faculty of a theater department on a college campus.

"We've all heard the phrase 'a picture is worth a thousand words,'" Carter said. "In every photograph, monument or anything that symbolizes something, there is always the possibility that two people may see the same thing completely differently from each other. I encourage people to come see 'Snapshot' to open their eyes to possibility, to see things from a different perspective, and consider what may be waiting just outside of a frame."

Theatre Northwest's 2026-27 season continues this fall with "The Importance of Being Earnest," Nov. 12-15. The season also includes "A Spring Evening of One-Acts," Feb. 11-13, and "Cry-Baby: The Musical," April 1-4.