Performing Arts, with its award-winning Theater Arts productions, is adding two full-time faculty to its already robust Music and Dance programs.
Martie Ramm Engle, professor, and chair of Golden West College’s Department of Performing Arts (Theater Arts, Music and Dance), sits behind her desk just a few hours before 2019 Commencement on May 25, 2019. As chair of the Academic Senate, Ramm was chosen to deliver a speech at the ceremony. Don’t think for a second she doesn’t have her speech down cold.
After all, Ramm has appeared in productions on Broadway, London, and during several tours of the U.S. She also is an award-winning director and choreographer of professional theatrical productions throughout the United States.
Ramm’s office is filled with memorabilia from her 16 years at Golden West College, the first three as a guest artist before she was hired as a full-time faculty member in 2006. Among the memorabilia is the rocking chair she’s sitting in—the one she sat in while directing, several years ago, a GWC production of “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.” It’s covered in loving words of support and gratitude from the cast and production crew.
Year after year, Ramm and the 400-plus GWC students enrolled in Performing Arts have rocked audiences in stage dramas and comedies, musicals, concerts, and recitals. This past academic year concluded with a stirring version of “The Pirates of Penzance,” the comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. And the coming academic year (2019-20) promises to deliver more award-winning productions. “We have a very good department, and we offer quality productions to our community at a very reasonable price ($16 for plays, $25 for musicals),” Ramm says. GWC boasts a recently refurbished, 326-seat theater (built-in 1972) with a fully functional orchestra pit and state-of-the-art projection equipment, making it the most modern and fully capable performing arts space in the Coast Community College District. And coming this fall are two new full-time faculty members with glittering resumes who are set to enhance GWC’s dance and music programs.
Dancer/choreographer Leslie Bitong will teach modern, contemporary, ballet, strength and stretch and choreography. She also will teach “Viewing Dance” online.
As a professional dancer in both the concert and commercial dance sectors, Bitong has performed repertoire by Mia Michaels, Martha Graham, and George Balanchine, and has appeared in commercials and industrials for Mentos, Admiral’s Club, ASIA and Sepideh.
Dr. Dawn Brooks is coming this fall to run GWC’s Vocal Music program. Brooks graduated from Cal State Long Beach with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Vocal Performance and a DMA in Choral Music from USC.
She served as supervisor of Vocal and Choral Studies at CSU Dominguez Hills, where she conducted the CSUDH Chamber Singers, an auditioned ensemble that performs traditional choral music, including works by Britten, Schumann, Debussy, Vaughan Williams, and Pergolesi.
Bitong and Brooks join other full-time instructors including Tom Amen (Theater Arts), Tim Mueller (Theater Arts/technical theater) and Collette Hausey (Music). GWC puts on four main stage productions per academic year with a mission on staging shows with only the highest-quality production values, including costumes.
Ramm has been directing two musicals per year, while Amen directs both comedies and dramas.
“What we really are proud of, in addition to our students, is the quality of our faculty,” Ramm says. “Everybody brings something special and unique to the table, and our departments are very stable.”
GWC Performing Arts students regularly win awards—along with faculty. The Daily Pilot, for example, named Ramm and Amen man and woman of the year in theater for 2013, for exemplary contributions to local theater.
And the Kennedy Center/American College Theater Festival (ACTF) recognized four students who performed in “The Pirates of Penzance:” Marcus Voyette (Frederic), Daniel Geurkink (Sergeant), Breea Hayes (Mabel) and Sarah Cabrera (Kate). The musical was directed and choreographed by Martie Ramm. Of the four plays and musical productions staged in 2018-19, GWC actors won five awards and collected 11 nominations for the 14th Annual University Arts (UniArts) Awards presented in conjunction with the National Youth Arts Awards.
“Performing Arts in general has been doing quite well on this campus,” Ramm says. “The Theater Arts department has been going quite well, and it has for many years. We have a good, loyal audience.” Theater Arts and Music recently have had similar numbers of majors, between 75 and 100 each. Dance only has a dozen or so, but Ramm sees that picking up considerably with the addition of Bitong to the faculty.
“For many students today, attending our productions is probably the first time they ever see live theater,” she says, adding with a laugh: “Most of them have a difficult time sitting still for two hours without distractions. Our job is to introduce them to the excitement of live theater, dance and music.”
While theater productions run from October to May, music and dance programs begin in December. The Music Department presents both an orchestral concert and a choral music concert in December and in May. The Dance Department stages a studio concert in December and their largest dance concert in May.
GWC’s Theater Arts department also offers certificates for students in Scenic, Lighting and Projection Design and in Costume Design and Wardrobe Techniques.
2019-20 Performing Arts season at
Golden West College Theater Arts
OCTOBER 4-13, 2019
Playing with Fire (After Frankenstein)
NOVEMBER 8-17, 2019
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
MARCH 6-15, 2020
Cyrano
MAY 1-10, 2020
Monty Python’s Spamalot Music
Tuesday • December 3 • 7:30 pm
SYMPHONIC BAND FALL INTO WINTER
Dr. Collette Hausey, Conductor
Wednesday • Dec. 4 • 7:30 pm
WINTER FESTIVAL CHORAL CONCERT
Dr. Dawn Brooks, Director
Tuesday • May 12 • 7:30 pm
SYMPHONIC BAND SPRING INTO SUMMER
Dr. Collette Hausey Conductor
Monday • May 18 • 7:30 pm
SPRING CHORALE CONCERT
Dr. Dawn Brooks, Director Dance
Saturday • May 16 • 7:30 pm
Sunday • May 17 • 2 pm
MIND.BODY.MOVEMENT.
Golden West College Dance Department
