Chase Meacham
Spotlight: Community Collaboration
- Class of 2014
- Roots of GU experience: Davis Center (on/offstage), TPST Classes, Mask & Bauble, Nomadic
- What Davis Center experience was most transformative? Susan Lynskey’s “Visible Impact” was probably the most transformative experience for me. It represented a radically new and inclusive way of making theater that I hadn’t before encountered. And it helped me make up my mind to declare a Theater and Performance Studies major.
- What’s the Davis Center’s lasting impact on your current values and work? My time in the TPST program taught me incredibly valuable life lessons. Even though I do not practice theater in my current job, the program taught me time management, the ability to collaborate deeply with all kinds of people, public speaking skills, creative thinking, and a degree of natural improvisation that comes in very handy in working meetings. In my mind this program is one where learning happens in the context of creating. This way of approaching problems and challenges, where you are actively and collaboratively working towards a solution with your peers and advisors, is a great primer for real-world work environments.
- What are some professional highlights? I am currently the first ever manager of international subscriptions at The Washington Post and previously was the founding Director of Marketing & Communications at Mosaic Theater Company of DC. I connect both of these professional experiences to my time in the Davis Center: TPST taught me to be incredibly entrepreneurial. It gave me the confidence and support to know that if I needed to make something happen, that I would be empowered by faculty and staff to do so. Moreover, the TPST support of co-curricular theater groups is incredible. These groups are rich playgrounds for learning many life skills — teamwork, collaboration, budgeting, project management…. so many things. I feel like my time in TPST was both education and work, in a great way. It primed me for so many of the professional challenges I’ve faced since graduation.
- What is your wish for the future of the Davis Center? When I came to Georgetown I never thought of myself as someone who was destined to work in theater after college (I thought I would be pre-med!). I didn’t come to school looking for theatrical training. The TPST program discovered me, in a way, and I was totally swept up. It truly was home for me at Georgetown. I think that’s why “Visible Impact,” for me, was so influential. It was my first TPST show that I was involved in. And I was like “YES. This. This is what I want to be a part of while I’m on this campus.”
As the program continues to grow, I suspect there will be students who come to Georgetown FOR the TPST program. (I’m sure this is already the case!) But I hope, as the program grows and becomes more widely known, that it continues to be a safe and welcoming home for students who wander through its doors, maybe a little lost, unsure of what to expect, or if this is really the place for them.
I’m just so grateful to TPST for being my home for four years, and I hope that many students after me are lucky enough to have this same experience — whether they set out looking for it, or whether, like me, it was something of a wonderful accident.