SUMMER 2026 | 15 serving as resident dramaturge at Los Angeles’ Robey Theatre Company, an award-winning African American theater arts organization, and directing the first AfroLatine play at the Latino Theater Company. Living in L.A. has long been a dream of Sicre’s, who came to the city in 2019 with an assistant professor position at Loyola Marymount University. She left after five years and joined University of California–Riverside in 2024, where she now teaches a diverse student body with many Latine students. “They come into class with no idea of the lack of representation of Latines in entertainment, and leave with an understanding of the importance of their voices and how they are going to fight to be heard,” she says. “I watch their final projects, and I am just moved and crying.” Sicre finally feels like she’s found a place where she can be heard as well. “I got an opportunity to teach and research at an institution with kids that look like me, where I have the support of the deans and fellow faculty,” she says. “There’s something really special about that.” Pushing Boundaries with New Productions Meanwhile, the theatre department at Lehigh continues to push the envelope of what’s possible on the stage. During the spring semester, the department successfully staged “Into the Woods,” Stephen Sondheim’s challenging and affecting Broadway reinterpretation of children’s fairy tales. Johnson co-directed the production along with Lyam Gabel, assistant professor of acting and directing, in a unique collaboration with the music department. Two dozen students took a voice class during the fall semester to master Sondheim’s unique vocalizations and harmonies before performing in the musical in the spring, reimagined as a group of children whose backyard adventures lead them into the forest. “It was tremendous,” says Johnson, who notes that engineers and computer scientists were among the actors in the play, and hopes it will inaugurate similarly ambitious musicals in the future. “We set a new bar and met it. Whatever happens next, we’ll be building on more than goodwill.” Among the productions this academic year is “Whither Wander We,” a new ensemble-created performance inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In a fall devising course, Gabel and his students will collaboratively create the production through performance, writing and design. The piece reimagines Shakespeare through a contemporary lens, asking what happens when queer and transgender fairies take up residence in a rural town. It premieres in the spring. Both productions show how Lehigh continues to push boundaries in theater and inspire the next generation of alumni to explore their own creativity, whether or not they choose to pursue a career in theater. L The project is about more than just drawing attention to a neglected art form, she says—it’s about exposing bold new forms of what theater can be. “Latin and Caribbean musicals break the mold of what the American musical is supposed to do,” she says. “They use hip-hop techniques and looping, interweaving storytelling and dance.” To further encourage the emergence of playwrights of color, she helps run the Candela Fellowship, now in its fourth year, which combines practical training and instruction for playwrights, librettists, lyricists, composers and choreopoets of Latin American and Caribbean heritage in musical theater. Amidst her research, Sicre has also worked as a director and dramaturge for productions, including recently “The arts provide something increasingly rare in higher education: spaces where students can learn to navigate ambiguity, collaborate deeply, take risks, make meaning and develop empathy.” —KASHI JOHNSON ’93, PROFESSOR OF ACTING CHRISTINE KRESCHOLLEK Kashi Johnson ’93
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