Faculty Spotlight: Q&A with Nathan Crocker, MFA

The USD College of Arts and Sciences (the college) hired 14 new faculty members in three distinctive themes – Borders and Social Justice, Technology and the Human Experience and Climate Change and Environmental Justice – this past fall.

As part of the university's commitment to academic excellence, the college endeavored to assemble a cohort of teacher-scholars who offer a strong contribution to the diversity and excellence of USD through teaching, scholarship, service and collaboration.

This spring semester, the college is featuring each new faculty member with a Q&A series every week. Each spotlight highlights their professional journeys, academic expertise, research and their goals for fostering academic and personal growth within the USD community. 

Learn more about The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program Assistant Professor Nathan Crocker, MFA, his background and his passion for teaching in the Q&A below.

Cluster-Theme: Borders and Social Justice

Q: Please share your name, title, department and the subjects or courses you will be teaching at USD.

A: My name is Nathan Crocker, head of voice and speech, at the Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program. I am overseeing all voice and speech curriculum for the graduate students, but primarily teaching Voice and Speech I & II for first-year graduate students.

Q: What key experiences have shaped your career and where you are today? 

A: I’ve always been fascinated by the mechanics of the human voice and how those mystical mechanical movements can come together to tell a story that can move and transport people. In my graduate acting program, we had a very extensive voice and speech component. I coached my first show at Chautauqua Theatre Company in 2017 with Broadway director Steve Broadnax and realized then how impactful working with actors in voice and speech could be on the storytelling of a show.

Q: What aspects of joining the University of San Diego community are you most excited about?

A: I have really been taken by the sense of community that USD instills in the professors and students here. There is a true feeling of support amongst my colleagues. And the students that we attract are ever-curious and excited to grow and learn, which is exciting. The Old Globe and University of San Diego Shiley Graduate Theatre Program is also really trying to be on the front edge of redefining what it means to be a “classical theatre training program” in the 21st century for students and actors who have very different cultural and artistic influences and expectations than those of students in the 90’s and early 00’s.

Q: How do you envision your course curriculum contributing to the academic and personal growth of USD students?

A: My course curriculum starts with the idea that accent is identity, and everyone has one, and it’s what makes you unique. So how do we learn the roots of our own vocal and speech patterns so that we may gain autonomy and agency over those? Patterns can exist, shift and/or change with the given circumstances of any classical or contemporary dramatic work. Can we question the ideas of vocal “standards” in Shakespeare, and rather approach it with a broad set of skills that give a wide range of expressive territory? I’m interested in exploring how an actor can use physical speech sensations and sounds in dramatic texts to achieve actions and objectives. We will also explore how to develop vocal stamina to perform in any space one might produce theatre or film.

Q: What current research projects are you working on or interested in, and how do they align with your cluster theme? 

A: A lot of my “research” is actually coaching professional theatre, TV and film projects. So I hope to coach on projects that require interesting and specific dialects and explore how those dialects represent identities in storytelling. But I’m also interested in exploring how actors can bring in their own accents and challenge the norms and expectations of which sounds and bodies “belong” in Shakespeare, and what effect that has on an audience’s ability to connect to a story. I am also very interested in researching the spectrum of authenticity and performance in accents and dialects of the African diaspora.

Q: What’s an interesting or unique fact about yourself that others might not know?

A: Before I trained as an actor, I started off as an electrical engineering major, but then quickly realized that it was a lot of math! But I love working with phonetics in speech and accent work, and it kind of allows me to exercise the problem-solving and analytical side of my brain in an artistic field.