Pictured (from left): Skylar Hodson, Halea Ledezma, Luke McCraw, and Mary Lou Mowery.
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Three NTCC honors scholars involved with the coming honors film on the traveling preachers of early Texas were able to witness Shakespeare’s King Lear in an afternoon production on 13 July. They traveled to the annual Texas Shakespeare Festival in Kilgore. Donors of Honors Northeast such as Mary Lou Mowery made the visit possible. The students drove with Dr. Andrew Yox, whose ticket was also covered--by Jerald Mowery.
Luke McCraw, who had written a recent paper on King Lear, came ready to follow the play. Even though he knew the ending, he was amazed by the impact of a live Shakespearean drama. He had previously called “A Few Good Men,” seen on the spring Honors Day trip to Dallas last January, the “most awesome production” he had ever seen.” Even by Texas-Shakespeare-Festival standards, the play, also witnessed by other friends of NTCC, was an electrifying and passionate rendition of one of Shakespeare’s greatest works.
Skylar Hodson, who played the main role of Minnie Fisher Cunningham in last year’s NTCC film production, also attended, along with an incoming student from Chapel Hill, Halea Ledezma. This summer Hodson, who hopes for a double major in film, plans to work with the Honors Northeast film crew. Ledezma, who is a gifted singer, is being eyed for a special role that was written into the script. McCraw is the 2023 Film Scholar who journeyed to Southern Methodist University in May to develop the research the produced the script on the traveling preachers.
