Pictured (from left): Martín Mata, Emma Mendoza, Sabrina Otero-Svirska, and Dr. Andrew P. Yox
By: Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director
Students involved with the 15th original, feature-length film of NTCC’s Honors Northeast this summer had a unique opportunity on 24 July. They viewed one of the all-time great works of classic theatre—Hamlet, by William Shakespeare. Thanks to a generous donation by Dr. Chuck Hamilton of Daingerfield, the group along with Dr. Andrew Yox, Honors Director, were able to drive south to Kilgore for the Texas Shakespeare Festival performance. Along the way, they were also able to have lunch together at Jack Ryan’s of Kilgore.
The group included students who are taking key roles in the upcoming film. NTCC Winkle Scholar, Emma Mendoza is the film scholar who inspired the upcoming film. She will serve as the director this August during the filming. Sabrina Otero-Svirska will star as the film’s subject, Jovita Idar, an early-twentieth-century Tejana from Laredo. Idar has now been featured on the reverse side of 389 million U.S. quarters—along with George Washington, who is still on the front. Martín Mata, a theatre major, will appear in the film as Nicasio Idar, the visionary Tejano publisher of Laredo who hosted a pioneering conference in 1911 to address Mexican-American rights.
The students had little trouble following the outline of Shakespeare’s grand work. They were most impressed by the ghost scenes of King Hamlet, which appeared to employ some kind of dry ice to produce smoke, the play that Hamlet produces where he leers at his uncle--Claudius, the duel with sabers, and the ongoing dramatic tension that leads to a complete outburst of tragedy at the end. None of the students had seen Hamlet before. Mendoza, a veteran now of three trips, had seen the Twelfth Night, also by Shakespeare, in Kilgore.
Honors Director, Dr. Andrew P. Yox notes, “Jerald and Mary Lou Mowery of Mount Vernon made the first eleven theatre trips possible, and we are so thankful that Dr. Hamilton, who we met at a previous Kilgore performance, has stepped in to continue this invaluable tradition.”
Dr. Hamilton is a former NTCC professor who now teaches online courses both for Southern New Hampshire University, and Texas A&M University. He has a long list of publications and still presents his scholarly works at conferences around the nation, on topics ranging from rural sustainability to the decline of church attendance among younger cohorts. He writes that for many years he has “admired the work of NTCC honors” with its films, poetry contests and scholarship.
