Artist in Residence performs at USD, raises more than $700 for scholarship fund

Artist in Residence Joseph Mahowald performed for students, faculty and the Vermillion community to raise money for the Theatre Scholarship Fund this past Saturday.

Mahowald has been the Artist in Residence at USD for the past two years, and Oct. 17 was his final performance alongside his wife, Elizabeth Mohowald.

Together, they performed pieces from different Broadway musicals, ending with his favorite of all his performances, Les Miserables. His final performance helped raise more than $700 for the program.

Mahowald, who is originally from South Dakota, said he felt happy to be back home teaching at USD.

The artist spent his years here teaching students in both theatre and musical theatre, and offered them career advice from his years on Broadway.

Mahowald, who performed in plays such as “Jekyll & Hyde” and “Les Miserables,” said he was grateful for the opportunity to perform to help raise funds for student scholarships.

“It (the performance) went very, very well,” he said. “I’m looking forward to more opportunities, school is expensive and having just a little help … you can achieve something with it.”

This is the first time the theatre department had a benefit concert for the scholarship fund, but Mahowald was completely on board.

The concert was open to the public and donations were optional.

Raimondo Genna, interim chair and assistant professor at the theatre department, said there were more than 100 audience members in attendance. The evening ended with a social hour for Mahowald and his wife to meet the art patrons and fellow students.

Genna worked with Mahowald and knew all about the different master classes he taught in his time at USD.

“(Maholwald) is an artist in residence so what that means is he comes out and performs and holds master classes,” Genna said. “He’s held three master classes while he was here, the first one was with the music department and it was a master class on singing, the other was with the theatre department and it was called ‘the business of the business’, (which was) about being a professional actor, and the last was on musical theatre acting.”

Genna also worked with Mahowald and Larry Schou, dean of Arts & Sciences, to organize a benefit concert raising funds for student scholarships.

“There would be a benefit of his performing for the department and for the college just because we would be exposed to his talent and be exposed to his expertise, so there is a benefit to that,” Genna said. “But they were also thinking ‘What other ways could we benefit from it?,’ and part of the thinking was that we could raise money for scholarships.”

Senior Walker Iverson, a musical theatre major and a student of Maholwald’s, enjoyed the concert and saw it as another learning experience.

“I thought it was excellent. The whole experience was valuable. I thought it was really special he came here. It was really cool to see a Broadway actor on our stage performing for us,” he said.

The production itself was put on by many people in the USD and Vermillion community. Maholwald said he and his wife had just two full rehearsals with the band.

“The process is a collaborative process,” he said. “A show like this just doesn’t happen, it takes a lot of people to do something like this.