Honoring the Legacy of Bill Reeder

Emily Schneider — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 14:33:25 +0000

Honoring the Legacy of Bill Reeder Emily Schneider Wed, 04/16/2025 - 10:33

I am so very sorry to share the sad news of Bill Reeder's death, surrounded by his family in hospice care after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Bill was the Founding Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA), joining us in 2001 to lead the newly formed college after a distinguished career as an operatic tenor and arts administrator.

Bill Reeder at a university event with his customary smile and style.

He served as Dean until May 2015, and continued to work, as a faculty member (and a term as Director), of the Arts Management program, one of three new academic programs (including Film and Video Studies and Computer Game Design) that were launched under his leadership. These programs have helped shape CVPA into the comprehensive arts college that it is today. He had a transformative physical impact on the arts landscape at Mason as well, securing for CVPA the planned "Academic V" facility, now known as the award-winning Art & Design Building, coordinating philanthropic, state, and university support for the DeLaski Performing Arts Building addition, and the renovation of what became the Music Theater Building.

Carol Merchant Kirby, Bill Reeder (center), and Provost David Wu at the Hylton Performing Arts Center Education and Rehearsal Wing ribbon cutting ceremony in 2019. Photo by Evan Cantwell.

His crowning achievement was the successful realization of a long-held community vision for an arts center serving Manassas and Prince William County. Bill's tenacious, loquacious, always-optimistic advocacy, expressed in countless breakfast meetings in diners, neighborhood gatherings, political forums, and rounds of golf with prospective supporters, led to the creation of the Hylton Performing Arts Center on what is now the Science & Technology Campus. At times it seemed as if Bill was almost single-handedly willing the center into existence — but it was really his tireless behind-the-scenes coordination of university, civic, and volunteer energy that carried the day. He was honored for his accomplishment at the Hylton Center's 5th Anniversary Gala in 2015. At this year's Gala, we will take a moment — or three — to remember Bill's foundational contributions.

Bill will be remembered for his energetic and passionate advocacy for artists of all kinds and at every stage of their journeys. I will always be grateful for his friendship and mentorship over 25 years of personal and professional collaboration.

Bill Reeder and Dean Davis celebrating together at an Arts Management program event before Reeder's retirement from George Mason. Photo by Setarra Kennedy.

Details regarding memorial arrangements will be forthcoming. If you would like to share memories and photographs of your experiences with Bill, please submit them through this form.

Bill's full obituary, provided by his family, can be accessed here.

Topics

College of Visual and Performing Arts

College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA) Arts Management Program

Arts Management News

Dewberry School of Music

Hylton Center

Rick Davis

admin_alpha — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 23:24:01 +0000

Rick Davis admin_alpha Tue, 10/20/2015 - 19:24

Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts, CVPA
Executive Director, Hylton Performing Arts Center, CVPA
Professor, School of Theater, Theater
Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts & Adjunct Faculty, Arts Management, Arts Management
Executive Director, Hylton Performing Arts Center, Hylton Center

Contact Information

Phone: 703-993-8624
Campus: Fairfax
Building: College Hall
Room C200B
Mail Stop: 4C1

Personal Websites

Rick Davis Director

Biography

Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts

Rick joined Mason in 1991 as Artistic Director of Theater of the First Amendment (TFA) and a member of the theater faculty. The company, which presented its final programs in 2012, was nominated for 38 Helen Hayes Awards, winning 12, and originated numerous works that went on to other regional theaters, television, radio, recordings, and publication.

Prior to coming to Mason, Rick was Resident Dramaturg and Associate Artistic Director of Baltimore's Center Stage (1986-91), Associate Director and co-founder of the American Ibsen Theater in Pittsburgh (1983-85), and taught drama at Washington College.

Rick has directed a broad range of professional theater and opera productions (more than 40 to date) in venues such as Center Stage, TFA, the Kennedy Center, American Ibsen Theater, Unseam'd Shakespeare Company, Players Theatre Columbus, Delaware Theatre Company, Lake George Opera (NY), Opera Idaho, Washington, D.C.'s IN Series, and other companies. He also has worked as dramaturg on more than 30 professional productions and has directed dozens of plays, musicals, and operas for college and university programs, including Mason Opera and the Mason Players.

From 2007 to 2011, Rick served as Mason's Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, working primarily on issues of general and liberal education, international programs, and student academic life. The assessment protocol that he co-developed with Mason’s Office of Institutional Research and Reporting was honored with the “Exemplary Program Award” in 2011 by the Association of General and Liberal Studies.

As Executive Director of the Hylton Performing Arts Center since August 2011, Rick Davis oversees a state-of-the-art venue presenting national and international touring artists and serving as home to several resident arts organizations, as well as providing a major resource for Mason students and faculty, community, educational, business, civic, and social events.

In May 2015, Rick was appointed Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. In this capacity, he oversees the college’s seven academic programs, its creative, research, and community arts education arms, and its many performance and exhibition venues. He continues to teach in the School of Theater and for Mason’s Honors College, as well as working on various directing and writing projects on and off campus.

Rick's four books include Calderón de la Barca: Four Great Plays of the Golden Age; his co-translations of Ibsen with Brian Johnston (Ibsen: Four Major Plays, vol. I), which have been performed at leading regional theaters across the country; Ibsen in an Hour (with Brian Johnston); and Writing About Theatre (with Christopher Thaiss). His translation of Calderón’s The Phantom Lady was awarded the Franklin Smith Prize for Comedia Translation in 2019 by the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre.

With composer Kim D. Sherman, he is the librettist for an opera, Love's Comedy, and an oratorio, The Songbird and the Eagle, commissioned and premiered by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. He wrote the libretto for a song cycle based on the life of Father Mychal Judge, “Stations of Mychal,” with composer Kevin Salfen. The work premiered in New York City on September 10 and 11, 2021, as part of the commemorations of the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, and is now available through Centaur Records.

Rick has won the George Mason Teaching Excellence Award (1997) and was named an Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Member of the Year (2006). In 2024 he received the Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp Award for Distinguished Service from his undergraduate alma mater, Lawrence University. He went on to the Yale School of Drama for his MFA and DFA.

Degrees:

DFA, Yale School of Drama, CT
MFA, Yale School of Drama, CT