Jeanine L'Ecuyer

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As a journalist, writing hard-hitting, late-breaking stories is exciting, but with each story one has to make ethical decisions with the information they are given. Jeanine L'Ecuyer, the Director of Communications at Ziemba Waid Public Affairs spoke to about 30 students and faculty about crisis communication and the importance of making critical ethical decisions in such times.

The main problem at hand was the information the media wanted to release, and how much information L'Ecuyer and her PR team thought was necessary to release throughout the conflict.

The conflict L'Ecuyer and many members of the media team dealt with was a two-week prison hostage situation. Two prisoners held two prison guards captive in a guard tower at the Arizona Department of Corrections. The prisoners raped the hostages and hardly fed them for the two weeks they stayed in that tower.

L'Ecuyer knew information like this and more and the conflict arose when reporters wanted to release this type of information and L'Ecuyer felt the information, which was extremely personal had no reason to be released to the public. The prisoners of the jail, actually used the media, in the beginning to communicate to the public and to state their terms. This was one of the first times the media actually played a part in the actual hostage situation. The main members were Andy McKinney, a radio host from KTAR Radio, and Ilona Carson who was a fox anchor in Arizona. The men in the tower would only listen to McKinney and they initially only wanted to talk to Carson.

Jeanine and crew knew that this was an unprecedented act and the way they dealt with the situation, albeit not perfectly, was one of the most important public relations events of that time. One can learn moving forward that although some people look down on Twitter and Facebook for its lack of professionalism from some users, this would have been one of the more important tools in a situation like this one where information was not coming from many places. Twitter would have been able to share information in a quicker and more global manner and hopefully, a more simple way to communicate with the public and hopefully it would have kept more people involved.

In the School of Musical Theatre, the students allow the school's success. Dr. Greg Kunesh, the Interim Director and Regents professor of the School explained it this way.

"It's part of the school's mission statement. The first sentence of our mission statement is to identify, recruit and train talented and bright high school students. So that they are prepared to enter the musical theatre performance career in a highly competitive manner when they graduate. Down and dirty, that's who we are."

Dr. Kunesh and his staff travel around the country, from June to March to look at over 2,000 musical theatre student auditions. After that process, they invite 130-140 high school students to campus to audition in front of the entire staff of the school.

This year, they took twelve students- six men and six women.

Richard Taylor, the Dean of the Weitzenhoffer School of Fine Arts talks about what kinds of students the School of Musical Theatre and the other fine arts schools invite to attend.

"I think you look for a good grade point in high school. You look for someone that has really been involved in a lot of things. You look for a person that has natural talent, that we believe we can make better. And you look for scholars too.... (We look for) people that want to work hard..." Taylor said.

It seems over the past decade the schools have gotten the exact students they are looking for because with each year they have put on bigger and more challenging productions.

"You can only do what your student body is capable of doing... There is no way we could have done 'Rent' ten years ago," Kunesh said.

With the growth in production, the demand for flexibility also becomes apparent. The School of Fine Arts are always collaborative, with this week's U.S. premier of Andrew Lloyd Webber, it has never been more apparent.

"The collaborative nature of between the (three performing arts schools) is really driven by production demands- whether we are doing a dance production, just drama or musical theatre. But I would like to think the collaborative nature of the art form goes beyond just production demands."

But each student works with each school to learn each other's skill to become more skilled in the practice. Especially the Musical Theatre majors.

"All of our musical theatre majors, they have to take x number of years of acting, that's in the drama school. Our student's have to take production support classes like stagecraft and costume construction and stage lighting. Our students also have to take classes from our School of Dance- ballet and modern dance." Dr. Kunesh further elaborated.

The students of the School of Musical Theatre are special, with the tireless effort of the faculty OU has one of the more impressive powerhouse fine arts schools in the nation.

Dean Taylor Talks Andrew Lloyd Webber Show and More

The Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts is one of the strongest Fine Arts colleges in the nation for many reasons, The Dean of the College, Richard Taylor talks about one of many reasons with the the upcoming US premier of the show "The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber."

"The Music of Andrew Lloyd Webber" is primed to be one of the more significant shows The University of Oklahoma has ever performed. From the School of Dance preparing dances to the operas, to the School of Art preparing some of their works to be shown in conjunction with the music played, the Fine Arts College has put together one of the more diverse shows it has ever produced.

The director for the show, Hugh Wooldridge is one of the world's most renown directors. Based in London, Wooldridge is Webber's most trusted director and came to OU by the request of Regent Max Weitzenhoffer to put together a show that will highlight the strengths of the OU students.

Dean Taylor talks a bit more about the significance of having Wooldridge for the show in this clip.

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Although it is great that the University of Oklahoma possesses the ability to put on such an ambitious show with the great directors and designers they will have, this is not an every year occurrence.

That is what makes this show so special.

The Musical Director is Richard Zielinski, the Choral Director of Activities and the Chair of Graduate Choral Studies. He has conducted orchestras and choruses around the world and is the Principle conductor of the Classical Music Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria.

The Production Designer, Kasey Allee Foreman serves as OU's costume designer and Supervisor for the Oklahoma Opera Theatre.

From the students to the staff, this show is destined to be special.