Urinetown the Musical is full of surprises!!

I attended the opening of Urinetown last night.

WOW! 

Urinetown has to be one of the strongest musical theatre productions in the history of the UNI Department of Theatre!  The student performances, the work of the directing team, the design team and crew are all OUTSTANDING!  If you love musical theatre, if you are a supporter of the UNI Department of Theatre, you don’t want to miss this one.

The first act was awesome and well-received by the audience.  And then, because I chose to remain in my seat during intermission, I witnessed a special show.  It began after the houselights had come up and patrons had begun making their ways to the aisles and exits.  A group of about five or six run crew members emerged from backstage right, and made their way down to the grate in the floor downstage right.  They appeared to be inspecting the grate, as if to identify a problem.  As they stood on the four sides of the grate and bent down to touch it, a loud pulsing bass beat enveloped the theatre and they began to move in unison.  To my surprise, as the music progressed, I looked around and noted that more than half of the Urinetown patrons, including President Ben Allen, were participating in the same wild dance!  What was up?

There are times when I feel like I’ve transitioned to somewhere beyond the fringe of mainstream culture.   This was one of those times.  I was clueless.  What could this mass hysteria be about?  So I did what I always do when I need accurate and insightful information:  I asked a student, in this case, a group of students sitting directly behind me.  The answer came clearly and with nonchalance:  “Interlude”.  I also learned that the dance has become a sensation particularly during this season’s basketball games, and that the young man credited with creating it was a former student of mine in Creativity and Performance:  NISG Vice President Ian Goldsmith!  An old adage proven true:  you’re never too old to learn!

Kudos to all those dedicated and hardworking members of the UNI community who are making Urinetown a success!

--Leonard Curtis

Urinetown Updates from Leonard Curtis

Something hot is cooking in the Strayer-Wood Theatre!  On Thursday (technical rehearsal) the warm soup was transferred to a cold kettle.  Now, over the course of the next week, the production ensemble will be firing up to a full boil!

Since my last blog entry, Urinetown has come head to head with technical rehearsals, a process that in the Strayer-Wood Theatre is at once exciting, ponderous and exhausting.  The final touches to the working components of the set are being made by students under the direction of Technical Director Ron Koinzan, and Set Designer Mark Parrott.  Props Master Allie Smith is steadily checking things off her extensive to-do list. 

On any given morning this week, you could walk into the Strayer-Wood Theatre and see Pip Gordon, Chris Winneman, Stephanie Wessels, and Tony Lempares tackling the painstaking process of building beautiful light-cues, taking lighting notes, and addressing electrical problems.  If you go there, don’t forget to carry your Maglite!   Don’t forget to button your lip!  I forgot to do both during an intense cue-building session two days ago.  The result:  I tripped into the seating (the theater was necessarily dark for cue-building), exclaimed a few choice words, and then cowered as I realized I had violated the dark, quiet, and preciously short time that lighting designers have to build splendid cues (I’m pretty familiar with Pip’s work) and build them right in order to minimize future notes.  There I saw distinctive patterns, a subtle color palette, and insightful cue transitions.  I can hardly wait to see it!

This Saturday will be a busy one as Mark (Parrott), Alex (Westrum), Allie (Smith), Ron (Koinzan) and crew tie up the loose ends of scenery, paint and props.  On the same day, the costume studio will be having a major work call in preparation for the first dress on Sunday.

These big musicals require special exertions from the performers, especially when music and dance rehearsals are shepherded by artists as inspired and dedicated as Joel (Waggoner), Daniel (Wells), and Kelsey (Waugaman).  There were bunches of thrilling performances evident at Crew View that now have to slow down, as if they were performing in sticky honey, as lighting, sound, and scenery cues are layered into their performance work of the past six weeks.  It’s always like that, then back up to speed by opening!

This production of Urinetown exemplifies one of the most important artistic and pedagogical activities in which the UNI Department of Theatre participates:  working with, learning with, and learning from free-lance theater artists and colleagues from other academic theatre programs.  Urinetown is a collaboration between UNI’s Department of Theatre and  Marshalltown’s Iowa Valley Community College Orpheum Theatre Center.  It is also a collaboration involving a free-lance theater artist from New York City (Joel Waggoner) and a UNI colleague from the Department of Health, Physical Education and Leisure Services (Daniel Wells)  It is an excellent example of how coordinated collaborative efforts within a college theatre environment serve to build learning outcomes for all parties involved.

I haven’t yet had a chance to talk to Jay, Joel, and Daniel about the impact this production is having on the students under their mentorship, but a brief chat today with Pip Gordon and Chris Winneman (Iowa Valley Community College Orpheum Theatre Center) revealed that UNI student collaboration with “Team Lighting” has resulted in the following important student opportunities:

·         Urinetown Assistant to the Lighting Designer Stephanie Wessels has been offered a job as stage manager for the inaugural performance at the Orpheum Theatre Center this summer.  The arena production of The Music Man will be directed by Rod Caspers (Austin, Texas) with musical direction by UNI’s Dr. Rebecca Burkhardt.  With a cast of 26 local performers, it will be the first live theatre performance produced in the newly renovated Orpheum Theatre, an historic RKO Art Moderne movie house from 1949.

·         Michael Brown, lighting designer for our spring 2011 production of On the Verge, will be receiving a recommendation (very favorable) from Pip as he applies for the position of Assistant Lighting Supervisor at the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville.  Michael has been an indispensible contributor to the process of familiarizing our Orpheum Theatre Center guests with the peculiarities of the performance space and its lighting equipment.  In addition to serving as long-time student guru of the latest lighting technologies, Michael has proven himself to be a very gifted lighting designer, judging from his contributions to On the Verge.   Proof of Michael’s talent and expertise as evidenced by his portfolio and the approval from a first class lighting designer with a long history at ATL should place Michael in a strong place to compete for this important appointment.  Good luck, Michael!

·         Thomas White, ETC control console programming-guru has been an indispensible factor in assisting “Team Lighting” with the setup and programming of the light board and moving lights.  I also witnessed him pulling a couple of long stints with trouble-shooting and lighting focus.  Thomas will be following up on some leads on lighting industry work opportunities in the Las Vegas market, thanks to our Orpheum Theatre Center colleague, Pip Gordon.

Certainly, many seeds of opportunity are being sown in the rich earth of Urinetown.  Next week I hope to un-earth a few more...

Associate Professor Leonard Curtis Shares Thoughts on Monday's Urinetown Activities

Although I derive great satisfaction from designing for the department’s main stage season, I also love to experience the process from the safe and relatively objective perspective of a spectator.  This has been the case with our production of Urinetown, directed by Jay Edelnant, designed by Mark Parrott, Carol Colburn, and Pip Gordon, for I have no official role on the production team (Additional members of this stellar team are Music Director Joel Waggoner and Choreographer Daniel Wells.).  This situation has allowed me to float from studio to studio, helping with scenery construction, props, and paint, contributing assistance where needed and taking opportunities to work with our students in a more relaxing way than that of a supervising designer.  Thus, my production experience in this situation more closely resembles that of a student volunteer from Theatrical Arts and Society.  It is one where I get to help out and learn and observe the growth of a production with wonderment and admiration, without the endless decision-making required for the realization of a design in “the big house”, the Strayer-Wood Theatre.  It is very useful to step back occasionally and experience this process from a student view-point. 

Two additional pleasures attend my sideline participation in Urinetown:  working for the first time with Chris Winneman (Associate Lighting Designer), and working again with my good friend Pip Gordon (Lighting Designer).  I first met Pip at the University of Iowa during the fall semester of 1987.  We were both graduate students in Theatre Arts, she with a crusading vision of what extraordinary theatre should and can be (not much has changed there!), me a jaded and skeptical dropout from Florida State University’s MFA program.  From our work together at University Theatres, including a couple of great summers with Eric Forsythe’s Iowa Summer Repertory Theatre, then to her outstanding teaching at Grinnell College and lighting design work at Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, she has returned to Iowa to serve as the Director of the Orpheum Theater Center in Marshalltown, Iowa.  Lucky Marshalltown!  Lucky us!  As I write this, she and Chris are in the South Lobby of the Strayer-Wood Theatre writing cues for Urinetown.  I wish all of our audiences could have watched the show that took place in the Strayer-Wood Theatre on Saturday.  Beginning at 9:00am, Pip, Chris, Master Electrician Tony Lempares, and a large crew of Iowa Valley Community College students (Marshalltown) and UNI students worked persistently and diligently to focus the more than 250 fixtures that make up the Urinetown plot (This is a large hang for the SWT, facilitated in part by the participation of two college programs, the first in a hopefully long ongoing collaboration with Iowa Valley Community College.).  They finished the work on Sunday afternoon.  I watched a little bit of Pip’s initial playing with groups of fixtures producing specific color washes and patterns.  There are some exciting looks and I look forward to seeing her work come together with the work of the other designers and the directors and actors in the next two weeks.

Designer Mark Parrott, his assistant Alex Westrum, a TAS student named Jody and myself began the process of applying the final paint treatment on Friday night so that “Team Lighting” (i.e. Pip and crew) would have a homogenous paint value upon which to begin the focus on Saturday.  Today Ron engineered the moving of the piano from the floor to a platform 10 feet above the stage floor, and Props Master Allison Smith, put some finishing touches on more of the colorful props used in this production.  So far, my experiences have been limited to activities in the scenery studio and onstage, but today I checked out the costume studio and guess what?  Things are humming down there as well!

More to come later…

As Big as Texas: A Full-Length Musical about the Life and Times of Texas Governor Ann Richards

Last fall I was fortunate to receive a PDA to work on a new musical.  PDA stands for Professional Development Assignment and is a competitive granting of support for a faculty member to pursue her or his own creative or research project.  By competitive, I mean that you have to apply and a committee of professors from many disciplines look at the proposals and make selections.  My proposal, “As Big as Texas:  A Full-Length Musical about the Life and Times of Texas Governor Ann Richards,” allowed me and my writing partner, Rebecca Burkhardt from the School of Music, to spend most of the fall in Austin, Texas.  Here’s a little bit of information about Governor Richards:  Ann Richards rose to national prominence at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.  Her best-known quote from this convention is about George H.W. Bush:  “Poor, George.  He can’t help it.  He was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”  This made headlines and Ann Richards was suggested as a future candidate for the first woman president of the US.  When she became governor of Texas in 1991, it seemed as if nothing could stop her, but George W. Bush managed a successful challenge to her bid for reelection in 1995.  Though no longer Texas governor, Richards continued her active political life up until her death from esophageal cancer in 2006.   A political pioneer and openly recovering alcoholic, Governor Ann Richards continues to loom large on the landscape of Texas. 

Ann Richards’s papers are in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History on the University of Texas campus in Austin.  It is a huge collection, with 1500 boxes of public and personal papers, but that’s where we needed to begin.  Our work in the fall was the third time that we had visited Austin to do archival research.  My schedule consisted of getting to library by 9 or 10am (after coffee, of course), working until around noon, having lunch, and then returning to work until the library closed at 5pm.  There was so much information!  We discovered that there were additional materials that had not been catalogued in our previous visits, and though we had hoped to finish up the research portion early on in the fall and begin our writing, that was not possible due to the wealth of information we found about the last stage of her life when she was struggling with cancer. 

How do we keep track of all of this information?  The old-fashioned way.  I typed notes on 3 X 5 note cards, categorized them, and filed them in card file boxes.  There are five boxes, including the bibliography card box.  This seemed the only way to organize our work.  This semester, Dr. Burkhardt and I have been meticulously outlining the piece.  We began by reading through all of the cards and putting aside information that we thought we didn’t need to use, or couldn’t use for some reason.  Then, I began outlining.  My outline process was executed with 11 X 17 inch sketch paper.  We had identified topic areas, which we call buttons, and I drew a large circle in the center of the paper which represented the button.  Possible songs were identified and these were smaller circles surrounding the larger button, or when needed they had their own smaller piece of sketch paper.  Next, we read through the material related to that button, selecting information we wanted to use.  I drew a line sticking out of the button and wrote a word or phrase that would help me remember the information.  The card number was also noted.  Our buttons are related to the different roles Governor Richards assumed in her life.  I am going to write the piece out of order, picking a button and starting off with it to see where it leads.  There is so much information that I feel overwhelmed at times, but I also know that our meticulous approach will pay off and that once I begin, the work will draft itself.

It has been a challenge to devote time to this project while directing and teaching, but I have learned an extremely important lesson:  I can do it!  As I told my playwriting students today, stealing advice about the secret of successful writing from one of Dr. Burkhardt’s former professors, “affix your butt to the chair.”  And that’s what I will keep doing.

Monabelle McKinley Hake

Today we pay our respects to former Costume Designer at the Strayer-Wood Theatre, Monabelle McKinley Hake.  She passed away February 14th, and was laid to rest in Seattle.  The full obituary states that she was 105 years old.... 105!  And, that she spent 14 years working in the Strayer-Wood Theatre Costume Shop. 

We encourage you to share any stories or memories you may have of working with her at UNI, and we wish her family peace at this difficult time.

Making Theatre Magic!

We have one more weekend of performances of On the Verge, and tickets are available by calling the Box Office at 319.273.6387.

We also had a great write up in the WCF Courier.  Read the review here!

We'll leave you with a quick teaser of our work so far on Urinetown - we can't help but make theatre magic!

Yellow stock clothing ready for Urinetown fittings.  Get it - Urinetown?  Yellow?

Students hard at work in the Strayer-Wood this afternoon.

From L to R: Technical Director Ron Koinzan, Scenic Designer Mark Parrott, and Student Technical Assistant Joshua Dirks.

Costume design inspiration board. On the left, examples of silhouette and style, on the right, color swatches.

Rachel Russell selected as Finalist in Regional Theatre Festival

Strayer-Wood Theatre students participated recently in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (KCACTF), Region V, held at Iowa State in Ames, January 17-January 22. The Festival is sponsored by the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington DC.

Rachel Russell (Theatre:Performance major) and her partner Stephanie Wessels (Theatre: Design & Production major), were selected as Regional Finalists in the Irene Ryan Acting Scholarship Competition at the festival.  Participants perform scenes and monologues from plays, advancing through a series of elimination rounds juried by theatre professionals. Russell and Wessels were one of the top 16 teams, out of 296 teams composed of graduate and undergraduate students from the 7-state region.  Participants for the Ryan Scholarship Competition are nominated by guest adjudicators who evaluate region productions, and nominees choose acting partners for their scenes.  In addition to Russell, who was nominated for her performance in the Strayer-Wood Theatre production of She Stoops to Conquer (directed by theatre professor Gwendolyn Schwinke) three other UNI actors were nominated and participated in the competition with their partners.  They were: Diana Garles (Theatre:Performance major) nominated for her performance in She Stoops to Conquer, performing with partner Michael Achenbach (Theatre: Performance); Liz Cook (Theatre & English double major) nominated for her performance in Mother Hicks (directed by theatre professor Gretta Berghammer), also partnered with Michael Achenbach; and Shane Gavin (Theatre), nominated for Mother Hicks, with partner Clay Swanson (Theatre: Performance). Christian Mangrich (a high school student at West High in Waterloo) also received an honorable mention for his performance in Mother Hicks.  

Steve Taft, Part 3!

(Note from the editor: On the Verge opened last night, 2/24, but there was a delay in posting this blog entry.  boo...hisss... sorry...)

Well it’s another cloudy day outside, but if you want to see something to brighten your day and warm you up be sure to check out On the Verge as tonight is OPENING NIGHT!  I attended dress rehearsal last night and was thoroughly engaged witnessing a creative ensemble in every respect. Direction, design, acting, and crew were all rather impressive.  I rarely laugh OUT LOUD but I must admit I was last night. And on those quiet moments, you could hear a pin drop.

I’m in final preparations for a presentation on “Teaching Theatre Online and Embracing Technology” at the Southeastern Theatre Conference (SETC) next week in Atlanta.  It will be nice to experience some warmer weather and see former colleagues and students and form some new alliances as well.

Other than that it’s been a week of grading, class preparation, reading plays and all the fun stuff we do as professors. 

Have a great day.

Steve Taft, Part 2!

My Theatrical Arts & Society students have ONE opportunity to attend an event on campus to gain a whopping TEN extra points.  They must turn in a one-page response to the event as well.  Such opportunities this semester have included or will include Department Design Presentations and UNISTA events such as Betrayal, My First Time and the upcoming Ten-Minute Play Festival.  Our students involved in such productions should know that on-campus students appreciate such work.  It’s another testament that stripped-down, bare-bones theatre can affect people in a positive way.  For instance, one student writes:  “The theatrical performance of My First Time was a very disturbing, exciting, and heartbreaking event.”  The student goes on to say:  “The most touching and powerful scenes in the play were when the atmosphere was serious.  Most people think of their first time as something that was either funny or pleasurable, but we fail to consider the ones in which their first time wasn’t a choice . . . .”  As we move toward an exciting opening night of On the Verge this week and Urinetown in the future, TAS students will begin to see the application of design elements into the respective productions and have the opportunity to provide their impressions in longer, more detailed response papers.

The Inaugural Blog Post of Dr. Steve Taft

I have never ever blogged before, but there is a first time for everything so here it goes. 

I had an interesting Saturday this past weekend serving as a guest Critic in Ensemble Acting at the IHSSA Festival hosted by Iowa State University. What is apparent is that there is a tremendous amount of talent throughout Iowa as I saw twenty scenes filled with many talented actors.  The experience shows that actors can be utterly captivating, incredibly comical, and hear-a-pin-drop heart-wrenching with only one table and up to six chairs to work with.  No lights, sets, props, costumes or sound.  For most, they relied on a good choice of material and their talent.  Dubuque Senior received the All-State Critics Choice for Doubt.  By the way, Waterloo West High School received the All-State Critic’s Choice for Musical Theatre!

I spent much of Sunday re-editing a video for my online TAS class and getting ready for a busy week as I prepare to head to Atlanta next week for the Southeastern Theatre Conference and a presentation on you guessed it, “Embracing Technology and Teaching Theatre Online”.

It’s a busy week for the department as we head towards the opening of On the Verge and yet students, faculty, and staff will continue to balance classes, work, and other commitments.  Break-a-leg to all.  It was nice to see the On the Verge pre-show article (and photo) in Sunday’s Waterloo Courier as well.

Well, that’s it for now.  Have a great day.

Steve Taft

The Dirty Confessions of a Theatre Nerd

Time warp yourself back to 1995 and you’re at the Strayer-Wood Theatre.  You see a brooding young man with dreadlocks, facial piercings, combat boots up to his knees in shorts and all black, smoking a cigarette and scowling at the world around him.  That was me.  My name is Gabe Wilkinson and I am a proud alum of the University of Northern Iowa’s Theatre Program.  My story and history with the Strayer-Wood Theatre starts in about 1995.  It actually starts a little bit before then, but this is when I officially became a student at UNI.

            I came from a developing theatre program at NIACC under another UNI Theatre graduate by the name of Tim Slaven.  He convinced me that UNI was the place for me so I agreed and headed to Cedar Falls.  But this really isn’t about that; it’s about Strayer-Wood Theatre and my experiences there, and how it helped shape me into the man I am today.  It's about why I’ve decided to give back to the program, and the people, the professors, educators and the school that gave me so much.

            Now jump forward a bit to my senior year.  Its 1998, I’m touring with a rock band, bartending at the now defunct Steb’s Amusement.  I’m 26 years old and I’m pretty sure I know it all.  I want to do dangerous theatre -theatre that pushes boundaries, that makes people think and that pushes people’s buttons.  I’ve officially burnt out on academic theatre and I’m ready to do “real” art.  I remember seeing a show in St. Louis with Jay Edelnant that was something I really thought was amazing.  It was a student piece and it was spectacle and horror and challenged the audience, Jay reminded me that every playwright’s first play is about how much they hate their father… he was right again.

            I seem to be drifting away from my core thesis here, something I often did and Cynthia was often reminding me to reel it in.  Tangents... I often tend to meander on tangents. Eric remembers that for my first lighting design piece where I created a crucifix out of found wood in the shop and played a song by Strapping Young Lad at maximum volume in the BMT while everyone sat there with their jaws hanging down.  Or the time I did a performance art piece called “What the F**K I’m Naked” and performed it in the BMT, which Leonard often reminds me of when I see him about on campus.

            Wow do you see what I’m getting at?  The theatre department at UNI gave me so much more than just a solid education.  It gave me so much more than training for my future career.  What it gave is completely immeasurable in monetary amounts.  I’ll be paying my student loans back until about 2095 but I could care less. What I learned from the theatre and what the theatre gave me far exceeds the money I spent on my education.

            First and foremost the theatre gave me training for the future.  Do I work in the field of theatre now?  Not in so many words.  I work at KWWL as a commercial producer, but the theatre got me my job at the station over 10 years ago.  My knowledge of live production and the ability to communicate over a headset gave me a leg up on the competition.  It also helped that I had experience with audio in the theatre and I could handle the stress of live production.  From there I moved on to commercial production, where I write, shoot, edit and direct commercials for local clients-  all skills that I acquired while at Theatre UNI.  I learned to write from Cynthia, I learned to direct from Jay, I learned to compose a scene from Leonard and Eric.  All of these people touched me specifically and taught me ways to do my job today, even down to something as simple as three point lighting for KWWL’s annual Best of Class presentation that I’ve been lighting and shooting now for almost 11 years!

            The theatre also gave me a network of professionals and friends that work throughout the country that I can call on for help or advice.  I developed stronger connections and friendships with staff and students in my three years at UNI than I did in all 13 years of my primary education in small town Iowa.  Perhaps it’s due to the fact that the class sizes are small or that the program is incredibly hands on and student driven., Whatever the case is, I learned to depend on my fellow students and staff and they learned to depend on me.  As a team we achieved some pretty amazing things. (By the way, I still haven’t found that ghost cat that I swear I saw hanging a false proscenium with Leonard, Eric and Cory Shipler for Die Fledermaus).  The biggest thing that I learned about my fellow students and staff though was respect and trust of the professionals you were working with.  Did we butt heads at times? Sure. Did I get along with everyone? Absolutely not. But I respected what they brought to the table and that carries over into my professional life now.

            The last thing, and perhaps the most important thing I gained from my experience at the Strayer-Wood Theatre, are the lasting relationships.  I decided to stay in Cedar Falls and raise my family; I know it’s tough to believe that the dreadlocked Goth kid decided to stick around the small town, but I did and the theatre continues to be a huge part of my life.  Eric and I often get together and have lunch.  I see the staff at community functions, I still try and go to shows and most importantly I’m still around to provide help and to get help when I or they need it.  I recently worked on a documentary about Jay and Gwendolyn’s production of Marat Sade and their work with the textile artist Cat Chow.  Eric helped me build a new deck.  I worked on video installation for the production of The Laramie Project; Eric let me borrow his truck to haul junk to the transfer station.  Sometimes I almost feel like the theatre and the people there are more of a family to me than I ever thought.

            So what’s this all leading up to, you might ask.  It’s a nice story, Gabe, but get to the point.  Well here’s the point.  The scrawny angry kid that just wanted to get the hell out of school in 1998 is now the slightly plump father of two and a professional in the Cedar Valley, and really a large part of that is due to my training and the relationships I developed at the Strayer-Wood Theatre, both professionally and personally.  So what did I decide to do?  I decided to give back.  I currently sit on the Board of Directors for STAGE Inc. as the Vice President.  For those of you not familiar with STAGE Inc. it's a group of individuals from the Cedar Valley from all different walks of life who get together and try and raise awareness for the Strayer-Wood Theatre and at the same time try and raise scholarship money for deserving students that apply for it, but that’s not all!  We also raise funds for strike food and theatre enhancements as well.  We volunteer our time to meet up, come up with creative ways to get you, the public, involved and get you to give back.  I’m giving back by sitting on the board.  The Strayer-Wood Theatre, its students, its staff, and the University of Northern Iowa gave me more than I will ever be able to pay back. So this is my way of giving back to this organization, nay not organization, but this family that taught me so much and gave me so much. 

So what I’d like to do today is to ask you to give back, too.  I would love it if you would make a donation to STAGE Inc., or better yet become a full-fledged member.  Whether you are alumni, parents of alumni or even just a fan of the program, I ask you to give back.  In the world we live in today, more and more money is being pulled from public schools to cut programs in the arts.  If you give to this program you are helping to make sure these students, these future professionals in many different careers have a chance to grow and express themselves - to find out who they are and take their talents to the next level.  I am forever grateful to the Strayer-Wood Theatre, the faculty and the University of Northern Iowa for giving me a chance, for teaching me, for letting me grow, for letting me fall on my face more than once, but for always being there to give me another chance - to let me prove that I wasn’t a dumb ass.  So please take the time to give back today and make a difference in the future of another me.

Sincerely,

Gabe Wilkinson