Five and a Half Feet of Fearsome at McDonald Theatre, Gearan Center for the Performing Arts

HWS Theatre is thrilled to welcome back alum artist-scholar Nicolas Shannon Savard ‘15, ‘16 MAT for a free, one-night-only performance of their solo show, Five and a Half Feet of Fearsome on Tuesday November 4 at 7:30 in McDonald Theatre in the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts on the Hobart and William Smith Colleges campus. 

Part storytelling, part recruitment meeting, part puppet show, all heart and biting wit, Five and a Half Feet of Fearsome is a comedic takedown of anti-LGBTQ politics in 2025. This solo show blends jokes and physical metaphor to poke the holes in the logic underneath the misinformation surrounding trans identity and community from the headlines to the legislature. Much like the transgender community, the show doesn’t fit neatly into one box. The storytelling is at once hilarious and heart-wrenching and has been described by past audience members as “the softest sucker punch,” “so truthful, so deeply resonant,” and “engaging, educational, and emotionally moving.” It’s at once a celebration of community and identity and a battle cry. In a culture where transgender lives are routinely made invisible, this is at once one twenty-something genderqueer person’s story and the story of so many others. CONTENT WARNING: Themes of anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination, themes of sexual harassment, audience interaction.

Nicolas Shannon Savard (they/them) is a queer-trans multidisciplinary artist-scholar, educator, and the host of Gender Euphoria, the Podcast, a series produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons. They earned their PhD in Theatre from The Ohio State University (2021), studying applied theatre and queer and feminist theory, history, and performance practice. They hold a B.A. and M.A.T. from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. As an educator and director, Nicolas Shannon aims to cultivate spaces and pedagogies that prioritize equity, accessibility, and accountability and that draw upon the lived experience and cultural wealth each participant brings into the room. Their pedagogical practice-as-research employs digital humanities methodologies to design accessible, adaptable, collaborative learning experiences for theatre history, writing, and seminar classrooms; the rehearsal studio; and beyond. Their writing and other media on solo and collaborative devised performance, disability aesthetics, and LGBTQ-inclusive pedagogies have been published in the Journal of Consent Based Performance, Theatre Topics, and Texas Theatre Journal.

Five and a Half Feet of Fearsome is sponsored by HWS Theatre, with additional support from the Office of Academic and Faculty Affairs and Alumni Alumnae Relations. The performance will be Tuesday November 4 at 7:30 in McDonald Theatre in the Gearan Center for the Performing Arts. Free parking is available in the Medbery North Visitor Parking Lot, adjacent to the Gearan Center. Admission is free, on a first-come, first-serve basis. Doors will open at 7:15 pm. Latecomers will not be seated. The performance lasts approximately one hour. For more information, contact Professor Chris Woodworth, Theatre Department Chair (cwoodworth@hws.edu).