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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- I turned 50 in the last five years. And so one of the things-
- So young.
- Yeah. One of the things that I think I really, this is totally related to what we've just been talking about, is I think I always would use the word but in between I'm an actor, but I teach. Or I would say I'm a teacher, but I'm still an actor. And I stopped using that word and I say and. I'm a teacher and an actor. I'm an actor and a teacher.
- Oh, that's cool.
- Because I think I finally allowed myself to be that snowflake, unicorn, whatever I am. To be like, oh, no, I really am both of those things. I mean, I really do work at a very high level in the industry, and I work at a very high level in academia. And I think I had to keep both secret from each other sometimes. And I now don't do that. And so I think it's made me a better teacher, and I think it's made me a better actor.
- Hey, Bobcats. Kelly Damphousse here, president of Texas State University. Welcome to "The Current" where we spend time with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of the university, finding out about what's happening here at Texas State. And today, I'm super excited about having my friend Richard Robichaux join us. We're gonna talk about theater, acting, his career. Let's hear the Richard Robichaux story about how you got to Texas State. Your history is just so fascinating.
- I'm from Texas, proud to be from Texas. The last name's Robichaux, so that's my Louisiana side. So, I'm from East Texas.
- [Kelly] Whereabouts?
- I grew up just east of Houston, between Beaumont and Houston.
- [Kelly] Oh okay, yeah.
- In a little town called Channelview. I had a speech impediment as a little kid, and so I had a stutter, I had R's, L's, S's, which if you've ever watched "Wheel of Fortune," those are the biggies.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And it was my fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Fleck, who made me do speech drills during recess while the other kids played. And now I get paid to talk for a living.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So education from very early age had a huge impact on my life. And my mom was a teenager when she had me. She was 16, my dad was 17. Back then she wasn't allowed to finish her high school term because she was showing. So fortunately those things have changed.
- Yeah. Things have changed.
- So we didn't go to the theater a lot, you know what I mean?
- [Kelly] Exactly. Exactly.
- It's not like that.
- I get it.
- Yeah. We didn't have tickets to the Alley or anything. So I found theater and found art like a lot of people do, which is at school in education, which is why I'm still sort of paying back the debt I owe to education.
- Did you see a show and say, I wanna do that? Or did you like just join something spontaneously?
- No, you know, I didn't do a play even. I mean, we did little plays that all the students had to do. You know, "Bingo is my Name-O" and all that kinda stuff, but I really didn't do a play until my freshman year of high school. And then another, there was a teacher there, Ernie Landrum, who cast me in a UIL, which UIL so big in Texas with for the arts.
- Yeah, yeah.
- I mean, really one of the best in the country, if not the best.
- Yeah.
- And I did a play, my first play, Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." And we did a one act and it won, and I won best actor.
- [Kelly] Wow.
- And then it went to region, and I won best actor again. And there was this miracle of, there was a professor, I wish I knew his name, I wish I could find him. I've tried. But it was so long ago. He was from SMU and apparently he was the judge. And he pulled my teacher, Ernie Landrum aside, and said, I think that kid needs to be somewhere special.
- [Kelly] Wow. Wow.
- So again, education, just being like coming in to say, "Hey, we got you. We see you." Amazing.
- I just think there's three people in a row that you mentioned. Two teachers and a professor.
- Yes.
- That's the power of education and educators who are not just doing a job. They're invested in what they're doing because they're investing themselves in young people mostly and changing their lives. I mean, some people sometimes ask me about like, what's the value of higher education? I think for many of us, we feel like we're giving hope and power to someone's dreams. Sometimes teaching them the dream 'cause you don't even know, you probably didn't even know this existed as a, you knew there were movie actors, but how do you get there?
- Right. I mean, absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, growing up, the way I grew up, I grew up in a trailer house most of the time. And it was my single mom, my dad was around, but they were, you know, they divorced before I was one years old. When you want to get out of whatever sort of socioeconomic sphere you are in, there's only a few ways to do it. Travel. There's education, is one of them. And the arts is one of them. Natural ability, so athletics. Or if you become like a Ranger or something like that. You know, there are certain ways to get out of it. Education being not only what you're taught, but the access that you are given. And that's what all those teachers ended up giving me is they said, they had the eye to see that I had something, and then they also had the eye to see where the door was, so I could put my foot in it.
- You didn't know if the door's even there.
- I didn't even know the door-
- And they're showing a door and they're opening it for you.
- Yes, and that's the same thing with our students right now. The door is basically designed so nobody knows where it is in the acting business. Do you know what I mean?
- Yeah, yeah It's very mysterious, right?
- Yes. And so we, those of us in the program, part of our job is yes, we're there to teach them how to do it in the lab, but we're also there to give them access. And education is more than learning theory. It's practical access. And so all those three people I just named gave me access to things I did not know was there that, and then change the course of my life forever.
- So then where do you go?
- Then I went to the High School for Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, which is what, and Ernie Landrum helped me get an audition for there. I got in and I went there. Then through a turn of events, went back to Channelview High School because of a lot of things. It was difficult to get there, and so it's tough. And then got a scholarship to Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. And first generation college student, like somebody else I know.
- Yeah.
- So I was a Bearcat and you're a Lumberjack.
- Yes, exactly.
- So two big rivals.
- Exactly.
- I don't hold that against you though.
- Just the Piney Woods. We're holding the Piney Woods round. And there, that really then just really changed everything. Then I saw my first professional play because at SFA, they took a trip to Houston to see a show at the Alley. That show at the Alley had Annalee Jefferies in it, who was the big actor at the Alley at that time. Beautiful, wonderful, talented actor who I just was on the red carpet with last week at South by Southwest because we're in the same movie.
- Yeah.
- Now is that just incredible?
- Crazy. It's crazy.
- And I got to tell her that story. I mean, that's just a miracle.
- So now you're at Stephen F. Austin.
- [Richard] Right.
- And you're fine arts major, I guess.
- Yes, theater major and-
- Scholarship?
- I did, I had a small scholarship there, but I still worked at the local Chinese food restaurant there. And I was there. They helped me get access to then an internship at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater.
- Okay.
- Now, that was life changing too 'cause I'd never really been outta Texas and then also never had access to the profession in that way. Another example of those people, Dr. Boz, Alan Oster giving me access that I didn't have before. Once I got there, I noticed the big difference between me and the other folks. All the people that were professional actors.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- Is that I had a lot of instinct and I had a lot of personality, and I had zero technique.
- You know, I think people realize, like sometimes you go to something like that, you think you're pretty good.
- Oh, yeah.
- And you get there and you go, holy cow, this is a whole different thing here.
- Yeah, the difference was that they had all been to grad school.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- They had all had, you know, additional training,
- And they had lived off their raw talent already.
- Totally.
- But they learned something different. And grad school was a differentiator.
- Yes, and so that really got me on the idea of, oh, maybe grad school is right for me. And because as great as my teachers were at Stephen F. Austin, one of the things they couldn't give me was access to New York, access to LA. The access they could give me was limited, but boy, they gave me the full privilege of their access. So again, I needed an educational platform where I could get even better training and even better access. And I remember I auditioned for Rutgers University and very famous acting teacher, Bill Esper, who worked with everybody. I mean, just all the famous guys. Robert Duvall and all these really, really people that I really admire. And when I auditioned for him, I said, "Well, what is it that separates Rutgers from some of the other programs in this way?" He said, "Well, me."
- Just wish he had more confidence.
- I know. Exactly.
- Yeah.
- And then he just kind of paused and he said, "Me." He said, "Listen, you can go to some school with some connection to a regional theater. You go to Rutgers. I'm connected to every theater on and off Broadway and every network on television. You decide."
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- What he was really telling me was, it was, is your university connected?
- [Kelly] Yeah, yeah.
- And that was a big lesson. Not, do you have, does everybody, is everybody the smartest? It was like, yes, these are smart people who are also connected. And that really landed on me. And years later, I become friends with him, and he had really just taken me under his wing and he helped me get my first agent again access. And we were having dinner and I told him that story, "Oh, Richard, I never said that."
- I never said that.
- And I said, "Yes, you did." And he goes, "Well, I was right."
- Yeah. I had that experience though, before. So you said something and it changed my, I think about it every day.
- Yes.
- I never said. I didn't make it up.
- Yeah.
- I mean, I've been living this mantra this whole time and it was profound.
- I know.
- You should take credit for that.
- So that was a big thing. To then be at Rutgers, which was founded before the United States was founded. Boy, from that boy from Channelview, I showed up to Rutgers. I felt like I had overalls and straw hanging out in my mouth. I mean, I really was as, I was more country than I knew. Do you know what I mean?
- Yeah. Was the plan then, like were you open or was it like film or TV or theater or just whatever it worked out?
- In my mind, theater was everything. I mean, the dream was to go back to Milwaukee Repertory and be a company member, to do eight plays a year, and do all these different plays. But that really was as big as I could imagine. I loved movies. I loved TV. I could not really see it. I just really couldn't see it. Even when my first few auditions for television, one of the things that I tell the students here today is that what they have to prepare for is what the environment is gonna press upon them. Because they are going to feel that one of these things is not like the other. And that one thing is them. They are gonna feel like they have not been invited to the party. And I tell them, I go, "If you got the audition, you have been invited to the party, party."
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- That's what you have to do. And that took me a long time to realize. For the first few TV auditions, I really did feel like an outsider.
- You know, I think a lot of our students, 'cause so many of them are like you and me, first generation students, they have huge imposter syndrome.
- Totally.
- They don't believe they belong. And they're naive and frankly ignorant of what the options are. And you said something really interesting about your Rutgers professor. There's this, I think there's students sometimes cynically say, "Oh, it's not what you know, it's who you know," but more importantly, it's who knows you. And if someone knows you and they're connected, they can open doors or kind of widen your perspective on things. And that's what happened to you, right?
- Yeah, that's exactly.
- You're thinking Milwaukee and this guy's thinking the world.
- Oh, oh, yeah. He was thinking the world. And also, if you come late to my class, you don't get to decide, oh, well, I'll start being on time when I get to CBS.
- Yeah.
- Because if CBS calls me, because people at CBS know me, and go, "Hey, do you remember Kelly? He's auditioning for us, this, this." That connection also can come and get you.
- [Kelly] Yeah, exactly.
- So that starts today. One of the reasons those professors and those teachers gave me access is because I had had a sort of repeated excellence in the classroom. It was not charity. It didn't feel like charity.
- They didn't take you under their wing and build you out of nothing.
- Absolutely.
- You had something already.
- I think they were saying, "Hey, I see you reaching out and I'm gonna reach out too." And it's something that I have to, you know, work with my own children about when they wanna talk to their teachers and talk to their coaches, I know how nerve wracking it is. And they get nervous. And I have to tell 'em, I say, as a teacher, as a coach, I know I want my kids talking to me. So you reach out to your coach, talk to your coach. They want to be connected to you. And that changes everything.
- So then you graduate, you have your MFA and now what?
- Well, then I got my first agent because of Bill Esper. Bill Esper. I remember about meeting with her. It was a mid-tier agency in New York City. Really a hard agency to get into today. And we were having breakfast. And I said, so thank you for looking into me and this and this, and how did you know you wanted to sign me? And she said, oh, well, you remember when I did that workshop at Rutgers? And I said, oh, yes, yes ma'am. Yes ma'am. She said, well, Bill Esper always whispers one name in my ear. And he said, Richard Robichaux.
- Wow.
- And so I knew you were the one this year.
- Wow.
- I mean, she said, I knew then that I was gonna sign you.
- I think when you have that experience, that kind of, if you're paying attention, it inspires you to do the same thing for the next generation right?
- Oh, man.
- Because it's that whole pay it forward thing. Because you realize like you would never be having breakfast with her without him, right?
- I know, I know.
- And then you wouldn't be with where you are without her.
- I know.
- [Kelly] So, yeah.
- All the time.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- One of the first things I did when I got here was help organize a digital showcase for our graduating seniors, which they had not had before. And this was a way to introduce them for our, in the acting area, to introduce them to New York and LA casting directors to Atlanta, Chicago network executives. And now we're in the third year of doing that. And so we have made it an institutional sense of connection where not only are we gonna teach you how to act, we're gonna teach you how to act for a living. And they're doing it. And that's why there's, thank God they've been so successful. And so that agent got me my first TV audition, which was, I remember it like it was yesterday. And then I got, I booked a theater job almost right outta school. And then my first TV job was for "Spin City," which was a show on ABC with Michael J. Fox. And it was one episode.
- Canadian by the way.
- Canadian.
- Yeah.
- Well, and it was his last episode because of he was sick from Parkinson's. He had just been diagnosed. That was my very first TV job. I mean, I was like, Bo, you're in.
- How old were you?
- I was probably 25.
- [Kelly] Okay.
- Probably 25. And then I booked my first movie. And then I remember being on my first movie set. And I remember, I made a little bit of money by that point because the movie had given me a little money. But by little money, I mean, I bought a really good pair of shoes and I bought a futon. It was the first futon I had not found on the street. Do you know what I mean? It was like, I'm gonna, I'm so fancy, I'm gonna buy a bed.
- Yeah, that's a New York movie now, right?
- Yes. And that was in New York.
- You're kind of, you're centered there eventually.
- I was centered in New York.
- Eventually you move out west.
- Yeah, we did. I went, I did a play in at Shakespeare Santa Cruz. And there I fell in love with Natalie Griffith, who is getting her master's at Texas State in counseling.
- Oh, excellent.
- Currently.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And she was from South Carolina, but we both lived in New York and we went back to New York and it's been 25 years.
- Wow.
- Isn't that incredible? Her grandmother, she's from South Carolina. I told her grandmother, I said, oh yeah, you know, we met in California, but we lived in New York, but we were both from the South. And she let me know, I was not from the South. She said, I am from the South. You're from the country. She said, Texas is country.
- That's funny. You're acting and you're in, so list some of the movies you're in. I know you did a lot of Richard Linklater.
- Yes. Yeah, I did some Linklater movies. I've done five of those so far which is really-
- Are you like his go-to guy? Like he's one of your people-
- Oh man. Another person, like what a miracle of these people who just sort of tap me on the shoulder and go, Hey, I'm gonna give you X.
- Grew up in Huntsville, Texas, by the way.
- He did. Yes, yes, he did. And did a great documentary about the Huntsville prison system.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I did. I was in "Ocean's 8," which a big movie. And then I did some TV shows. You know, when I was in LA I did a show called "Better Off Ted." And then I did "Boyhood," which was nominated for six Academy Awards. That was one of Rick's films. And then I did, I was just doing TV, film, and then I did a great series called "Big Shot" that was with John Stamos and Yvette Nicole Brown. And that David E. Kelly produced that. And then just the movie I just had that was at South by, it's called "Family Movie," Kevin Bacon directed that. And then I'm in "Paradise" right now with Sterling K. Brown.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So it just kind of, the work started to beget work, like they always say. You know, your teachers tell you that and your coaches tell you that and your mentors tell you that, and it turns out it's true.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- It's that if you wanna work, work.
- When I was doing, so you do creative activities, I do research back in the day. And like, I never turned down a collaborative opportunity. Someone said, Hey, I'm working on something. I just said, oh yeah, I'll do. It's not really my area, but I'll learn about it. And all my papers are all co-authored. But I found that, you know, I learned something new by working with this person. And then that led to something else. And so I just was always kind of leaping around a little bit. But it just seemed, in some ways, it seems kind of like scatterbrained, but it's also iterative. Like it's always building on itself and what you learned here, you can apply it to the next thing.
- Absolutely.
- It sounds like the same thing happened with you.
- Yes, yes, yes. You know what I mean? Would just say, well, what if I said yes? I mean, really, what if I said yes?
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And that's been, that saved my life over and over again.
- It's interesting sometimes listening to interviews of actors who were offered a part and they said, ah, I'm not sure. And I go, man, that could have been me. I could have been in a "Godfather," right?
- Yes.
- Yeah, and so.
- Yeah, there've been times I've had to turn down roles, which is always frustrating simply 'cause of scheduling. And I always wanna go into the movie theater and like stand up and say, Hey, just so you know, that was mine. That was mine originally. That's frustrating. Over and over again my agents know that I'm a yes man.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- They know that I'm a player, that I'm game. That I'm like, put me in, Coach.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- They'll call me and say, hi, you know what? This might be this or this might be this. Linklater said this to me before. He said, "Hey, I've got a little something for you in this movie but it's only one scene. Is that okay?" Yes.
- [Kelly] Yeah, absolutely.
- Absolutely. That's what I wanna do. I wanna be caught making. Because if I wasn't making that film that day, what would I be doing? What I would be doing is going, "Now why wasn't I making that film that day?"
- Yeah, at some point you say, I've got all this knowledge, I've got all this experience, and I've had people who've opened doors for me. I wanna start doing that for others and you get into teaching.
- [Richard] Yeah.
- Talk about that.
- Well, this is another one of those wild miracles. There was a casting director at ABC named Ellen Novack, and she really liked me. This was when I was in New York. And she loved the way I talk, she loved the way I talk acting. She said, "Oh, you know what? I'm teaching this class at Julliard. It's a camera."
- I've heard of it.
- I've heard of it, yes, yes. It's got rings a bell. And she said it's for their four year, your fourth year students. It's an on-camera class. And I like the way you do in the auditions and how you talk. And would you be my assistant? It's just four weeks.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So my first teaching job was at Julliard. And then I got to watch her teach, and then I got to be with those students. And then that turned into four years. So, you know, four straight years I would be her assistant and I would sort of translate for her that casting directors would go, "Ugh, we need like more ugh." And like if you could just, ah, and I would go, "What she means is," and I would talk in actor terms. Well, what it started to do was it started to make me verbalize what I believe in.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- Which so many teachers talk about, is that something you go, you'll teach a class and go, ah, why don't I do that?
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I should do what I teach. And so because of that, it started to get me some attention at other places. And I started to be a guest artist at some places. And I knew Laura Lane from the business, who is a great acting teacher here at Texas State. And she said, "Oh man, we would really love to get you for a weekend. Could you come to a weekend here?" This was probably 15 years ago, maybe.
- Wow.
- And I said, oh yeah, of course. I mean, in Texas. And I could, you know, be there and see everybody. And I remember when I first, this is true. I remember when I first saw the theater and the moat and the cypress trees and all that. And I just started to walk around it and I, it was like, it's like the musicians in the room will know what I'm talking about. It's like whenever you hit two notes that go, oh, I think we're onto something.
- Yeah.
- I think we're on. I mean, the resonance was I was onto something.
- Yeah.
- And then-
- So you had not been on campus before?
- I had not been on this campus before. And it really, I did think, oh, I could see myself here in some way. And then other universities started to grab me and St. Edwards grabbed me and then Penn State grabbed me, and then Penn State wanted me to be the head of their MFA program and the head of the acting program. So we did that and we moved there and then UCSD at San Diego, big great university. And they were with the La Jolla Playhouse. So we went there and I was the head of that MFA program and we were ranked number three on the Hollywood Reporter when I was there. And then COVID hit, and then my kids, my son turned 13 and my family was here. And boy, it just seemed like, why am I not in Texas?
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And so we moved. We kinda left everything. And I left a full professor with tenure, a head of one of the best programs in the, I was an endowed chair. It was a really big deal for me to walk away from with no job. I had a TV show at the time. And so, but that got canceled and we were here, and whenever the folks from Texas State found out I was back here, they said, "Hey, you wanna maybe teach an acting class?" I said, "Oh God, I'd love to." And then I think we started the same year.
- Yeah, same time.
- I think it was almost the same year.
- I think I met you like the first month I was here.
- I think so too, because I think I just, I had just accepted a position.
- Yeah.
- And I remember you told me this, you said, "I'm here to stay." And I said, "Me too."
- Yeah, yeah. I got nowhere else to go.
- I said, "This is it. This is it. I'm here to stay."
- That's how you got to Texas State.
- Yeah. And that's how I got to Texas State and got here.
- Yeah. So now let's shift gears a little bit. Talk about what's happening here at Texas State. I think you were at, was it UC San Diego, and they were known as a really good theater program, right?
- Yes.
- Well, Texas State has, you know, another bit of notoriety. The same, is it Hollywood Reporter ranking?
- That's right.
- Ranked Texas State, I think top 25 at one point. And then now we're maybe top 22 in the world.
- Yeah.
- For the theater program. I think people are surprised when they hear that. I'm not, 'cause I get this, we never miss a show. And my wife, who's, well, she's a music theater. She's a music major, so she is professionally kind of critical. Like, I don't mean critical in a mean way, but she knows what's good and what's not. She's always blown away. She said, "Kelly, that's as good as anything you see on Broadway."
- Absolutely.
- And to me, it's just like, you know, I was kind of humming along to it, but she gets how good it is and clearly other people are too. What do you think led us to get to that status? And then what does it mean to be thought of like that?
- To give you context. In the Hollywood Reporter, the top 25 in the world, that also says that there's not another program in Texas ranked.
- Yeah, yeah.
- So I just wanna say that out loud.
- It's the best in Texas, right?
- [Richard] Like eat 'em up Cats.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- Like there's not another program in Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico. I mean, you have to go 1500 miles before you find another program ranked in this program, in this list.
- Wow.
- So we are a lighthouse, and Texas is obviously a huge state. We've got big metropolis and then we've got the great rural areas as well, so our access to talent is almost infinite.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And yet we still have people from all over the country applying. And we have over a thousand applicants for these few spots every year.
- It's unbelievable.
- It is. Our musical theater program of course gets a lot of attention because it is, because musical theater is shiny and it's really, it is kind of great.
- It is shiny, right?
- What you don't see is, you know, the things that are happening backstage, those programs are ranked as well. Then you've got our acting program. We've got actors in major motion pictures, we've got actors on Broadway, we've got Emmy Award winning TV actors. Then our film program, which is, we're one of the few schools that has a School of Theatre, Dance, Film. That means it's all under the same umbrella. Most the theater and film are in sort of separate gated communities and they never talk to each other. There's another school just north of us that's like that where they don't really communicate, and they lose that connection.
- Yeah.
- What we were talking about just earlier, about being connected. Here, I'm very connected with the film program, so whenever we wanted to do our showcase for our students and do a digital showcase so that in an agent's office in LA they could click a button and see all of our students, some of which are first generation students who never had, could never have this kind of access. They can see their headshot, resume, and then see a professionally shot film that we've done for them, two, three minutes. The film program does that for us. So it's great practice for the film program, great practice for theater program. So we're working like that. And no other program's doing that. I think that's what the Hollywood Reporter really started to notice is that we're also one of the largest in the country and all the work that musical theater did to get us here to that. And then my first year here, we made the list, and then it was like we started to push on that. And I talk about it everywhere I go.
- Well, that's the thing. You gotta keep building the brand, right?
- Yes, I do.
- So people gotta keep listening to it and it comes from you. But, you know, our alumni build some of that as well. They go-
- Without a doubt.
- Who's that person singing at the Grammys or-
- Yes.
- Or at the Tony Awards, the opening number. Oh, that's a Texas State grad. And then it kind of builds from there, you know?
- Yeah, you do. And I think it's really important, and this is to all the alumni that are listening, it's really important that when you put your where you went to school in your program.
- Yeah.
- You always say, I'm a graduate of Texas State, because that's how I went to Rutgers, is I saw a performance and I saw the best acting I'd ever seen. And I said, where'd that guy go? And it said Rutgers. And that's how I decided to go to Rutgers.
- You know, I was at home one night and one of my friends texted me and said, I'm watching this show and it's one of your alumni. She read it in the program.
- See? Yes. See, that's amazing. And the fact that so many of our faculty work. I now get to work in TV and film and so that's in everybody's living room, so that has a certain cache to it, especially for the students, you know? But all the other faculty too are doing incredible research and creative scholarly work behind the scenes on television, in theaters all over the country, writing, directing, filmmaking. I'm always, I go to a faculty meeting and I'm kinda starstruck.
- It seems to me, and here's the naive person talking here, that you had to go to California or you had to go to New York, maybe Chicago to kind of make it. But that's changing. It seems like Texas is now becoming a place, and I know people like Taylor Sheridan are really kind of bringing this forward. There's other people, you know, Matthew McConaughey for a long time. And other folks have been working really hard to get people to come make film here or make shows here. And I think that's being pretty successful. You think a lot of our students who are graduate from Texas State, a lot of 'em don't wanna leave Texas 'cause they love Texas. And at some of those places seem so far away that they're almost possible to think about even going. Is the industry moving to Texas and is that a good thing for our students or appropriate?
- I think it's a really good thing for our students, and I think that it's a really good time to be here.
- Yeah.
- Because I just did a couple of episodes of Matthew McConaughey's new series called "Brothers" that'll be on Apple with Woody Harrelson.
- [Kelly] Woody Harrelson.
- And, well, I shot that up in Austin.
- It's nice you didn't have to go to LA to do it.
- Oh, I know, exactly.
- [Kelly] Or Vancouver.
- Yeah, it was kind of amazing. The movie I shot with Kevin Bacon, we shot that in Round Top.
- Yeah.
- So there's a lot more work coming here, which is pretty exciting. I still have to travel for work, but our students, I get them connected to agents and casting directors right here in town as soon as I can. And we have students, I have students in my senior acting class in the acting program who are on national commercials right now.
- Wow.
- In their senior year. I mean, from Austin, you know, from being in Central Texas. So we have a lot to offer and I mean, there's a reason I'm here.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- That I live here. If I couldn't do it from here, I wouldn't.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- But I can. And so what, gosh, where else would I be?
- You talk about students who are coming from everywhere to come here, and we, and I know they go, we go around the country and audition 'em and so on. Is there a typical student who comes here? Are there Texans who are coming here? Is it always people from somewhere else coming here?
- We have a lot of Texans, which I'm very proud of because that, you know, obviously I am a Texan.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And I like to have little places, you know, I have certain high schools that I love.
- [Kelly] Oh yeah.
- I'm a big fan of these high schools. And I will, I'll recruit, I mean, I recruit like athletics. Do you know what I mean? I will call high schools. I'll call those high school teachers. I'll like, and say, all right, who's your, in the same way that Bill did for me.
- Richard Robichaux.
- Richard Robichaux. Is that I'm looking for my little Richard Robichaux. And so I go, okay, now I'm gonna, I think I have the ability with this university backing me up and backing up this education to literally change the course of your life.
- Yeah, yeah.
- And then we just try to keep that promise.
- Yeah, I always like to think about the fact that we're bringing in kids from around, sometimes around the country, around the world to come here and they get exposed in the classroom to kids from Texas.
- Yes.
- So there are something about Texas and our kids kind of, they kind of rub off on each other a little bit. So I think there's something to be said about having a diverse background people in the same classroom.
- Without a doubt, without a doubt. And that's the human behavior.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- If our job is to produce human behavior in imaginary circumstances, then I need a lot of human behavior in the classroom. The one thing that can't be diverse in our classroom is commitment.
- Yeah.
- And that's all I say. I always say I can't have any diversity on commitment.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- That has to be unified.
- You know, it's amazing to me, when I think of when I go to the musicals or the theater productions, how much work these kids are doing behind the scenes that no one ever sees that, you know, we're making our own costumes, we're making the sets, we're designing the lighting and so on. And it'd be very easy for a student to say, you know, I'm just not gonna go tonight.
- Oh yeah.
- And if they did, thing falls apart, right?
- I mean.
- So you need that commitment.
- It would, I mean, a whole series of mousetraps would go off.
- Yeah.
- I mean, it's just our system's set up that that just doesn't happen.
- Yeah.
- The students, I don't have students late for my class because the way we recruit.
- Yeah.
- And my grades are very high in my class. Not because I give A's, but you should see the kids I recruit.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- They'd make A's anywhere.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- So they're serious. They're serious. Which is going to be the reason they have longevity. And they're gonna be great alumni. They're gonna be great alumni.
- Well, thanks for sharing your Texas State story and thank you for sharing about what's going on in our theater and fine arts program generally. We're excited. We think a lot about the growth of the university and I think a lot of people are concerned that we're focusing on like STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. But I like the idea of STEAM like arts right in the middle of it because the humanities is what makes us human. Yeah, I think about the advent of AI.
- Oh yeah.
- And about how that's so artificial and the human element is the thing that can't be replaced or replicated. I don't think robots are gonna be able to do what you're able to do.
- We won't wanna see it.
- Who would wanna watch someone play the cello perfectly? A robot play it perfectly.
- Absolutely. And I'll tell you what's gone. Blockbuster.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And CDs and DVDs and VHS tapes, but we still have a theater.
- That's right.
- People keep going back to it because it's embodied.
- People wanna go theater
- Yeah.
- And there is an embodied practice happening on campus of, in music and everything, we still wanna see. I don't wanna see a robot play piano.
- Yeah.
- I wanna see a human walk that tightrope and do it. And there is something about embodied creativity and embodied excellence that I think this university is doubling down on.
- Yeah. Okay, Richard, we've got one thing here. So this is a tradition we started right from the beginning where the guest gets to be the podcast host. And you get to ask me a question. I've not seen the question, fire away.
- What is something you've changed your mind about in the past five years? That's a good question.
- Something I've changed my mind about.
- In the past five years.
- Boy, that's a tough one because I'm pretty stubborn, so I don't change my mind a lot. I think what I, let me think about this. I think I've grown to have more confidence about myself. I used to not think I could do things, so maybe this more of a personal thing. And it's something I just grew up. Just like you grew up, I grew up in a trailer court and mobile homes and so on. Very poor background. Didn't go to any musical theaters. And so because of that, I actually lacked a lot of confidence and belief in myself. And I think that's also kind of a Canadian sensibility to be humble. Like to be humble is you should be proud of how humble you are kind of thing.
- Right.
- And so, and I'm still like to maintain that humility, but I have a lot more confidence than I used to have. And so I've changed, that's changed in me. I think just confidence and also I think belief in what we're doing at the university. I used to think of this as a job. Like this is what I do to get paid, and now I'm way more passionate about it because I know how it changed my life, how it changed your life. And how it's changing lives that people come here. I'm more passionate about that. I didn't not believe it before, but it wasn't intrinsic to me that what I'm doing is not a thing. It's not just how I earn a paycheck. I'm actually hopefully making a difference in the lives of our faculty and staff and our students who are here because we know the students who come here and the faculty and staff are different when they leave here in a good way. What about you?
- Oh, man, that's so good. I turned 50 in the last five years, and so one of the things-
- So young.
- Yeah. One of the things that I think I really, this is totally related to what we've just been talking about is I think I always would use the word but in between I'm an actor, but I teach.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- Or I would say I'm a teacher, but I'm still an actor.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And I stopped using that word and I say, and.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I'm a teacher and an actor. I'm an actor and a teacher.
- Oh, that's cool.
- Because I think I finally allowed myself to be that snowflake, unicorn, whatever I am. To be like, oh no, I really am both of those things.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- I mean I really do work at a very high level in the industry and I work at a very high level in academia and I think I had to keep both secret from each other sometimes.
- [Kelly] Yeah.
- And I now don't do that. And so I think it's made me a better teacher and I think it's made me a better actor.
- That's awesome. Thank you all for joining us here at "The Current," where we talk about things that are happening at Texas State, to learn more about what's happening here in San Marcos and Round Rock, around the state of Texas, around the country, and increasingly around the world. Alright, thank you so much. States Up, everyone.