Scholar Artist Teacher

Written, Directed, and Edited by Rick Pulos 

Featuring: Darby Kingman, Jay Figueroa, and Lee Ann Littrell  with TTC Community 

Members

 Original music by Bran Kempf

 Gimbal Operator: KAAN (Texas A&M student) 

 Production Assistants: Bryan Adams & Bryan Rodarte

Episode: Community with Heart  

Once Upon a Time…in Community Theatre is an episodic documentary about The Theatre Company, a community theatre in Texas. The folks that come to TTC do it for their love of theatre and to build community. Anyone who walks through the doors of the theatre will be greeted with a deep feeling of belonging. “Community with Heart” is an uplifting episode that shows the power and beauty of community theatre. To learn more about The Theatre Company visit www.theatrecompany.com.

This is a 30 second commercial I created to advertise The Sound of Music.

Drone operation: Leo Garza

Collaborating with TTC is always fun but this project holds an especially important place in my heart because I was able to work with one of my students from Texas A&M.

I've been creating social media trailers for The Theatre Company since 2023. Depending on the limitations of our contracts, they can range in length from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. I film the final dress rehearsal of shows and then edit together the video for publication to our social media accounts.  

I led a cast, crew, and orchestra of over 40 Bryan-College Station community members  in this production of 1776: The Musical. I also designed the projections for the show. I cast the show non-traditionally and I created projections that emphasized the shortcomings of the founding of the United States. 

I created this celebration of The Theatre Company of BCS that we used at our annual season reveal party to inspire folks to donate to the company and buy season tickets. Except for Cinderella and 1776 (captured by Bryan Adams) the videography and editing work was done by me. You might capture a glimpse of me performing as Sheldon in The Prom! 

This is an advertisement I shot and edited for a workshop I ran as part of TTC Teaches, a series of low-cost workshops offered through The Theatre Company of Bryan-College Station. As the program coordinator for TTC Teaches, I develop, manage, market, and run the workshops. We've offered workshops in sewing, singing, how to audition (for kids and adult versions), and dancing.

I collaborated with the projection designer for The Prom. Using Q-Lab and Adobe CS, I mapped the designer's work onto our set. 

I conceptualized the Kit Kat Club as if it were a modern venue with projection capabilities.  I designed a false proscenium for the projection surface to frame the stage:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lnDw2heR_pA_OYQX4-wk-OfkAjuwu70O/view?usp=share_link. 

I also constructed it myself. The results brought our audiences on an unexpected visual journey.  

Design work was created with Adobe Creative Suite and projection mapping and programming was don in Q-Lab. 

This is a social media trailer I created to promote the show. 

A short documentary about electronic artist Zoe Nowak and her weeks long visit to Texas A & M University. This video was made collaboratively with the Media & Gaming Lab and Texas A &M  Performance Studies Department. Pulos, R., Connor, W. K., & Lopez, J. (2024).

Created for Dr. Connor's faculty showcase in the College of Performance, Visualization, & Fine Arts. 

Videography: Rick Pulos

My classmate's dissertation documentary project. 

Directed and Produced by Valentina Aduen.

Cinematography by Daniel Sheridan 

Camera Department on location in rural Texas and at A&M: Rick Pulos

(Presented at the National Communication Association's 2020 convention as a staged reading)

This multimedia performance explores race, ethnicity, and culture through the personal stories and artifacts of the author as he navigated life up through applying to college in 1992. At that time affirmative action, particularly in his home state of California, was a well-known part of the admissions process at major universities; a few years later prop 209 would end affirmative action in education in California. At the core of the piece are a few questions: what box should I check? Do I count as Latinx? Am I a diversity recruit? Am I too white? Does family history count? Am I privileged one way but not another? Because of unknowns perpetuated by family legend, the author in his later years conducted an ancestry.com DNA test which he uses to great effect along with familial artifacts that illuminate the dilemma he faced while applying to college. This topic is salient today considering the Trump administration’s recent actions against race conscious admissions.

Award-winning musical theatre writer Stephen Cole tells his hilarious story of writing a musical for the Emir of Qatar. Picture this! Two Brooklyn Jews, some Middle Eastern producers, flying carpets, Croatian acrobats, Russian ballet dancers, an Italian director, the desert, camels (a lot of camels!) and, of course, music. You will laugh and you will cry (from laughing) in this outrageous, once-in-a-lifetime, unbelievable-but-true tale of how Stephen and his collaborator wrote the first American Musical to premiere in the Middle East. The show will be directed by Rick Pulos with Steve Malski Niles as the accompanist.

A “gay purge” has swept Chechnya, an Islamic republic of Russia, and the police are rounding up men to interrogate and torture. An American visiting the beautiful mosques of the capital Grozny is brought in by the police and tossed in a cell. His cellmate is a Russian-American working in Chechnya to help rescue as many people as he can and move them across the border to safety. The two will embark on an unexpected journey.

What happens when a husband and wife voluntarily patrol the US-Mexico Border? George and Margaret feel they must defend the borders. Potential “illegals” are there, lurking, waiting to cross. When Margaret begins to ask too many questions, everything changes. Arizona was inspired by the real-life Minutemen Project that was a vigilante organization started in August 2004 by a group of activist citizens in the United States to monitor, count and scare away undocumented immigrants at the US-Mexico Border. Arizona was translated with care by Laureano Corces. Arizona will be directed by Rick Pulos, Ryan Rep’s artistic director, and will feature seasoned performers Zoe Bloomfield as Margaret and Pat McAndrew as George in their debut performances at the Harry Warren Theatre. 

Decades Apart: Reflections of Three Gay Men is a multimedia theatrical performance that captures significant moments in the lives of three gay American men from different eras and cities. Bob is a carefree soul who lives in 1970s San Francisco and finds sex and love closely intertwined. Patrick, a gay Republican, tries to survive 1980s New York City but finds himself hopelessly lost. Danny is a wild club kid who parties and pays hard for it in 1990s Los Angeles. Decades Apart reflects back on the social and political issues that shaped the worldview of these men. 

Performed in New York City, Los Angles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Long Island and New Haven between 2009 and 2017. 

See a picture of a recent graduate student production at Texas A&M Corpus Christi in 2019 below! 

Chicago Stage Style raves that Decades Apart demonstrates “real innovation[s] in gay theatre” and that the text is “…a provocative and thought provoking picture of same-sex proclivities and issues.  If the response to Pulos' World Premiere was any indication, this is a work that can really get blood boiling out there, and isn't that one of the benchmarks of great theatre?” 

See the trailer:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w6_hRTI-95l84JJ9_VO4iSYNVZzw4M32/view?usp=share_link

Relativity

Another Woman's Baby

A Late Snow

Singing for the Boys

Kong by Pamela Sneed

You Are Confused

Brooklyn - A Work in Progress

George Dandin or The Deceived Husband  

No Exit  

The African Company Presents Richard III  

America Ain’t Ready 

Introducing Harry Warren-The Tin Pan Alley      Years