![\"Ado](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/ado-july25.jpg\")
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The Baylor Department of Theatre Arts<\/a> doesn’t just nurture young talent; its members are also producing projects that are making waves — including an Oscar-qualifying short film!<\/p>\n ADO<\/a><\/em> (as in “Much Ado About Nothing”) is the brainchild of Sam Henderson<\/a> (BFA ’05), an assistant professor in both Baylor’s film & digital media and theatre departments. The film (which Henderson co-wrote and directed) follows a middle school theatre teacher caught in an unimaginable situation when her class\u2019s rehearsal is interrupted by a school shooting.<\/p>\n The idea came from a conversation Henderson had with his mom (also a theatre teacher) about what she would do in a school shooter situation. The talk led to a broader idea — to spotlight American teachers and the issues they face in classrooms nationwide.<\/p>\n The film stars Jenifer Lewis<\/a> (Cars<\/em>, Black-ish<\/em>, The Princess and the Frog<\/em>) as Ms. Hopkins, the theatre teacher, while the rest of the cast and crew includes multiple Baylor alumni, students and faculty. ADO<\/em> has already been selected for screening at six different Oscar-qualifying film festivals, and won the HBO Short Film Award at the American Black Film Festival earlier this year — which makes ADO<\/em> officially Oscar-eligible<\/a>!<\/p>\n Sic \u2019em, Prof. Henderson (and all the Baylor Family members who made this film possible)!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Baylor Department of Theatre Arts doesn’t just nurture young talent; its members are also producing projects that are making waves — including an Oscar-qualifying short film! ADO (as in “Much Ado About Nothing”) is the brainchild of Sam Henderson (BFA ’05), an assistant professor in both Baylor’s film & digital media and theatre departments. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-honors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/baylorproud\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}