“She was a ray of sunshine,” said Stacy Alley, assistant professor of musical theatre and dance. “Both as a person and a theatre practitioner, she was the kind of person you wanted to have around. It’s still surreal.”
UA students, faculty and staff mourn the loss of Trueblood, a senior majoring in theatre. She was working as a stage manager on the show “Texas” at the Pioneer Amphitheatre in Canyon, Texas, and was taking inventory in a warehouse containing fireworks when an explosion occurred.
She was a member of the Alpha Psi Omega national theatre honors society.
“It was hard not to know Peyton once you met her,” said Sarah Kathryn Bonds, UA theatre and dance alumnus and member of Alpha Psi Omega. “She was very genuine and caring. She made time for everyone.”
Friends remember her as someone they not only respected, but who respected everyone else as well. Luke Haynes, fellow stage manager and Alpha Psi Omega member, worked as her assistant stage manager and became very close to her.
“She became my APO ‘Big,’” Haynes said. “To be honest, I was strongly considering dropping out of pledging APO at the time, but seeing how excited Peyton was to have me got me to keep going. She had a unique way of pushing me, and everyone she came in contact with, to be the most they could be. Sometimes it was to make her happy, more often it was to keep from making her mad, but mostly it was because I knew she believed in me and that gave me the inkling that maybe I was worth believing in.”
Haynes said Trueblood was an excellent leader.
“Peyton wasn’t the type to shirk her responsibilities, but she wouldn’t hold your hand through yours either. Everyone had to do their own job; that’s how you grow. Peyton probably helped me grow more than anyone else in the department. Her ambition and drive were contagious and it was sometimes a struggle to keep up…but she made me want to try.”
Abby Gandy, a senior majoring in theatre and stage manager, first met Peyton the first week of their freshman year at a meeting for the department’s stage managers.
“She stage managed the first show of the semester that year, and was wonderfully helpful when I came to her asking questions about the forms we were supposed to use and where stuff was in the AB,” Gandy said. “We then worked together on a monster of a show, ‘Showboat.’ Peyton was always willing to lend a hand if you needed one, and she knew what she was doing when it came to stage management (which is very high praise).”
Friends expressed disbelief in the accident.
“I don’t really have one specific big memory with Peyton,” Gandy said, “just a large series of small ones: chatting in the halls of Rojo, how excited she was that she’d figured out how to make all the Merrily furniture fit backstage, sitting in meetings together, and her driving me home after a long night of rehearsal. She was just always there, and it’s so strange to me that now she isn’t.”
