a poor player

(This is the fourth part in a five-part series on theatre education being written in collaboration with Scott Walters of Theatre Ideas. Please be sure to visit his site to view his own entry on these issues – twl)

Dunkirk NY – It seems that after pounding theatre departments for the past three posts for all the things I believe are not working, I would be remiss if I did not spend some time talking about what’s happening that’s right. There are some things going on which I think have merit, and in the interest of balance it’s important that we get them out there.

Interestingly enough (and this will almost seem like a contradiction with what I’ve written so far), in looking at this issue it’s important to understand that, were the theatre business healthy and popular, and there were more nationwide opportunities available (basically, if the regional theatre movement had lived up to its potential), we would not in fact be doing much wrong at all. In fact, we’d be doing a lot of things right. It isn’t that the model of training itself is intrinsically bad or ineffective; it’s just that realities within the theatre world itself have changed radically, and theatre education has not met the challenges of change.

For the large educational institutions with the brand names – Yale, Julliard, Carnegie Mellon, NYU, ACT – and those universities connected to major regional theatres – San Diego with the Old Globe, Univ. of Alabama with Alabama Shakespeare – the continuation of pre-professional training makes some sense. There ought to be a few schools in this country where the best of the best actually do go to get this type of intense actor training. But that’s the issue: there ought to be only a few, not hundreds or thousands.

By and large, we also produce good – and sometimes excellent – traditional theatre. If you attend any regional festival of the American College Theatre Festival you will see on display a number of high-quality productions. It’s all by and large theatrical re-creation, but it’s generally done well. It speaks to the fact that this country actually has an amazing amount of talented young people in it. I’ve seen a lot of good and highly talented young people come through my program, and perhaps what stings the most is the realization that all this good young talent is going to waste. What a theatre we could have in this country if only we could harness this bounty of talent better.

I also think that, on the whole, we mentor our students pretty well. Now, I will readily admit that, like every profession on the planet, we have our share of incompetents. But setting that aside (and dealing with it in the final post), we do have a collection of very dedicated people who are interested in their student’s progress both inside and outside the classroom. If there is anything you hear back from theatre students that is consistently positive, it’s that they developed a strong working relationship with a faculty member in the department, and this relationship was one that inspired them and gave them some clarity along the way. We can’t ever forget that, at least at the undergraduate level, these are 18-22 year old young people seeking not only a theatre education, but seeking to learn how to fit into the world around them. The collaborative nature of theatre is such that developing mentoring relationships with students is almost unavoidable. I believe many theatre educators want to do a good job at guiding their students along, giving them encouragement, and in the end making sure their students have a positive educational experience while they are in college.

I want to make it clear (if I haven’t already) that when speaking about what is wrong with theatre education today, I don’t want to imply that there is any insidious conspiracy or plot to keep students ignorant or to do anything less than a first-class job in training students. The issue is not one of intent; it is one of neglect. I meet a good many well-intentioned people in theatre education, and in my own department I do not think that any of them are in some way deliberately misguiding or misleading their students. They are simply so focused in on doing what they are doing that looking beyond their daily routines is not something they are thinking about. We have to find some way to get them to consider options, that’s all. If we can take these good people and move them towards considering some reforms we could be well on the way towards re-inventing theatre education. In the final post on this series, Scott and I hope to offer some reforms we believe could transform how we educate theatre students for today’s theatrical needs. -twl