a poor player

Dunkirk NY – Probably not! No matter, because I have not been doing much of anything connected with theatre for the last 10 days or so.

Since returning from Amherst MA, I have been consumed by our campus’ Middle States accreditation process. For those of you not familiar with the ways of higher education, an accreditation process is what a university has to go through every ten years in order to qualify for federal funds. If you do not have accreditation from some organization regulated by the Department of Education, you cannot receive federal funds, and your students are not eligible to receive federally guaranteed student loans. The process now is far more intense than it used to be, mostly due to the effects of No Child Left Behind, a bill which has increased accountability in education even at the university level.

I will not bore any of you with the details of what i did, but basically I was the guy responsible for making sure that everything we claimed we did or are was backed by documentation. The documentation needed is extensive, and from March 18 until March 24 I was totally consumed with making sure everything was in order for the visiting team sent to evaluate the college. It’s a BIG DEAL, believe me. Wednesday last I celebrated the end of it all with my colleagues, and then Thurs-Fri I caught up with my mid-term grading (which was late) and class assignments. Saturday was an Open House at the college, followed by helping my son move to a new apartment. Sunday was something of a decompression day. And today – well, I spent the day reading 49 SOQs (Statement of Qualifications) for architectural firms interested in designing the new addition to our Rockefeller Arts Center.

So it’s been busy with all kinds of things unrelated to theatre. This week is advising week, getting classes for my advisees, and I have other things to consider. So perhaps during the coming week or so I can get back to writing more.

But I will say this. In thinking about the blog, I think what I am going to do is use this blog to write about things more personal to me, while using the TACT blog to concentrate on writing about issues in theatrical higher education. Perhaps this will help me concentrate more closely on making tighter connections between what I see happening in the professional world and the way we educate students for the profession. Then I can just use this blog to go back to my original focus on my own personal journey as a theatre artist. While I am sure those lines will blur once in awhile, I think getting some separation will allow for more a professional focus on the TACT blog and a more personal one here. Time will tell.  -twl

Amherst MA – I’ve been on spring break and have spent the first part of my break visiting my parents in their new condo in Amherst MA. I have a number of busy items coming up in the next week, so posting has been scarce and will continue to be so for the next week at least. In the meantime, you can laugh yourself silly at this. I am taking a broadsword class along with my students in an attempt to receive certification as an actor-combatant in broadsword. Here’s a rehearsal of my first scene coming up next week. I am the bald guy. My wonderful young partner is Mr. Dan Evans, a senior BFA Acting major at SUNY Fredonia.

Dunkirk NY – I got this from Scott’s blog, but rather than link to it, I thought it was worthy of being posted right here. Ben Cameron is the Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and former Theatre Communications Group director, and in this talk he speaks about the future of the arts that points the way towards a more de-centralized and participatory model. It’s passionate and, interestingly enough, it uses the same analogy I used concerning the effect that the Protestant Reformation had on “de-Catholicizing” the western Europe mindset of the day.

Dunkirk NY – Before I get too far into this post, I am going to let you look at this particular graphic for a bit. Take your time with it.

source: The NY Innovative Theatre Fund Demographic Survey of OOB Practitioners

Notice anything interesting about it? I thought the most interesting aspect of this graphic was the fact that, while 77% of OOB theatre practitioners are white, only 45% of the population of New York City is white. And just as striking are the figures below it: while 27% of NYC’s population is Black/African American, only 5% of OOB theatre people are Black/African American. Although not in this graphic, the numbers for the Hispanic community mirror those of the African American numbers.

Something else from the NY Innovative Theatre Fund survey was interesting to me as well (this data is not, by the way, a part of the published study. I asked for the additional breakdown). It’s the fact that 32% of OOB theatre practitioners come from the tri-state region of NY (24%), NJ (6%) and CT (2%). The data does not give us where in the state those people come from, so we don’t know exactly what their proximity to NYC is, but regardless, what it also means is that 68% of all OOB practitioners originally came from outside the NYC metropolitan region (actually, the percentage is probably higher, because while the data says that 24% of them are from NY state, it does not say how many of those 24% are native to the five boroughs or Westchester/Rockland/Nassau counties). But once they get to New York, they live in the city. 93% live in NY State, while 91% live in one of the five boroughs. In terms of borough breakdown, it’s 52% Manhattan, 30% Brooklyn, 16% Queens, and the rest of the remaining 2% split between the Bronx and Staten Island. Continue Reading »

Dunkirk NY – Poor Scott. I seem to get him into a lot of trouble unknowingly. I write what I think is an innocuous post, catching my feelings of the moment; Scott expands upon it because it moves him to think and consider; and the next thing you know – theatrospherical shitstorm! I wouldn’t blame him if the first thing he does when he sees me at the SETC Conference is beat the crap out of me for getting him into so much verbal trouble.

So, to some extent, I feel a bit compelled to come to his rescue and pull out from his post something I think is important to both of us, and why we collaborate in terms of trying to change the face of theatre education. Here is what I’d like to focus on from his most recent apologia:

My desire to increase geographical diversity has never been about rejecting the small theatres struggling to carve out a niche in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles. Many of those theatre are very much a part of their community — I think of a theatre like, say The Classical Theatre of Harlem in this regard. My beef, to borrow Don’s terminology, is the message that theatre people can only have a “serious” career if they are in Nylachi; that theatre in Nylachi is the only theatre worth considering; that there is a geographical hierarchy with Broadway at the top (which has been recognized as a dumb idea for decades now); that “quality” and “excellence” has a geographical component. This is nothing short of an ideology, one that is oft repeated by those who have bully pulpits for the art form such as Michael Kaiser and Rocco Landesman, and that gets passed down to high schoolers across the nation through TV broadcasts of the Tony Awards and TV shows like “Taking the Stage” and “Grease: You’re the One That I Want” and “Fame” that are little more than extended advertisements for the Broadway and commodity-arts ideology. Continue Reading »