This may be of interest to Canadian Theatre/ Drama Departments

[Jay Ball]

Lynette offers a smart and impassioned apologia for an undergraduate
theatre education. However, I wonder if the same argument obtains for
MA/PhD training? Surely there is an over-production of PhDs in our
field, especially since the majority of tenure-track faculty
appointments belong to MFA practitioners these days. It's one thing to
tell a graduating BA that her theatre training prepares her for a broad
spectrum of careers outside of theatre, quite another to inform a
freshly minted graduate student that it might have been all for nought.

 
I offer this as a friendly variation on the theme in question. I don't
have any meaningful solutions to this problem myself.
 
Jay

 
 

Jay Ball, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Theatre Studies
M.A. Program Coordinator
Theatre Arts Department
Central Washington University
400 E University Way 
McConnell Hall 110 - MS 7460
Ellensburg, WA  98926-7460
E-mail: jball at cwu.edu
>>> Lynette Hunter <lhunter at UCDAVIS.EDU> 10/14/2012 11:47 AM >>>
To argue that we 'overtrain' "(in the sense that supper far exceeds
demand) actor and other theatre students" is to ignore the list of
trained areas offered by Professor Irwin:
strong and transferable skills training, vibrant community building
activity, creative problem solving, enhanced tourist activity, and so
forth.
this list could easily be extended.



Departments of English Literature 'overtrain' in the sense that
students rarely become creative writers, and only a small proportion
become English Literature teachers. The vast number develop transferable
skills that equip them to work in areas that require understanding of
communication strategies - from the law to banking to retail to social
services to medicine ...



Theatre, dance and performance university departments are often only
incidentally training people to enter professional performance activity.
This training has in the past been frequently more appropriately
acquired in conservatory systems. Today universities are the sites where
far more experimental work is possible, but students still rarely become
professionals. 


Theatre, dance and performance in the university context are more
likely to train an understanding of both creative power and different
kinds of knowledge (especially practice-based and embodied knowledges
that generate new insights drawing from current issues around diversity
and globalisation), interpretation (in an exceptionally wide range of
different media not encountered in any other arts or humanities textual
base), and communication (using voice, body and gesture, spatial and
material visualization and implementation, and sociocultural media), as
well as academic exploration and argumentation.



The skills outcomes in departments of Theatre, Dance and Performance,
are also inherently interdisciplinary and collective, training students
in the pragmatics of problem-solving, negotiation, time- and
material-management, and project completion.


There are few other departments in a university in which students can
be trained for such a wide range of skills acquisition necessary for
contemporary society to adapt, change and flourish.

Lynette Hunter
Chair, Department of Theatre and Dance
Chair, Graduate Group in Performance Studies
University of California Davis
lhunter at ucdavis.edu


On 14 October 2012 09:21, David Ferry <appledor at sympatico.ca> wrote:


Thank you Ms Irwin for your thoughtful and provocative post.

We must reflect too that our university and college system, nation
wide, has been overtraining (in the sense that supply far exceeds
demand) actors and other theatre students for years. As far back as the
late 1970s the Canada Council sponsored Black report (after its author,
theatre director Malcolm Black) warned of the trend then to have far too
many theatre training programs to support an industry that has (among
actors alone) a consistent 85-90% unemployment rate. He questioned then,
and the questioned has never really been addressed, the ethics of
creating so many training programs for so few jobs. Of course
immediately on delivery of that report, it was shelved.

David Ferry
Appledore Productions

416 433 5826 ( tel:416%20433%205826 )
www.davidferryactor.com

On Oct 13, 2012, at 8:38 PM, Kathleen Irwin <Kathleen.Irwin at UREGINA.CA>
wrote:





This may be of interest to Canadian Theatre/ Drama Departments 

On September 26 2012, the University of Regina posted an update
regarding the university-wide Academic Program Review (APR) on their
public website. The information in the announcement regarded major
changes to the delivery of programs within the Theatre Department. It
was erroneous and, as many of you across Canada have asked about it, I
want to correct the misinformation and provide a context for the
statement. What was posted was news that the Theatre Department had
retired its BFA in the Performance and Design / Stage Management streams
effective January 1, 2013 – after 42 years. While this was true in part,
it was only partial. The official statement from the Theatre Department
on what really happened follows here. 

The Theatre Department at the University of Regina is focusing
attention on the delivery of the core degree, the BA in Theatre and
Performance (with optional concentrations in acting or design/stage
management). We see this as a way of consolidating our course offerings
into a flexible degree that optimizes our skills and resources and
enables students to choose widely from a menu of courses that reaches
across the Fine Arts disciplines or to pursue further training in
theatre, a professional career or higher education. 

We believe that this will educate students to be broad thinking and
resourceful in their approach to creativity while they are here at the
university and when they graduate into the world beyond whether they
chose to pursue further training in theatre, a professional career or
higher education. 

In reality, nothing changes in the delivery of our program other than
the name change. In doing this we feel we are reflecting a current shift
across North America in the delivery of performance-based undergraduate
training by allowing our student more control over their course of
study. We are excited to offer a more progressive degree – A BA in
Theatre and Performance that will highlight traditional training in
addition to innovative courses in creative technologies and
community-oriented practice. 
The BFA programs are suspending admissions as of January 1. Current
students have 6 years to complete. 

While the official Theatre Department statement points to exciting new
directions in course delivery (digital media, community–oriented
practice, links with indigenous communities, ACTRA mentorships,
international exchange), it also puts a slightly optimistic spin on a
slow decline that masks a self-fulfilling prophecy (the annual
department budget is now $40,000 less than it was 16 years ago). Cuts
and changes are almost always read in a negative way. What is
self-fulfilling is that the withdrawal of funding and the loss of 2 key
faculty positions in the studies area (due to cuts and attrition) and
the elimination of many sessional positions in a department already
stressed by tight overall budgets and static numbers is demoralizing and
it immediately impacts registration. When current and potential students
sense weakness, they look elsewhere for education and training. This is
not only true at the U of R. Anecdotal information indicates that many
smaller departments across the country are suffering as administrations
slowly withdraw support in those areas following fiscal strategies that
prioritize student numbers and research dollars over less directly
quantifiable measures of success that the arts amply produce – strong
and transferable skills training, vibrant community building activity,
creative problem solving, enhanced tourist activity, and so forth.
Students will take note and Theatre Departments will continue to
crumble. 

In our case, following APR directives to modernize old courses, the
Theatre Department was aggressive and proactive in cleaning up programs
thereby making them more focused, accessible, flexible and aligned with
current interdisciplinary pedagogy. However the overall net gain is
negative as the perception that we are now closed for business, fed by
the University’s fatal error in reporting changes to our program,
persists despite retractions, rebuttals and statements that stress
otherwise. This is, in fact, why I am so emphatically making two points
simultaneously: 1. The Theatre Department at the University of Regina is
open for business; 2. The University is slowly pulling the rug out. The
third point is: if it is happening here, it will happen elsewhere. 

This is all happening within a wider provincial context. Over the past
6 months, the film business in Saskatchewan has received a deathblow
through changes to the Saskatchewan Film Employment Tax Credit. This has
affected the entire creative industry and it is estimated that
approximately 600 arts professionals are leaving the province for
greener pastures. As head of the Theatre Department at the University of
Regina, I am, in part, responsible for the training of our undergraduate
students to prepare them for a future in the Theatre, Television and
Film industry in Saskatchewan. Every year we graduate young people who
are trained in acting, technical direction, costume, set, props,
lighting and sound design. These are the troops on the ground who help
make the industry vibrant and successful. Without jobs to go to, our
graduates will join the flood of young people leaving the province and
they will take our training / their education with them. 

These two events are, of course linked in important and obvious ways.
The arts feed into a complex ecosystem – when one part is jeopardized,
the rest of the organism begins to fail as well. Is this important? You
tell me. 

Kathleen Irwin, Head 
Theatre Department, University of Regina 
Kathleen.Irwin at uregina.ca 










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