Paul Hughes has a new toy. The HOG III lighting board controls an entire lighting system comprised of two “studio spot” units and two “studio color” units, but it looks more like a computer console in Star Trek. Two touch-screens rise above an assortment of dials, switches, slides and rollers. To the side, sits a large Dell flat-screen monitor.
“This thing is more expensive than most people’s cars,” says Hughes as he guides one of the “studio color” lights to center stage with the quick flick of his mouse. The stage glows with bright magenta and then fades to a deep blue. “Now if I do this,” he continues, tapping another screen on the main lighting console, “I can rotate gobos and adjust their speed.” Gobos, he explains, are perforated metal sheets that allow lights to project an image or texture onto the stage. Just like in Star Trek, some of the “tech talk” is lost on the those less familiar with theater jargon.
Meanwhile, Hughes is oblivious to the chaos around him. It’s Friday night of “tech weekend,” the last weekend before the show debuts. With the show opening next week, the next two days are normally reserved for working out last minute kinks. But for the production crew of Nomadic’s Beyond Therapy, kinks are the least of their problems. The lighting design has yet to be finalized, and the sound cues still await creation. The night’s rehearsal must be pushed back to Saturday afternoon.
Hughes is not fazed. This is his ninth show working as lighting designer, and it is obvious that he is in his element. With his aura of professionalism mixed with a deep-seeded passion for theater, one would not guess that next year he will be moving to the graduate program in international affairs at Georgetown. Like most students involved in student club theater at Georgetown, this is just an extracurricular activity for Hughes, though an extremely intense one. Even if he did want to pursue theater academically, until recently, it was not an option.
Though Georgetown stresses the importance of liberal arts through its extensive core curriculum requirements, the University has rejected performing arts as a serious component of that education. Instead, extracurricular opportunities in theater, music and dance have served as a substitute for this hole in academic programming. Nobody is more aware of this than the hundreds of students who participate in performing arts everyday on this campus.
Theater in particular has enjoyed a long and rich tradition at Georgetown. Mask & Bauble Dramatic Society, which bills itself as the oldest continually running student theatrical society in the United States, can boast of frequent performances in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt White House. However, even extracurricular performing arts have gotten the shorter end of the stick. In 1975, Mask and Bauble members, fed up with the lack of theater space, took over a classroom in Poulton Hall. The classroom was quickly returned, and the University responded by building an even larger space in Poulton Hall, which is now home to all of Mask and Bauble’s productions.
The performing arts have recently entered the early stages of a renaissance in the University’s academic community. In August 2003, the University inaugurated the creation of the Program in Performing Arts, consolidating student, faculty and administrative resources for all performing arts under one department. Currently located entirely in the basement of New North, most of the offices will be moved to the new performing arts center at its completion, expected by the fall of 2005. For now, PPA serves as a base camp for student groups and faculty in theater, music and dance. The PPA signifies a change in the University’s attitude toward the performing arts, lending them new legitimacy as a scholarly subject.
For now the most tangible benefit of the PPA is the creation of seriously lacking theater and music majors. However, while students passionate about performing arts are glad to merge their co-curricular interests with academic work, there are some who don’t have any intention to become theater majors. To the latter group, the PPA threatens a club theater culture, which they have grown to love.
“No one is against having a theater major. No one is against the creation of the PPA,” said Sally Richardson (CAS ‘04), associate producer for Mask & Bauble. “What people are against is the theater major and PPA being created at the expense of other theater groups on campus.”
Richardson became involved in theater in middle school, but she hadn’t intended to do anything related to the stage after high school graduation. Speaking about her experiences with Mask and Bauble, it is obvious that her passion extends past theater itself to the entire student theater culture. “And Mask and Bauble provides a social setting to meet people and make new friends,” Richardson said. “It’s more than just theater. It’s about fellowship and community … it’s what all my friends do.”
However, theater is a resource intensive activity, and the lack of facilities, time and people worries Richardson and many other members of the club theater community. “This campus physically can’t support more shows,” she said. Presently, between Mask and Bauble, Nomadic, Black Theater Ensemble and Georgetown Players, there are 10 shows and 15 show weekends-of which Mask and Bauble hold 10 for the five shows they produce each season. The audience pool is also limited, so theater groups as well as other performing arts groups try not to compete with each other by avoiding overlapping schedules.
With the opening of the new academic theater program, Mask and Bauble in particular stands to lose one or more of its productions. “I don’t like academic theater hurting club theater. The PPA doesn’t want to do that, but sometimes its comes across that way,” Richardson said.
Richardson is not alone in her fears. Kristen Brudy (CAS ‘06) began her involvement in club theater during her first semester at Georgetown, appearing in Nomadic’s production of The Laramie Project. She is currently Business Manager of Nomadic and recently had her directing debut with Beyond Therapy. “If the PPA wants to independently put on shows, it will have to pull them from Mask and Bauble and Nomadic.” Because Black Theater Ensemble and Georgetown Players run fewer shows and have more particular niches, Brudy feels Nomadic and Mask and Bauble have the most to lose.
Brudy is especially fearful for Nomadic because she believes that the groups has struggled to find a separate identity from Mask and Bauble in recent years. Nomadic Theater was originally formed as a counter to Mask and Bauble. 24 years ago, a group of Mask and Bauble members, disgruntled by what they perceived as a lack of socially aware theater, formed a separate group affectionately named “Dead Baubles.” Since then, “the whole campus has become socially aware,” says Brudy. With Mask and Bauble and the now renamed Nomadic Theater sharing both personnel and socially aware identities, Brudy is unsure about her group’s place on this campus. Like their name implies, Nomadic’s identity hinges on the fact that they have no official performing space of their own. With the creation of the new performing arts center, everyone who wants to perform on campus will ostensibly have a space to do so, rendering an important part of Nomadic’s identity moot.
More than just losing a show, many fear that an academic theater program will severely limit non-theater majors’ involvement. “I don’t want to be a theater major, but I do want to work in theater,” said Brudy. “I don’t want to come back and be told that I can’t direct because a theater major gets priority over that position.”
Ron Lignelli, managing director for the PPA, agrees that there are limited resources on campus. But he adamantly dismisses any agenda to eliminate student club theater. “We very much value that whole function of the way in which students are elected and have a say in their how their organizations are managed,” Lignelli says. He also said that students who wish to become involved in theater strictly as an extracurricular activity will still retain that opportunity in the future.
“We get caught up so much in the historical nature of something because it’s always been that way,” said Lignelli. “The reality is, it’s not always been that way. Only the student who’s been here as a junior or senior remembers it that way.”
Lignelli concedes, however, that a new theater major program will consume resources. “If you’re an English professor, your research consists of writing books. But for theater faculty, its to direct a play, its to do research into theater,” he says. However, he also believes that more student groups doesn’t necessarily mean better theater. “I saw a lot of dilution when Georgetown Players came into existence … Although that has gotten better now, I believe that we have more groups but less talent per group,” Lignelli said. “The bottom line is trying to create good art.”
One of the fundamental problems the PPA faces is a lack of tradition or social capital that would serve as a driving force for the accumulation of resources and the creation of a good academic program. Club theater provides this tradition and to date, it has served to promote performing arts with the intention of gaining support and resources for the theater major. But club theater has different goals and values than academic theater. While the PPA is interested in providing the highest quality work, student groups are mostly in it to have fun.
Maya Roth, Interim Director of Theater, is acutely aware of these differences. According to her, while both academic and club theater share the goal of education, the latter is more focused on building community. In academic theater, “we really value as a primary goal teaching a rigorous creative process,” said Roth.
Arriving at Georgetown last year, Roth’s experience in building theater programs makes her an ideal person to have around. While she holds a powerful administrative role in the PPA, her office retains a scholarly quality; her desk faces away from the door and the lights are slightly dimmed to a comforting level. Her thoughtful tone and careful choice of words indicates a desire to calm concerns, but they also clearly state her intents.
Though Roth recognizes the importance of preserving student club theater, she is also committed to developing an academic department. “There should always be student activity theater, but likewise I don’t want the academic programs subsumed by student activity.”
Roth sees the immediate role of the PPA as an academic institution, which will also bring legitimacy to performing arts as a scholarly endeavor. “We’re trying to help affect a cultural transformation for Georgetown to value the arts more highly,” she said. In particular, she cites the lack of resources to start a dance program as something that can be remedied by placing performing arts within an academic department. “Theater and performing arts have been important to the culture at Georgetown. What they haven’t been is recognized as integral to the educational learning in liberal arts … In a liberal arts environment, the point is that scholarship feeds creative work, and creative work feeds scholarship.”
In an effort to begin the integration of academic theater into Georgetown’s culture, the idea of collaborations between faculty and students to produce shows was introduced even before the creation of the PPA. While feedback has been mixed, collaborations have provided theater faculty with directing positions while not having to cut shows from the club groups. According to Roth, faculty-student collaborations have allowed her to introduce different styles and theories of making theater.
Dustin Maghamfar (CAS ‘06), Technical director for Nomadic Theater, recognizes the value of working with a professional and the other opportunities gained through collaboration. While he is especially pleased with the extra funding that collaborations tend to receive, he also believes that collaborations help maintain the independence of both Nomadic and the PPA.
Nevertheless, he realizes that Nomadic theater in particular has not had positive experiences with faculty directors in the past. “[Nomadic] is used to doing things a certain way, while a faculty director has his or her own style,” said Magahmfar.
Nomadic’s experiences with theatrical shorts do not necessarily constitute the norm. Members of both Nomadic and Mask and Bauble cite Mask and Bauble’s collaboration with Roth on Twelfth Night as proof that positive relations are possible. Richardson, who produced the show, remembers the ease with which Mask and Bauble and Roth were able to agree on a script. “We mentioned the idea of doing a Shakespeare in that slot … [Roth] was fine with doing a Shakespeare so we came up with a list of shows and she came up with a list of shows, and our lists matched.”
Apart from the actual show Roth was also able to set up workshops and sessions that reached out to the wider university community, which added a scholarly context to the work she did with the student group.
Black Theater Ensemble has similarly expanded their presence through PPA resources. According to Dionne Young (CAS ‘04), Black Theater Ensemble was originally formed to produce a show in celebration of Black History Month. Although, the group first started out with student written and directed plays, they have since embraced professional advising as part of their production process. With the PPA, professional involvement has only lead to a greater scope. “We have resource that lets us go beyond our February show,” said Young, referring to the open mic coffee houses the group sponsors later in the year. “I think the PPA has opened up a new door for us … we’re not finding our way through the dark.”
While Richardson acknowledges the benefits of having a professional in the production process, she feels that the presence of a faculty member takes away from the student club atmosphere. “There is a lot to learn and [Roth] brought a lot to the table during Twelfth Night, but it was very different.” She adds, “Being in a room with only your peers is very different from being in a room with even one faculty member … As soon as you put a faculty member into the theater, it turns into a classroom experience.”
Despite these tensions, Roth feels she fills her role appropriately. “I am very happy to have a positive relationship with many people in student groups and have worked to develop that. But I have to make sure my job doesn’t become about mentoring student [club] theater. I don’t want that.”
With the new building scheduled to be done by 2005, the academic side of performing arts will have a solid facility with which to nurture theater, music and dance programs as well as to combine performing arts with other academic areas through interdisciplinary programs. It is at that time Richardson feels that academic and club theater will be more comfortable with each other. “The theater program will attract more people once it is up and running,” Richardson said. “With a new space, we could put multiple shows up at the same time.”
Maghamfar echoes Richardson’s sentiments. “When the PPA is off its feet, I’d like to see a return to a divide between club and academic theater,” he said. “The two are different, and I think the department respects that.”
Presently, the PPA is interviewing for a new senior director in theater and has invited students to participate in the selection process. Both students and faculty agree that a lot depends on the vision the new faculty member will bring to the theater program. In the meantime, poor collaborations and recognition of finite resources will continue to lfrustrate many club theater members.
While Roth understands these concerns, she hopes that students will be receptive to a change in the culture of performing arts at Georgetown. “Are [students] threatened because we’re growing, and there’s going to be another kind of theater at Georgetown? If that’s what it is, yeah, there’s going to be another kind of theater that has an important role in the community. Does that displace them? No. There will continue to be the clubs that have a very important role in the Georgetown community and a very different role than academic theater.”
