Stage administration MFA college students on the University of California, San Diego. (Photo by Manuel Rotenberg)
Across the nation, as graduate coaching applications choose candidates for incoming cohorts, directors are additionally making robust choices about program choices as a result of budgetary restrictions. The pandemic has had an outsize impact on universities, and the financial downturn of the previous three years is forcing some graduate theatre coaching applications to drag again on recruitment efforts, cut back class sizes, and minimize manufacturing budgets.
According to the National Student Clearinghouse, postsecondary enrollment numbers have been on a gradual decline, and fall 2022 enrollment dipped additional under pre-pandemic ranges. Fewer college students are pursuing high majors equivalent to enterprise, engineering, and organic sciences on the undergraduate and graduate stage, and that normally filters all the way down to smaller price range strains for the humanities, significantly for graduate applications.
“Universities are facing a significant financial crunch right now,” mentioned Lisa Portes, the top of the MFA directing program on the Theatre School at DePaul University. “Typically, theatre programs are offset by more lucrative ventures in other areas.”
In March, Penn State University revealed a normal price range deficit of $140 million. Low state funding has pressured the Big Ten faculty to slash its soccer price range by half, leaving the varsity’s arts applications to struggle for a chunk of the shrinking pie. This spring, committees advocating for the MFA theatre program are navigating choices round scholar manufacturing choices and looming university-wide layoffs.
Despite having a big endowment, the University of Texas at Austin can also be feeling the pinch. The MFA theatre program’s price range is supported by rental revenue, and a number of other summer time ballet camps have been canceled due to the pandemic. “Our production operating budget is really reliant on how we use our space in the summer,” mentioned KJ Sanchez, head of the MFA directing program. (This 12 months UT Austin’s Theatre & Dance division will run its personal summer time dance camp.)
Even as graduate applications face monetary woes, the intention to take care of excellence remains to be the objective. For many, persevering with to supply tuition remission and manufacturing alternatives means they’ll have to supply fewer slots. Penn State gives full assistantships to MFA theatre college students, however to take care of that mannequin, they could must reduce on the variety of college students admitted into the following cohort in 2024.
“It is important to me that we offer the students a gateway into the professional field—that is always the goal,” mentioned Steve H. Broadnax III, head of Penn’s MFA directing program. “Budgets may diminish, but we are always trying to focus on how the quality of the education can remain the same.”
At the University of California San Diego, the variety of spots in the MFA theatre program dropped this 12 months from 25 to fifteen. “That’s a combination of a perfect storm of things,” defined Lamar Perry, an assistant professor of directing. In addition to the nation’s declining financial state, UCSD continues to be impacted by the continuing decision of final 12 months’s United Auto Workers (UAW) strike.
Other universities paused recruitment and admissions to provide present college students the chance to proceed their research after COVID-19 halted in-person studying and stay performances. While Northwestern University welcomed a brand new class within the fall of 2020, this system didn’t admit college students in 2021. “We were extremely grateful that the university really got behind the graduate program and supported it so that our students had a fourth year,” mentioned Linda Roethke, head of the MFA design program.
At Brown University, two MFA directing cohorts have been granted a further 12 months of coaching, pausing admittance two years in a row. The program is at the moment on hiatus because it engages in a full exterior evaluate. Likewise, the MFA directing program at Theatre School at DePaul University is on pause. Just a few MFA directing college students determined to take depart when the pandemic pressured lessons on-line in 2020, and this under-enrollment flagged this system within the bigger college system.
“While our MFA directing program is on pause, we are grateful to our dean, Martine Kei Green-Rogers, and our provost, Salma Ghanem, for their support as we revision the program with the aim of taking in MFA directors again within the next three to five years,” mentioned Portes. “It is our intent to use the pause to reimagine a new program for a changing field, one that would also be economically viable for both the university and the graduate students.”
The financial viability of graduate applications is turning into an more and more sophisticated query. The majority of MFA theatre applications supply tuition remission, housing, and stipends, however with inflation ramping up, the price of supporting college students is rising. Potential candidates are additionally rigorously assessing the cost-benefit evaluation because the monetary panorama grows extra precarious.
UT Austin’s Sanchez mentioned she feels the burden of this duty. “Are we giving students what they came for?” she questioned. “They’re taking three years out of their life and they’re moving far away from everything they know.”
MFA directing and playwriting college students at UT Austin obtain paid instructing appointments, however the ballooning price of residing in Austin, now at a report excessive, poses one other hurdle. A latest survey revealed that UT Austin graduate theatre college students accrue between $10,000 and $20,000 of debt throughout their graduate tenure. Just a few years in the past, the scholars efficiently led a cost to extend the instructing compensation and well being advantages bundle. (The elevated funds for the instructing appointments, nonetheless, meant the college needed to reduce on the variety of admitted college students.)
As graduate faculty is a considerable dedication of time and sources, UCSD’s Perry believes the easiest way to supply worth to graduate college students is to pay attention intently to their wants. “Everyone is thinking about how much things cost, you know, what is valuable to me?” he mentioned. “Being open and having those conversations is extremely important, because when the students don’t feel listened to, then you have chaos.”
In the wake of George Floyd’s homicide and the We See You, White American Theater motion, college students are demanding change and the institution of anti-racist practices in academia. This second of budgetary and pedagogical transformation is being met by a racial reckoning.
“Zoom and this moment of contraction are really giving space to folks to imagine how to de-center what has prevailed in training for the last 50 years, and to think about how to meet the world right now,” mentioned UCSD’s Perry. “The needs of artists, directors, actors, and playwrights are radically different in 2023.”
Students not have persistence with half measures. “They are demanding a decolonized curriculum and for the global majority to be seen and heard onstage,” mentioned Sanchez. Added Penn State’s Broadnax, “Students are not taking it anymore. They know that they have a voice, they know they have agency, and they demand equity and diversity. When I was in school, I had no agency.”
The pandemic has additionally spotlighted the necessity for larger scholar assist companies. UT Austin school have interaction in workshops on burnout and sustainability to prioritize the scholars’ psychological well being. At Penn State, Broadnax leads with the philosophy “people over plays.” He places the give attention to college students’ bodily and psychological well-being, and is heartened that the college supplies psychological companies and has a wellness middle for theatre college students.
At the University of Washington, change is occurring on the high, with an effort to rent extra academics of the worldwide majority.
“We have a pretty good set of anti-racist goals, and we are checking in on how to diversify the canon of the curriculum, how to be more inclusive of other perspectives and points of view, and how to think about a more global approach,” mentioned Valerie Curtis-Newton, head of UW’s MFA directing program.
“Training programs have been making concerted efforts over the last many years to train artists for a changing field, which means training more artists of color, more artists who identify as having disabilities, more gender-expansive artists to lead the changing field,” mentioned Lisa Portes. “If the training programs contract now, that’s going to create an overall contraction of who is entering the American theatre ready to hit the ground running and make positive change.”
Students are nonetheless making use of for coveted spots in MFA applications, whatever the limitations to entry, shrinking class sizes, or ill-boding statistics. In some ways, although, the pandemic is altering the composition of cohorts.
Brown University’s Brown/Trinity MFA appearing program has had extra candidates for the reason that program went tuition-free in 2018, however the applicant pool has modified for the reason that pandemic. Sophia Skiles, head of the appearing program, has famous a surge of candidates who didn’t research theatre on the undergraduate stage. Skiles believes the pandemic pause gave many individuals a chance to reexamine their passions.
“Brown/Trinity prides itself on really being accessible to first-generation students for whom there were certain pressures to study a certain thing as undergraduates,” says Skiles. “With the tuition-free piece, folks get to ask themselves that question again.”
Applicants for UT Austin’s directing and playwriting applications have been decrease this 12 months, “but it was one of our strongest years in terms of quality of applicants,” mentioned Sanchez. “Students are coming in with a body of work and a ferocity.”
The University of Washington has seen a rise of older candidates with extra work expertise making use of to the MFA program, and an increase of cross-disciplinary artists pursuing graduate research.
“Most of our undergraduate [theatre] majors are double majors—they are already Plan B-ing themselves,” mentioned Curtis-Newton. “The MFA level manifestation of that is a consideration of what we’re calling more of a hyphenate artist. Part of what we’re navigating right now is finding enough space on the plate for the hyphens without pushing the rigor of craft in the various areas off the plate.”
Despite the caliber of scholars coming via now, educators are dealing with the truth of a looming demographic cliff in just a few years. Statistics present that due to the Great Recession of 15 years in the past, the delivery price declined, so there will likely be fewer undergraduates in 2025.
“This is a once-in-a-generation field shift that we’re seeing right now,” mentioned Portes. “If training programs can figure out a way to stay alive and pivot at the same time, I think we’re going to be inventing some really exciting genre-shifting training moving forward.”
Over the previous few years, reimagining coaching applications for the shifting trade has required swift adaptation and inventiveness, and digital training cracked open new methods of studying. “COVID propelled us forward in the way we were doing arts education,” mentioned Penn State’s Broadnax. “I believe that online-and-in-person is the way to go.”
Indeed, a number of applications are persevering with to supply some Zoom lessons, significantly for enterprise programs and visitor lectures. The digital entry to working professionals gives college students a better take a look at the sphere, which is very helpful for applications exterior the glare of huge cities.
For research-intensive universities, the digital studying mannequin has been a boon for educators, who can journey for productions and proceed to mentor and train nearly from the highway. For his half, UCSD’s Perry simply wrapped a workshop manufacturing at Penumbra Theatre Company in Minneapolis, all whereas shifting forward with the winter semester.
At the University of Washington, the pivot to digital studying impressed the directing college students to discover devising and directing on-camera work for TV and movie tasks. The pandemic additionally compelled educators and college students to assume creatively about the way to current performs. UT Austin college students turned fallow land on campus right into a blooming neighborhood backyard for an outside efficiency, with viewers members invited to sit down amongst kale and collard greens.
This out-of-the-box method to theatremaking is each a response to dwindling sources and to the wants of a altering trade. For many a long time, graduate coaching applications have been designed to arrange MFA college students to current premiere workshop productions at regional theatres. “We’re learning that it doesn’t actually have to be that way,” mentioned Sanchez. “If students are here to work on craft, there are so many different ways to achieve that.”
UW’s Valerie Curtis-Newton remembers the challenges of the 2008 recession for educators getting ready college students to enter a area with few work alternatives. At that point, the large query was, “Where are they going to work?” The query now, she mentioned, is, “How are they going to work?”
Randolph College is constructing a brand new program to fulfill the wants of scholars and a altering area. This summer time, the liberal arts faculty in Lynchburg, Va., will welcome its first cohort of multi-disciplinary MFA theatre college students. The two-year low-residency program, modeled after the varsity’s profitable artistic writing observe, will deliver college students collectively biannually for on-campus intensives. In the interim, college students will work remotely with mentors and collaborators.
“The track to an MFA in acting, directing, design, and many of the other subdisciplines—it feels like one has to be able to hit pause on their life and move wherever they get in and be there and be in intensive training from early in the morning until late at night,” mentioned Stephanie Holladay Earl, head of Randolph’s MFA theatre program. “I don’t think that path suits everyone, and it leaves a lot of people out.”
The program goals to fulfill the wants of artists in a post-pandemic actuality; its tagline is “theatre for the modern world.” The curriculum will function programs that concentrate on fairness, variety, and inclusion. Indeed, whereas established applications are shifting their practices to mandate EDI coaching for school and intimacy coordination in scholar productions, these practices will likely be baked into the Randolph College mission from the beginning.
“People see our mission and they connect with it,” mentioned Holladay Earl, calling curiosity in this system thus far “overwhelming. I think this is a really good sign of the values people have in the industry moving forward. The enthusiasm for these practices in education makes me feel very hopeful.”
Despite the financial turmoil and the continuing wrestle to show the worth of the humanities, theatre educators retain hope. Curtis-Newton likens the University of Washington to a canary within the coal mine for applications at the moment struggling—and thus far the canary remains to be singing. After the hiring freezes and restricted budgets after the 2008 recession, the University of Washington’s theatre program thrived, and it’s nonetheless thriving amid the challenges of the pandemic.
“Knowing that we had cuts of lines for a number of years, and we’re still here, and we’re expanding and we’re looking at our research and our impact on the field in a more muscular way,” she mentioned. “Those are all reasons for hope.” Another purpose for hope? “Students are still coming, despite all the obstacles.”
UT’s Sanchez lately noticed a manufacturing of A Chorus Line and was reminded that the concern of the trade dying has been round a very long time. The “where,” the “how,” and the “what” of theatre training could also be altering, however the “why” stays.
“As hackneyed as it sounds, there’s that song at the end—‘What I Did for Love,’” Sanchez mentioned. “I think that is what we’re in right now. People are going to grad school to work on their craft and find their future collaborators, and they’re doing this because they have to make theatre.”
Allison Considine (she/her) is a former senior editor of this journal.