20
Incite/Insight
M em b er’ s Corn er
S pr in g 201 8
21
In c it e / In sig h t
Towards a Fully-Funded
Future in Theatre Education
Y
A long-building tension in higher
education about student debt
was whipped up with passion
in the 2016 presidential election.
And as 2017 rang in, our field was
publicly forced to grapple with
the implications of student debt
in our backyard.
2017 brought high profile
articles in The New York Times,
The Chicago Tribune, and The
Boston Globe about a theatre
degree and debt. The graduate
theatre training program at
Harvard—one of the wealthiest
and most prestigious schools
in the world—was given a sour
ranking from the United States
government. Harvard’s program
for theatre was listed in a long
lineup of—mainly for-profit—
institutions that charge for more
than their degree can return.
The criticism wasn’t about
the training. It was about the
financial cost. The amount of
debt graduates from Harvard’s
American Repertory Theater’s
program—The A.R.T. Institute—are
saddled with is disproportionate
to the potential earnings they
could make in the field, the
Department declared. The
whole scenario jeopardized the
program’s eligibility for federal
financial aid.
As a result, and presumably
embarrassed, the A.R.T. and
Harvard announced that they
would suspend admissions
into the program for three
years’ time. With revelations
that the Institute was relying
heavily (if not exclusively)
on the tuition of students for
subsidization—$63,370 for two
years according to the 2015/2016
admissions application—it is
assumed that the leaders of the
highly successful Cambridge-
to-Broadway theatre program
and the administrators of
Harvard will use the three-year
term to raise an endowment for
the A.R.T.’s training program.
Or, perhaps the three-year
sabbatical indicates a slow
and gentle swan song for the
31-year-old program which
uses a partnership with the
Moscow Art Theatre School as a
defining appeal. Scott Zigler, the
now-former Head of the A.R.T.’s
program is en route to being the
next Dean at the North Carolina
School of the Arts—a move
announced in June 2017.
In a New York Times article, the
Artistic Director of the A.R.T.,
Diane Paulus, said that since
arriving at the theatre in 2009,
her mission was to make the
graduate training program a
fully-funded one. And while
Paulus has been able to send
several shows to commercially
successful runs on Broadway,
she has not been able to attain
that level of financial aid for
A.R.T.’s students.
The scenario isn’t just a
blow for Harvard—it was an
embarrassing revelation for
theatre education and the
professional field as a whole.
And certainly, while Harvard was
made an example of, it is not an
anomaly. There are presumably
many other programs which
operate similarly. Cut to
February of 2018 when Harvard’s
Ivy League sibling, Brown,
announced that beginning in
the upcoming academic year,
all incoming and returning
MFA students in the acting
and directing programs would
have full scholarships. “In the
theatre world, diversity is often
hampered by the inability of
low-income artists and artists of
color to afford to be creators,”
Patricia Ybarra, chair of Brown’s
theatre arts and performance
studies department said in a
press release. “By expanding
access to our program, we
expand access to theatre world
more broadly… You cannot take
risks and choose your path
when hampered by debt.”
Spring 2 018
“If we, as a field of educators, support a system
of higher, post-graduate learning—what, then,
are we endorsing financially?”
By Alex Ates
ou could call these
past few years
ones of a financial
awakening—or
reckoning.
M e m be r ’s C o r n e r
Brown’s announcement and
Ybarra’s statement stab at
the essential question of our
American theatre educational
landscape—as long as our field
deems Master’s degrees useful
and essential, what ethical role
does the tuition cost play?
According to the 2016/2017
Annual Report from Actors’
Equity - the nation’s union for
professional stage actors and
stage managers - roughly 18,422
professional actors are working
annually on an average of 16.4
weeks. Thirty-seven percent of
Equity members earn between
$1,000 and $5,000 annually;
31% earn between $5,000 and
$15,000 annually. The American
theater does not offer financial
stability.
It’s not much better in higher
education. In a growing study
on the matter, the Association
for Theatre in Higher Education
wrote, “What the data seem
to show is that the market
for faculty positions in
theatre in higher education
has remained reasonably
consistent between 1996 and
the present. Unfortunately, given
the distribution of full-time
tenure-eligible positions versus
temporary or non-tenurable
positions, this consistency is by
no means an indication that
everything is just fine. Rather, it
suggests that the current state
of affairs has been in place
for at least 15 years, and that
we need to move away from
thinking of a temporary ‘job
crisis’ and toward a recognition
that this is ‘the new normal.’”
If we, as a field of educators,
support a system of higher,
post-graduate learning—
what, then, are we endorsing
financially? As long as we assign
importance to “prestigious”
programs with high tuition costs
in high cost-of-living epicenters,
we embolden an ecosystem
that accelerates and celebrates
the wealthier students and limits
the poorer ones—if not shutting
them out altogether or setting
them up for a financial coma.
The conundrum of American
theatre hype is a noticeable
knot—the more we celebrate
expensive programs in a field
that doesn’t pay enough to
cover tuition costs, the more
inequity we create in our field.
Our American field of theatre
education needs to confront
this inequitable social dynamic
as aggressively as we are
interrogating the deeply-
sewn mechanisms of racism,
sexism, and other gate-keeping
injustices.
And while postgraduates, in
particular, have a responsibility
to interrogate the impact of
potential costs, the way we
as educators place value into
specific degree programs
can convince a student that
incurring such costs could be
worth it. In this way, educators
contribute to the financial
quicksand that too many
American theatre artists fall into.
So, what do we do? We must
shift the dynamic. We must
research, celebrate, promote,
and encourage programs which
subsidize graduate students in
the same way that graduate
students in most other post-
graduate academic fields
are supported—with a tuition
waiver, stipend, and even—(in
exceptional cases) health care
in exchange for teaching or
research assistantships.
Concurrently, we must cheer on
responsible graduate student
unions who protect assistants
from being easily manipulated
by departments who wish to
overwork graduates in attempts
to cut staffing corners.
The most prestigious
postgraduate programs must
now become the ones with
the least financial burden on
students, our country’s future
artists and future theatre
educators.
This dynamic shift does not
necessitate a pedagogical
stretch.