Dramatics Magazine
Choices
Finding the right college theatre program
Maybe this sounds like you.
Dylan Alexis Elhai, from Claremont, California, is a high school senior, an active Thespian and a good student. She’d like to study theatre in college—specifically lighting design—and her parents are supportive, but being creative types themselves they know how hard it is to find steady employment in the field. They’ve encouraged Dylan to have “something to fall back on,” so she’s considering a major in electrical engineering as well. The problem is finding a school with a rigorous engineering program and a well-regarded technical theatre degree, where she could actually succeed in the classes for both without killing herself. And which her family, with three children of college age, can afford. And where she could participate on a rowing or water polo team (she’s also an avid swimmer), ride horses, study abroad, work on a film set…
The list goes on.
Over the next few months, Dylan will have to reconcile her college dreams with reality. Adding pressure to her decision are two major factors beyond her control: the lingering economic recession, which has forced many colleges to cut back on classes and productions (a few have discontinued their theatre programs altogether) and made paying for college an unprecedented strain on many families; and the fact that the peak of the “Baby Boomlet” generation (the offspring of Baby Boomers) is now ready for college, making competition for slots in the nation’s freshman classes fiercer than it’s been in decades. That’s especially true for musical theatre students, recruiters say, citing the effects of High School Musical, Glee, and other pop cultural phenomena that have romanticized life in show business.
“It is really hard,” says Dylan, who’s not one of those starry-eyed Gleeks. She’s pragmatic. She’s done her homework. She’s applied to several top professional training programs, for lighting design, but she worries the course of study might not suit her: “It’s so scheduled and lock-tight, I’d only get one class every two years that was not in theatre... I think it’s important to explore a lot of different areas.” On the other hand, if she can get into a prestigious Bachelor of Fine Arts program—especially with a scholarship offer—how could she turn that opportunity down? If she opts for a more flexible liberal arts degree, will she find herself at a disadvantage later when she’s competing with B.F.A. grads for jobs on theatrical lighting crews?
Right now there are thousands of theatre-interested high school seniors—gifted performers, skilled technicians, playwrights- and designers- and directors-in-the-making—facing dilemmas like Dylan’s. There are so many variables and so many possibilities, with more than three thousand colleges, universities, and professional schools in the United States. Finding the right one involves sorting through information about the course offerings, faculty, facilities, location and setting, cost, financial aid, and many less tangible qualities of dozens of schools.
And if you want to prepare yourself for a career in theatre or film, you have a choice to make at the outset, before your first class as a freshman, about how to pursue the skills and knowledge you will use in your working life. Put simply:
- You can pursue professional training immediately in a four-year Bachelor of Fine Arts or two-year conservatory program.
- Or you can begin by getting a broad liberal arts education, while also studying theatre, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in theatre. After completing that four-year degree, you can then, if you choose, enter a professional training program at the graduate level. The B.A. and the B.F.A. represent two fundamentally different ideas about how theatre artists should be trained. As defined by the National Association of Schools of Theatre, the liberal arts approach is designed to provide the B.A. student with a broad range of knowledge in the arts, humanities, and sciences as well as theatre. B.A. theatre students should develop basic technique and get production experience in an environment that “lead[s] to a fuller intellectual grasp of the art,” NAST says in its standards for degree-granting institutions.
The B.F.A., on the other hand, places “primary emphasis… on the development of skills, concepts, and sensitivities essential to the theatre professional.” NAST recognizes six different theatre B.F.A. concentrations: acting, design and technology, film and video production, theatre for youth, musical theatre with a theatre emphasis, and musical theatre with a music emphasis. (Conservatories that offer associate degrees or certificates, generally in a two-year program, are concentrated versions of the professional training approach; the difference, other than the length of the course of study, is that B.F.A. programs include a small amount of general, non-theatre coursework, and two-year conservatories don’t.)
About 20 to 25 percent of the B.A. curriculum consists of theatre studies; 60 to 65 percent is general education, and the remaining 10 or 20 percent is made up of electives. In the B.F.A. curriculum, the percentages are approximately reversed: between 60 and 70 percent of the coursework is in the area of theatre concentration and supportive studies, around 20 to 25 percent is in general education, and the remaining 10 or 15 percent is made up of electives (which may include even more theatre courses).
There are other differences. In most colleges and universities that offer a B.A. in theatre, the student simply declares an intention to pursue that major. Entrance into a B.F.A. program usually requires an audition or portfolio evaluation, and the student’s continued participation is subject to annual review.
Acting conservatories have been around for a long time. The American Academy of Dramatic Arts, a two-year conservatory, was founded in New York in 1884, and the first university-based actor training program was established at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1914. But professional actor training on the scale that it exists today, and the B.F.A. degree in theatre disciplines, are both relatively new. As recently as 1970 there were only six professional training programs in the United States, all concentrated in the Northeast. This directory lists more than 125 conservatory programs and university theatre departments that offer B.F.A. or M.F.A. degrees, from Seattle to Miami.
Like the other aspects of choosing a school, the question of whether to pursue a liberal arts or professional degree as an undergraduate is ultimately a personal one. The issue is not whether one approach is better; it’s a matter of figuring out which course of study is better for you.
In the course of preparing this directory of college theatre programs over the past twenty years, the staff of Dramatics has discussed the question of how actors should be trained with countless educators, students, actors, and directors. Here are some observations, based on that accumulated knowledge, about the choice between professional training and a liberal arts education at the undergraduate level.
- A generation ago, a liberal arts degree with a major in theatre was a well-traveled path toward a life on stage. Today, while it’s not unheard of, neither is it common for an actor or designer to launch a professional career on the basis of a B.A. theatre degree alone. Most students who decide to continue their pursuit of a life in the theatre after earning a liberal arts theatre degree do so by enrolling in an M.F.A. program or conservatory, by spending a season as an acting apprentice at a resident theatre company, or by studying with an acting teacher in a studio. The B.F.A., on the other hand, is designed to prepare graduates to go directly to work.
- Many B.F.A. programs graduate actors who are indisputably well-trained. An actor who earns a liberal arts degree and then an M.F.A., though, is both well-trained and well-educated. It’s a formidable combination that, all other things being equal, directors will find very appealing. (The downside, of course, is that the B.A./M.F.A. actor will have delayed the beginning of her career by two or three years, and probably will have tens of thousands of dollars in additional student loan debt.)
- The B.F.A. is a narrowly focused, highly specialized course of study. B.F.A. students learn a lot about their chosen theatre concentration and related areas, and not much about anything else. For that reason, you should be very certain that you really want to spend your life in the theatre before committing to a professional program.
- A cautionary note for students who are leaning toward a B.A. theatre major: if you’re considering a school that offers both a B.A. and a B.F.A. or M.F.A., ask some hard questions about the B.A. students’ performance and production opportunities and access to senior faculty. Because B.F.A. students and graduate students require so much of the department’s resources, liberal arts students sometimes are relegated to second-class status.
In sorting through these issues, talk to people who know you and your work—your parents, your theatre teachers and others whose judgment you trust—and to people who know college theatre programs. We’ve already tapped some of them for you: scattered throughout this issue are first-hand observations and advice from theatre faculty who teach in a wide range of programs across the country. Count them among the many people rooting for you to make the right decision.
Dylan Alexis Elhai will apply to fourteen colleges between now and February: some B.F.A. programs, some B.A. or B.S., on small and large campuses from coast to coast. She’ll try to enjoy her senior year (and keep her grades up) while waiting for the results. Then comes the really hard part: the choice.
“I’m sure after all my applications are sent in I’ll start to feel a little anxiety, and the panic will set in,” she says, laughing. “But right now, I’m mostly excited. Getting into college—it’s going to be a huge payoff. For me, it’s being able to learn what I want to learn really well, to home in on something I’m super-passionate about and what I could probably do for the rest of my life. That makes me so excited, that I’m setting myself up for a career and a life I will love.”
