Posted on 05/25/2018 11:30:29 PM PDT by llevrok
The Evergreen State College is known for a liberal-arts environment that encourages free artistic expression. However, this spring Evergreen will cut heavily into the budget for staff and facilities that nurture theatrical expression. This year, the last seven shows at TESC will be especially fraught but meaningful, as they mark a climax before severe budget cuts and staff reductions go into effect.
The Experimental Theater (COM 124, a 200-seat, black-box venue) and its costume and scene shops will close at the end of the spring 2018 semester. On Friday, May 18, faculty and staff members were informed that three of four staff positions and 20 student-staff positions are to be eliminated. There will also be cuts to the academic budget office, library staff and media-services office.
Theater arts at TESC have educated and entertained thousands of students and community members over the decades and have been a greenhouse for theater to grow across the South Sound and the world. Alumni of the program have gone on to theatrical success. Mark Alford graduated in 2011, has since co-founded two improv companies and appeared on nearly every stage in the South Sound. After renowned choreographer and actress Amy Shephard’s 2009 graduation, she completed theater graduate school in England. Matt Lawrence, a 1992 graduate, went from a role as technical-theater director at TESC to lighting design at Abu Dhabi entertainment complexes for global entertainment agency ThinkWell.
Lawrence describes the decision to close the theater as “mind-numbingly short-sighted” and “diametrically opposed to the point of a liberal arts institution. Performing-arts curriculum without actual public performance is like swimming school without water.”
“We have 5.9 million (dollars) in cuts to make,” explains Zach Powers, communications manager for the college, “and the reduction to our Communication Building and some of our arts programs that work in that building make up 250 thousand of that.” In a year of “waning enrollment,” Powers emphasizes the need to prioritize funding for lower-cost programs that most directly affect students’ academic paths. “There (are) no curricular offerings being cancelled as a result of these closures. … We’re trying to minimize the effects on students all over campus. … It’s not as though (the arts) are being singled out.”
“As the school was working on their fiscal challenges and drop in enrollment,” recalls Jerry Berebitsky, the facility’s current technical director, “they said, ‘Stuff will happen. People will lose jobs.’ We knew the arts are not often respected in the budget-cutting realm, and it’s something that’s easy to cut early.” The faculty will be reduced to “about as minimal as you can get,” Berebitsky says: “one full-time dance faculty, one full-time theater faculty and (supplemental) weekend and evening faculty.” Berebitsky himself will lose his job. The recital hall will remain open, but scheduling space for student-run arts organizations to perform will be increasingly difficult.
“I find it very disappointing,” says Shephard, “but I’m not surprised. … The benefits of theater and performance for individuals and groups are boundless, but … the benefits aren’t easily measured and recorded, so those departments that rely primarily on qualitative data are the first to get cut.”
Asked to characterize this loss to students and the community, Berebitsky recalls a Russian-history student who was cast in ‘Three Sisters’ this spring. “He was deeply moved by what this experience brought to him,” says Berebitsky. “He thought he would carry this with him the rest of his life. I was really moved by his comments. He was choking up as he reflected on it. That’s what I think the power of Evergreen offers.”
Really?
WA state ping
On Tucker Carlson:
Prof: Country is being put in danger by identity politics
May. 25, 2018 - 5:33 - ‘Inside the Issues’: Former Evergreen State College professor Bret Weinstein reflects on the lessons learned in the year since a campus mob targeted him when he refused to participate in a ‘Day of Absence’ where white people were told to leave campus - and he ultimately resigned. #Tucker
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5789858992001/?#sp=show-clips
“Free expression” as in Stalinist/Maoist/Militantly Anti-Zionist, yes.
What would please me most would be to see them reduce faculty salary to 1/3 of its present rate. Say the average prof there makes $120K, then his new salary would be $40K. And if they don't like it, let them quit.
Even at $40K they'd have 100 applicants for every open position. That is not an exaggeration. It's a buyer's market for liberal arts professors. A friend of mine is an administrator at a local college and she said for one opening for a sh*t teaching job, she had to cull almost 400 applications down to 10 finalists, just for one opening.
Evergreen State College is proof that Cultural Marxism is a threat to America. Everything it touches burns out the soul of what made America great.
Gangs of students roving campus while carrying baseball bats, looking for white people to beat up, are very expressive.
First, this cut only takes them through the rest of this year and spring of 2019. By May of 2019....there’s likely to be the next cut announced, or significant tuition rise.
Second, at the heart of the matter....this is really a lesson in capitalism. If you can’t make a profit or sustain your operation....you cut. There should an entire class offered at the school to explain capitalism and how things work in the real world.
$250,000 needed to keep the 200-seat theater open. That’s $1,250 per seat. 36 shows a year at $40/ticket will cover it. I guess they don’t teach “how to manage a theater without going broke” at the school?
Heck they don’t even need to put on their own productions all the time. Just book the theater more often. Let bands play there and promote it for you. Have some stand-up comic nights. Run a few classic movies that people will pay to go see. But I get the impression that this place suffers from “that’s not my job” syndrome. The students aren’t there to run the place, and the teachers are there to, well, do something unrelated to actually working to keep their theater and their jobs I guess.
You might be interested in this story, Bret Weinstein (the professor who quit his job at Evergreen along with his wife because they thought the “no white people day” was obviously racists and were ostracized for it) are part of what they or the NYT call a burgeoning “intellectual dark web” of disenchanted actvists. The article goes into some detail about Weinstein and others including Joe Rogan, Kanye West, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and many others. Some of them are making bigger bucks selling speaking engagements and asking for donations on podcasts, etc than they were being scientists or professors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/08/opinion/intellectual-dark-web.html
Being a liberal isn’t a “Art”, it’s a mental illness.
One of Evergreen’s professors was an old Trotskyite communist, Stephanie Coontz. She was in the Socialist Workers Party for many years but I don’t know if she left it before it collapsed or not.
Now she’s a “leading” feminist theories writer and has books reviewed in the Wash. Post Book Section.
Tank, you leftist indoctrination brain washing camp!
I’m going to guess that the productions put on by this campus had zero public appeal. I’m sure Shakespeare wasn’t performed, because white patriarchy and all.
Get woke, go broke. I love a happy ending, from my perspective. Starve liberals of money, folks.
JoMa
Well known as nothing burger college
I think Evergreen can use a few Caterpillars. Bulldoze the place to the ground.
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