and the RATS, take another one in the.........HA ha!!!
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.”
Whether they cut into arts programs or into their social justice programs makes little difference to me.
Just cut and feel pain. Let the arts people whose programs got cut have it out with the social justice people whose programs didn’t get cut.
Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes
Excellent points and ideas al around!!
an oldie but goodie..... true story
Well, ok, I can’t resist telling the tale.
About 12 years ago I attended a week long workshop in metals held at a fine arts enclave located several miles from the main campus of a university. I have learned to work in silver.
We were given a tour. The head of the glass studio asked at the first words he uttered...... “What’s the difference between a large Domino’s pepperoni pizza and a glass artist?”
“The pizza can feed a family of four.”
But I digress.
Each evening the various work shop heads made presentations and had extensive presentations of their work
The wood work shop was hosted by the out going resident artist in the wood work studio. She showed the pictures and some showed beautiful work in furniture and boxes I think. Most was devoted to her calling however. Her calling and reason for being was to express the dialogue between lines and dots.
She would make door frames and window facing and all sorts of architectural fenestration from wood that received a wash of tempera paint onto which she took an HB pencil and made a dot from which a line extended. The dots were more or less uniform but the lines mostly at right angles were of various lengths. This meticulously applied pencil work was a dialogue between lines and dots.
She was very upset and complained through the whole presentation. She had to leave the security of the wood studio where she had dwelled for about 8 years. She came as a freshman Fine Arts Major, spent 2 more years getting a Masters of Fine arts and then was granted 2 more years as Artist in Residence, Wood Working Studio. At 26 she was kicked out into the hard cold world. She was wonderfully talented and made beautiful stuff. She was hung up as an artist however.....lines and dots.
It was realized that she had to make a living and the solution proposed was a production item. That is artist code for something you make over and over rather than just one at a time. The buzz is “do you have a production item”.
Well she developed one. Mirror Frames that were about 3 “ wide painted in the yellow milk tempera and containing the wonderful hand applied dialogue with lines and dots. So all was well. She had the production item and sold one.
OOps.....there was a problem. It had to be shipped. She could find no box the right size to ship the frame in. Turns out to get a box or boxes, the frames had to be dimensionally fabricated to a size determined by the box manufacturer. Time for crying...... literally. Her whole artistic world came crashing down.
The box maker destroyed her artistic freedom and thus her integrity and thus her being.
The story had no end. Her final days at the school including the summer workshop gig granted in total pity was at an end. She had no job. She had no prospects. The wonderful production item was distasteful because of the loss of artistic freedom and integrity.
I don’t know what happened but know that she at 26 thought the world was nearing an end
Could not happen to a more deserviong bunch of liberal commies. We need to see more of this!!!
Free “artistic” expression, not free rational expression.
Wonder if she was a ‘friend’ of Barry’s bio daddy Frank, or Stanley, etc.. Hmmmmmm....Ties to Chicago perhaps? Well, now I have a new mini hobby....
I wouldn’t feel I had much power if my kid chose a pathetic school like this. I would of course give my opinion, but make it very clear there would be no financial support from me. Adults make choices.
Fund raising at Rachel Corrie’s alma mater is..... flat?!
For all the laid off employees, dont forget to send a thank you note to the SJWs.
If the laid off employee is an SJW, well, schadenfreude!
Time to cut your losses and transfer. Any school degree would be better.
Very excellently stated! No sane person wants to feel threatened & tormented at a place they are paying for!
Or anywhere for that matter.
‘There should an entire class offered at the school to explain capitalism and how things work in the real world.’
reminds me of the girl in a local college who complained bitterly that her archery program was being cut, but the ‘spineless bastards’ would never cut the ‘holy’ men’s football and basketball...uh, dearie, does women’s archery generate even one cent of income...?
‘Woke thee watching lefties stroke their goatees and say ”Yeesss...yeeesss...I get it!”’
thou hast made an interesting post...
“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.”
Looking at 400 Fakebook and Twit accounts would be a tiresome job.
“Have some stand-up comic nights.”
And risk the students burning down the theater because they were offended by a politically incorrect joke? :-)
‘...they were offended by a politically incorrect joke?’
something like ‘my daughter, her high school yearbook picture was horizontal’...
Thank you for the link. I read it last night and I'm still thinking it over. It's good to learn that somewhere these people have acknowledged, to a small extent, this amazing problem.
These intellectuals should have been reading FR since 1998, maybe then they wouldn't be so afraid of us, lol.
Instead of learning some humility from their experiences, they now think of themselves as the elite-of-the-eltie.
Everything would fall into place for them if they would just meet Jesus. That's what is missing from their studies.
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