Or maybe, not.
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.”
A B.A. in hate whitey studies ain’t what it used to be.
Or maybe, not.
Great idea. Evergrim can bring in the Cutees for Show and Tell
Should be completely shutdown. An evil place.
No. Just bulldoze the people
Then salvage the campus by de fumigation
“Well known as nothing-burger college”
I used to a guy with a degree from there. He had nothing good to say about it academically.
Usually an authoritarian regime takes over after a period of unrest, revolution and general dysfunction. Often times the roots of a lot of this mayhem lies in the Universities which makes them the first targets of the new regime. More often than not these academics are lefties.
Why go to college to learn “theatre arts”. Isn’t that best learned as an apprentice?
They’re too good to book such pedestrian events. They’re ARTISTES, man! Their version of theatre involves naked fat girls rolling around in chocolate or queers fighting with stuffed parakeets. You know ... THEATRE!
It’s not their fault that you Neanderthals don’t appreciate great art.
Yes! Evergreen State welcomes all viewpoints on their campus. Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Trotskyites, Khmerists, Juche... All are welcome at Evergreen.
This guy has a theater degree from Evergreen State.
He might be the only one.
IIRC, his career was marred by some public comments that his alma mater would most certainly not approve of.
Free expression as long as you agree with them.
Any parent who enrolls a child in this Leftist sink hole should be charged with child abuse.
” The benefits of theater and performance for individuals and groups are boundless”
What crap.
[ Evergreen College is in Olympia, WA ]
Closing the school would be a kindnesss so students don’t waste their money for a worthless diploma from Evergreen. Imagine putting that school down on a resume. it is interview employment death if you’d even be granted an interview. Good job Evergreen that ruins it for alumni for decades as well.
Leftists ruin everything.
The people who are REALLY PUNISHED by the idiots running the school are the ones that never even attended, those who live in commuting distance - they now have a college option closed out, and driving daily to Seattle, for example, won’t be fun.
The ones there already, who have invested their time and work, will probably simply kiss the feet of their new master (while seething in anger), but ride it out to get their degrees, but potential new students would be INSANE to go there.
Given the mess they created, what the school should do is simply NOT ACCEPT anymore freshmen, let the existing students finish up, and then after 4 or 5 years of this, then start over with new staff and admins.
Kind of like flushing out a bad meal.
May they go bankrupt for treating Whitey like $hit.
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