<p>What, if anything do the current students and parents know about the changes coming soon at UArts? So far I know that Charlie Gilbert is stepping down as director and they are interviewing for a new one. Does anyone else have any insight into the changes we can expect?</p>
<p>I am heading off to Philly on Friday to visit my D, a freshman MT at Uarts. I will try to scope out the changes and post what I find out.</p>
<p>Thanks I 4inoregon. I will watch for your post or your private message. Usually, change is a good thing, so I am not too worried.</p>
<p>theatermom, I am sending a pm</p>
<p>4inoregon - I am also very interested. Are there big changes in faculty - in the theater department’s focus or philosophy? Is it true that UArts will have larger classes and less division between MT, Acting and Dance? I was in Philly a few weeks ago and heard rumors…</p>
<p>Yes, there have been and will be some changes, but nothing is in concrete yet. It sounds all good. I’ll send a pm.</p>
<p>Hi Everyone, my daughter will be attending UARTS in the Fall as a MT major and we are interested in learning more about what’s going on. I know that they are interviewing for a new head of the theatre dept and that the new Dean of the school is looking for more collaboration which is good. Is there any more we should know about?? Thanks.</p>
<p>That’s pretty much it. The school is looking towards keeping up with all of the changes in theater itself, and providing an up-to-date education for the kids. The goal is to make the kids employable, between the stage, film, voice overs, etc. I was happy with the answers I got during my visit this weekend.</p>
<p>I’m a current Junior Acting major, and I just wanted to say that 4inoregon is correct. They’re interviewing for a new head of the school, and for this year David Howey is filling in. He was the head of the Acting Dept, although I have a feeling while he is the head of the entire school someone will fill in as the Acting Head (or not, I don’t really know). But in general, there are changes that are being made to try to incorporate more collaboration, as well as push more “modern” theatre practices. I put modern in quotes because it’s nothing drastic that they’re trying to do, I just know that one thing that has received a lot of interest is devised theatre, and other contemporary ideas. Or opening up a few more credits in the curriculum for other classes. MT students, for example, would probably find it difficult in their schedules to take a playwriting class if they were interested in that. This way, they would hopefully have the chance to do that. But that is more along the lines of adding a class here or there in the curriculum, and working things out between what the students want, what the staff/faculty want for them, and what we HAVE to have (be it for accreditation, financial reasons, whatever…I could only guess on those things).</p>
<p>For the most part, I like a lot of the changes that are being made, and I think a lot of them are for the best. It’s just hard because the students don’t necessarily know exactly what is going on, and that’s how rumors get spread. I know a lot of people are upset that we reduced the number of shows we have each year. We were doing more shows than almost any other university though (without me going back to count, I believe it was 6 or 7 a semester, plus numerous student projects). That was running some of our “production” students (designers, directors, stage managers, etc) completely ragged. Things like that obviously needed to be changed. I was talking to someone on here about this before, and what they said was that change is always hard and scary, but yet it’s still necessary. Everything is being done with the students in mind, even if it is a little hard to adjust.</p>