<p>Can students from departments other than drama or art participate in the theatre production?</p>
<p>The Rep is a professional organization. Only occasional yale drama students are involved – not the norm at all. However, there are tons of other theaters and productions every year. And I MEAN TONS.</p>
<p>And tons of non theatre studies people fill the roles every year.</p>
<p>Just to be a little more clear:</p>
<p>The Yale Rep (Yale Repertory Theater) is a professional theater company affiliated with Yale Drama School. Yale Drama School is a graduate/professional school, probably the best-respected one of its type in the world. It doesn’t have any undergraduate component at all. It is very common for Drama School students to work on Yale Rep productions, as actors and as techs, although most of the jobs are filled by professionals. When I was in college, the Rep also used to do one student-dominated show per season. (Which provided me with one of my most cherished theatrical memories: seeing a musical written by Chris Durang and Albert Innaurato (both of whom have since had successful careers as playwrights), starring Meryl Streep, and also including Susan (later Sigourney) Weaver. Not bad, huh?) The Drama School also puts on a number of nonprofessional, all-student productions each semester.</p>
<p>None of which has anything to do with undergraduates. (Or much. Once in a blue moon undergraduates get small parts in Drama School stuff.) Yale College has a relatively small Theater Studies major, which is an academic major, not a BFA program, and involves a tiny fraction of Yale undergraduates who spend a chunk of their time on theater stuff. The central institution of undergraduate theater is the Yale Dramat, essentially an independent, well-funded student-run drama club. The Dramat puts on several shows each semester, at least one of which is big and glitzy. It hires professionals from New York to work on its shows with students. Then, there is an ever-changing array of smaller drama clubs in the residential colleges that rise and fall with the students interested in theater there, especially in the colleges with good theater space. Every semester, there are a bunch of residential college productions, some bare-bones and others well-funded and elaborate. Theater Studies majors get involved in all of this, and may do projects at their senior theses, but they do not dominate any of it.</p>
<p>Yale has always attracted lots and lots of students who are interested in theater (and the road from New Haven to Broadway has always been pretty wide and well-lit). Yale has more, and better, student theater than practically anywhere, and more people participating in it than anywhere.</p>
<p>thnx JHS: your clarification reflects your better recollection of all things theater at Yale. Another thing that’s terrific about New Haven is that it’s traditionally been one of the starting points for Broadway bound shows where the production staff and actors are working out kinks before going to NYC. I saw two August Wilson plays while at Yale – these later would go to NYC and win much acclaim.</p>
<p>(We used to line up for returned tickets at the Long Wharf theatre – $5 w/student ID! How’s that for a cool date?)</p>
<p>Acting for undergrad abounds due to the multiple and well funded groups. My roomie, a lax English major – acted in some productions while we were undergrads. He found his calling and now theater has been his career ever since we left New Haven. In my year also happened to be Ron Livingston and Paul Giamatti. I knew Ron through friends but never saw either of them act.</p>
<p>thx for the detailed clarification!
I would be grateful if you can talk more about students’dance/music/art performace or students’ access to ‘art and culture’ stuff.</p>
<p>The only thing there’s more of at Yale than drama is music. Music of every variety is everywhere. There are big organizations like the Yale Glee Club and the Yale Symphony Orchestra, at least a dozen a cappella groups, and a constant round of people forming bands or quartets or whatever, giving recitals, busking, anything. And since so many people are involved in making music, everybody knows lots of musicians, which means that it’s easy to get up and audience for almost everything, and even people who don’t do music themselves can be very caught up in the various music scenes.</p>
<p>My class – and this is long ago, mind you – had two people who went on to brand-name classical music careers. They were slated for that before they ever showed up at Yale, though. But there are lots of doctors and lawyers who did a lot of music at Yale. (And I think every college had at least one person writing a musical.)</p>
<p>Dance and visual art, at least in the past, were much smaller deals. For serious dancers, college is almost an either-or thing: going to college full time really means giving up a big chunk of your prime dancing years. So no one really serious about dance can do it, unless they are in a BFA conservatory program (where real success is going pro before you complete your degree). There are always a bunch of ex-dancers around who want to keep dancing, but the volume and quality are nothing special. Visual art is a very individual thing. There are always people who do it, some stunningly well. (Like Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington as a project for an college architecture class, in which she received a B. Or Matthew Barney.) Again, things may have changed in the past few years, but making visual art (as opposed to studying art history or art theory) was always kind of a fringe activity for undergraduates. Everyone and her brother are making films, of course.</p>
<p>Access: First off, remember Manhattan is 90-120 minutes away by train, and you have lots of classmates whose families live there. During college, I was there at least 3-4 times a year to go to cultural stuff (dance, theater, art), and I spent six months living and working at internships there. The train goes both ways: Lots of NYC people are happy to come to Yale once a week to teach. I had a seminar on dance history with a famous dance critic (and one of my friends from that class went on to a career as a businessperson in ballet companies), and there were always difficult-to-get-into classes being offered by famous actors/directors/producers. Theater, between Yale Rep, the Drama School, and undergraduate stuff, you can see a play or two a week without ever leaving campus. Then add Long Wharf (a respected repertory company in New Haven), the Broadway try-out theaters, and the Shakespeare theater in Stratford CT, all of which are close by, and the problem becomes making choices – even before you start thinking about your road trip to NYC. Music – has been described largely, except there’s a great rock club right in the middle of Yale, Toad’s Place. Major acts used to play the New Haven Coliseum, but that’s gone. I assume you have to go to Hartford for that sort of thing now. Art: Yale has two pretty nice, but quirky museums – the Yale Art Gallery and the Yale British Art Museum. The Art & Architecture buildings have decent studio space, I think, although maybe not enough for everyone who wants to use it. (Yale has a graduate MFA-granting Art and Architecture School, by the way. So there IS a visual art community there.)</p>
<p>Hope that helps!</p>
<p>Thanks for your help.<br>
Happy to know that I can still involve in music scenes even though I dont know how to play any musical instruments.</p>
<p>I have no theater abilities/aspirations at all, but I would love to attend Yale theater productions. I was wondering how expensive theater tickets are for Yale students (do we get any discounts?). Say I go to a theater production once a month - how much money would that cost me?</p>
<p>Watching theater is very easy–Yale Rep tickets are a little more difficult, but they do sell season tickets (which are good for six Yale Rep shows) for $60–$10 a show. The nice thing is that these tickets are not specifically in your name–if you can get six people together for one Yale Rep show, you can all go in together on one of these passes and use all six tickets on one show for all of you together–$10 each.</p>
<p>If you want to see your friends, you’re going to see either a Yale Dramat show or one of the independent (probably Sudler-funded) productions. Dramat tickets are something in the order of $5 each, and literally every other show on campus is free. Free. You will likely be able to see a show with your theater friends in it every single week without spending a dollar.</p>
<p>That’s encouraging, thanks Disneyguy! =)</p>