Graphic by Jieyu Feng ’22
BY FLANNERY LANGTON ’22
In spring 2019, the film studies and theatre arts departments announced a tentative merger to create a new major. Faculty and students gathered to discuss concerns with the majors and ideas for a new path of study. This semester, the two departments announced that the plan is in the works and awaiting final approval from the faculty board.
The proposed name for this new major is “film, media and theatre,” combining film studies and theatre arts, as well as media classes. The department’s season will include two main stage shows, a theatre senior showcase and a new film festival with student works. Rumors and concerns have been floating around between the students in the two departments, while professors are generally optimistic and excited about the potential coming change.
In 2012, a review of the Film Studies made recommendations to “integrate film studies more into the library arts, critical studies and creative practice, according to Jon Western, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Faculty.
He added that the recommendations also asked “to enhance the production courses and have a production space.”
In 2014, faculty found “concerns about where theatre fits in the College,” Western said. Reportedly, there were “a lot of productions, but it didn’t seem like they were connected with other parts of the curriculum.”
Western said he was hoping to create “more of a student-centered approach,” which would make student work “structurally incorporated into the curriculum at all stages.”
Western organized a discussion between departments and faculty members with a focus on the creative and performing arts.
Robin Blaetz, chair of the film studies department, described the creation of this merge as a “grass roots movement.”
“We started to see this circle of faculty coming together with shared interests ... so we spent two years ... meeting with this big group of faculty about how we might collaborate,” Blaetz said. “Film and theatre started to see some good connections, and we said to
[Western], ‘If you give us a real production space for film that has a soft floor for teaching acting ... we will figure out how we can work together.’”
“In film we only have two and a half people in our department, but we have other people who ... teach affiliated courses. That’s never reliable,” Blaetz said.
From the theatre arts department’s perspective, however, this move is more of an administrative push than something the department was seeking.
“I think their idea is, if we could have a chance to bring all of those things together, it [would] build a bigger and stronger department in the end,” Noah Tuleja, Director of Rooke Theatre, said.
“It sounded like we were downsizing anyway, and this was a way to minimize the collateral, which is much more disheartening and much less optimistic, ” theatre arts major Zoe Fieldman ’22 said.
Fieldman also said that, for a few years, the theatre department had been facing pressure to reduce from four performances each year to two.
“The theatre department has been encouraged to downsize for a while and this is ... somewhat of a compromise,” Theatre Arts Department Liaison Katy Gore ’20 said.
“If people are looking to focus on theatre more specifically then there are conservatory schools out there,” Gore said. “The balance is that we do have a theatre department [at Mount Holyoke] that is important and thriving. I think it’s important that it doesn’t disappear because it allows a space for a lot of people to pursue their passions while still being in a liberal arts environment.”
Students in the theatre department mentioned how this could be tied to an administrative financial incentive, yet Western maintained that there is no financial push to combine the departments.
This merge “is not coming out of a moment of scarcity,” he said, adding that it, “invests in the future of the curriculum.”
Although the merge may not primarily be for financial reasons, there still appear to be financial benefits.
“Theatre is an expensive department for the College to run,” Tuleja said. “I think there will be less full-scale shows but not necessarily less opportunities for our performers.”
Tuleja thinks that the department will “be able to do some things with those shows that we weren’t able to do before.”
Thus far, the only drawback he has found is that “students are nervous because they don’t know what’s coming next ... It’s unsettled them.”
However, he emphasizes that the new major is “just going to expand [their] toolboxes.” Tuleja finds proof for this in his new audition class this semester, in which he, for the first time, is teaching audition techniques for both stage and film.
Gore spoke to this from a content perspective, explaining the different opportunities that will be given to students studying theatre. She expressed the concerns of students with more tech and design based majors.
“I think there are valid concerns as well on the tech side,” Gore said, “There can’t necessarily be more design roles, for example, for senior design majors because there are only two main stage shows as opposed to four for them to choose from.”
Gore hopes that these roles and experiences can be fulfilled on the smaller student productions. She was also excited for the new opportunities for smaller-scale, student-run work.
“That’s a trade off,” Western said. He explained that the goal is to enhance “the student experience and [be] more student-centered than a more tradition regimented structures approach.”
“We really want more integration into the liberal arts and into the rest of the curriculum,” Western said.
Excitement also ran high in the film department.
“I was actually happy that they were doing this and a little jealous because I’m graduating soon,” Film Studies Department Liaison Hanye Chen ’20 said.
Blaetz was particularly excited about the new abilities to produce media for students studying film. The new department will be receiving “more equipment” and “access to the teaching of directing and acting in addition to the editing and cinematography that we have,” she said.
On the film side, the department will also be looking to hire two more faculty members over the next two years, who will be able to cross over between the theatre and film disciplines. Theatre arts is losing two specialized staff members, Lara Dubin, Lighting Technician, and Shawn Hill, the Scene Shop Carpenter through the merger. Their positions will be replaced with a single full-time general electrician, who will also be teaching classes and working on the stage productions.
Fieldman expressed concerns with having all of this responsibility on one person.
“There’s a difference between having a trained skill in theatre and knowing a theatre,” they said. “The idea that they can replace both of these people with one person who is going to be a full time faculty member ... but somehow also be the lighting, sound and set [person] for the entire production” is hard for Fieldman to imagine.
Gore is currently working on selecting the shows for next year.
“There definitely are options,” she said, explaining that larger quality shows are harder to find. She explained that the main stage shows this year are larger anyways, with around 10 actors each, which she has found to be a “good opportunity for a larger ensemble of actors to work together.”
More official information will be released about the merger on Nov. 8.