LAB Overload

As many of you are aware, after careful consideration, the staff and faculty have instituted a new way of selecting crew assignments for students beginning this year. We consider “crew” to be a LAB, one that is directly attached to classes in which you are enrolled. This idea allows us to assign students to production with motivation that is purely pedagogical and not driven by a need to staff a certain number of shows. Your show advisor considers your interactions on production a practical extension of your classroom work, and different from work in the class only in the fact that you have an audience for production.

At the end of last year, working in concert with Lab requests created by classroom instructors and directors, we thoughtfully assigned design students to opportunities that we thought would be the best learning experiences at this juncture of the individual’s learning curve. We made a very concerted effort to not over-task you. This system would appear to leave a number of “holes” in the production teams for many shows. Many of you, out of the goodness of your hearts and the depth of your talent and skill, have volunteered to fill some of these perceived “holes”. It’s critical that you know that the staffing on all of the shows is in direct response to Lab request forms that were collected last year. So, for example, if there appears to be a team member missing, it’s actually a response to a Lab request form and is a scope of show decision. The situation does not represent a “hole” There have been instances where we’ve had to fill in some gaps that truly turned out to be holes and we worked to staff those areas in the best interest of all involved with the production. In most cases, however, it’s a question (as it ALWAYS is, even with nearly infinite Resources) of how to do tell our story with what we have.

We’ve assigned you to what we have and the amount we have so that you can lead a balanced academic life and make the most out of your time here. If you feel like you’d really benefit from a production assignment that is in the volunteer category, vs. the Lab category, you must discuss the opportunity thoroughly with your advisor, so that your class/lab work is not put at risk. All new design and crew assignments must also go through David Holcomb and me or David Boevers, if you are PTM.

For more clarity on this issue, you may also have a look at our handbooks: http://www.cmu.edu/cfa/drama/about_us/handbooks/undergraduate_handbook.pdf and http://www.cmu.edu/cfa/drama/about_us/handbooks/graduate_handbook.pdf.

Thanks for your attention in this matter.