StarTribune.com: For Carl Flink, it didn't feel right. In the midst of the Twin Cities' thriving artistic community, the University of Minnesota performing arts department sat as an isolated island. Yes, several professionals from the community taught within the department, but that just made it worse. The chair of theater arts and dance (and artistic director of the dance troupe Black Label Movement), Flink in the past year has begun to aggressively forge partnerships between the university and independent companies.
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Storming the walls of academia
StarTribune.com: For Carl Flink, it didn't feel right. In the midst of the Twin Cities' thriving artistic community, the University of Minnesota performing arts department sat as an isolated island. Yes, several professionals from the community taught within the department, but that just made it worse. The chair of theater arts and dance (and artistic director of the dance troupe Black Label Movement), Flink in the past year has begun to aggressively forge partnerships between the university and independent companies.
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8 comments:
The thought of bringing outside companies in to interact with students in the department is good idea on the surface but tough in execution, I think. It is a great idea to get the students real world experience and exposure to industry professionals, but doing that while they also have classes is tough on the students. And asking the industry professionals to accommodate the students because they are students is tough on them because things can't usually happen on the time table they are used to working with. I am glad to see that the school is endorsing it so much, but its no surprise to me that companies are allowed to walk away after only one production.
I think that the more connections that arts organizations of any type can have, the better. Like the author points out, a collaboration between a university and a theater company benefits both groups. It exposes the students to many different ways of working and types of performance and it allows the theater companies to develop pieces and to develop talent that they can mine after the students graduate (often at little cost if the university is paying). The more we work together, the more we can achieve both because there are more people to contribute ideas and because resources can be shared and duplication of effort can be reduced. Of course, the devil is in the details and often collaborations between arts organizations don't go as well as planned.
I like the idea of integrating the professional world of theatre with the academic world. It seems that the really successful theatre programs have found a way to do this. I am not sure what CMU could do to integrate more with the professional theatre of Pittsburgh, but I would be happy to see it.
i think this is a great idea. the more potential influences and ideas a school can have to more rounded the production can become. bringing in people who work in the industry allows students to start making connections outside of academia as well as get experience with the “real world” with all that being said i think on the schools side of things it will require that much more planning and communication. because there are that many more people involved it requires more organisation and leadership to get everything to run smoothly and on top of that teach studients the skills and craft that the university has set out to do.
I'm not sure I'm sold. I mean, if we wanted to go work in the real world we could. Right? Academe is structure differently for a reason. As long as we aren to losing sight of our end goals here. What we want to our students to know after four years is important. But in a way academe is supposed to be sheltered. A bad design here, a dumb decision on crew, isn't supposed to change our professional reputation. It's supposed to be a sandbox. Bringing some exposure can be part of a healthy curriculum. But there can be dangers in adding too much to it.
I think it's great for colleges to interact with their outside community...especially arts programs. This is especially useful to theatre as securing connections and simply meeting many people in the business is a very good way to be 'in the know' about great job opportunities. Expanding your network on contacts during college would be great. I get emails from the d-list about things happening outside CMU, often that CMU faculty or students or graduated students are involved in, and I think that's great. CMU also brings in people like the stage managers of Wicked--they were very interesting to talk to. I think all colleges, including us, should make this a priority.
There's definitely a delicate balance to strike when combining industry and academia. It can certainly be beneficial to expose students to professional companies and visa versa, but over involvement can be detrimental to both groups. When visiting different schools, I went to one that was linked with a professional company. The first priority of the program was facilitating the company and the commitment to teaching seemed to get shortchanged in the mix. I have no doubt that it can be a great mix, I'm just hesitant. The connection has to be designed very well.
As Calvin said, I think this is a great idea in theory, as long as the practical application doesn't interfere too much with the school work that the students are still expected to do. I think hands on professional work like this makes students ten times more aware and focused on what they are learning, but there needs to be a balance between that professional experience and the academic work load. I wonder if the school is changing their academic classes and work to accommodate for the inclusion of the professional companies, or if it is strictly up to the students to keep up this balance, which could prove to be a real problem.
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