The interchange between different schools and areas of study was what attracted Professor David Bathrick to Cornell.
"One of the reasons I came was that it is very interdisciplinary, both at the graduate and undergraduate level," he said.
So it comes as no surprise that Bathrick, who came to Cornell in 1987 to teach in the German department, would end up chairing what many consider to be one of the more interdisciplinary departments on campus, the Department of Theatre, Film and Dance. "We don't see ourselves as a pre-professional program," he said. "This is not just for theater, film or dance students. It is part of the larger humanities picture and not limited to majors. We believe that everyone should participate in the arts."
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| Eduardo Porto Carreiro '02, left, who plays Florizel, and Thalia Goldstein '02, center, who plays Perdita, rehearse with Stephen Cole, associate professor of theatre, film and dance and director of the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts production of "A Winter's Tale." Charles Harrington/University Photography |
The department strives to give students access to the performing arts by making auditions open to the Cornell community. Every year there are six major theatre productions, an annual dance concert and film classes where students create short movies. Each production provides performance opportunities for majors and non-majors alike. In the dance department, for example, psychology major Elizabeth Mao '01 performed in all three dances in the annual dance concert last spring and was president of the Cornell Student Choreographers and the Shadows Dance Troupe. Amy Ann Schleunes '03, a performance studies and neurobiology major, has one of the leading roles in this semester's Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts production of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale.
Students are also encouraged to take classes in the department, many of which satisfy arts or humanities credits, or in the case of dance, physical education requirements. Many classes are cross-listed with other departments such as English, American Studies, physical education, anthropology and German and women's studies. Less than 10 percent of the students enrolled in classes in the department are actual majors. There are 61 majors in the department (theatre, 24; film, 33; dance, four) and in this fall semester, more than 700 students (684 through the department and 40 to 50 through outside departments) are registered for classes.
The department strives not only to introduce students to creativity in art, but to show how it manifests itself in science and other disciplines. For example, the survey class Mind and Memory: Exploration of Creativity in the Arts and Sciences is a series of lectures by university professors in the humanities, arts and sciences who discuss their own creative process in their work. "Creativity in the sciences is not that different from creativity in the arts in that both require a critical moment of formulating the project followed by the need for a formal procedure," said Joyce Morgenroth, a dance professor who directed the course in the spring 2001 semester.
Unlike a BFA program, designed to prepare students for a professional career in performing, Cornell's B.A. program seeks to expose majors within the department to a broad range of styles, genres and concepts within their chosen area of performance.
Students in the department's three programs take theory and history as well as studio and production classes. For example, in film, students take a combination of film studies and film production courses. Film studies classes examine different genres: narrative, documentary, experimental, animation, as well as films from different countries or cultures. Film production classes teach actual filmmaking using 16 mm or digital cameras and film editing equipment. "For majors, it offers them theory and practice; one supports the other," said Marilyn Rivchin, a senior lecturer in the film department. "All students start by taking at least one film analysis course, which exposes them to film theory, criticism and history. It makes them think more critically in terms of the structure of films and the Hollywood system. For non-majors, it exposes them to this whole new way of looking at films critically."
In theater, majors can take either a broad range of theory and practical courses or focus on one area of theater, such as directing, scenery design or acting. Dance majors are required to take a combination of dance studies, actual dance courses and music courses. In the theater concentration there are classes in avant-garde theater, British drama, comedy, Asian and feminist theater. The film concentration has classes in Polish, French, Russian and German film as well as documentaries, narrative and experimental film. The dance program teaches classes in ballet, modern and jazz dance.
Today, the department still hosts a small master's and doctoral program for theatre, film and dance students. The M.F.A. program that the school started around 1968 to train budding professional actors (one of the program's most famous graduates is actor Jimmy Smits, M.F.A. '82) closed in 1988. After the current undergraduate program started in 1989, the department sought to continue students' access to older, more experienced actors by creating the Resident Professional Teaching Associates and the Distinguished Guest Artists programs. For the RPTA program, the university selects several actors from auditions held in New York City to come to Cornell for a one-year residency. The RPTAs teach introductory acting classes, perform in productions and act as mentors to theater majors. The guest artists program brings a range of playwrights, directors, filmmakers, choreographers, actors and scene and costume designers to Cornell for participation in instructional and performing programs.
Thespian activities at Cornell started in 1909 when a group of students formed the Cornell Dramatic Club. In 1922 the university began offering theater classes and seven years later it added a Ph.D. program in theater. Courses in dance started in the following decade and film studies were added to the curriculum in 1953. A number of graduates from Cornell have gone on to become noted actors, stage designers and playwrights, including actor and activist Christopher Reeve '74; actor Harold Gould '48, Ph.D. '53; lighting designer Jennifer Tipton '58; director/actor Gene Saks '43; and playwright Oliver Mayer '86.
One of the department's guiding philosophies is that people learn more by practicing than observing, so it hosts a number of opportunities for students to create, direct or choreograph their own productions. In the theatre department, for example, there are four student-directed and -produced Black Box productions held every year in the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts. "The Black Box Series really allows us to put into use what we've learned," said Rori Bergman '03, a theatre and English major who is directing "The American Century," a 1985 play written by Murphy Guyer. "After taking a full year of directing with David Feldshuh (theater professor and artistic director of the university's Schwartz Center) and assistant directing 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof' with him this fall, I think directing this play is an amazing way to put to the test everything I've learned over the past few years."
What Bergman, Mao and other students in the department did not learn, however, was how to work in one specific style or genre or to follow a specific method. "Students have to be bombarded by different approaches to get a good general understanding of the theater," said associate professor of theater Stephen Cole. "We're not trying to turn out actors, just well-rounded students."
Index to the Chronicle's series on the Humanities
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