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Theatre in Theory and Practice
Description and Justification
Description:
Evergreen seeks to appoint a full-time faculty member in theatre who can teach
foundational work in theatre studies. The successful candidate is expected to both
teach the theoretical aspects of theatre arts and guide students through the practical
experiences of theatrical production. The candidate should be serious about
establishing an interactive and creative curricular pathway in theatre within a
liberal arts education.
The candidate should demonstrate knowledge and expertise in several of the
following areas: acting, directing, playwriting, theatre design, dramatic literature,
theatre history and theory. The candidate should provide evidence of commitment
to working with the fundamentals of theatre in his/her areas of teaching. The
candidate should be familiar with traditional and experimental theatre in the West,
and demonstrate a solid familiarity with at least one other form of cultural
performance besides Western theatre.
The minimum requirement for the successful candidate is the MFA in theatre with
practical experience in academic, community or commercial theatres. The
candidate is expected to teach beginning, intermediate and advanced levels within a
progressive theatre curricular structure in close collaboration with other
performing arts faculty in theatre, music and dance, and should be capable of
working with faculty in other areas of the College, including, but not limited to,
media arts, visual arts, classical studies, literature, social and physical sciences, and
cultural studies. Given these opportunities and challenges, applicants are invited to
address in their letters of application their vision of innovative approaches to
teaching theatre in an interdisciplinary, collaborative and experiential classroom.
A. Support the Current Curriculum:
1. What is the specific hole that this position is designed to fill?
We have lost three full-time faculty from the theatre division in the past ten years: Sandie
Nisbet, Doranne Crable, and Ariel Goldberger. We now have only two: Walter Grodzik
and Rose Jang. Walter specializes in experimental performance besides teaching
traditional Western theatre occasionally, and Rose has to split her commitment between
theatre and China studies which is equally short-staffed. We currently have no one whose
primary focus is the fundamentals of theatre, especially the foundation of Western theatre
in both theory and practice. With these losses in theatre, we are no longer able to teach
the Introduction to the Performing Arts program, which normally would have drawn from
faculty in music, theatre, and dance. It is particularly difficult, if not impossible, to
establish a coherent curricular pathway for theatre studies with only two faculty, which
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should incorporate beginning, intermediate and advanced levels within a two-to-threeyear bracket period.
2. How would this position reinforce and support our current curriculum?
As stated, with only two faculty, it is simply impossible to generate a theatre curriculum
for the students on any long-term basis. With this theatre hire, the theatre faculty, along
with the whole performing arts faculty team, can start planning a consistent theatre
curriculum installed with full-time sequential programs in beginning, intermediate, and
advanced levels. Most importantly, with a passion and skill set in teaching foundational
work in theatre arts, this new theatre faculty can provide important fundamental and
contextual knowledge within the discipline of theatre as well as linking the fundamental
knowledge of theatre with other disciplines across curriculum. A well-rounded theatre
faculty will bring enormous benefits to the College as a whole. His/her joining in fulltime interdisciplinary programs will ultimately provide students with the connection of
theatre with other fields or disciplines, whether that connection is manifested in the
historical, cultural or sociological contexts.
3. How might this person augment the faculty in terms of pedagogical interests, skills,
and experience?
When theatre faculty teach across the curriculum, they bring skills and experience in
physical movement, use of the voice, performance, staging and adaptation of stories,
cultural knowledge, performance theory, literature, contextual knowledge, spatial
awareness, body-mind coordination, budgeting, oral traditions, folklore, turning theory
into practice, discipline, critique skills, collaboration, improvisation, creativity, and
understanding that there is more to a “text” than what is written on the page.
4. How might this position advance Gen Ed goals across the curriculum?
Theatre faculty teach skills in writing (critiquing, script writing, writing reviews, writing
about the issues that emerge from the stories), quantitative reasoning (creating a
sophisticated and attainable budget for a production, and developing a theatre design that
includes lighting, scene design, costume fitting, and other quantitative problems),
political studies through social commentary, cultural studies through understanding
contexts for performance, and literature to generate discussion.
C. Transition of New Hire into the College and Curriculum
5. What specific opportunities for interdisciplinary teaching do you envision that a person
hired for the position would have? How have faculty in your planning unit or elsewhere
at the College already stated interest in developing interdisciplinary programs with a
faculty hired for this position?
We envision that our new colleague in theatre would join with faculty in literature and
cultural studies to develop a CORE program based on identity in 20th century American
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life. We also imagine that this colleague would work in a newly-revived Introduction to
the Performing Arts program with dance and music faculty, and would rotate into that
program periodically as need arises. Finally, we hope that this colleague will create an
upper division program that would cover an essential Western tradition, such as ancient
Greece (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and others), the Renaissance (Shakespeare and
his contemporaries), the Realists (Ibsen, Shaw and Chekhov), and into the early 20th
century (Miller, Williams, O’Neill). There are endless possibilities of collaboration with
this new faculty within the area and across disciplines.
6. What multi-faculty team/programs do you foresee that the person hired for this
position would be teaching during their first year?
We expect that our new colleague will teach in an introductory program; either CORE or
sophomore-level fundamentals in the performing arts, with the support of area colleagues
who may serve as mentors and guides.
7. Who among the current faculty would provide the person hired for the position with
academic colleagues in or near their field?
Our current performing arts faculty will serve that function. We are united in our support
and committed in our enthusiasm for a long-lasting collaborative relationship with our
new colleague. We, collectively, understand the College’s resources, theatre facilities,
rehearsal spaces, technical capabilities (including the new dance studio, costume shop,
scene shop, and prop shop). Because we do public productions, we can also mentor our
colleague in the logistics of local marketing, community outreach, and publicity.
8. What infrastructure will be necessary for instruction in this new field of study?
This theatre hire will be the recipient of the College’s investment of infrastructure with
the remodel of Comm building and current staff support. Our existing infrastructure
includes a black box theatre, a recital hall, several performance labs, a dance studio,
design lab/critique room, and – in another building – a rehearsal/performance space.
Because we have only two faculty in this crucial area of the performing arts, we have
ample room to support a third colleague in theatre. Because the Comm building has just
opened up after an extensive remodel, we have even more space for the performing arts
than we have ever had; the infrastructure is just as it should be for our new colleague.
It is imperative that the College maintain its support for the interdisciplinary, coordinated
studies program design and pedagogy for the theatre curriculum. It is also essential to
connect work in theatre with other areas of the existing curriculum at the College. The
only way that we can fulfill our disciplinary and interdisciplinary commitments to the
College is to add one more full-time faculty line in theatre within the next two years.
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