Theatre Production and the Creative Campus

Trippet Hall's conference room window provides a view of the Wabash College mall, a grassy rectangular space framed by a colonnade of red-brick buildings. Well-defined examples of Georgian architecture, the buildings shelter administrative offices and academic departments: classics and modern languages, mathematics and science, English, philosophy, religion, history, and the social sciences. The theatre department, housed in the Fine Arts Center, is located on the campus periphery, much like our athletic facility. One reasonable argument for the decentralized location is that the arts naturally spill over into the local community and, therefore, theatre on the "fringe" provides the most accessible location for public interactions. These interactions remind Wabash students of the surrounding community, while providing community members an entry point to the creative activities and scholarship that occurs on campus. In this way, the theatre may rest in the margins, but it is positioned to make a significant impact on the college and the community.

Theatre location provides a starting point for this essay and for my study of theatre production in the liberal arts, a project supported by the Center of Inquiry in the Liberal Arts at Wabash, located in Trippet Hall.¹ When I began the study in early 2009, the country was in the middle of a changing economy; students, colleagues, and their families were facing financial uncertainties, and colleges were asking new questions. As I developed research ideas, evaluating sound theatre pedagogy began to encompass a more immediate concern: How might theatre production become a creative agent on campus and in the social and economic fabric of a community? A partial response to these questions is found in theatre outreach programs and college production facilities that are located in the community and away from campus. A college summer-stock company, for example, or a university performance program with ties to a regional theatre contributes to the social and economic profile of a community. But there is another alternative—theatre as a creative agent—which offers a different set of challenges and has led me to consider the growing number of Creative Campus initiatives that have appeared in recent years.

The Creative Campus Movement

The Creative Campus movement was set in motion by the American Assembly at Columbia University in 2004. Since that time, the movement has spread to colleges and universities across the country with innovative, multidisciplinary programs and creative campus-wide and community projects. Fostering linkages between the arts and areas such as public policy and entrepreneurship, these programs are often designed as a series of public events that advance topics of social responsibility and respond to the challenges of an uncertain and rapidly changing world. As these partnerships build mutual support and strengthen alliances among academic disciplines and their surrounding communities, it is reasonable to assume that the intellectual power and practice of theatre will find its way into the arrangement of Creative Campus programs.

Sociologist Steven Tepper asserts that "[t]he creative campus is not just a fashionable alliteration" (2006). He cites several universities and colleges that are engaged in Creative Campus activities, such as the hiring of professional staff and the development of campus centers or institutes. Tepper's campus, Vanderbilt University, is a prime example, with its Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy and its Creative Campus initiative that

seeks to place creativity at the center of campus life—integrating art, media, design and creative expression into the curriculum; transforming campus spaces through public art and performance; connecting faculty and students across disciplines, with a special emphasis on the links between artistic and scientific practice; and building community, both on and off campus, by using art and creativity to animate conversations, reach across cultures, and bring people together around heritage, public service and difficult dialogues.

(Curb Center)

Although the Curb Center's mission statement is articulate and bold, it is also grounded in a fundamental premise of theatre art—namely, that theatre brings people together. Forging connections between past and present, visual and performing arts, and actors and audience, theatre also transforms spaces, builds learning communities, and stimulates conversation. It is a shared experience...