From the Ground Up: Institutional Arts Partnerships as Authentic Problem Solving

Shallow resources, limited course-credit opportunities, and low student motivation are constant challenges for theatre programs in higher education, especially those without majors. Our internal performance settings do not correlate to the nonhomogeneous nature of the outside professional world. Partnerships among schools and organizations have the potential to address all these issues at once. Because learning is inherently social and problem centered, collaboration can catalyze immediate challenges into occasions for better and more expansive learning outcomes.

Pooling abilities, funding, and access exposes students to new faces and opportunities. The encounter outside any one institutional culture necessarily raises issues of difference, so cultural awareness—broadly construed—is a natural organizing principle for theatre partnerships. Such a focus galvanizes students who are already in the process of forming their identities, and well-chosen productions, especially those that capitalize on difference, can themselves encourage problem-centered learning. Satellite programs like thematic symposia and guest lectures can augment academic assignments and enrich the productions.

The New York-based initiative APACHE (Arts Partnership and Collaborative in Higher Education) models theatrical resource pooling in higher education. Its theoretical premises, operations, and outcomes suggest that the arrangement may be likewise productive in other settings. This essay describes the project, its history, and one of its productions in order to suggest a starting point for collaborations elsewhere. The information presented has been nonsystematically sourced from organizers' experience and participant feedback. Ultimately, APACHE demonstrates that collaboration to solve concrete institutional challenges is its own good and, if carried out with dignity and professionalism, can lead to genuine cultural impact for students and their supportive communities.

APACHE: Its Structure and Goals

The APACHE project, conceived and initiated in 2006, is a joint effort among institutions of higher learning that connects a diverse population of students and faculty from a range of disciplines within a performing-arts context. A public-private partnership between John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York, and the New York Arts Program (NYAP), an internship program managed by Ohio Wesleyan University), it is a unique institutional partnership that has resulted in three fully staged productions involving over 300 students, professional practitioners, faculty, and outside experts.

APACHE supports the development of students' theatrical skills in a rigorous professional setting under the guidance of theatre faculty and practitioners and humanities scholars. Its mission is to bring together student artists from different academic and cultural backgrounds, as well as some guest artists and faculty, in order to cultivate nonhomogeneous artistic and cultural collaboration, while concurrently providing students with advancement opportunities in the performing arts.

Each of the three APACHE productions so far—West Side Story, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street—and their accompanying activities have taken place during four months of the academic year. The culminating events of each APACHE project included: 1) fully mounted professional productions utilizing participants from the partnership; 2) satellite events, such as multicultural programs, artist-in-residence programs, guest speakers, symposia, workshops, and professional development opportunities; and 3) the dissemination of comprehensive study guides to audiences of community members, students, parents, and faculty.

John Jay College, the hosting institution, provides a liberal-arts education to over 14,000 students from more than 135 nations (John Jay Undergraduate Bulletin). Included in this liberal-arts curriculum is a Department of Communication and Theatre Arts, which offers a minor in theatre studies. Its partner, NYAP, a recognized program of the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA), is a consortium of more than a dozen colleges and universities and is managed by Ohio Wesleyan University. Students from colleges all over the United States come to NYAP to serve a credit-bearing professional internship semester in order to gain advanced experience and knowledge in highly focused arts areas. Theatre students accepted into the program work with theatres, arts organizations, and artists in various theatrical disciplines.

APACHE is just a few years old and, as associate professor of theatre at John Jay and theatre advisor at NYAP, I have spearheaded all of its productions. Elane Denny-Todd, chair of...