Theatre.edu

No sooner had PAJ 103 been published, featuring "The Education of the Artist" section of articles decrying the tenuous professional rewards of MFAs in playwriting and acting, and theatre training tied to the "market" rather than enabling artistic experimentation, than The Chronicle of Higher Education appeared with "An Argument for Eliminating the Doctorate in Theater" (January 15, 2013). On a daily basis in this paper there are news stories about the challenge to universities from online courses, the denigration of liberal arts in a technocratic society, the precarious situation of scholarly publishing, rising tuition, and the scarcity of tenure positions. Readers are treated to a litany of current crises or a set of pieties about the value of liberal arts and humanities in the university, which increasingly mirrors corporate culture and a contracting environment for faculty empowerment.

I am not sure why we should single out for banishment the PhD in Theatre when almost any other subject area involved in the creation of culture and intellectual life is equally threatened by the new academic world order and the whims of the global marketplace. Spiraling administrative departments spend an inordinate amount of time assessing what increasingly appears to be overly educated, specialized faculty in many programs, and obsessing over learning outcomes. Still, there is a vast disconnect between the decreased intellectual rigor of undergraduate programs in Theatre, focused on plays and productions, and the jump to graduate school, which is moving away from dramatic literature, both levels still fixed in departmental tracks of playwriting, acting and directing. As construed today, the organization of theatre study and theatre training in the university and professional schools is largely outmoded in the 21st century.

As for the beleaguered PhD, it would be a good idea to rethink the agonizing period of research and writing of those dissertations that merely synthesize scholarship already in circulation. On several occasions I have lamented in the pages of PAJ the absence of histories of institutions, biographies, monographs, and documentation of artistic processes, which have mainly fallen by the wayside as doctoral students became mired in theoretical discourse, neglecting these much-needed studies. Instead of individuals working alone on dissertations that can take two or more years to complete only to face diminishing opportunities in a publishing industry that cannot sustain scholarly demands (yes, there are e-books as an alternative), why not organize clusters of students and scholars to work on shorter forms of research in emergent fields that focus on essays and other forms of writing and reportage? (Journals are becoming increasingly significant as research material.) It is important for theatre scholars to avoid redundant scholarship in favor of also cultivating serious journalism by contributing their efforts to research in public policy, urban planning, institutional critique, and community partnerships, besides commentary on art works and art practices.

It would also be worthwhile to provide graduate students with skills for working in archives, foundations, editing, translation, curating, and administration. (That would require reorganizing class time to allow for more flexible work and apprenticeships.) Added to foundational historical studies, important critical texts and investigation of art practices, students would have many more options and perspectives over their working lives. Furthermore, it would empower students to shape their own lives more independently, beyond the grip of institutional exigency. This shift is a necessity after years of preparing to teach in specialized departments in the face of decreasing tenure opportunities and probable departmental consolidation. (If "interdisciplinarity" is so important in university-speak, why are departments and faculty almost exclusively discipline-based in their hiring practices?)

By now for many years doctoral students—let's take the example of those in New York—have been expected to develop a substantial publishing record, often competing for space in periodicals with faculty, well before they graduate. They attend conferences and specialize early in chosen fields and seek out current theatrical offerings to bolster their research interests. A desperate careerism and strategizing now characterizes the climate of graduate school and the early years of entering the profession, added to a psychology of fear that avoids risk and resistance to the systems in place. This situation leaves insufficient time...