ENMU Theatre Department, Part 6: The Bad

Yesterday, I covered several positive aspects to the Theatre Department at Eastern New Mexico University that I and most other students didn't really avail ourselves to. But there were a few things that the department could have brought under control. This is a list of my actual grievances.

1. There were too many people trying to be the big fish

As I mentioned before with Bid and Toilethead, these were two students who already had the skills needed to make livings as actors and they knew it. But they still came to our little college because they were aware that they wouldn't be facing much competition from the other students who came from their piddly little high school drama departments. There was also a guy who came in the same year as them who went to the High School of the Performing Arts in New York City. The thing about this guy is that he was there the year "Fame" came out. He should have been able to parlay that into a big career, but he decided he wanted to stick a few things on his resume. He also got in the way of me getting a larger role in "Anything Goes," but I'll go into more detail about that later in this article. Now, I didn't have a problem if someone worked their way to being the big fish. A junior student I knew my freshman year got off on the wrong foot when he was a freshman. He got called back to audition for the first production of the year, but he wasn't aware the callbacks were on Saturday and he figured the Theatre building was closed that day. He didn't get cast. During his junior year, he got cast in the larger roles in all four mainstage productions. His senior year, he played Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the title role in "The Elephant Man." That's the way you're supposed to become the big fish. You grow your way into that role. You don't try to take over by just plopping yourself in the middle of the pond.

2. There were not enough acting classes

This was one of the biggest gripes of the students. There were only three actual acting classes: Beginning, Intermediate and Advanced. The Advanced class was either never offered or canceled before registration. By the time I was able to take it (my senior year), it was not being taught by Dr. R. He let Ms. F teach it. (He also had her teach the Intermediate class the previous semester.) While I did sign up for it, I had to drop it because I was working full time at a radio station. If Dr. R had been teaching it, I would have stayed in the class. (But I still probably would have wound up with Ms. F teaching the class because that was the same semester Dr. R had his heart attack.) Because there were only three classes, those of us who did not get Dr. R in Beginning were WAY behind the other students in terms of improving our artistry. A few extra levels of acting classes would have gotten us all up to speed before we graduated. There were some performance-enhancing classes like Stage Combat, Literary Interpretation, Beginning and Advanced Directing and Production Techniques, but not a lot of focus on acting. Mr. H once went on a rant regarding the complaints about the lack of acting classes. "IF YOU WANT TO BE A PROFESSIONAL ACTOR, YOU DON'T NEED TO BE HERE! THERE ARE PEOPLE IN L.A. AND NEW YORK RIGHT NOW WHO ARE AHEAD OF YOU! WE ARE TRYING TO HELP YOU TO BE ABLE TO SUPPORT YOURSELVES ONCE YOU'RE OUT OF HERE!" They were very accurate words, but he shouted them so loudly, no one wanted to listen.

3. Some of the students in the Dance Department were twerps

The Dance Department was a subsidiary of the Theatre Department, and during the time I was there, it was not offered as a major. Theatre students were invited to take the Dance classes because we did musicals every year. But this brought on a whole new level of ridicule. "Oh, I can dance. That means I'm a better actor than you." No, it doesn't. It just means that you're going to get cast more often as a dancer. I was very uncoordinated. Taking dance classes would not have made me more coordinated. I would have just always been out of step. If you've ever seen the opening sequence from "All that Jazz" with the dance auditions, there's one guy who clearly doesn't belong as he's constantly trying to keep up. That would have been me. Because of that superiority attitude, I had no inclination of getting that inserted into my brain.

4. The Theatre Department should have put an "eligibility" system in place

The period of time in which I started college was on the cusp of when it was becoming more common for students to take more than four years to complete their degree plans. In the sports departments, there is something called "eligibility" in which students are only allowed to play on a collegiate level for four years. If they stick around another year, they are not eligible to play on the teams. The lack of this concept in the Theatre Department created a problem when I was a senior and I was competing against other students who should have graduated the year before. In "Anything Goes," I was beaten out for the role of Moonface Martin by the guy who went to the High School of the Performing Arts. The issue was that he was black and the student cast to play his girlfriend was also black. She was also in her fifth year in the department.(Our Theatre Department had a few issues with portraying interracial relationships on stage to the point that in the summer 1984 production of "The Boyfriend," Bid and this same girl were the romantic leads, but both of them had white parents.) If he had gone out into the real world after four years, I would have gotten that role. Even worse that that even though that guy was in my college graduating class, he came back the next year and got cast as the Pharoah in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat." That put him in his SIXTH year. And even though he was a graduate student, eligibility should have been put into effect for him. The real puzzling thing is that Dr. R actually pushed away a student who was a graduating senior when I was a freshman. Why didn't he do that to anyone else? (I will go into more details about that student, whose name is Sanz, on Thursday.)

5. The "Rehearsal and Production" class was really slave labor

I mentioned the Rehearsal and Performance class that was newly available my senior year. With that, students were allowed to get college credit for being in the mainstage productions. However, in the three years prior, there was a class called "Rehearsal and Production." All the Theatre majors were required to take five sessions of the class over four years. Rehearsal and Production was originally set up like Rehearsal and Performance as a means of getting college credit for productions. However, by the time I got to college, it had evolved into everyone having to show up a few hours every week to help build the sets and do other technical aspects for the productions. While the professors would never fully explain how the class transformed, I have a good idea how it happened:

First, you had a student who registered for the course, but did not get cast in either of the mainstage productions that semester. He was in a quandry about how he was going to get a grade as the drop/add period had closed. The Technical Director stepped in and said, "No problem. We'll have him come in and work on the sets and I'll be able to give him a grade." So that student starts doing a lot of work on the sets, but he notices that a few of the people in the production don't have any lines are still getting credit without having to work as hard. He complains and the Theatre faculty determines that they will also have to come and work on the sets. The people with no lines see a few people with only one line not really doing anything productive and the parameters are changed again. Then it moves up to the minor roles and the lead roles. Everyone is required to work on the sets. I can guarantee this all happened over the course of one year, if not the same semester.

So when they implemented "Rehearsal and Performance," they did not get rid of the slave labor. They changed that class to "Technical Production" and students were still required to take it over five semesters. The students complained that this was not what they wanted, but as usual, they didn't get their way.

So while there were other issues that kept me from having a successful collegiate experience in the Theatre Department, these were the main things that someone could have done something about. Usually, if action were taken, it almost always came up short of our expectations.

Tomorrow, I'll go into detail about a specific complaint that doesn't just pertain to ENMU.