Classes in costume design, playwriting and Thai Chi are not a
part of the average freshman’s experience.
But they are part of the “freshman experience,” a
term coined to define the required curriculum for UCLA
undergraduate theater students. Most students outside the major
find the seemingly random assortment of classes to be, well,
random, and they may have a point. Why should a musical theater
student have to take classes in an ancient form of exercise like
Thai Chi? Why should a future director have to learn how to sew a
costume or design a set?
Within the theater department, there are six principle divisions
for students to find their niche: acting, design, directing, the
history and criticism of theater and drama, musical theater and
playwriting. For some, transcending the boundaries between the
concentrations has been an enriching lesson. Second-year musical
theater student Ryan Borcherding found the all-encompassing nature
of the freshman experience to be invaluable.
“The objective of taking such a diverse set of courses is
to broaden our horizons,” Borcherding said. “Most
people associate the word “˜theater’ with Broadway and
only have a very Western perception of what that entails, but we
get to experience it as a global medium of
communication.”
In this sense, the freshman experience offers courses that
introduce students to the varied levels of talent required to run
an entire show.
“The freshman experience turns theater for us into a
collaborative art form,” Borcherding said. “The more
you know about playwriting, the more in tune you can become with
the script you have to memorize. Likewise, if you are a director
and have had acting experience, you can more aptly create a scene
based on your knowledge about the process of acting.”
But while these varied courses open new doors to the students
involved, not being able to delve directly into one’s assumed
specialization has left some students feeling slightly anxious. One
issue that has been raised is what some perceive to be repetition
in their classes. Second-year musical theater student Trenton Price
would liked to have been challenged with fresh material throughout
the duration of his first year.
“I was relearning past material as time went on,”
Price said. “In the design class that we take for a whole
year, with one quarter devoted to set, then costume, then light,
there are some fundamental ideas that apply to all three, like
colors, that we had to relearn each quarter. It did get a bit
old.”
Although Borcherding and Price have somewhat varied opinions
when it comes to their shared major, they did agree about the
strong camaraderie they both found among their fellow students.
“The ties that we formed have been very important now that
we are in smaller, closer classes,” Price said. “We
often acted out personal things from monologues that we wrote
ourselves. So now when we get up in front of our classes to
perform, there is a bond that is completely because we all took
those classes together.”
Another area where the two found common ground is in the special
enrichment they gained from the class called Introduction to
Performance, taught by Professor Michael Hackett, where they were
introduced to culturally enhancing aspects of theater such as
Butoh, a post-World War II Japanese form of dance designed to
convey a visceral reaction to the traumas experienced during the
war. Hackett affirms that, while some of these courses may seem
random, they were all strategically chosen to fulfill a direct
purpose.
“Sometimes the students do not particularly like working
within other disciplines, but they all must understand each other
for a performance to come together,” Hackett said. “An
actor must know how to direct for the same reason a set designer
must be aware of body and space. You wouldn’t want someone to
sew a costume for you who had no sense of movement. It just
wouldn’t work.”
While that may validate the need for cross-discipline theater
studies, it doesn’t explain something like Thai Chi, the
infamous oddball of the group.
“Thai Chi is a system of physical training that brings
about a great awareness of one’s body and space,”
Hackett said. “The meditative aspect of the practice might
seem boring to some students, but it trains us to slow down and
bring about a more focused way of thinking that is completely
opposite of the fast-paced Western culture that we know.”
To Hackett, students should embrace the inclusive curriculum of
their first year.
“For theater students, your body is your
instrument,” he said. “It’s not like having a
violin where you can leave it at home for Thanksgiving. You take it
with you everywhere, and thus you must train to concentrate always
and in multiple ways.”