Let me take a moment to talk about the theatre department at my university. Both the builder and destroyer of my happiness and dreams.
This department has not kept up with the changing theatre world in many ways. That's evidence in the lack of projection and sound design courses, the almost complete absence musicals and new plays in the mainstage seasons, which student organizations have had to pick up the slack on, and the fact that they require you to take fucking scenic painting.
One of its worst offenses is that it gives design/tech students very little opportunity to design. A typical major can hope for one or two shows assisting a faculty designer and then maybe a dance piece or two on their own. That's it. They're fairly with it when it comes to stage management, with student stage managers taking the reigns on every show, but design is something they're usually unwilling to entrust students with.
I have been extremely lucky. As one of the very few students studying sound design, and because of the lack of a dedicated sound faculty member, I have been given the opportunity to design one show last year and two this upcoming year. I can't express how rare this is. Between the 10 design/tech majors that graduated last year, only one had ever designed a show (as the lighting designer for one production) on his won.
Designing two shows also means I will be extremely busy. I have a friend who is a rising sophomore and, to my great joy, interested in sound design. She approached me about being my assistant designer on one of the shows. Not thinking how there could be any problem with this, I said yes. I emailed the director to let her know I would like to bring on an assistant. She emailed back approving completely, and CC'd the rest of the design team on an email letting them know, in the form of a fact, that there was now an assistant sound designer.
The email included my advisor and the main lighting professor. Who immediately emails me back and overrules the director by stating that "students cannot assist students." Which is just absolutely and utter nonsense. Because any of the faculty designers OR the director could bring on an assistant, or two, if they wanted. No one had anything to say when a professor brought on three assistant dramaturgs for a show this upcoming semester. I break down a barrier but I still am treated as lower on the pecking order, and I'm powerless to help my make sure I won't be the last one who gets these opportunities.
This is just the latest volley in a constant barrage of supreme bullshit. I don't know if I'm complained before about their attempts to stamp out student-produced work even though that's the only way anyone will ever get enough experience to make it out in the working world, because they see it as 'competition,' even though that isn't what it is at all because we always let mainstage shows get cast first and there's still 50 actors and a dozen technicians not involved in any mainstage in any given semester. Not to mention that club shows have brought new people into the theatre major.
Everything in this goddamned department is dysfunctional politics. It's not what I signed up for. And now that I'm a senior and an officer in multiple clubs I have to be on the confrontational side of things, not by choice. I have never heard of a department at any other school being this way. It's so fucking upsetting.
