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Bonnie Marranca

No sooner had PAJ 103 been published, featuring “The Education of the Artist” sec-

tion 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” (Gennaio 15, 2013). On a daily basis in this
paper there are news stories about the challenge to universities from online courses, IL
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 environ-
ment 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, E
obsessing over learning outcomes. Ancora, 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 profes-
sional 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 mate-
rial.) 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.

PAJ 104 (2013), pag. 1–2.  1

doi:10.1162/PAJJ_e_00141

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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. Inoltre, it would empower students to shape their own lives more indepen-
dently, 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 opportuni-
ties 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 for doing new research outside of classroom subjects and for actually experiencing
multiple art forms, while forcing narrow specialization in those areas deemed worthy
subjects and methodologies. Let me be clear: I am not advocating an abandonment of
scholarship and intellectual rigor. I am proposing that intellectual energy and practical
skills be redirected to sustainable forms of creative activity in expanded areas of social
and cultural life and through multiple forms of research and writing.

Now is a time when one of the essential problems facing the arts, in my view, is the lack
of knowledge of each other’s fields that those studying and curating performance, visual
arts and dance demonstrate, true even in New York City museums and performance
homes. In addition, we are still not training arts critics outside of their specialties, an
oversight that impacts the evolution of critical vocabularies, when we should be moving
toward a more fully integrated view across the arts. The collaborative, hybrid model is
already more than a half-century old in the U.S., developed through numerous forms
of artistic practice outside the mainstream. It has served as a point of departure for
new ways of being in the world, highlighting the intrinsic intermedial, intertextual, E
intercultural nature of human interaction. Today we understand this perspective as the
basis of democratic pluralism — an ethics of performance, as it were. That is the heart of
what we define as “contemporary arts,” and, before that, called the “avant-garde.” We
need make no apologies or justifications for working in the arts. We are not the infantry
of gentrification. From the very start PAJ took its instruction from Hannah Arendt, IL
philosopher of the public square, who wrote: “Art works clearly are superior to all other
things; since they stay longer in the world than anything else, they are the worldliest
of things.”

What we need is a new ecology in the theatre that honors the gift of worldliness, starting
in the university, which is the breeding ground for thinkers and artists, and moving out
to artistic spaces and companies of artists. What’s happened in university departments,
not just Theatre, is that real-world action is sublimated in the essay in the discussion of
texts and artworks that exaggerate their “subversive” cultural impact. The essay can be
the beginning of a critique but not the end point. It is time again for sweeping changes
and grand visions in professional theatre and arts education to break through the stifling
institutionalization at every level. Where are the impassioned manifestos and writings
of artists and artistic directors? Where are the critics outraged by the juvenilia in our
theatres? Where are the audiences who refuse to be pandered to?

2  PAJ 104