Lessons Learned from a Defunct Degree

My alma mater, University of the Arts, closed abruptly this week., leaving thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff the majority of whom are artists themselves to scramble to figure out what's next.

I've been trying to collect my feelings and write something cogent about experience there and its value to me as an experience and as an institution. 15 years after graduation, I am a professor myself at DePaul University, working to pass on knowledge to the next generation of theater artists while struggling with the challenges that face all of us in the arts, in higher education and in the overlap between the two. We seem to be in a moment and in a society and a time that seems to devalue both more and more. The Comedy Arts Program and DePaul at large faced the same struggles and hard choices as UArts in a lot of ways.

With almost 20 years of professional experience and perspective, I think the value of UArts for me came in the challenges of what it meant to be a student there.? I was a communication major for the first two weeks of my education but upon my arrival I saw the vibrant theater community and knew immediately that that’s what I wanted to do. Even though I had already been admitted and awarded a scholarship, my admittance to the Applied Theater Art major was not easy. I was asked to collect a theater portfolio and essentially apply again. I had to pitch myself to the department head as a theater artist before being allowed to study with them. I was eventually admitted and joined what would have been (had I not ruined it) a full class of exceptional women.

I was a comedian and a writer even before I was an adult, but UArts and the Theater Management and Production major (brand new name, same great taste!) didn’t know quite what to do with that. I had to fight a conservatory style system to have them allow me to direct a comedic short (essentially a 15 minute sketch) in the Equinox play festival that involved setting the show in the audience and allowing the audience to watch themselves and the action on a set of mirrors. I was told that due to the nature of the program, if I wanted to spend a semester studying comedy in Chicago at The Second City, none of those credits would be applicable to my degree; “Why not just take the clowning class with Aaron Cromie??” When it came time to direct my senior show, the first 3 pitches I submitted for production were rejected. (The department head ended up taking my first pitch and directing it herself the following season). I settled on directing Savage in Limbo, and throughout the process, I would spar with my department head regularly about my approach and my work in the room. “Where are the laughs?? Aren’t you supposed to be the funny guy?” I think the members of that ensemble and the audiences who remember it would agree that Savage was a very successful production and one of the? things in my career of which I am deeply proud. While I was still a student, I was lucky enough to be hired as stage manager and designer. I didn’t realize at the time what an unbelievable opportunity it was to be offered paid, professional work that would be seen by audiences and reviewed by critics before receiving my diploma. UArts was less than thrilled to have me and so many of my classmates doing this work before we had completed our studies. In those years, with one foot in and one foot out school, I again created some of the work that I am most proud of as a resident designer. I still tell people about Talk Radio to this day, and not just because Paul Felder is a MMA and TV star now.

I walked across the stage at the Academy of Music and got my diploma before an evening performance of whatever show I was working on at the time and therein lies the most valuable lesson that UArts taught me. Whether it was their intent or not, in my struggle to create the work I wanted to create, on my own terms, with limited resources and limited support, UArts taught me how to be an artist, It taught me how to be clear and focused in my pursuit of my aesthetic regardless of outside influence? and how to pitch and pitch and pitch and become a swiss army knife of theater so that when someone told me “No” I was able to say “I’ll do it myself.” with the support of others who share my vision or perhaps were just morbidly curious to how fast it would blow up in my face.?

I stayed in Philadelphia for four more years after graduation and UArts continued to be instrumental in my career. Aside from providing an almost endless supply of eager theater collaborators, they also give me SPACE. David, Nick, Andrew, and I built Off-Color Comedy before we had any idea what we were doing. We pitched Gene Teruso and Charlie Gilbert on utilizing UArts space to rehearse and perform, and I don’t think it took them each more than 10 minutes to say ‘Absolutely’ . It's likely they just wanted David and I out of their offices as soon as possible. Over the next 4 years both on and off University grounds, we would produce and create original comedy of all shapes and sizes, sketch, improv, fully original plays, a 6 episode sitcom, a musical revue, a standup showcase, the list goes on and on. None of that would have been possible without UArts and the faculty who approved our deeply stupid ideas to create nearly pointless theater. It was those years of experimentation, self-producing, and almost constant trial and failure that opened doors for me at The Second City and turned me into a professional. It’s the myriad skills I learned in the classroom and the number of challenges I faced that made me into a producer. It’s my desire to provide the same support and guidance in younger artists to make their weird bad things that made me into a professor. I wear all of those hats very proudly.

The lessons UArts taught me and continue to teach their students and faculty seem to be equally accidental and deliberate. It’s incredibly upsetting and unfair to all the artists that walked those halls that this is happening. The loss of UArts will be felt immediately by the Philadelphia Theater and art communities, not just as a source for new creative talent but as a place for practicing artists to continue hone their craft and put food on the table. The theater community at large will be worse off for its loss in ways that will never be truly measured. The only silver lining here is that through this grave error they continue to teach resilience, grit and self-sufficiency. I will always be grateful to them and to the Philly Theater Community for those lessons, they’re much more valuable than this degree ever will be.