Many of our departments are labeled “theater”, which hides the ball a little. In fact, we largely form people not to do a theater but to do things – to do, directly, write, manage on stage, design, direct a shop, suspend the lights – which can be done inside or outside a theatrical space. More and more, today's artists use 21st century tools such as auto-tapes and digital wallets to ensure employment in cinema, television, new media, immersive events and the business world, alongside theater work. However, many departments have no special courses to work on the camera and, among universities that have film and theater majors, there is often no interaction between the two departments.
Even when schools offer camera -based courses, they are not always up to date. Matt Koenig, now assistant game teacher to Baldwin Wallace In Berea, Ohio, recalled a “camera course” he took: “We obtained a handwritten call sheet and we said:” This is what you will receive each time you go on the set. I had just made my first film, and I went, “manuscript?
There are signs of change. At American musical and dramatic academy (AMDA), which offers only diplomas based on performance, all students leave with a coil and professional head shots. The state of Louisiana recently implemented a BFA in the cinema and an optional camera track for its actor diploma, both hosted in the theater department, and they produce two to four “departmental films” each year, as well as a season of pieces. Tyler Kieffer, assistant professor of sound design in LSU, uses the multiplicity of his profession as the cornerstone of his teaching philosophy. The uncertainty in the industry, he said, forced students to look at other career avenues “which may not be in a building with four walls with stage lights”. His dishes to remember: “I try to prepare students to be better listeners and to recognize where they can use the power of the sound in any avenue they are trying to continue.”
For many students and teachers, the training of the 21st century industry also means modeling new ways of working rather than strengthening archaic and harmful practices. The last 10 years have seen the advent of #MeToo, the coordination of intimacy, socio-emotional learning, trauma-based practices and an awakening based on work in the industry requiring decent salary and a balance between professional and private life, without mentioning diversity, actions and inclusion initiatives. Addie Barnhart, assistant theater professor of Creighton University In Omaha, in Nebraska, noted that training in intimacy coordination can be undertaken online, so that teachers have no excuse to reject it.
“These practices are the path of the future, because it is a work based on consent, and these tools are an integral part of this industry, whatever your role,” she said. The training she mentions is not free, but Sonya Cooke of LSU proposed that a way of “solving the problem is that the administrations finance an additional education”. Although there is a general meaning among students and teachers that programs are lagging behind in the preparation of students to work in mediums based on the camera, the academy seems to be ahead of the practices concerning sex, race, class and consent. A colleague who recently returned from a national tour in shares told me that, perhaps because of students of the Z generation Z of activism, the undergraduate programs are generally more suited to the 21st century social and work problems than the industry.
