The­atre De­part­ment Of­fers Grad­u­ate School Ad­vice

MISHAWAKA—Bethel Uni­ver­si­ty’s The­atre De­part­ment had much to say on grad­u­ate school and what it en­tails for any­one look­ing into the­atre as a ca­reer.  

De­bra Swer­man, di­rec­tor of act­ing, talked about how spe­cial­ized a grad­u­ate pro­gram can be. Lots of time will be spent on scene work if one is go­ing for act­ing or di­rect­ing. Also, mas­ter’s pro­gram stu­dents will be work­ing with oth­ers who are se­ri­ous about the craft, which is of­ten en­cour­ag­ing to them.  

Swer­man said that a grad­u­ate pro­gram is for stu­dents to hone their skills. Stu­dents should look for a pro­gram per­son­al­ized to what they want out of it. Swer­man also sug­gested look­ing at where the school is and who went there, see­ing if it of­fers as­sist­ant­ships, find­ing what spe­cific kind of the­atre it does and if it is at­tached to a the­atre com­pany. There are many grad­u­ate schools out there with dif­fer­ent fla­vors. 

“Any pro­gram, re­gard­less of how big or how won­der­ful it is, you make it what it is,” Swer­man said. “You could sit back and glide or get your­self in­volved.” 

To get the best out of one’s ex­pe­ri­ence, Swer­man en­cour­aged tak­ing in as much in­for­ma­tion as pos­si­ble, work­ing as hard as pos­si­ble and mak­ing con­nec­tions with new peo­ple. 

Chair of the Art, The­atre and Mu­sic De­part­ments Don­ald Hunter talked of his ex­pe­ri­ence in his mas­ter’s pro­gram as en­cour­ag­ing. He worked for a year be­fore go­ing to Wayne State Uni­ver­sity in De­troit. In his mas­ter’s pro­gram, he stud­ied stage man­ag­ing and light­ing. Now, he uses both in his du­ties in the the­atre de­part­ment. Apart from be­ing the chair, he men­tors stage man­agers and de­signs for the shows at Bethel.  

Ac­cord­ing to Hunter, if one is con­sid­er­ing ap­ply­ing for a mas­ter’s pro­gram as some­one who is in­ter­ested in de­sign or stage man­age­ment, they should con­sider what they are try­ing to get out of that ex­pe­ri­ence.  

“Go­ing to grad school is for a cou­ple of rea­sons,” Hunter said. “You can go for...teach­ing...the other rea­son is...new con­nec­tions.”  

Hunter be­lieves that grad school is not nec­es­sar­ily for learn­ing—it is more for get­ting bet­ter at what one has al­ready es­tab­lished in their un­der­grad­u­ate de­gree, break­ing bad habits one might have and find­ing con­nec­tions through one’s uni­ver­sity of choice.  

These con­nec­tions are an im­por­tant part of an ed­u­ca­tion in the­atre. This is some­thing to eval­u­ate when look­ing into a school. Ask­ing what you want to learn and who you want to learn it from is para­mount when find­ing the best mas­ter’s pro­gram. An­other item to con­sider is what kind of de­gree to get in the­atre: an M.A., tak­ing two years, which pro­vides a spring­board for a doc­tor­ate de­gree or an M.F.A., tak­ing three years, which de­notes you are a mas­ter in your field.  

A piece of ad­vice Hunter gives is be­ing hon­est with your­self as you look for schools, find­ing the rea­son why you want to go in the first place and what fits for you.