As many as 16 graduate students may join the Department of Theatre, Speech and Dance in the fall of 2002, when the University begins offering MFA and Ph.D. degrees in theater.
The new programs were approved by the faculty earlier this month after earning the unanimous endorsement from the Faculty Committee on Educational Legislation (FCEL) and faculty meeting approval. Once final approval is received at the Corporation level, three new degrees will be offered through a collaboration with Providence’s acclaimed Trinity Repertory Company: MFAs in acting and directing and a doctorate in theater and performance studies.
"This is certainly a giant step for us — both in terms of our scope and, more significantly, in our connection with Trinity," said department Chairman Don Wilmeth. "It’s an enormous breakthrough."
Wilmeth said the new degree programs have been in development for more than three years. The partnership with Trinity will provide "a professional collaboration with an intellectual underpinning" — a rare combination in other graduate theater programs and one that will give the new graduate students "a unique advantage," he noted.
"We’ll train scholar artists in a way few have," predicted Wilmeth. "We will do all the things traditional doctoral students will do, but with the additional dimension of the professional production process — so when they’re done, they’ll be far more employable."
One additional faculty member will be hired as the department expands, according to Wilmeth. The current theater faculty is already "as strong as most doctoral program faculties," he added. Brown’s doctoral program will be one of about 40 offered in theater, and Wilmeth believes it will quickly be ranked among the top half-dozen in the field.
There’s likely to be a ready demand for the 14 masters and two doctoral candidate slots.
"Trinity gets a tremendous number of applicants for its [conservatory] program now — without Brown in the mix," Wilmeth noted.
The collaborative partners plan eventually to add a third, the Rhode Island School of Design, and expand the consortium offerings to include master's degrees in lighting, costume and set design. That combination of resources will place the consortium in a prime position, according to the report of the FCEL.
"The consortium will be built on the great tradition that informs the current department: the belief that the best artists are those who are given the broadest training in the liberal arts, and who have their intellectual and social curiosity provoked by their training," committee members wrote. "…The geographical connection among these three institutions is so fortuitous that it seems to demand an alliance."