University Theatre: Embarrassing Riches

Extract

Recently, while touring with a New York road company, I performed at a number of universities across the country. I saw splendid, expensive facilities at schools which are doing little either to train students for theatre work or to nurture future audiences. And I saw ambitious and active departments making do with whatever was around when they began their programs years ago. There is little correlation between the money spent on theatre programs and the uses to which facilities are put.

At the South Bend Campus of Indiana University, where theatrical activity is limited and where few students attend what productions there are, our road company played in an exquisite theatre with a costly lighting system so complex that the head of the theatre department confessed he had difficulty making use of it.