You're the Count of Brandenburg, Brant...

Pictured: The university neither
you nor I neither work at nor attend.

Well, I just think that the University of Arizona is making a huge mistake and--wait, where are you going? I'll explain. I'm not just going to drop an unsolicited opinion about a university with which I have no connection and then leave you hanging. So a friend posted on Facebook about how the University of Arizona, for which he works, suspended admissions to their BFA in Musical Theatre and is planning to gut their live theatre programs in order to concentrate on film and television. 

Above: one of the many dogs neither
you nor I have in this or any hunt.

There are currently three different scenarios being looked at, which I'll sum up because I know you're busy and, if you're anything like me, you don't actually live in Arizona. One would kill the BFA in Musical Theatre, reduce the number of staged productions and turn the BA in Theatre into a BA in Live and Screened Performance. Scenario two would eliminate live theatre as an area of study and go full film and television. And the third sounds kind of similar to the other two, but also outlines plans to turn one of the school’s theatres into a sound stage. Boo...

All of this is coming from documents written by Brant Law Pope, the new interim director of the University's School of Theatre, Film, and Television, and leaked to the public by a Facebook group called Saveaztheatre. A group who would like to, you know, save University of Arizona's theatre...uh...program.

Leaks are all the rage nowadays, isn't that right Justice Alito?

So where's the school’s MFA
in Acting for TikTok?

Pope's rationale for--or is it Law Pope's? I don't know, let's call him BLP. BLP makes the case that student interest in movies and television far outstrips that of live theatre and also that there are more careers in screen acting and production than in live theatre. And to the first point, sure, but kids don't always make the best choices either. College kids use emojis but that doesn't mean you throw out the English program to teach them how to compose better Tweets. As for careers, what percentage of college football players go pro?

Go on, guess. One point six percent. And that's not me knocking sports, I'm just saying that not everything kids do is expected to directly lead to a career. 

I rest my case.

I

"You keep my patron's name
out of your damn mouth."

-Bach

And sure, BLP does admit that a theatre education has "collateral benefits," but he quickly moves into arguing that those benefits aren't worth it financially because musical theatre "NEVER makes money." His caps, not mine, because I know that's not how capital letters work. And I didn’t even go through the University of Arizona's MFA program in Writing for Leaked Documents. He goes on:

"There is no prospect, NONE, of having a Count of Brandenburg who is going to underwrite our Bach to pay for our musical theatre art making." 

-Brant Law Pope, evoking 

the Count of Brandenburg

to argue against patronage

Pictured: Brant Law Pope,
Count of Brandenburg.

But I mean, you're the Count of Brandenburg, Brant. Or rather the school is. Or at least it's supposed to be. Art isn't art because it makes money, usually art costs money. The collateral benefits he brushes off are the benefits. Creative expression, social commentary, public speaking skills, the smug superiority of getting to start conversations with "whilst attending the theatre last night..." aren't just bonuses of theatre, they're its value to the community. What he's talking about is commercial theatre, which yeah, isn't always successful, but the same can be said of both film and television. Did you see Morbius? No, neither did I. Even with all the marketing money and test audiences and demographic analyses behind it, there is still the risk that the end result will be dumb and nobody will want to see it.

I suppose the difference here is that film and television are almost universally regarded as product rather than art (which itself is kind of a bummer), and that that is how it's supposed to be. Which it's not, and I'm not saying that there's no artistic merit in something produced for the screen. There is. Even something big and commercially successful can be art. 

Not everyone who goes through UA's program will go on
to create the next Cocaine Bear. I mean, let's hope...

Above: CG Mark Hamill proving that
Disney will be able to exploit the
actor's likeness for decades to come.

But it's unfair and unrealistic to present an education in film and television as something that will lead to stable careers in those fields, and theatre as something that will not. It seems like BLP is saying that screens are the future and he just wants to future-proof the school. Cool. But what if there's no such thing as future-proof? Digital technology is getting better and cheaper all the time and it's entirely possible the industry won't need actors by the time this year's class graduates. There will be jobs sure, but for coders, not actors.

Which is a totally legitimate field. It would be a bleak, video game-less world without them. And I'm not down on movies either. I like movies and television, everyone does. But I love theatre. And again, I don't live in Arizona, college is a hazy memory at this point, and I have no stake in this outside of a firm belief that which arts kids have access to should never be down to a simple financial equation of which ones make the school the most money.

It's a belief that separates ours from the grim, empty existence of people who choose
to study business. Sure, they're smiling and are financially stable, but they're dead inside.