Theatre Arts Named 2004 "Exemplary Department"
November, 2004

The Department of Theatre Arts was one of three campus units honored as an Exemplary Department in a ceremony Nov. 4, 2003. This year's awards recognized excellence in linking scholarship and research with undergraduate teaching. In his original nomination, Professor Tom Gardner (English) said the department provides "powerfully innovative connections between teaching and research."

"Doing plays in a theatre department is nothing new; it's how this theatre faculty collaborates with each other and with the students to link faculty research with student learning and educational needs that led to our exemplary award," says Patty Raun, department head. Undergraduate and graduate students engage in all levels of production and experience first hand the rigor and intensity of research application.

The research specialties of the faculty – movement specialists, lighting and sound spcialists, set and costume designers, literature scholars, and audience engagement specialists – are focused in a deeply collaborative way on an investigation process that is at the core of teaching. The result is a vital and symbiotic relationship that melds teaching and research through theatrical production and classroom experiences.

Several years ago the department realized that their traditional course structure was in conflict with the very nature of theatre. At the end of a two-year development process, the entire curriculum was revised to create a fully integrated learning and research environment. As a result, the department now has a curriculum that is unique in the nation, one that has been held as a model and emulated by other departments. What is taught in courses feeds directly into what is examined and tested in the laboratory: the theatre stage.

For example, a poetry class becomes a new play, ear, and I and silence; the study of scansion, period movement, and international theatre styles feeds into a production of Hamlet; or in the reverse, The Laramie Project generates class conversations and presentations across campus on the issue of human rights and diversity. This linking of research and teaching/learning permeates the culture of the department and results in 100% of the majors and a large percentage of the 3200 non-majors in classes being directly involved in the research over the course of a production season. With each production, the team conducts and examines and refines the implications of the research (thinking about voice, and movement, and language, about multiple ways of making sense of the world) by literally working with undergraduates as primary source material. They are not simply invited into our labs and assigned projects. Rather, their discoveries and puzzlements and breakthroughs are used as the very material to be worked with. Night after night in rehearsal, the team watches and refines and tests the various physical movements and mental/emotional insights that the ensemble of actors generate in response to the written text. The gradually deepening responses of these students is what the theatre faculty work with and explore and, finally, publish on stage for public scrutiny.

An example of linking research with teaching was the 1999-2000 collaboration with internationally acclaimed theatre creator/director Ping Chong. Chong, a recipient of six National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and a Guggenheim Fellowship, was in residence at Virginia Tech for six weeks during which time he team taught undergraduate performance courses with five performance faculty members and created a new theatre production with students and faculty. Truth and Beauty, the newly developed theatre piece, then received its world premiere at Virginia Tech and was seen by more than 2000 students, faculty, and community members. The script was later published in American Theatre Magazine, the primary publication of the Theatre Communications Group the national theatre service organization, and has been performed many places since.

As a result of the positive interactions with the department, Ping Chong and Company has continued working to produce new works nationally and internationally with the department scenographer (Randy Ward) and an alumnus of the M.F.A. program (Michael Rohd). In December 2004 Ping Chong and Company returned to create yet another new work. With the support of a Colloquium Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, God Favors The Predator was developed and performed on campus in collaboration with theatre department students and faculty.