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Last fall, for the first time, College of Fine Arts students began studying toward a master of fine arts degree in dramatic writing, culminating ten years of planning to establish the state’s only MFA degree in theatre.
Six students enrolled in the program and this winter, the Regional American College Theatre Festival, a juried competition, invited the performance of one of the student’s plays. Susan Erickson’s Lifting Off is a dark comedy that examines an eccentric, wacky family whose center of stability is about to graduate from high school. Through tragic events, they eventually are made whole again. Erickson’s play was one of three finalists for the national Mark Twain Comedy Award.
The new program also inaugurated a theatre festival that introduced the students’ works throughout the Albuquerque community. Words of Fire: The Edmund Evans New Works Festival premiered last fall in the department’s Experimental Theatre and in two Albuquerque community theatres. Productions, involving more than one hundred theatre students, included two full-length plays, an evening of short plays and an evening of comedy created by a team of writers. The comedy show in radio-show format, focused on Albuquerque’s Big I interstate intersection construction.
“This festival, which we hope will spread to more theatres, is a way to not only showcase the talents of our writers, but provides opportunities for students with other areas of interest in theatre,” says Theatre Professor Jim Linnell, who was instrumental in establishing the new degree program.
Linnell was department chair in 1989 when the effort began, Professor Bob Hartung was retiring and to honor his career long interest in playwriting, the department began a campaign to establish an endowment. The financial goal was $1 million and the artistic goal was to establish a professional degree program in dramatic writing. Both goals have been met. Digby Wolfe, a co-creator of the now legendary 1970s television show, Laugh-in, heads the program.
“We’re assuming there will be major scripts coming out of this program,” says Denise Schulz, chair of Theatre and Dance.
The endowment, exclusively earmarked for the MFA Dramatic Writing Program, helps fund the new works festival, guest artists, scholarships and travel opportunities for students to attend plays and to take their plays to out-of-state festivals.
“We couldn’t have conceived being able to offer this kind of quality program if we didn’t have in place the kind of support the endowment provides,” says Linnell. “We will continue to build the endowment.”
With the MFA in dramatic writing off to a great start, Schulz has turned her attention to establishing another MFA program–in choreography. The approval process is ongoing and she hopes to admit the first class in fall 2002.
In March, the department hosted the Regional American College Dance Festival, a competition that attracted more than five hundred dancers who performed and participated in classes and workshops.
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