I dropped out of a PhD program in political science at UCSD in 1992, came clean with my advisors, and proceeded to use my still-valid student ID card to sign out theatre department spaces to direct in. I assisted both MFA grad students as well as professional directors—Anne Bogart and Des McAnuff, to be precise. I also directed MFA and undergrad actors in Russian Futurist plays in parking lots and stairwells on the border of La Jolla Playhouse and UCSD. In short, the academic campus—though I never actually enrolled in the theatre program—jump-started me into a theatre community that to this day lasts, surrounds me, and holds me up. I went from dropout to participant to member to director in no small part because I was on a campus.
Now, decades later, I find myself the Artistic Director of A.C.T., a LORT A theatre with an acting conservatory at its center. I am back on a campus of sorts. I am in frequent discussions about training and how that intersects with mainstage programming and the vision of our theatre and American theatre writ large. As a director surrounded by acting students, I want these actors to take responsibility for storytelling, be front-footed, and think about context and why they are telling any story here and now. I hugely appreciate A.C.T.’s core faculty members as they go from studio spaces with our students and then come into my or guest directors’ and choreographers’ rehearsal halls. They are additional eyes and ears, at the ready to assist with a vision, say the thing that will open up an actor, making them more willing and able to reveal themselves, to take a leap.
As someone who never studied drama formally but for one class senior year of high school, instead of physics—much to the chagrin of my parents—I do recognize that my work as a director is informed by collaborators who have and do. I recognize that research and development in academia directly influences and energizes the field. I recognize that our field gets pushed forward by the very conversations and work that takes place in training programs, whether it’s the use of intimacy choreographers in rehearsals and in new play development, the actions taken to bring and fully support greater diversity on our stages, debates over casting and the continua of authenticity and transformation, questions about where classics—largely European—fit into the conversation today, social justice and community engagement in our institutional theatres—I could go on. And the Union is listening. We can hear the millennial students and professionals no longer asking or suggesting but demanding that we in power—whether that be in individual rooms and rehearsal halls or at the helm of organizations—listen, take note, speak up, and change the field. Onward!
In Solidarity,
Pam MacKinnon
Executive Board President