8-29-08
University of Chicago: A New Commitment to the Performing Arts?
University of Chicago students finally have the opportunity to receive a degree in theatre and performance studies, plus the promise of a shiny new performing arts center to go with it. Although U Chicago was the breeding ground for the Playwright’s Theatre Club (which begat The Compass, which begat The Second City, which begat….well, probably the rest of off-Loop theatre in Chicago) students did not have available to them a degree program in theatre. All that changes with the class of 2009.
According to Heidi Coleman, director of University Theatre and director of Undergraduate Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies (TAPS), the class of 2009 will for the first time be able to receive diplomas stating that they have a degree in theatre. And by 2011, they will hopefully have a $100 million performing arts center to call their artistic home.
The Reva and David Logan Center for Creative and Performing arts is designed to be a “venue for the artistic expression and multi-disciplinary inquiry, performance, and production of our faculty and students,” according to the U Chicago website. It will house all or parts of several University programs, including visual arts, theatre and performance, music, and cinema and media studies. The thought is that by bringing together these separate artistic elements under one roof, it may open up opportunities for interdisciplinary work, which is what has Coleman and others so jazzed.
“The fact that film and music and theatre and dance and visual arts will all be in the same building is fantastic. It represents the interdisciplinary nature of the U of C,” effused Coleman.
They still have quite a bit of money to raise—just more than 40 percent has been committed so far, according to the website—and they have yet to break ground on the new facility, which will be located at 60th St. and Ingleside Ave. However, the fact that a comprehensive arts center and a theatre degree have finally come to U Chicago (about 55 years after some of the most prolific and seminal performers of our time attended the university) is remarkable.