On Friday, April 7, about 40 theater majors and minors gathered in the Fine Arts Building to discuss the Binghamton University theatre department’s imminent need for a new full time acting professor, now that long time acting professor Theodore Swetz is no longer teaching at BU as of December 2005.

Senior theater major Dina Kirschenbaum and junior theatre major Adi Cydulkin, the undergraduate representatives for the department, wrote a petition in an effort to convince Jean-Pierre Mileur, dean of Harpur College of Arts and Sciences, to hire a new full time acting professor. According to Cydulkin, Mileur candidly announced at a recent faculty meeting that he has no plans to give any more funding to the theatre department or hire a new acting professor.

“In order for all aspects of BU to thrive, the people who are in the position to make decisions must listen to the needs of their students,” Kirschenbaum said. “The theatre department needs a new acting professor. The current theater professors are trying their hardest to do everything, but are ultimately stretching themselves too thin to accommodate all of their students.”

With the loss of Professor Swetz, the theatre department no longer has a professor to teach the comedy, directing and scene study classes, along with other upper-level theater classes such as Shakespeare.

There are also fewer professors to direct the mainstage productions, and fewer advisers for students who wish to direct their own productions at BU. Many students have been turned away from directing projects because the current faculty is already advising too many students. The loss of Professor Swetz as a teacher at BU cuts the acting/directing portion of the theatre department by a third.

“The students in the theatre department are just as passionate about what they do as any other student at BU,” Cydulkin said. “It isn’t fair that fine arts programs are considered to come second to other departments and schools at this university.”

Both Kirschenbaum and Cydulkin expect approximately 400 to 500 students to sign the petition, in addition to the community members that support the theatre department and the Anderson Center.

“The petition is an endeavor completely run by the students to prove the point that it is not faculty forcing us to do this, rather it is us, the students, the people who pay to attend BU, who are saying that we need to have a new full-time acting professor,” Kirschenbaum said. “If the theatre department continues to lose faculty members and there are no replacements, the department will completely fall apart.”

According to Kirschenbaum, the Harpur administration is willing to hire adjunct faculty, and guest directors for the mainstage productions that can “maybe teach a class or two,” but she said a guest professor with minimal obligation to the students is not sufficient for a theater student to learn and develop their craft while growing as an individual.

Will Green, a senior English major and theatre minor, attributed his recent acceptance into CalArts’ 2006 Master of Fine Arts acting class entirely to BU’s theatre department. CalArts auditions thousands of actors from all over the country, accepting only 10 students per year.

“With the loss of Ted Swetz, the department, which is already short-handed, has been mortally crippled, and if a replacement is not found immediately, the department faces a very bleak future,” Green said. “Theater students will not be able to receive the specific hands-on training that actors need to grow. Potentially successful careers in the arts could be completely scuttled. This petition is a very important linchpin in the student-led process to save the BU theatre department.”

Many other senior theater students were in attendance at the meeting, displaying their concern for the future of the theatre department. These students expressed a desire to ensure that future students receive the same quality theater education they have had in their years at BU.

“The students in the theatre department will not go down without a fight. We’ll knock on the doors every day of the people who can help us, until they do. It’s that simple,” Kirschenbaum said. “The Harpur College administration shouldn’t close their doors on us. They should be thrilled that BU has students who care enough about the future of their department to want to make a change.”