Feature: Theatre UCF Shines While Blurring Line Between Academic & Professional Theatre

Between theme parks, professional theatres, and arts organizations, Central Florida is one of the most fertile grounds for theatre artists in the country. Whether it is at Disney, Universal, Orlando Shakespeare, Mad Cow, the Orlando Rep, or any of the other wonderful organizations in town, you can find many different types of exciting theatre year-round in the City Beautiful. However, despite all of the well-known options in Orlando, one of the best-kept secrets in the community is that when it comes to consistently high quality, cutting-edge professional theatre, some of the best is at our local universities.

Since moving to Orlando, I have been floored by the quality of talent on and off of the stages at Rollins College and the University of Central Florida. While I haven't loved every production that I've seen at these institutions, I have never left feeling underwhelmed, something that can't be said for all of the professional theatres in town.

Obviously the organization of professional and education theatres varies greatly, perhaps most obviously in terms of budgets and artist commitments, but when it is not unusual to see current college students performing side-by-side with professionals on stages at Disney and Universal, a look at what got them ready to be there is instructive.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit in on two production meetings at Theatre UCF as they prepared for their upcoming productions of Mel Brooks' musical YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, which begins performances tonight, and CLOUD 9, which starts on November 10th.

Throughout the hour of meetings, it was clear that UCF's faculty straddled an important line that their professional counterparts would never have to even consider, the line between teaching and doing.

"Sometimes I forget about the other half after doing one," Theatre UCF's Production Manager, Gary Brown said of his dual responsibilities. "Like right now, I feel like for (YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN), it's just focusing on getting the show opened. Sometimes, I've got to be like, 'Stop that!' and then kind of work on making sure that the student understands what it means if they miss a deadline."

After producing theatre in New York for 10 years while teaching lighting and sound at NYU, Brown spent a few years at a performing arts center in Michigan as the production manager coordinating touring shows coming through town. After realizing that he was bored not producing shows, he came to UCF and is in his third season with the program.

Brown said that one of the advantages that collegiate theatres have over professional ones is that they can take risks, because they have a built in audience.

"A lot of our students are our audience. So, we can do things where we don't have to worry about offending somebody," he said. In speaking about the particularly weird and "ethereal" A LOVE STORY in 2015, Brown said, "We were able to play with it, and experiment with it, and create what we did out of it. I don't know if other theatres would have been able to do that (show)."

Even though Theatre UCF's in house audience of 600 theatre students helps sell tickets, those sales don't really have an impact on the department's budget, or what shows they produce, or how they produce them. The school's shows are considered academic lab time for students, so they are funded separately from ticket sales, something of which professional theatres are no doubt jealous.

"Our season is funded from the beginning," Brown said. "I feel like our budgets are pretty adequate at the moment, (but) increasing the budget really doesn't help sometimes, because we only have so many man-hours, because our labor is our students. So, even if we had more money, sure we could buy more things, but we couldn't exactly build bigger sets. We have only a certain amount of labor in our students, and the skill level is still pretty minimal, because we are teaching them as we go."

However, one long-lasting benefit of the educational budget is that Theatre UCF has been able to amass a warehouse of props, furniture, and scenery that Brown equated to a Home Depot with 17-foot high shelves. During the production meetings that I witnessed, nearly every department mentioned that they already had, or would be, pulling items out of the warehouse to address needs that they had encountered. Again, while most theatres are able to store some props and pieces for future use, to accumulate a stockpile requiring warehouse space is a luxury that only the most well funded professional theatres can afford.

Despite some of the obvious administrative differences between what Theatre UCF and professional companies do, Brown says that the faculty tries to prepare students as best they can for the life of a working theatre artist.

"I feel like we are trying to show the students how to put together the best show that they can," he said, "because if all we are trying to do here is mediocre theatre, they're never going to know what really good theatre looks like, or how to put those shows together."

Clearly this philosophy is working, because in the vast majority of shows in town, you are likely to see at least one Theatre UCF grad, and alums can be found performing in every corner of the area's theme parks. Brown believes that this is not only because of UCF's fantastic faculty, but also because of the way that the program is structured.

"A lot of the students really get a chance to be in the shows," he said. "I feel like if you want to be an actor, you have to act; you can't just learn it in the books. In the past couple of years, we've started off with a rep show in the fall, so we had two shows running at the same time. That would complete us having four shows just in the fall semester alone, and then we do another three in the spring, and now we're doing the downtown theatre show (at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts), and then we also have the summer season, which not a lot of theatres or academic spaces do.

"So, we have 10 or more professionally produced productions going on every single year. So there's more opportunities for the students to be able to hone their craft in front of an audience and working with a director and other actors."

The impressive number of shows that Theatre UCF produces every year provides its students the opportunity to gain experience working in as many different genres as possible. By design, the department's faculty tries to ensure that in every student's academic career, he or she has the chance to experience as many different types of shows as possible.

"Something that we talk about is creating a four-year season," Brown said, "so that way the students have an opportunity, at least once every four years, to be able to do a Shakespeare, once every four years (to do) that whimsical farce, once every four years (to do) the contemporary dramas."

Brown said that in looking at their previous seasons, the faculty noticed a somewhat glaring omission. Despite the department's relationship with Orlando Shakes, they saw that the Bard hadn't been seen on a UCF stage in quite some time.

"We realized that we hadn't been doing it for the last five years, or six years," Brown said. "So, we've been really trying to focus on it, which is why we're doing ROMEO AND JULIET later this year."

While with a department of over 600 students, including four BFA programs of 15-20 students apiece, not every student can be involved with every production, Brown says that, depending on the program, some can be involved with multiple productions every year.

"A BFA Acting student, I might see them on stage once, maybe twice in a year," he said. "Then, I might even see that student working in a production, at least maybe once. Design-wise, maybe less, because when it comes to the actual implementation, into the tech, into completing it, the design students are in for a longer haul."

While in many cases, area educational theatres have an inherent advantage over their not-for-profit brethren, those professional theatres do not have to account for class schedules, semester breaks, or inexperienced artists. Despite the limitations of academic theatre, Brown thinks that UCF is providing a strong foundation for the next generation of artists.

"We're trying to put out the best quality work that we can here," Brown said. "Whether it's acting, or stage management, or the design process, or even working backstage as a tech, we're really trying to show the students what professional theatre looks like."

Theatre UCF's production of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN begins performances tonight and runs through October 30th, and CLOUD 9 runs from November 10th through 20th. While you're at it, check out the season at Rollin College's Annie Russell Theatre.

---

What has been your favorite Central Florida piece of academic theatre? Let me know on Twitter @BWWMatt. And, "Like" and follow BWW Orlando on Facebook and Twitter using the buttons below.

You can listen to Matt on BroadwayRadio or on BroadwayWorld's pop culture podcast Some Like it Pop.

Banner Credit: Theatre UCF students at a WEST SIDE STORY master class taught by Orlando Shakespeare. Photo Credit: Theatre UCF

To post a comment, you must register and login.