Disrupting the MFA Complex, Part 1: Why Randolph College

Hoo boy, it’s been a while. A year and a half ago I freaked myself out by saying that my next post would be my new paradigm manifesto for the field of directing, and you’d think that with my history of anxiety and ADHD I would know better than to set myself up with the promise of a major deliverable like that before I had finished writing it. #executivedysfunctionparalysis

That’s still coming (eventually), but for now I’m going to pivot and start a new series chronicling my experience of the MFA Theatre program at Randolph College, which I have the distinct honor to be a part of starting today, January 8th, 2024 (which also happens to be my 35th birthday). So while I’m sitting here at the airport waiting for my connecting flight to Lynchburg, I want to take a moment to share a bit about the program and why I’m so excited about it.

Context: The Landscape for Directing Training in the US

For the non-directors reading this, there is no clear pathway for the training of theatrical directors in the US outside of degree programs (BFAs and MFAs, mostly). There are one-off classes that you might be able to find, but usually the model is to serve as an assistant director, which is one of the most ill-defined roles in a theatrical production process and thus means that your training is subject to the whims and wishes of whoever you “apprentice” with for a production. It may or may not involve any actual instruction and more often is left to learning through observation.

This means that degree programs are a gatekeeper for working professionally anywhere close to full-time as a director for most directors in the US, and goodness are they inaccessible. First, most MFA directing programs take between 2 and 4 folks per cohort (Columbia is a rare exception, taking 6 students per year), and a lot of them do not offer tuition waivers or stipends, meaning that students have to take out loans not just for tuition, but living expenses as well. Sometimes MFA students will be able to teach or TA classes to help offset tuition, but every program I’ve seen makes it clear that it’s basically impossible to hold a job while in the program. This means that to matriculate to an MFA program, artists have to take 2-3 years off of work, go into huge amounts of debt, and receive little to no financial support from the institution while they do so. There are absolutely programs that cover tuition and provide a stipend (Yale famously is now completely tuition-free for all of its theatre programs thanks to a huge donation by David Geffen), but that benefits 2-4 students each year out of hundreds, if not thousands, of directors. And there are still is at least one well-known program run by theatrical royalty who provide very little financial assistance for their students that is not need-based.

Add to this the fact that many of these programs are primarily run by white artists. This is the context of MFA directing programs. Design MFA programs have similar issues, and acting MFA programs may have more spots (usually 6-8 per year) and there are more programs for actors than directors or designers, but it’s not that different.

Randolph’s Offering

Low-residency graduate programs are not new. These programs are a hybrid between online classes and a fully in-person program, usually involving an intensive “in-residence” time followed by a majority of the semester spent in distance education. What isn’t common is low-residency MFA programs, likely because the assumption is that creativity requires in-person collaboration and dialogue. Randolph’s first foray into low-residency MFA programs was in creative writing, which has proven successful enough that they are now taking that model and applying it to theatre, with the ability to focus in acting, directing, design, or a combination of two (playwriting may be coming soon).

Our experience starts with an intensive in-person week, followed by online asynchronous classes (this semester will be new play development) and 1:1 mentorship with a faculty mentor that is entirely designed around our goals and the artistic work we are doing in our home communities. Which means that we can all keep our jobs, maintain the relationships and communities we have all spent time building, and tailor our mentorship to the needs that we have as individual artists in addition to the foundational curriculum of asynchronous work. Even that asynchronous work looks different than a lot of other MFA directing programs, with semester-long classes in topics like equity, diversity, and inclusion, non-profit theatre for the digital age, and reinventing classical traditions for the modern world.

Not only that, but 100% of the faculty mentors are people of color and many of them are queer! It’s almost as if someone took a look at all the problems listed above and designed a program to address all of the deficits in the current theatre MFA landscape, and I am here. for. it.

If you want to read more about the program itself, check out the website here.

Lots more to come! I’m finishing this post at lunch on day one and I’m already certain that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be in my life right now and I could not be more happy. I can’t wait to share this journey!