It’s a Flex: Disrupting the MFA Complex, Part 3

So my goal of blogging every day of my first residency in the Randolph College MFA Theatre program clearly didn’t happen; the week got very full and busy, and while they gave us plenty of down time (2 hour dinner breaks ftw!), every single moment of that downtime was either processing time or rest time. And I don’t process by writing very well, my brain moves faster than my fingers, so writing is something I do after I’ve processed.

So a couple of days out, I’ve been processing my meetings with my faculty mentor for the semester, the incredible Jose Zayas. I got to have two 45-minute 1-on-1 meetings with him in the latter part of the week, and to say that I felt a kinship with this person is an understatement. He is someone I am delighted to learn from and with this semester.

If I were in a typical MFA directing program, I would have a lot of class work. Take a look at these two breakdowns of the first year of curriculum at Yale and DePaul:

Yale

DePaul

First, no wonder traditional MFAs require you to drop everything you’re doing and working on to go to their program: that is a LOT of material to cover in one year. I think if you count up the credit hours for the DePaul program, that’s 65 credit hours in one year. Even if you divide that across three semesters, that’s 21+ credit hours per semester).

I, on the other hand, have two courses this semester: my 1:1 mentorship with Jose and a course that both cohorts are taking in New Play Development with Karl O’Brian Williams, an incredible Jamaican-born actor, writer, director, producer, and educator who dropped an incredible quote during faculty Q&A: “Rejection just creates another hyphen.”

That may seem like I’m doing nothing in comparison to Yale and DePaul folks, but quite the contrary: I’m asking Jose and Karl to push me this semester. But I’m asking them to push me where I need to be pushed. I’ve been coaching actors for decades at this point; there’s always more to learn regarding acting techniques, but I don’t need that class right now. If I were in a traditional program I wouldn’t have a choice.

I’ve read a lot of books on directing over the years. Do I need (or want) to re-read more directing theories by mostly white men for an entire course? Nope. What I do need and want is for Jose to introduce me to books and resources about storytelling that may not necessarily be about stage directing, but that are from a wider variety of voices and perspectives.

Jose watches a film a day on average, and he suggested films as a medium for us to discuss directing, not in terms of the nuts and bolts of cinematography and the like, but in terms of the storytelling, including the structure and approach, especially given what I need at this point in my career. Nothing like that in the above lists.

And I got to propose my own project for the semester, along with my desire to read a lot of plays. And I’m not scared of biting off more than I can chew, because everyone has told us over and over again that since this is a mentorship, we can adjust and flex the structure and content as we need to when life happens as long as we meet some minimum qualifications.

For some folks, traditional MFA program structures may be the way to go, especially if they’re earlier in their career and need a foundation on which to build their work. But I’ve spent two decades analyzing myself and my process and being taught by all of the artists I’ve worked with; what I need now is exactly what I’m getting: focused attention from incredible professionals who are committed to helping me become the best version of Director Andrew I can be, all while acknowledging that the best person to help define what I need is me, myself, and I.

Seems so simple, and yet it took a small liberal arts school in VA to take the first steps. Hoo boy am I glad that they did.