Breaking a leg, and the norm

Sarah Curran ’02 was continually asked this question when she attended the Tribeca Film Festival as a student.

Though she does not work in film today, Curran is one of hundreds of alumni working in the performing arts industry. After acting, teaching and earning a master’s degree in performance, she now holds a position at an arts programming office at Stanford University. In following a combination of performance and administrative pursuits, Curran’s path mirrors that of many other alumni in the field, from recent graduates to those who received their degrees more than a decade ago.

But while holding a Princeton degree does not offer the same advantages in the theater world as it does in banking or academia, alumni countered the widely held idea that a liberal arts education does not provide a good foundation for a professional arts career. Alumni said that the challenges of combining their passion for theater with their academic requirements prepared them well for positions in the industry, though they face the same challenge in paying their bills as all aspiring artists do.

Performing without a major

There is “a myopia about Princeton” in the theater world, as Curran put it, with many assuming that serious artists should attend a conservatory where they can focus solely on their craft. Many colleges, and every other Ivy League school except Harvard, offer a major in theater studies that allows students to have a conservatory-like experience within a liberal arts education.

But at Princeton, students must major in a different field, though they can study the discipline through classes on topics ranging from acting and directing to sound design and Shakespeare.

Students can also enroll in the theater certificate program, which until 2009 was combined with the dance program. Theater certificate candidates complete four practical courses and a fifth course in the humanities. They must also complete a prescribed number of technical hours and independent work, which can either be incorporated into departmental independent work or completed as a separate creative thesis.

“The very fact that you can’t major in it ... means that we have to make do and build things ourselves, where at other theater programs everything’s there,” said Tony Valles ’97, who founded the Prospect Theater Company along with three fellow alumni after graduation. Valles credited the theater environment at Princeton with preparing him for a career in the industry.

Amanda Saunders ’00, who acts and teaches high school theater, said she feels so strongly about the benefits of a liberal arts education that she discourages most of her students from going to a conservatory. “For 90 percent of my students, I say you need to go get a great education, and that will make you a better actor,” she explained.

In addition to taking classes across disciplines, alumni said they benefited from interacting with a wide variety of students at the University. Ronee Penoi ’07, who is a senior fellow at Arena Stage's American Voices New Play Institute, said she is thankful that theater was available to her as a certificate program rather than as a concentration at Princeton. “One of the things I really loved about the program in general was that everyone was coming from such different passions — math majors, engineers, philosophers,” she said. “I really think that I wouldn’t have had as full of an experience if there had been a theater major.”

Michael Cadden, director of Princeton’s theater program, said in an e-mail that a theater concentration is hardly what Princeton needs. “Theater majors at most colleges and universities are fake conservatories looking to exploit the eternal optimism of young people interested in the arts for the sake of the financial health of said universities,” he said. “So I wonder about these majors’ ability to make a real contribution to the theater.”

Norma Bowles ’84, who successfully applied to create her own major while a student — masked performance — said she has mixed feelings about the lack of a theater department at the University. “On the one hand, such a change might make it possible to engage more faculty and staff, receive more financial support, and offer more courses and production opportunities,” Bowles, who now runs a theater company dedicated to promoting tolerance, said in an e-mail. “But on the other hand, we might risk becoming too insular.”

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To fulfill the creative thesis, students can participate in various aspects of a production, ranging from writing a play to acting in or directing one.

Pilar Castro-Kiltz ’10, who completed a creative thesis and is now pursuing a master’s of fine arts in dance at New York University, said she relished the ability to create new work, an opportunity rarely available at a liberal arts institution.

“It’s a collaboration between the students and the faculty to create something totally new that didn’t exist before,” she said. “Definitely one of the most valuable things that I experienced at Princeton was the permission to be creative and the support to do it.” Castro-Kiltz wrote an original work of tanztheater, which combines theater and dance, for her senior thesis production.

Students hoping to complete a creative thesis must apply in their junior year. Those selected work with theater professionals and receive funding from the theater program to access other professional-grade resources.

In completing theater work at the University, alumni said they benefited from faculty who prioritized their teaching commitments. Susan Jonas ’81, a theater professor at Ithaca College, noted that while city colleges often have big theater names attached to their programs, these artists usually only spend several hours a week with students before returning to professional life.

“At Princeton, among other schools, the faculty is largely people whose primary commitment is to teaching and being part of the college, so they develop closer relationships with the students and are more committed mentors and see more of the students’ work,” Jonas said in an e-mail. “Of course it’s great that there are also fabulous guest faculty and artists, but the emphasis is different.”

The presence of these theater practitioners and academics on campus is likewise recognized as an essential component of Princeton’s theater offerings. In Jonas and Bowles’ day, such figures included Froma Zeitlin, who is now a lecturer in women and gender studies and Judaic studies, and Alan MacVey; today they include playwright Robert Sandberg ’70 and Will Power.

Before visiting Princeton, Penoi had her sights set on attending a conservatory and had never given a liberal arts education much thought. “The thing that really impressed me when I first looked at the school was actually how many individual artists that I really respected ... that I was seeing in all of these courses,” she said.

Learning outside the classroom

Princeton’s theatre program is only part of the story for most dramatically inclined students. Extracurricular theater groups, which include the Princeton Triangle Club, Theater Intime and the Princeton University Players, among others, offer solid pre-professional experience for students interested in continuing to pursue theater after graduation.

Cara Reichel ’96, who worked with Valles to co-found Prospect Theatre Company and now serves as its producing artistic director, said her extracurricular experience with PUP prepared her for her current position. The organization had gone dormant and fell into debt, Reichel recalled, but she established an agreement by which the University offered the group up-front funding to produce shows. The troupe was eventually able to pay back the University and produced seven shows during Reichel’s senior year.

“That sort of entrepreneurial thing of figuring out how you make a project happen if you don’t have any money ... That’s kind of the situation I constantly find myself in in New York,” she said.

Most graduates who work in theater said they spent time in Theatre Intime, the University’s student-run theater located adjacent to Murray-Dodge Hall. The theater hosts a show almost every weekend, whether it is produced by the theater itself or another student group.

Jenna Devine ’12, an English major pursuing a theater certificate, currently serves as the theater’s box office manager and is its incoming general manager. She said that before working with the group exposed her to the different aspects of production, she had not considered paths in theater beyond acting. “One thing that student theater has taught me ... is how to manage a small student theater,” she said. “As box office manager, it’s my job not only to make sure the box office runs smoothly, but interacting with subscribers and all of our patrons and making sure people want to keep subscribing. And I think that’s really interesting.”

For some students, extracurricular involvement in theater is the only way to pursue the discipline. Saunders said that as a varsity tennis player, she didn’t have time to take classes in the theater program, let alone pursue the certificate, and ended up doing most of her work in theater through Theatre Intime. “I had to find my own way,” she said. “Luckily at Princeton there were enough opportunities outside the mainstream theater and dance department where I could find opportunities to perform.”

After graduation

While many of their classmates apply for jobs with the help of Career Services, apply to fellowships through the Office of International Programs or receive advice on pursuing postgraduate degrees from offices like Health Professions Advising, students hoping to break into the theater world must do so without a formal advising program.

Instead, they generally network informally through artists they have met at the University or elsewhere. Many alumni also consider pursuing a master’s degree as another step, whether immediately after Princeton or later in life.

Jonas stressed the importance of finding an internship to gain both connections and experience. “Students should certainly do this ... not only because it will vastly improve their chances, but moreover because it will help them enormously to figure out how to make the most of graduate school and to see if the reality of the life in the theater is for them.”

Within the theater industry, nearly every job is transient. For those who do find longer-term positions, it sometimes takes an entrepreneurial approach. In the summer of 1998, Reichel, Valles, Melissa Huber ’96 and Peter Mills ’95 formed the Prospect Theater Company.

Huber described the simple beginnings of the company, formed over a beer. “When we were together, we found we worked really well together ... and we thought, ‘You know, we work well together. Do we want to try to figure out how to do this for a living?’ ”

Through trying economic times, the theater company has remained a home for producing new interpretations of classic dramatic and musical work.

But even those who find positions within the theater world do not necessarily reap financial rewards. To pay the bills, many alumni take several jobs at once, including positions outside theater.

Valles, who not only works on Prospect, but also sings opera and makes films, said that “13 years out of college, what pays my bills is a temp job.”

An Italian concentrator, perhaps lacking the “real world” training of those studying economics or science, Valles said contentedly that when it comes to his day job, “I just have to make do with my good typing skills, with my charm and my good phone skills.”

Within the artistic realm, Jonas advised students to have a “double vision,” finding multiple passions in the hopes that one, whether in theater or out of it, can provide a living.

Yet most agree that pursuing their academic and theatrical passions at and after Princeton was the right decision. Further, they said that their exposure to different fields in the context of a liberal arts education, rather than a more-focused theater program, ultimately helped them perfect their craft.

Saunders noted that her classes as a religion major contributed immeasurably to her work as an artist. “It’s a way of looking at the world. It’s a way of really deeply examining why we live the way we do, make the decisions that we make,” she said. “And that has everything to do with being a performing artist. That has everything to do with being a teacher.”

Corrections: An earlier version of this article stated that Ronee Penoi ’07 is an artistic fellow at the Shakespeare Theatre, when in fact she held that position from 2007-08. She is currently a senior fellow at Arena Stage's American Voices New Play Institute. The spelling of Alan MacVey's name has also been corrected.