Every semester, students crowd into Yamawaki auditorium to view the latest show director Hortense Gerardo has pulled together. The performances display talents students on campus hide.
Senior Tim Doucette, a finance-business major, has been spending his nights on the stage of Yamawaki since his sophomore year. Lyndsey Charette, a sophomore psychology major, developed the Lasell Drama Club's first "Lasernation Live" show to give students another acting opportunity. Even Dean Steven Bloom studied theater in high school in a "Fame"-like setting.
With each production the Lasell Drama Club puts on, the cast grows in members and in production quality level, and students are left wondering: Why doesn't Lasell offer a performing arts major or minor?
According to Becky Kennedy, head of the Humanities department, Gerardo, and Bloom, Dean of undergraduate education, there are several reasons why Lasell isn't ready to add a minor.
Why isn't there a performing arts education program? Because there isn't enough interest yet from the student body. "The students we've been attracting haven't been geared towards haven't been heavily in the arts," says Bloom.
In the last few years, especially since President Alexander came in, we've been building up the arts more," Bloom says. "We know that a lot of our students that write application letters and come in who are majoring in sports management or fashion...a lot of them have done theater or dance in high school, so why wouldn't they continue here?"
Before President Alexander arrived in 2007, the drama club didn't perform plays and lost visibility. Since then Alexander extended performing arts into classrooms, offering introduction to theater classes, starting up the choir, and in 2012 partnering with Boston Ballet.
The expansion brought Lasell's performing arts alive in comparison to its non-existent history, but the lack of structured majors or minors doesn't attract students who participate in the extra-curricula's.
So why not establish a performing arts program? Because, as Bloom notes, it's a matter of sequencing."It's always a chicken or egg thing; do you make the major and have students come, or do you have students demand the major," Bloom says. The decision could go either way, but investing without students would put the school in a risky situation.
Charette says that she has seen interest, but also says that she doesn't think it would be good to start in current conditions. "The way we have been running things really doesn't allow for many people to be a part of it, the commitment is huge for everyone with the way it's been set up in the past," says Charette.
Another reason the investment for a full-fledged theater program would be risky? Lasell lacks the facilities necessary for a theater major.
"I will say that having limited resources has forced me to think very creatively, and I have been very fortunate to be working with talented fellow faculty and students," director Hortense Gerardo says."But it's also true that the production quality could easily be so much better with some basic improvements in technical equipment."
Lasell College's production of "Spring Awakening," in Fall 2014. Photo by Melinda Gordon
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