[SML] Student workers (was: Aggregrate hours for majors?)

Wed Nov 11 18:00:36 UTC 2015

Dear Larry,
I'll try not to take such an inflammatory approach as you have in your
previous response: many of your assumptions are untrue, and you have
misquoted my advice given freely. Students conscripted to do work that they
neither then, nor now, see the value of appear to resemble young adults
drafted into the armed forces, in that it may be a valuable experience for
them, but may still be perceived as 'Slave Labor' at the time. Before
earning my Doctorate in 1982, I produced shows starting in 1970 and took a
wide variety of classes, and did plenty of what I felt was labor done
primarily to lower the University's production costs, while still paying
full tuition and working on Productions at IA-signatory theaters in the
Southern California market, whence I was paid. The rationale: I wanted to
work at every possible assignment, and take classes in every relevant
discipline so that, as a Producer, few artists Directors, Designers,
Actors, Stage Managers, Investors, or other above-the-line persons could
influence me to allocate resources where they were not actually needed,
contrary to my fiduciary duties as a Producer and Artistic Director. Over
the years, I successfully learned to spot Waste, Unsafe Conditions,
Illegality, and 'Creative Accounting', not mention elements that I thought
would turn off audiences - not because that they were controversial, but
merely boring, the anathema to Earned Income.
/s/ Richard.

On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 8:41 AM, Lawrence E. Stahl via Stagecraft <
stagecraft at theatrical.net> wrote:

> I want to push back against Mr. Niederberg's insinuation that students
> working on college productions constitute "slave labor" because they are
> not paid.   In my opinion it is incorrect both to say this is done
> primarily for practical reasons and also to declare it to be
> "philosophically suspect" (aka: “wrong”).   Money is not the only thing of
> value, at college or elsewhere.   Exposure to new ideas, experiences,
> techniques, and people is also of value, and providing that exposure is one
> of the things that colleges do well when things are working right, and
> ought to do more of whenever possible.   I work for a small liberal arts
> college, with all of the strengths and weaknesses inherent in that
> circumstance.   We don't try to make our students actively unemployable,
> but we are also not a professional training program.  There are many
> excellent conservatory-based pre-professional training programs that do
> what they do because that's what their faculty believes in, which is great,
> but just as we cannot do some of what they do, they can’t do some of what
> we do.   Both approaches are valid.  Both approaches have strengths and
> weaknesses.  Each student has to choose the approach that best suits her or
> his interests, attitudes, abilities, and goals.
>
> Mr. Niederberg implies that since he has learned to deal with the many
> hidden expenses he enumerated in his post when producing a show, anyone who
> can't do what he does the way he thinks it should be done is somehow not
> employable.   Bull puckey.   I have heard variations on that for most of my
> career, along with the companion idea that college plays are really just
> subsidized vanity productions for hopelessly incompetent faculty who can’t
> get “real” producers to back their shows.   Also bull puckey.   Almost all
> of our productions are student-directed and designed.  Yes the
> infrastructure of the facility and the pre-existing props, costumes, and
> set pieces are provided for “free”--unless you count their ridiculously
> high tuition-- but our students are kept to a small and strictly enforced
> budget for production-specific expenditures.   The occasional faculty
> -directed or -designed show does in fact take place in part to allow
> faculty to keep skills sharp and to scratch their artistic itch, but they
> are also done to model the behavior the faculty expect of our students in
> how they prepare, how they work in the rehearsal room, and how they
> communicate with all members of the production.   The fact that each of the
> faculty members at my school has a different approach to directing and
> designing and to the rehearsal and performance process of a show is a
> strength and not a weakness of our program, in my opinion, and one that I
> openly discuss with our students.
>
> Exposing students to as many aspects of and approaches to theatre as
> possible within the acknowledged limits of our particular faculty, our
> facility, and our imagination is an essential component of our pedagogy.
>  Insisting that they engage with the liberal arts ethos of our college by
> studying a broad range of academic disciplines other than theatre is
> another part.  We do not consider that to be wasted time that would have
> been better spent calculating the pro-rated cost of toilet paper.  We
> expend a considerable effort to convince our students that ultimately our
> job is to teach them how to teach themselves, though I am acutely aware
> that we do not always achieve that goal.   There is no way we can give each
> one of them an identical education or cover every conceivable part of the
> theatrical universe.   We do not even come close to that nor do we claim
> to, but we do insist that everyone go up to the plate and take a swing at
> as many pitches as they can while they are here.  That includes students
> interested primarily in design or tech auditioning for and taking on acting
> roles, just as much as it does having students mostly interested in acting
> helping at load-in's, work calls, and strikes, and designing as well.   As
> I said earlier, it doesn’t always work as well as we’d like to hope, but
> when it does it’s pretty amazing.
>
> Um... well, I guess that pushed my buttons a little more that I realized
> when I started typing.   Sorry for the length of this post, and have a
> better day.
>
> Larry Stahl
> Technical Director
> Gibson Center for the Arts
> Washington College.
> Chestertown, MD 21620
>
>
> Date: Sun, 8 Nov 2015 17:01:10 -0800
> From: Richard Niederberg <ladesigners at gmail.com>
> To: Stagecraft Mailing List <stagecraft at theatrical.net>
> Subject: Re: [SML] Aggregate hours for majors?
> Message-ID:
> <CAJSxm-+_VOzfAug6w+-zYZhgCUrS9E0YgmkyyFEDx5GPunAL-w at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Dear John,
> It sounds like your institution, among most others, relies upon 'Slave
> Labor' to get the work done. This may be a practical approach, but it is
> philosophically suspect. Meanwhile, I am finding freshly minted graduates
> from most of these same institutions do not have the capacity to bid a job,
> whether it is building a Costume, a piece of Scenery, a Prop, or a lighting
> the stage for a production. They fail to consider overhead, such as FICA,
> FUTA, SDI. Workman's Compensation, or other employment taxes and fees,
> occupancy, and such incidentals as ordinary light bulbs, toilet paper,
> light and water bills, blades, maintenance of equipment, or other costs of
> doing business, We are in Show BUSINESS, NOT Show Talent. With a sound
> business basis, Art will be supported and enhanced.
> /s/ Richard
> _________
>
>
>
> Larry Stahl
> Technical Director
> Gibson Center for the Arts
> Washington College
> 300 Washington Ave.
> Chestertown, MD 21620
> 410-778-7859
>
>
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-- 
/s/ Richard
_________
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