by Sarah Schlesinger
Given the challenges musical theatre faces as it seeks to find its place as a powerful means of communication about the human condition and an agent of change in this century, having a base from which to launch the long-needed exploration of our art form at the Tisch School of the Arts signals the world that this is an investigation with serious ramifications. Our presence here strengthens the probability that our art form will be able to survive, flourish, and be redefined in the face of huge sea changes in our culture. As the only University program in the world on either the graduate or undergraduate level, our mission is not to return a moribund art form to its former glory or to understand how to maintain its status quo - but to initiate what it becomes in the future.
American musical theatre began in the cradles of civilization and was carried to New York City - note by note – impulse by impulse - from every corner of the world. It flowered here because this was the one place where the merger of so many cultural strains was geographically possible. It bloomed for sixty years, then faded in the face of the forces that took popular music in another direction. While popular music has continued to reinvent itself, musical theatre became frozen in time. Invention and discovery ceased. The form was stagnant, trivialized and marginalized. A similar set of demographic characteristics defined most of its artists and all too often, a numbing sameness marred its choice of subject matter. It failed to understand its role in the face of film, television, and computer technology - that in fact its being grounded in the realm of immediate experience was its most essential quality. The resulting vacuum opened the door for the so-called British invasion and the vacuum that has followed.
Before the existence of our Program, there was little true research and development in musical theatre. Fortunately, the leadership of the Tisch School understood that in order for the form to survive it needed a sanctuary where it could be free to search again for its justification to exist-to look at where it had been and consider where it has to go to survive and to thrive again. This searching process will never happen in the commercial theatre or the world of non-profit theatre as it exists in today's cultural and economic climate. But sheltered here in a University dedicated to the process of searching in all of its manifestations, we have a singular freedom to contemplate what was and what is, imagine the future, and take artistic risks. The very existence of our Program at this University says to the best and the brightest writers and musicians from Yale, Harvard, Brown, Julliard - South Africa, Australia, Malaysia, Manila, Cyprus, Cuba, Alaska, Texas and points in between - that musical theatre is worth pursuing in the 21st century.
Musical theatre is no longer an American commodity. It is a global commodity. Because we are here, we are free to welcome voices from everywhere. We are engineering collaborations between Koreans and Norwegians - composers from Hong Kong and lyricists from Missouri. We are discovering what fusing these voices can say that has never been said before.
Musical theatre in America has never been widely embracing of minorities. Because we are here, we are free to welcome everyone in. The most important black writer/director/artistic director in the history of the American musical theatre is George C. Wolfe, who is an alum of this Program. Slowly but surely an entire generation of black, Asian, and Latino writers and composers of musical theatre are advancing out of our doors-and telling their stories.
Musical theatre in America has never been widely embracing of emerging forms of music - popular, world, or classical. Because we are here, we welcome every kind of music.
Musical theatre in American has never been widely embracing of "serious" or controversial subject matter. Because we are here, our graduates are producing musical theatre works that explode myths about American history; explore contemporary moral issues confronting both governments and individuals; investigate the process of scientific discovery; take as their heroes gay men and women; and seek to lay bare the truth in our collective hearts. Our writers and composers are scholars who dig deep for their materials of construction and then unleash their imaginations to convert what they have discovered into art to share with their audiences.
Because we are here, we accept writers from every corner of the arts at every age. We have no preconceptions about who might create great musical theatre, when in their lives, or with whom.
Because we are here, we are a magnet for great musical theatre creators both in the New York theatre community and around the world who come to be nourished and to nourish. Because we are here, we have created a community of artists who offer each other support and continuity as they move in to the world.
Because we are here, our students have access to a remarkable library - to the city as a resource - to a convergence of cultural and intellectual experiences they could not equal anywhere else.
Because we are here, the heart of our Program is a writing laboratory that is as much of a seed bed for experimentation and discovery as any chemistry lab. Rewriting, and refining material and bringing it back into the lab are a critical part of the process.
As I watch our alums in the world, I can see the ways in which this connection to a great arts school at a great University has influenced the paths they take. Word by word-note by note-song by song-new form by new form - new viewpoint by new viewpoint - challenge by failure - as surely as those who search for ways in which to reinterpret and go beyond in every other field of knowledge - the musical theatre artists who emerge from this Program are able to strive to know and be known - because we are here.
