The Ph.D. in Theatre

Abstract

COMMENTS ONPROCESS The Ph.D. in Theatre AtHUo Favorini The following Comment presents a position that is not endorsed by the editors of Theatre Topics, by The Association for Theatre in Higher Education, or by The Johns Hopkins University Press. It is offered here as an individual opinion on a subject of great interest to scholars and practitioners in our profession. We actively solicit alternative opinions on the subject. —The Editor I once shared an office with a colleague who was a very dedicated teacher of theatre history. He spent endless hours over student papers and in class preparation. But he was also quite busy, and occasionally found himself with little time before class and not a great deal to say about, for example, early 18thcentury German acting style. One day, on one of those rare days when he was inadequately prepared, he articulated to me with splendid and conscious irony a principle I imagine he absorbed from his own distinguished and over-scheduled mentor. Tucking under his arm a huge pile of books as he trundled off to the classroom, he proclaimed, "When in doubt, bore." I recount this incident not to disseminate my colleague's advice, but because the discrediting of the traditional methodological assumption underlying it is one of the primary factors affecting the structure of today's Ph.D. programs in theatre. Indeed, the historiographical principle that truth will emerge from a revelation of "all" the facts has not survived the rigorous scrutiny of revisionist colleagues who warn us that it has led to intellectual stagnation. My own recent experience on doctoral committees has been much less concerned with factual matters than with attuning a candidate to the objections his/her methodology might invite from subsequent Marxist, feminist, or deconstructionist commentators . Were my former colleague alive today, his pungent advice might be altered to "When in doubt, confuse." I readily admit to a certain amount of confusion in my own thinking about the Ph.D. in theatre. I am by training a theatre historian whose Ph.D. was issued 2 Attilio Favorini by the Graduate School—although the departmental office and half of my classes were physically in the Drama School. I am chair of a department whose Ph.D. is rather old-fashioned in terms of language requirements, comprehensive examinations and dissertation, but which expects all of its doctoral students to exercise a "Special Option," virtually the equivalent of an MFA, in some aspect of theatre practice. In my own department the tensions between the artists and the humanists are not particularly severe; but they surface naturally in debates over money, faculty load, and academic credit given for practical work. Tensions of this sort have recently come to a head in discussions between National Association of Schools of Theatre representatives and those of the American Society for Theatre Research on the subject of NAST's recently withdrawn "Standards and Guidelines for the Accreditation of Ph.D. programs in Theatre." Despite the withdrawal of the NAST document, the discussions occasioned by it raised issues which remain unresolved and crucial to the training of Ph.D. candidates in theatre. The NAST document is lengthy and thorough, the ASTR responses thoughtful and precise. My intention here is neither to justify nor rationalize either position, but to use what I take to be the substance of ASTR's objections to the NAST position as a focus for the issues. 1) The NAST guidelines identify a basic understanding of theatre production as a prerequisite for doctoral study, suggest that production courses should be available or required, and otherwise emphasize production as a component of the degree. ASTR objects that such emphasis weakens the humanistic nature of the degree. The debate frames a potential conflict between artistic and humanistic missions in the context of advanced graduate study in theatre. 2) In deemphasizing within the guidelines—to judge by the amount of text devoted to these topics—research and the dissertation as an original contribution to collective knowledge about theatre, according to ASTR, NAST is weakening the foundation of the doctoral degree. 3) By specifying numbers of faculty and students and, indeed, by wishing to promulgate guidelines at all, NAST appears to...