For those of us who didn’t grow up collecting playbills or scouring Drama Online, the Yale Theater SceneTM sneaks up on you. I remember obsessively watching the Yale Behind the Gates YouTube series, where Yale students from long ago (2016) talked about their residential colleges; with the same urgency of mentioning dining halls, every one mentioned that the residential college had a theater. I misattributed this to the school trying to aggressively promote the fledgling arts, and was quickly corrected.
Since freshman year, the theater scene has been biting at my Google Calendar: invites to friends CPAs, Dramat Shows and Senior Theses. I’ve tried to fight back. I was never a theater kid (my stellar performance as Lumiere in my middle school production of Beauty and the Beast notwithstanding), nor did I ever understand theater, but I didn’t think that would matter. I wasn’t planning on doing any theater as an adult, and nobody I knew growing up was into it either. I figured when I returned home post-grad, I wouldn’t need to understand any of this stuff, and that I’d let the Theater PeopleTM have their corner of Yale.
Now I find myself consumed. I’ve shirked many of my obligations to perform in the Dramat mainstage this spring. Suddenly, Saturday matinees and closing nights usurped pregames and debate prep as kings of my weekends. I’ve built a mental hit-list of people my friends think to be banished from producing—or as they put it, “exploded.” That I’m invested in the arts after 3 years isn’t that much of a surprise to me: I came here wanting to engage in art at least a little bit. After all, any distinguished Yale man, beyond quoting Chaucer, should be able to tap into their artistic side. But I didn’t expect theater to be the most prestigious, and seemingly only way to do so.
At first, I chafed a bit in response to this. Theater was stuffy and posh, something Yankees and Europeans did performatively but didn’t actually understand. Going to the theater was theater. A thing people did not do because they liked the thing, but because it’s perceived as refined to do the thing. Real ArtTM was what I engaged with growing up, so that meant J.Cole (yes, I will defend Wet Dreamz as a sonic masterpiece), Joey Badass, Skyrim, the Black Ops 2 Campaign, Parasite, Paper Towns the book, and Paper Towns the movie.
I was also wary of theater or something because its dominance of the art space meant the marginalization of other art forms. I don’t mean their complete banishment from on campus – they still exist after all—but as secondary choices, only pursued by their most loyal proponents. Theater is all-consuming and the face of the performing arts scene to the outside observer. For someone seeking to engage in the arts, refusing to do the main respected art form seemed to limit oneself. The circle of collaborators will not be as big, audiences may be harder to come by, and while I’ve heard of Hamlet’s soliloquy being used to impress dates, I’m told that interpretive dance is not exactly an aphrodisiac.
Yet no matter how much my contrarian instincts tell me to rail against the dominance of theater, the more I think about it, the more I’ve come to appreciate it.
From a logistical perspective, it makes sense. We are surrounded on all sides by all levels of theater. Every residential college has its theater. The Dramat is one of the oldest student theater companies in America, with the University Theater looming over Library Walk. The Yale Rep provides occasional reminders of what we all could be if we really dedicated ourselves to the theatrical arts. Every show there features the professional thespians we could one day be, if we star in just one more CPA. It’s actively difficult to be more than two blocks away from a theatrical stage at any given moment on this campus.
From a pedagogical standpoint, theater is, unfortunately, a really good core of an arts program. You can teach future actors, directors, writers, producers, costume designers, musicians, and architects all in one production. Plus, it’s flexible to accommodate changes in interest in different aspects of the arts as classes come and go. A single student can go from techie to actor to director to playwright in a few semesters. If you accidentally admit a class that lacks singers, you can cut musicals; if you lack set designers, just set everything in a lieu vague.
There is also something beautiful about the theater ecosystem. I can’t imagine an arts scene without theater very much at the center. Having so many creatives collaborating on the same kind of art, working on the same seasonal calendars, same casting days, etc., creates the possibility for dense webs of collaboration.
The other performing arts are alive and well, even if you have to look a little bit harder for them. Our campus is teeming with singing groups, poetry showcases, dance performances; basically any art form you want has a place if you are willing to seek it out. It’s also hard to imagine an arts scene that is sustainable at Yale, given the infrastructure theater will always have here, that doesn’t have theater at the helm of it.
This is soft environmental determinism, but roll with me here. No matter what corner of campus you occupy, you probably have seen or will see campus groups rise and fall in your time at Yale. Every Yale class is a little bit different, every tap season has its magic moments, sometimes great collaborators never meet, and other times they are put in the same suite. This randomness means that Yale clubs are under constant stress to recruit and retain new members, maintain and expand their activities, and always operate under new circumstances.
Those that have been historically the most successful usually have one of three things. 1) They have immense material or institutional resources. Think of the YDN building or the college councils. 2) They are flexible and can accommodate different interests. Think the Yale Political Union: no matter if you are good or evil, there’s a party for you. 3) They appeal to a broad swath of first-years coming in. Think of our orchestras or those ever-enticing consulting groups.
Theater has all of that in spades. In the game of survival that is the club ecosystem, it is the most well-resourced, adaptable, and appealing. There is a borderline spiritual alignment between being a Yale student and doing Yale Theater that makes its popularity feel so inevitable. Doing either means dedicating a good chunk of your life to learning this skill that most people outside of New England and off Broadway don’t really care about – the ability to be a Yale student or how to put on a theatrical production – but that signifies some high level of intelligence, prestige, and competence in the intellectual spheres of life.
This similarity in appeal makes me seriously think that even if we wiped the slate clean, and there were no clubs, buildings nor any students at Yale, after 50 years, something like the Dramat would form, and a theater calendar would be made, and people would petition the dean to create a CPA system. It’s baked into our DNA to choose slightly pretentious intellectual pursuits. As a former humanities turned classical civilizations major, I’m highly guilty of this. To be a Yale student for most of us means we chose to go to school away from our family and where we want to live to spend four years in a prestigious bubble. Theater, that highest composite art form of the Athenians, is our destiny. The only natural organization of the Yale arts scene has theater at its center. It’s the only one that can claim and hold the title of artistic hegemon.
