The UB Post

Issue date: 10/4/06 Section: Feature

Jeff Brunell is an undergraduate student and contributing writer at The UB Post

Though it may have gone unnoticed up until now, a technologically advanced theatre awaits the interest of University of Baltimore students. Now five months old, the UB Student Center Performing Arts Theater is ready to walk. But will it be by our own steam or outsider help? We’re fortunate to have pros coming in with a great show and have the mayor’s office to thank for keeping it free. More, the administration deserves kudos for sidestepping the usual safe theatre pap and respecting the intelligence of our students. Now…will students respect themselves and pave the way for UB productions that are truly that?

Tucked away on floor five of the new Student Center is a two-hundred seat venue ready to host all varieties of the performing arts. The infrastructure in place, the matter at hand is: whose productions will be seen?

With remote-controlled spotlights and a design that held acoustics in mind, the stage is as equipped and intimate as the far corner of the Student Center could hope to accommodate. That said, it’s somewhat off the beaten path and lacking some elements that characterize theatres at large. An unusually small stage space and the absence of a traditional lighting grid may prove challenging for most productions, but could provoke a uniqueness in adaptation that will make the space truly UB students’.

Certainly the space, adjacent to the current exhibition of collages by Vivian Fliegel, faces a challenge in gaining public awareness of its existence. The larger issue is the absence of any student organization to mount indigenous UB productions. Up until now, no theatre meant no need for a theatre company, but the case has changed.

At present, the space is booked to host the Spotlighters production of “Angels in America: Part One: Millennium Approaches,” and musicians ranging in style from folk to chamber music. An eclectic mix of events and performers is the aim.

Joan Weber, responsible for securing outside acts for the Center, stated that she’s interested in “mounting productions that involve faculty, students and staff,” and that, “we’ll see how it works out as a spot for a local itinerant company.” She went on to say that she’s “very interested to see some sort of a drama club. There’s not such an outlet within the university at this time. Hopefully there’s a desire for that. We have to find out if students want to see theatre on campus.”

Creating UB student productions is a dangling question. There is no precedent for theatre at UB, and a student population as notoriously busy as ours may not have time to engage itself at such length.

I wonder if our atypical—let’s face it, anonymous—status among public universities in Maryland might be an asset. Beyond just paying lip service to notions of diversity, our school illustrates the concept in every respect…except perhaps the conspicuous absence of a comprehensive approach to the arts. Let’s start changing that. To those interested in establishing an active drama club: Weber, herself an actress, doesn’t think there’d be much trouble finding an adviser.

Let’s give it a name, too. The ponderously titled University of Baltimore Student Center Performing Arts Theater deserves a name as personal and memorable as our productions yet to be staged. What’s more, some permanent indication of its presence at the entrance to the Student Center would ensure that visitors never miss this space of such value to us and extinguish any ugly rumors that our career-minded university is pushing the arts to the far wings.

Brunell, an undergraduate student and contributing writer at The UB Post, can be reached at jeffieboy9@gmail.com.

 

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