University Departments of Drama (Article)

The first attempt to present theatre history and practice as an academic study leading to a university degree was made in the USA, when the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, established in 1914 a Department of Drama offering a degree in theatre arts. More influential, however, was the establishment in 1925 of a postgraduate Department of Drama at Yale, headed by George Pierce Baker. The movement grew so quickly that when in 1936 the American Educational Theatre Association (AETA) was founded, it had 80 members. Now, as the American Theatre Association (ATA) dealing with educational and non-commercial theatre nation-wide, it covers 1,600 drama departments in US colleges and universities.

In 1960 the McCarter Theatre at Princeton became the first professional theatre in the United States to be entirely under the control of a university. There was an expansion of university and college theatre building during the next 20 years, at the end of which virtually every educational institution with a theatre department had its own theatre, its facilities often comparing favourably with those of a Broadway or regional theatre. Some of the university theatres also function as civic theatres, serving the surrounding districts as well as the student body, often under a professional director. In some cases professional actors have been engaged to play in university theatres, in addition to student groups.

In Britain the gradual acceptance of the theatre as a subject for academic study resulted in the establishment in 1946–7 of the first Department of Drama, at Bristol University, which works closely with the Bristol Old Vic; it was followed after 13 years by the creation at Bristol of the first Chair of Drama at a British university. A Department of Drama was established in 1961–2 at Manchester, with Hugh Hunt as its first Professor. Similar departments have now been set up in other universities, and there are two within the University of London. Many of these universities also have Chairs of Drama, and Oxford has a Visiting Professor. By the end of the 1970s almost 20 British universities, and a similar number of other institutions of higher education, offered drama within a BA degree, many more offering drama in a B.Ed. degree. Some universities now have a theatre open to the public, among them the Northcott at Exeter, the Sherman at Cardiff, the Nuffield at South-ampton, and the university theatre at Manchester.

There has also been a great expansion of university theatre studies throughout the world, particularly in Canada, France, Germany, and Italy. Theatre is studied at universities in the USSR and in places as diverse as India, Japan, Korea, and Nigeria.