• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

Max Snyder (left) and Brian Kite are theater directing graduate students in UCLA’s highly s

Photo

Zero. That’s how many applicants the UCLA theater directing graduate program admitted this year.

Even though this year’s magic number is only two less than last year, zero does send a loud and clear message that the graduate directing program is not an easy fortress to breach.

Zero also means Max Snyder, Brian Kite, Thomas Burmester, Aaron Feinstein and Jonathan Gellert remain the only students in the program.

The 2001-2002 class of Snyder, Burmester and Feinstein was a bumper crop for the department, and with Kite and Gellert entering the following year, the need to admit additional students isn’t exactly pressing.

“We found more good students in the last couple of years than we normally admit, and we had too many students, actually,” said Bill Ward, chair of the theater department. “But we didn’t see anyone that was really compelling (this year).”

Theater directing Professor Michael McLain, who serves as the head of the MFA selection committee, echoes Ward’s sentiments.

“There wasn’t a strong sense of a very strong candidate,” said McLain. “We’re always hoping for the best ... hoping we’ll have someone who can revolutionize American theater.”

The current crop of graduate students, in McLain’s eyes, has exactly the kind of potential the department is looking for.

“They’re very careful about who they bring in. They want to bring in people who show true professional potential,” said Kite, who returned to UCLA after 10 years of acting and directing in Los Angeles. “I wanted to come back here and figure out how to be a better director, to go from being a good director to a great one.”

For Snyder, getting into UCLA was far from a sure thing, despite the fact he had just graduated from the highly regarded theater conservatory program at California Institute of the Arts.

“It’s possible that coming from CalArts helped, but I don’t know for sure,” said Snyder. “I certainly had an extensive acting background, but had only directed one show previously. They did, however, tell me that I was their third choice, and that if they did select me, they would be taking a chance. So I didn’t keep my hopes too high, and I was very surprised to be even called back for the second interview.”

Tony Award-winning director John Rando, who graduated from the program in 1990, had plenty of options before deciding on UCLA. Fresh from a theater fellowship in Germany, Rando had also applied to Columbia. He was surprised that he actually made the interview round, during which he was particularly impressed by the faculty at UCLA.

“Most of the people I knew were applying to Yale and NYU, but I recognized UCLA as providing a very specific (and individualized) kind of training,” said Rando. “Professor McLain really seemed to know where I was in my career and where I was heading.”

The place Rando was heading was Broadway, where he promptly put his UCLA training to use, culminating in the critical success that was “Urinetown.” Rando is making a homecoming of sorts when he directs Steve Martin’s “The Underpants” at the Geffen Playhouse, opening March 9.

“There are lots of people who want to come to our program, but the ones we want are that very top level of the very best students. And those are students that are desired by our competing schools, which are Juilliard, NYU and Yale,” said Ward. “We’ve been fortunate in the past in getting our first choices.”

In the case of Kite, UCLA was his first and only choice. His two concerns were having access to the best faculty and the fact that he was familiar with the bureaucratic ins and outs at UCLA, having done his undergraduate work here.

“I had an existing theater company here called Buffalo Nights, and I feel very strongly about Los Angeles as an arts center. So I didn’t apply all over the place. I took my chances and put all my energy into trying to get into UCLA. It wasn’t a matter of whether I would get into grad school or not; it was a matter of whether I would get into UCLA or not.”

Both Kite and Snyder agree with Rando that one of the major plus points of UCLA’s directing program is that it is highly flexible and tailored to each student.

“(The program) caters to the director’s aesthetic,” said Snyder. “There’s no one aesthetic that’s imposed upon the individual. They really try to work with our unique needs and qualities.”

The department must meet its graduate directors’ production needs by deploying considerable resources in the form of undergraduate students, rehearsal spaces, etc.

“If we wanted to admit one more director, we would need so many more designers, so many more actors, another theater space, more rehearsal rooms, all of those things,” Ward said. “It’s quite a management job to correlate the number of directors you admit and the number of (students in other parts of the program).”

It’s these resource needs that directly affect the number of students admitted, a fact that can be further complicated by budget cuts. According to the chair, the department has already been hit by cuts totaling close to three-quarters of $1 million over the last three years.

“If you have a big budget cut, you have basically three choices: one is to diminish the quality of the program, the other is to charge more for it and the third is to offer admission points less frequently,” said Ward. “The scary thing this year is that we’re admitting students without knowing what the situation is going to be next year.”

The department has been advised to stick to its normal admittance standards for the coming class year. As of right now, graduate applicants are in the middle of second-round interviews.

“The budget cuts are not a direct cause of (a low acceptance rate),” said McLain. “But if they continue to spiral further they might become a bigger factor.”

Even given the current situation, it remains unlikely that budget cuts will dampen demand for a place in the prestigious program.

“I think having a master’s degree gives producers a bit of calm about hiring you,” said Kite. “I think it really makes a difference. They feel a little better, like: ‘Somebody must think he’s good because he has a master’s from UCLA.’”