The proposed theatre major submitted to the Academic Planning and Priorities Committee in June of 2014 with an anticipated start date of September 2015 has officially started as of the Winter 2016 semester.
According to theatre department head Heather Davis-Fisch, the major was delayed as a result of concerns raised by the Ministry of Advanced Education regarding employment prospects. The Ministry wanted “assurances that students … currently in the theatre minor / extended minor diploma programs were finding work in their fields or … work relevant to their degrees.”
The now-approved theatre major is an addition to the theatre programs currently offered at UFV.
“More credits are required [for the major] and that’s typical,” said Davis-Fisch. “Students in the first two years develop foundational skills, stagecraft, acting, and what’s called theatre performance studies, that’s the sort of academic side of theatre.”
Upper-level theatre students, however, have more freedom of choice, according to Davis-Fisch.
“Students have all the foundational skills after the first couple of years that they can go on to do more research-based work, practice-based work, advanced acting classes,” she said. “It’s really up to our students to choose how to specialize in their last two years.”
The new major came hand-in-hand with a higher demand by UFV students for upper-level theatre courses, particularly courses in theory, which Davis-Fisch said was a waitlisted course this year.
“It’s a required course for all theatre majors, and it’s only offered every other year,” she said.
Current UFV students who found themselves waiting for the implementation of the major will have found that the courses offered this semester satisfy all the lower-level requirements for the major.
“Our goal in launching the major in January rather than September 2017 was made with an awareness that we had students who had been hanging out for an awful long time waiting for the degree,” said Davis-Fisch.
Theatre courses fall into two categories: creative practice and performance studies. These are normally offered on a rotating basis.
“Over the course of a student’s final two years in the program they’d have the option to take any of those courses. But not all of them are offered every year,” Davis-Fisch explained.
This year, however, the theatre department “made sure that everything required was being offered.”
“Everyone who has been close to graduating we’ve been able to accommodate,” Davis-Fisch said. “This was the year we were expecting to have [a] crunch on program completion.”
The theatre program at UFV will also start moving to the Abbotsford campus starting September.
“The long-term plan has always been to move theatre to Abbotsford with the other arts department,” Davis-Fisch explained.
