NC State has offered a theatre minor for students since 2013. After 11 years of serving students, the minor has been discontinued.
Joshua Reaves, director of University Theatre, said the decision was in response to a recommendation following a program review of University Theatre, and the initial suggestion was to eliminate the minor and academics associated with the theatre.
However, Reaves said the minor was holding students and staff back academically.
“The minor is a 15 credit hour course, and we have the resources in terms of staffing, based upon our funding model, to teach a certain number of classes a year,” Reaves said. “What happens is, in order to make that minor work, we are constrained to teaching those introductory classes. We can’t move beyond those because we have to teach the minor, and by doing so, we are basically eating up the entire pool of resources just by teaching intro to theatre, intro to acting, intro to stagecraft.”
Reaves said the process of canceling the minor started last semester.
“Last semester, the process formally began,” Reaves said. “In late April, early May, the administrative hold was put on it. So as students were starting to ask about [the minor], there was advice that this may be going away. But as of Aug. 16, the final approval at my level went through. It’s essentially official. As of mid-August, the minor’s officially discontinued.”
Gray Nico, a fourth-year statistics major and theatre minor, said he learned about the decision on Aug. 21 from another student.
“So my friend … was taking classes working up to a minor,” Nico said. “She didn’t declare it. So recently, she was looking in the MyPack Portal, and she realized that the minor was no longer there, so she reached out to her advisor and I guess that was how she was one of the first people to realize that.”
Nico said he didn’t recall current theatre students receiving notice from the University.
“She told this big group chat that had all of us from the Jekyll and Hyde cast from the spring, and then we all just kind of talked about it,” Nico said. “We were like, ‘What?’ So I don’t recall there being an actual announcement, it was pretty informal.”
Over the 11 years since its inception, 124 students have graduated with a theatre minor, though 169 students have declared the minor.
Mia Self, assistant director of acting, directing and academics at University Theatre, said limited academic resources are the culprit for the minor’s 26% drop rate.
“A lot of students at that point would leave the minor and not complete, although they had every intention,” Self said. “It was just not possible because of the constraints of the ability to offer classes at times that students could take them, and the flexibility of you can’t have a whole lot of extra classes if you have no one to teach those classes.”
With the elimination of the minor, Reaves said University Theatre will be focusing on their workshop series, which is a variety of workshops and masterclasses on theater and theater-adjacent topics in a digestible way.
The University Theatre’s workshop series began in fall 2023, and Reaves said it has been successful in that time.
“That first year, it turns out our fall semester of workshops served more students in the fall than it did an entire year of all of our academic courses,” Reaves said.
In the last three years, 3,366 students have participated in the University Theatre, regardless of major. Only 31 of these students are theatre minors.
In place of a minor on students’ academic records, Reaves said the theatre department works with students to get their theatre experience on paper. In January, the department began hosting meetings intended to teach students how to put together portfolios and resumes in a way that displays their experience.
“Your resume is not the one thing, certainly not your transcript, is not the one thing that’s going to sell you as a full person,” Reaves said. “So we are helping build that full person, that full identity of how the arts have shaped you, how your major is a part of that.”
While currently enrolled theatre minors will graduate with the minor, Nico said some theatre minor students are unhappy with the decision.
“I know that I am someone who obviously will graduate with it just because I’ve been in it before it got canceled,” Nico said. “But I do know that my friend was especially scared because she’s done so much for the theatre. … And she was doing the classes, but I don’t know if she was able to get into it or not. I don’t know what her advisor meeting was like, but she was an example of someone who was angry that it happened without warning.”
Nico said he only took some classes because of the minor, which he worries will limit the perspectives of those not pushed to take them.
“I don’t think it’s fair to only know what you see on stage and then not dive into what happens backstage,” Nico said. “I feel like there’s a respect that’s deserved there, and I don’t know how many people will be incentivized to give that respect or learn about what happens backstage without the class in the minor. I think that there’s a lot of value in these classes that is now being lost. I’m really hoping that they become frequent workshops that people are encouraged to become part of.”
Self said she looks forward to the future of the theatre department even in the absence of the minor.
“I’m excited with the shift over the next several years that we’re going to see much more dynamic teaching, much more varied teaching,” Self said. “It is painful to let that go, but it’s knowing, ‘Okay, if we let this go, it increases both access and flexibility and creativity for a much larger group of people.’”
Nico works with admissions and said he is disappointed he can no longer talk about the theatre minor to prospective NC State students.
“When people hear that I’m a theatre minor, there’s always a handful of families whose faces light up, and they will find me after the panel, and they will want to hear from an art student, specifically because NC State is advertised as a very STEM-heavy school,” Nico said. “My role was very valuable because I am a representative of someone who actually is successful in these other parts of State, and they always want to hear about the theatre minor. … So I am disappointed that that is something I can no longer really talk about.”
