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If School of Theatre dean Robert Scales gets his way, there’ll be lots more fun in store for the successful pop and theater composer.
Currently on the table is a proposal to bring Wildhorn back to USC – not as a student, but as a guest artist. During these visits, the Trojan composer would advise, critique or coach students, perhaps even use the theatre school as a “beta test-site for his ideas,” says Scales.
If Wildhorn signs on, he’ll be in good company. In past years, USC has brought such luminaries as Athol Fugard (Boesman and Lena), Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf), Tony Kushner (Angels in America) and David Henry Wang (M. Butterfly) to work with students. That’s in addition to the school’s 60-strong faculty, of whom, Scales says, “I don’t think we have a one who isn’t active professionally” outside the school.
Drama at USC has changed a lot since Wildhorn left in 1980. It became an autonomous school in 1991; enrollment has swelled to nearly 400 students. Ranked among the top five theater schools in the country by the Gourman Report, USC now offers intensive undergraduate and graduate training in acting, directing, technical production, theatrical design, stage management and playwriting, plus minors in dance, musical theater and performing arts.
Despite the school’s robust size, “everybody knows everybody,” Scales says. “All the different interests come together in performances.”
Indeed, performances are the very heart of the school. Students stage, on average, a whopping 30 shows a year, presented at three venues: the 590-seat Bing Theater, the 50- to 75-seat Massman Theatre, and the 99-seat Scene Dock Theatre.
To help them obtain other experience, USC runs a full-service casting office, with more than 300 head-shots and résumés on file.
The theatre school bends over backwards to advance students’ professional prospects. An official policy, for example, allows students to miss weeks of classes, even pass in and out of the program, when a long-running role conflicts with course work.
“This is a constant controversy,” says Scales. “Someone gets an opportunity, and they’re gone – maybe never to return. Is that a good thing? Personally, I’ve never felt any angst about students who do that.”
If that sounds a bit cavalier, bear in mind that the theater world doesn’t revolve around academic calendars and credentials. “There are a million entrés [into theater],” says USC production manager Jack Rowe. “You certainly don’t need to go to college.”
So why bother with theater education at all? “Something happens in a university – where a lot of expertise is brought together in a program that’s cohesive, integrated and structured to move forward – that can’t happen alone or in an acting studio,” says Rowe.
Few who attended USC’s School of Theatre will dispute that claim. After nearly 20 years of Broadway success, Chuck Wagner ’80 still treasures his college experiences, studying everything from stage lighting to the politics of Restoration comedy. “It was an amazing time,” says the actor-singer. “We were constantly busy. I was virtually in all the mainstage productions. I got to direct and design – I did everything. It was the time of my enlightenment.”
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Besides Wildhorn and Wagner, many other big names have come out of USC’s theatre school. Famous actors include Forest Whitaker ’82, Ally Sheedy ’84, Anthony Edwards ’82, Daryl Hannah ’81, Swoosie Kurtz ’68, John Ritter ’71, Rob Estes ’87, Cybill Shepherd ’73, Eric Stoltz ’81, Larry Harmon ’50, and Fess Parker ’51 MA. The roster extends to many prominent non-actors as well, among them South Coast Repertory co-founder David Emmes Ph.D. ’73, Nashville and “Chicago Hope” creator Joan Tewkesbury ’60, film director Andy Tennant ’77, and the late magician Harry Blackstone Jr. ’58. |
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