“We are structured as a very open community,” says current HRDC President Daniel A. Cozzens ’03, who says the group’s e-mail list goes out to over 700 people. “That is a great strength, that people can just come in.”
But Cozzens says this often means that students will participate in one show and then—disinterested in running or not making it past elections to Executive Board positions—“disappearing off the face of the earth.”
Of the 700 to 1,000 students on the e-group, only about 200 to 300 get involved in shows every semester, he says.
HRDC member Jeremy W. Blocker ’04 suggests that the theater group should expect more from its members than simply acting or directing.
There are a variety of ways to do this, he says, “whether it means that you direct one show and do run crew for another, or go to 10 shows in a season, or bring 15 friends to a show so that you’re a significant part of an audience.”
Otherwise, Blocker says, there would be “a bunch of people who do theater but don’t feel they’re in a club.”
Theater ‘Game Plan’
HRDC members also call for concrete change simply improve the shows they produce.
E. Peyton Sherwood ’04, who works on the technical aspects of performance, says there has long been a shortage of technical and production staff for all types of shows, and the problem shows no sign of going away.
In the past, aggressive campaigning to attract people to work on technical aspects of the show hasn’t alleviated the dearth.
“Part of the game plan should be to start early,” he says.
He adds that he hopes additional technical workshops, offered earlier in the semester and more highly publicized, will help solve the chronic shortage in coming years.
Sherwood also suggests a more drastic proposal—decreasing the number of shows put up, particularly in the Loeb Experimental Theater, so that existing technical staff can concentrate to produce better theater without burning out.
Stronger institutional memory could also result in better shows, Herrera says.
“We don’t understand the history of the institution,” says Herrera. “Information is not passed down because every two years, there’s a great turnover and we have to reinvent the wheel.”
Herrera says shows are often repeated over the course of six or seven years and if the group could improve the way it learns as an organization, it could avoid repeating mistakes.
To that end, the group also passed an amendment last night to add a historian to the Board, who will work to compile and maintain a history of information pertinent to all shows put on by the HRDC.