CAMPUS CLOSEUPHenry Bial - Assistant professor, theatre and film
Years at current job: Two and a half.
Job duties: I teach courses in script analysis, dramatic theory, performance studies and popular culture, as well as a professional development seminar for doctoral students. I also advise master's theses and doctoral dissertations and serve as the director of the master's and doctoral programs in theatre and film.
R. Steve Dick/University Relations
Henry Bial, assistant professor of theatre and film, stands next to a painting of his great-grandfather.
One of your areas of specialty is theatre history and criticism. This is not the same as simply writing a film review, is it? When theatre and film scholars talk about criticism, we don't mean the kind of "thumbs up/thumbs down" criticism you see on TV or in the newspaper. For us, "criticism" means a more rigorous analysis of the performance, with an eye toward the broader artistic, cultural or social issues the work raises. That said, some journalistic reviews can be very useful for theatre historians; for all their flaws and idiosyncrasies, they are often the best available record of what actually transpired on stage.
Religious performance and Jewish popular culture are also among your research specialties. Have you found that the way Jewish culture has been presented has changed over the years? If so, how? This is too big a question to answer properly in a paragraph, but the short version is that 20 years ago it was considered radical to even talk about "Jewish popular culture." The Jewishness of many celebrities and musicians was an open secret; people knew, but it wasn't discussed in mainstream conversation. Today, you have things like Adam Sandler's Hannukah song, VH1's "So Jewtastic" special and Jon Stewart making a Jews-in-Hollywood joke in the first five minutes of this year's Oscar telecast. Of course, 20 years ago, it was also considered radical to talk about popular culture in the academy. When I was an undergraduate at Harvard in the late 1980s, I took a class in which one of things we did was watch a couple of Madonna videos; that was considered so controversial at the time that talk radio hosts in Boston devoted hours to denouncing the class.
What does your role as vice president for advocacy for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education entail? ATHE is a professional organization that represents the interests of members who teach theatre at the college level in North America. As VP for advocacy, I help coordinate the organization's positions on issues such as public funding for the arts, censorship, social responsibility and the role of the arts in education at all levels. This often involves partnering with like-minded organizations. For example, I'm currently working with the International Thespian Society (which supports K-12 theatre teachers) to draft a joint statement on freedom of expression in educational theatre.
Music and arts programs are increasingly threatened at the K-12 level due to budget and various other challenges. Has this had an effect on the discipline at the college level, and does post-secondary education face the same challenges? The cutbacks in K-12 arts programming are of enormous concern to those of us teaching the arts in higher education. We feel it at both ends of our curriculum: our incoming students are less prepared for advanced study, while our graduating students have fewer employment options.
What do you enjoy most about your profession? I love working with creative people, both students and faculty, in a collaborative setting. The great thing about theatre and film is that they are cooperative arts — you can't do them alone. That gives our work, whether it's in the classroom or the rehearsal room, a sense of excitement and collective spirit that's hard to beat.
You've been involved in the arts as a performer, writer, designer and more. How does this experience inform your work as an educator? My practical experience, and my respect for the practical experience of my colleagues, is what keeps my teaching and my theoretical work honest. Working closely with faculty and student artists, I am continually reminded that theory and criticism must be grounded in the realities of performance practice. A theory that can't account for the real life adventures of getting the show up and down isn't going to get you very far.
What are some aspects of your job others might not realize you're involved with? I do a lot of work across departmental boundaries. I'm very involved in the administration of the Jewish studies minor, and I routinely work with students or guest lecture in American studies, English, anthropology, Spanish and Portuguese, music and art.
Email Page
Print Page
[an error occurred while processing this directive]