Letter to the Editor

The WSN editorial "Don't Let Budget Cuts Threaten Integrity" [Sept. 16] raises a number of valid issues, chief among them the observation that a decision as transformative as the elimination of two long time external acting studios warrants "an extended and deep discussion within the Tisch School of the Arts, and an examination of whether the school would still be able to maintain the level of education students expect." I could not agree more. Although that discussion was instigated by a consideration of the long-term financial sustainability of all six external studios, the final decision to build an internal alternative to both CAP21 and Strasberg came from our confidence in the internal studios that already exist. Three of the Tisch School's primary studios are internal: Experimental Theater Wing, Tech Track and the Meisner Extension. One of our advanced studios, Classical, is also internal. All four studios are stellar; all four have a track record of producing distinguished alumni; all four boast outstanding faculty. Three of these studios were established during my tenure as dean.

In addition to our history with internal studios, another factor we took into consideration was that the Tisch School and other parts of NYU offer considerable resources to an internally constructed studio. One example is the collaboration that will be possible when we move the Graduate Musical Theater Writing Program to the Broadway block. GMTW has had a long history of incubating Tony award-winning musical theater artists. They already have an ongoing collaboration with the Steinhardt music department and have staged highly successful musical theater productions over the past few summers that have brought together Tisch Drama and GMTW lyricists, book writers and composers. The Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music is another collaborator with whom we have been developing course content that would give our students access to music theory and keyboard classes taught by REMU professors. Our alliance with REMU also allows us to incorporate pop/rock and world music.

With the establishment of the New Studio on Broadway comes brand new facilities that in addition to providing studio space for teaching and rehearsal, include presentation spaces for full length work as well as cabaret, and which will make possible on-site private voice studios — which we were unable to provide in the past for music theater students. The space will be located on the second and third floors of 719/715 Broadway, in close proximity to ETW and the School's Tech Track, and in the midst of the rich array of graduate and undergraduate programs at Tisch.

Finally, we found that we had in Liz Bradley an extraordinarily gifted leader whose deep understanding not only of musical theater but of the requirements for stellar musical theater training was unmatched in the country. She and I were able to persuade another gifted talent, director Kent Gash, to assume the leadership of the program. Moreover, when we reached out to the musical theater community in New York, we found tremendous enthusiasm for what we are setting out to accomplish. The members of the New Studio's music theater advisory board include Tony award winners George C. Wolfe, Bart Sher, Sutton Foster, Michael Mayer, Margo Lion and Quira Hudes as well as many other luminaries in the field. They have all been actively involved in the New Studio's development.

The op-ed piece quite rightly speaks to the risk involved. There is risk. As dean of the Tisch School for the past 18 years and as someone who cares deeply about the quality of education at the school, I have made every decision about the school's future with the goal of making a great school even greater, and with the recognition that the creative process requires risk. My experience tells me that breaking with the past and establishing the New Studio is not only worth the risk, but is necessary as we stake our claim to leadership in the arts.

Mary Schmidt Campbell is Dean of Tisch School of the Arts.