NYU is best known around the country for a variety of qualities — the desirable location, high cost and its prestigious arts school. Admission to the Tisch School of the Arts ensures a student that his or her work will be cultivated, refined and supported by some of the most qualified teachers and advisors in the industry. Unfortunately, Tisch falters when it comes to providing students with the resources to properly showcase the results of their hard work.

There are many instances in which students lack proper performance spaces. The dance department holds over a dozen of its annual shows in a theater on the fifth floor of 111 Second Ave. It is a small black box theater that seats just 20 people, and in a show full of undergraduates excited to put their work on display for their families and friends, there is a slim chance that fellow NYU students can buy tickets before they are all snatched up in presale.

The same goes for many of the shows put on by drama students. The GAP shows, arguably the most important creative outlet because they are directed, produced, managed and performed entirely by undergraduates, are held in tiny rooms in Tisch that seat no more than 25 people. In my own experience, many students were unable to attend their peers’ shows because of a lack of space. Seats fill up quickly, and the shows sell out long before many people have the opportunity to buy tickets at the box office. If the demand is clearly so high, why not provide students with bigger performance spaces when the university has them at its disposal.

The Skirball Center for the Performing Arts seats 850, but is almost exclusively rented to outside artists. Mainstage performances, the biggest Tisch productions of every semester, are showcased not in Skirball, but in much smaller spaces, like the Abe Burrows Theatre, which only seats 99, and the Frederick Loewe Theatre — the second largest of the four major stages in Tisch — a 78-seater black box. While there are some performances spaces with more available seating, the options are limited in contrast to the size of these departments. Considering how my high school theater productions were performed in a 500-seat plus auditorium, it only seems logical that a major university, which prides itself on its arts school, would provide appropriate spaces for its students’ performances.

NYU arts students are afforded the greatest opportunities to work under the support and guidance of talented students and teachers. It is likely the only time they will have all of these resources at their fingertips, so it is a shame that their family members and peers are barred from seeing the product of extensive training because of something as trivial as a small performance space.

A version of this article appeared in the Wednesday, Nov. 13 print edition. Nina Golshan is a staff columnist. Email her at [email protected].