A half-century of staying creative to weather the storm
In late December the Bishop’s University Drama Department quietly passed a significant milestone. Whether due to timing and global circumstance, or the somewhat bureaucratic nature of the anniversary, there was little fanfare as one of the school’s most public-facing programs reached its 50th birthday.
Under the heading “unique in the province,” page three of the Dec. 21, 1970 edition of The Sherbrooke Record features a story about how Bishop’s University’s faculty of arts had recently approved the creation of a new threeyear program focusing on drama. The program, whose creation is credited to Festival Lennoxville founder David Rittenhouse, wouldn’t actually be implemented until the 1971-72 academic year, but it was hailed in the paper as a possible balm to a problem of reduced enrollment following the opening of Quebec’s CEGEP system.
“The new three-year drama program recently approved by the faculty of arts at Bishop s University may well be the first in a series of changes intended both to attract more students to Bishop s and to define the aims or mission of the university…” the paper reads.
Professor emeritus Jonathan Rittenhouse said that over the course of the time he taught in the department his late brother founded, that notion of drawing on creativity to weather the storm remained a consistent theme.
“I remember a few meetings in which the notion was that my brother’s position would disappear entirely,” Rittenhouse said, noting that although there were some definite high points for the arts at Bishop’s over the years, notably in the capital campaign that led to the construction of the Turner Studio Theatre, the department was always a small one that had to fight to assert its value.
Even if behind the scenes it sometimes, “kind-of looked like everything might collapse,” the former professor said the program still consistently served as a space where the resources of a professional theatre and an openness on the part of faculty to engage with and support ideas from the students allowed people to explore ideas and engage with the dramatic arts in ways that might not have been
“It became this place where anyone who showed interest and enthusiasm was free to see what they could to,” Rittenhouse said, citing examples like alumna Bona Duncan, who went on to a successful career stage managing at the Stratford Theatre Festival.
possible elsewhere.
“It became this place where anyone who showed interest and enthusiasm was free to see what they could to,” Rittenhouse said, citing examples like alumna Bona Duncan, who went on to a successful career stage managing at the Stratford Theatre Festival. “I think that what that provided for the students was a kind of ownership; they could use all the equipment in the playground.”
Being a space for intimate, hands-on experiences became so much a part of the drama department at Bishop’s over the years that George Rideout, who joined the faculty with his wife Jojo in 1986, said that one of the biggest challenges he saw academically over his time at the school was in the early 2000s when increased enrollment from the end of Grade 13 in Ontario saw the number of students jump from around 25 to closer to 80.
“It was just huge,” he said, explaining that the large number of students made it difficult to serve each individual well in the context of a program focused on performance. “We would have 70 people audition for shows, and end up casting a little over 30.”
Current department chair Rebecca Harries, herself a graduate of the BU drama program, said that the department’s history of facing challenges with creativity and flexibility has served well and carried them though what has proven to be a year of constant readjustment through 2020.
“We’re once again trying to create something new at a time that is challenging,” she said, noting that the months of the COVID-19 pandemic have featured adjustments and readjustments to planned performances as well as the way the students are able to meet up and interact with one another.
“I think what we really miss is having that live audience in the room,” she said, noting that although health restrictions have caused the professors to explore the possibilities of digital theatre it, “is not a replacement for a live audience.”
“The students have been frustrated, but they have also been pretty great about taking it in stride,” Rideout added. “They’re doing the best possible under the circumstances.”
Although one might think that this has been a time for hunkering down and sticking to the familiar, Harries said that on the contrary the department has been in the process of launching a new concentration in musical theatre.
“We have a bit of a tradition of home grown musical theatre,” she said, offering the concentration as a kind of light at the end of the tunnel for those caught up in the challenges of the moment.
Listed on the university’s website as starting in the Fall of 2020, the concentration in musical theatre will explore the fundamentals of acting in song and dance over different historical periods while also including a production component.
“We had to put it off by a year,” Rideout said, explaining that the ball is rolling again now for an imminent launch. “The idea is that there would be a musical every other year.”