Making a scene

By Janet Gilbert Journals Direct Response and Renewals Senior Coordinator Theatre majors—like philosophy and English majors—are frequent recipients of the question, “What on earth are you going to do with that when you graduate?” Yet the inexorable truth is that performance skills schooled and perfected onstage flow across the proscenium into mainstream life. Let’s give them a moment in the limelight, because they are on display in so many aspects of business and industry: collaboration, team-building, creative problem-solving, risk-taking, public speaking. What’s more, we can’t ignore the fact that the effects of theatrical productions and performance art on contemporary culture are evident in new public conversations on a range of issues, and that they are responsible for subtle paradigm shifts. The role of the theatre in effecting change is, in fact, nothing short of dramatic. The power of performance is regularly explored in the two publications of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) that are published by the JHU Press: Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics. Arts advocacy receives a particularly eloquent, even fervent, expression in a new installment of In Other Words featuring Mark Lococo, Ph.D., Vice President/ATHE Conference 2012 and Director of Theatre, Loyola University Chicago. Please enjoy his perspective. Bravo, Mark! Encore!