Article for Textual Rhetorical Analysis
A New Engineering Curriculum Tries to Make Magic
Dateline: LAS VEGAS
At the Bellagio hotel and casino, the curtain rises on Cirque du Soleil's "O" to reveal that the stage is a swimming pool. Looking down from tiered seats, the audience watches swimmers dive into the pool to perform a synchronized water dance.
Then another performer runs over the top of the water -- or magically appears to. In fact, the floor of the pool has risen 25 feet in seconds, with hardly a ripple, to provide a platform.
A few blocks away, the University of Nevada at Las Vegas wants to give students the special engineering and theater skills required by the many lavish shows -- like "O" -- that crowd the Las Vegas Strip. With encouragement from Carol C. Harter, the university's president, professors from the engineering and theater departments are creating a new major called entertainment engineering.
While theater-production courses have existed for years, they have rarely provided the technical skills and industry savvy that many high-tech shows now require. And demand for that expertise is climbing.
Since 2001, the university has made its planned entertainment-engineering major one of its priorities, at the same time as it is trying to become a nationally recognized research university.
Nevada at Las Vegas has played its strong suits before, creating well-known programs in hotel management and in gaming studies, which focuses on the business and cultural aspects of gambling.
But the professors involved in developing the new engineering and theater curriculum acknowledge that they face some challenges. For example, how do you merge two disciplines -- one creative, one technical -- that attract opposite personalities into a cohesive program?
Only a few other universities have tried similar programs, and opinion is divided on whether this one will work. UNLV's efforts to establish a new major show that even when there is a need for specialized training, it takes time to recognize and respond with a new curriculum. And some faculty members at other institutions are skeptical that the program will prepare students for the real world.
"I'll believe it when I see it," says Bronislaw J. Sammler, chairman of the program in technical design and production at the School of Drama at Yale University. That program is considered by many in the entertainment industry to be one of the best in the country.
Theaters need versatile engineers, says Mr. Sammler, but the undergraduate program planned by UNLV is not the best way to produce them. He says a small program like Nevada's -- which is scheduled to offer nine courses in the fall -- could provide only the most basic training.
An entertainment-engineering major for undergraduates would not sufficiently teach how the hardware works, Mr. Sammler warns, nor would it provide the theater context for the technology. Yale has a hard time squeezing all the essentials into a three-year master's-degree program, he says, so "undergrads can't even begin to touch these topics."
Robert F. Boehm, a professor of mechanical engineering at Las Vegas who is leading the project, disagrees. He says the program's combination of academic courses, hands-on work, and location will make it succeed. "Obviously, we won't be able to do everything," Mr. Boehm says. But the size of a program does not predict the success of its graduates as much as other factors, such as practical experience and the mix of courses, he says.
JOBS GALORE?
Some professors and entertainment-industry executives say that UNLV's attempt might succeed because of the widespread need for such expertise, which extends beyond Las Vegas to Broadway and includes high-tech sports and concert arenas, regional theaters, and convention centers.
And for those who get such training but wind up outside the entertainment world, the knowledge and insight they bring to more-mainstream jobs in engineering and architecture will be valuable, say entertainment-industry experts.
Other professors are rooting for UNLV's new program even as they see possible problems. Mary McDonald Badger, a producing director in the theater department at Columbia College Chicago, a private fine-arts college, thinks that the university's idea is "marvelous." It would be great, she says, not to have to struggle to explain artistic priorities to the architects and engineers who work on theater projects. "Any producer would tell you that's a good idea," she says.
THE OLD-FASHIONED WAY
The traditional way to produce the new high-tech shows is for theatrically trained managers, producers, and designers to learn enough engineering to do the job, says Anthony Ricotta, operations and production manager for "O" (a play on eau, the French word for water). But as shows become bigger and more complicated, the technical skills needed are more advanced, and the expertise won't be picked up just by watching, he says.
Engineers and architects have those skills, Mr. Ricotta says, but often don't understand that what may be most efficient from a mathematical or structural standpoint may not be the best solution artistically: "It's little things that pure architects or pure engineers don't think about."
Sitting in a red-velvet seat in the theater, Mr. Ricotta points to boxy stage lights mounted on catwalks high above. The lights were originally placed too close to the catwalk's safety railing, blocking their range of motion, and had to be raised to work properly.
A bigger challenge is that entertainment engineers often have to design and build something that has never been made before, says Rick Gray, a former theater professor at Pennsylvania State University at University Park who now works in Las Vegas creating high-tech shows. While designing the theater for "O," for instance, Mr. Gray contacted the Otis Elevator Company and other elevator manufacturers to see if they could build the moving underwater platform. It would have to be designed and built in months, not years, and operate every day for 10 years without breaking down.
The elevator companies all said it couldn't be done, so Mr. Gray and Cirque du Soleil built their own. Five years later, the platform still works.
Mr. Gray understands the pitfalls of small programs. In the 1980s he ran a popular three-year undergraduate program in theater technology at the State University of New York at Purchase. A decade later, Penn State lured him away and he planned to create a graduate program. Soon after arriving, Mr. Gray took a year off to work with Cirque du Soleil to design the theater for "O."
But less than a year after returning to Penn State, Mr. Gray left academe to work for Disney. He is now director of entertainment projects and development for Wynn Development and Design, the entertainment-engineering company owned by Steve Wynn, a casino mogul who kicked off the race to create high-tech, crowd-pleasing shows and spectacles in Las Vegas.
Dan Carter, director of the School of Theatre at Penn State, says an entertainment-engineering program isn't one that just anyone can create. "It was the first idea I heard that was a real 21st-century idea," he says of Mr. Gray's plan for the major, which he learned of nine years ago. But he says that after Mr. Gray left, the program never got off the ground.
The idea for a similar program has been bubbling at UNLV for at least 10 years, says Mr. Boehm, the mechanical-engineering professor. Brackley Frayer and Joe D. Aldridge, two associate professors of theater, collaborated with him.
Students will be able to sign up for nine classes that will begin in the fall, Mr. Boehm says. The classes will survey the field, introduce principles of technology and design, and culminate in a final project. The full major is expected to be offered in the fall of 2005. Faculty members from the engineering and theater departments have signed on to teach the courses, he says.
Despite a tight budget, the university has provided funds for equipment and for hiring two new professors, says Jeffrey Koep, dean of the College of Fine Arts. Several potential donors have shown interest in the program, he says, but the university has so far received just one donation. In October 2002, Martin Professional Inc., which sells computer-controlled lighting to casinos, gave the university $50,000 worth of equipment and training to help prepare for the new courses.
But Mr. Gray warns that entertainment companies may not provide the gravy train that the program at Las Vegas is looking for. Penn State initially believed that Disney would give it money for its program, he says, but that support never materialized. One reason may be that entertainment companies like Disney themselves train graduates to their own specifications, so the programs may be of no benefit to them.
DRESS REHEARSAL
The UNLV professors have thus far taught a survey course in the spring of 2001 and in the spring of 2003. Theater and engineering students, both undergraduate and graduate, met twice a week with guest lecturers from casinos and entertainment companies. The students took field trips to the Strip, where they got to check out a magnetically propelled roller coaster and go backstage at "O."
As a final project, the class designed shows based on nursery rhymes, says Jade D. Braithewaite, a graduate student in mechanical engineering who took the survey class last spring. Each show had to incorporate mechanical systems, lighting, set design, and sound. Teams of students were graded on their stories, their sales pitches to visiting professionals, and their engineering excellence.
Ms. Braithewaite's team designed a show for the "Jack and Jill" nursery rhyme that included a 10-foot-tall robotic baby and actors as Jack and Jill marionettes flying around the stage. They received an A.
The course also brought students from different backgrounds together, Ms. Braithewaite says. The engineers and architects initially sat on one side and the theater students on the other. But after several months, she says, the engineers saw how hard the theater students worked, and the theater students learned how creative the engineers could be. By semester's end, the two groups had started to mingle.
That mingling also let students with feet in both worlds feel at home. "I get a lot of people who look at me funny because I'm a really good mechanical engineer who does ballet," says Cameron M. Nelson, a graduate student who loved the course.
Ellen A. Wartella, dean of the college of communication at the University of Texas at Austin, applauds the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for responding to the market. Ms. Wartella says universities must get more faculty members from different disciplines to talk to one another, and smooth the way for students from different departments to take all the courses they need.
"It strikes at the heart of bridging the differences of the arts and humanities on one side and science and engineering on the other," Ms. Wartella says. "In the real world it's happening. Why not at colleges and universities?"
PHOTO (COLOR): In the Shakespeare Theatre's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, creatures and couches in the fairy kingdom can fly. The Washington, D.C., theater company, like others around the country, takes entertainment engineering to new heights.
PHOTO (COLOR): Robert F. Boehm, a mechanical-engineering professor (center, shown at a Las Vegas production company), is leading a new University of Nevada at Las Vegas program in entertainment engineering with Brackley Frayer and Joe D. Aldridge, two theater professors.
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By Michael Arnone
Link to the article on EBSCO Host:
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Additional information about the article:
*THEATER
*CURRICULA (Courses of study)
*HIGHER education
NEVADA
UNITED States
Just finished reading your summary so I noticed this here. Nice title! And subtitles. Can't wait to get back to reading it and read everyone else's too, but gotta finish the rest of the summaries first!
ReplyDelete--from 30,000 feet over somewhere-between-Chicago-and-San Diego