“Are you a BA?” No, I am not. I am not a BA, I am getting a B.A.
You hear the question “Are you a BA or a BFA?” a lot when you first come here and people don’t know you yet. It’s usually the second thing they ask you, after “what’s your name?” and before “where did you come from?”
I was one of those high school seniors who auditioned for the B.F.A. program and didn’t get accepted. But Fredonia was where I wanted, needed to go and so I came to join the department and get my B.A. in Theatre Arts. I figured then that I would suck up my wounded ego and re-audition, and meanwhile get some training that I wouldn’t have gotten back home. Yet, I am a year and half into the program and I still haven’t done so.
Because I love it. I love everything I’ve learned, even the things I’m not good at, like wood measurements, and being in the acting lab, to walking into the commons and find it full of people, full of friends. There’s more to theatre than just acting and musicals—I’m not just an actor and I’m not a BA—I’m a Theatre Arts major, a theatre artist! I want to create theatre, by writing, directing shows, acting in them too. Sometimes, yes, I even wish I could do juries with the BFAs and get feedback on how I’m improving, if this is a good monologue choice for me, what I need to work on now. I have all the freedom that the BFAs wish they had, but it’s got the other side of the coin too:
I’ll hear people say things like “BAs shouldn’t be allowed to do that—”, or have them tell me that “BFAs get casting priority over BAs, that the director will see it’s a BA and will automatically rule them out” I refuse to believe it. Or I try not to believe it, but only four BAs were cast in last year’s mainstage shows. I’m not naïve, I hear from the upperclassmen that it used to be much worse. It’s just that I don’t understand the word “no”. I spent two years trying to get in my first show, fighting to keep doing theatre after that, to major in theatre…I came home this Thanksgiving and some of my family told me that I should major in something else (among other things I should do with my life). A lot, a lot of the friends I made that first semester, all B.A.s because we were in the same classes, they switched their major, they transferred, they left. This wasn’t the right place for them; they decided theatre wasn’t the best major for them or that it shouldn’t be in this department. I think that I made the best decision of my life when I decided to come here and do theatre, I’d really like to think so. But this blog post is nothing new, it’s actually been building up for me in the last year and a half.
I am one of those infamous BAs who joined the BFA classes. I’m taking Voice and Movement this year and I plan on taking Stage Combat, hopefully with rapier and dagger. I’ve loved stage combat since I took a workshop in high school and I joined TCA, which is a dead club now. “I shouldn’t be in those classes, they are for the BFAs, they had to audition for this!” Yes, I admit that. I wasn’t accepted into the BFA program. But if I’m not in this class, what else will I do? Credit-wise, a musical theatre BFA needs to take about eight-nine credits for their major—a BA only has forty-one. Less than half. In fact, we have to double-major or minor! I love my minor, but when I first heard that, I was shocked. What, don’t you have more for me that I need to learn, that I can do? I came to college, to major in theatre, because I wanted to learn. My school didn’t have a theatre department or anything aside from a yearly (slowly dying) musical; we couldn’t afford private dance/vocal lessons. I wanted to be a better actor, I want to learn dance, I’d like to write plays and know how to direct. You’re going to tell me I can’t take Stage Combat? The odds of me needing to know it are just as good as any of yours, so why not? If there was a BA Stage Combat, or Voice and Movement, or whatever equivalent class, sure, I’d take it, but there isn’t.
We’re all artists, and as artists, we’re supposed to move past prejudices, past boundaries, to never stop growing and learning and that’s what I’m doing. I’m growing and creating and you’re going to tell me “No”? Let it be Modern Dance, Theatre Practice, Acting Lab or Voice and Movement: this isn’t just classwork to me, this is what I want to do, same as everyone else.
I’m not saying I want to do a B.F.A.. Even if I do re-audition, I’m staying in my major because I’m happy to be where I am, to be a Theatre Arts major. I have concepts for shows I want to direct, I have a script in front of me I’m working on right now, not to mention countless others that likewise deserve my attention; characters I want to play (Nora Helmer, Audrey Munson, Laura Wingfield…), a backwards roll I want to do for Modern Dance I next week! Just let me keep learning, so then I can do it.
-Shelby
