Theater major: To be or not to be?
- posted: 04 Dec. 2007
- scrollopinion@byui.edu
Forget the Hollywood writers’ strike. Forget the picket lines on Broadway. BYU-Idaho may soon have its own entertainment crisis on its hands.
The BYU-I Theatre Department recently applied to create a theater major for the university. Their request was denied. So what’s the crisis? BYU-I students who want to pursue a theater-based career are finding themselves between a rock and hard place.
The rock: As of now, BYU-I has a theater and speech education major. John Bidwell, the BYU-I Theatre Department chair, said this degree only seems to be pushing theater students away. He said that students come to study theater, but they soon become overwhelmed with the education classes they didn’t necessarily want to take. Because of this, fewer than ten students have graduated with a degree in theater and speech education since Ricks College became a four-year university.
“Everyone else leaves the department.They pick up whatever major they can still graduate with.
Quite often it’s a transition into the communication field, where they can have the theater credits count towards those kinds of skills, or to the university studies,” Bidwell said.
And university studies probably isn’t going to cut it for theater students who want to get into graduate schools that are big in the arts. Without the opportunity to pursue higher education in theater, the probability of making enough money to support a family isn’t good.
And the hard place: “Throughout the years many people, particularly church-going people, have considered the stage more of an evil than a good influence,” said President David O. McKay in his talk “Pathways to Happiness.”
So why would BYU-I students want to think about pursuing a career in theater?
President McKay went on to say that theater “can be made a wholesome means of recreation and entertainment, or it can be used to present the sensual and base in human nature.”
By creating a theater major, BYU-I can greatly contribute to the creation of that wholesome entetainment.
Students interested in a career in theater, whether it be acting, stage managing, or more in the technical, behind-the scenes spectrum, would then be allowed the opportunity to polish skills while strengthening their testimonies of the gospel.
Elder Boyd K. Packer said in his talk “The Arts and Spirit of the Lord,” that Church members who have a talent in the arts should “develop it to the highest possibility” while always keeping the Church standards in mind.
“No artist in the Church who desires unselfishly to extend our heritage need sacrifice his career or an avocation, nor need he neglect his gift as only a hobby. He can meet the world and ‘best’ it, and not be the loser,” Elder Packer said. And, last time the administration checked, BYU-I students aren’t losers. 
