The UTC Wind Ensemble rehearses in the Fine Arts Center. Photo by Angela Foster.
Thanks to programmatic innovations in both divisions, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Department of Performing Arts has been replaced with a pair of autonomous units.
When students return to campus for the spring 2024 semester, they will come back to the Department of Theatre and the Department of Music. Both are housed within the College of Arts and Sciences, the largest of UTC’s four colleges—with 14 academic departments and more than 3,900 students enrolled during the fall 2023 semester.
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Pam Riggs-Gelasco said the portfolio of programs in the two departments meets the needs of the students in both disciplines as part of the Mocs experience. She also said the dissolution better aligns UTC with peer and aspirational institutions.
“The performing arts have unique complexities relative to other traditional academic departments,” said Riggs-Gelasco, who came to UTC in 2020. “The need to recruit, to audition students, to raise funds, to pass accreditation, to provide equipment, costumes, and uniforms to students, and to produce a continuous stream of public-facing programming complicate the operation of these units.”
She said that within music, multiple subdisciplines—choral, instrumental, piano, composition, education and therapy—operate somewhat independently “and each with their own needs for budgetary autonomy and each with unique pedagogical best practices.”
In contrast, she said, the entire theatre faculty works together within its own specialty to contribute to each performance, such as lighting, costuming, sound, directing and set design.
“Thus, the units have very different operational styles, philosophies, and needs,” Riggs-Gelasco said.
Kenyon Wilson, head of the Department of Music and professor of applied tuba, said performing arts has seen incredible growth.
“I don’t know if it’s a post-pandemic shift to students wanting more of the University experience, which is not just going to classes—it’s going to classes and being in an ensemble or participating in intramurals. An on-campus experience is what students want; we are an in-person genre,” Wilson said.
“Music went from six ensembles three years ago to 11 today. The marching band has gone from 38 just a couple of years ago to 150. The number of students who are involved in music is over 400, so it’s not just music majors that we are serving.”
Highlights of music’s growth include the invitation to the Marching Mocs to perform in the upcoming London New Year’s Day Parade; the creation of the music therapy major—a program that has a 100% board certification pass rate and job placement; and the revision of the revised its graduate program to center around intensive conducting workshops held in the summer to appeal to working teachers who need professional development and graduate credentials.
Music therapy accounts for more than 25% of the department’s majors. The program debuted in 2019 and currently serves 12 clinical collaborations within the Chattanooga community.
The UTC Theatre Co.’s most recent production, “Alabaster,” featured senior Maegan Whitlock, left, and junior Calista Geralds.
Theatre has continued to add concentrations, including tracks for acting, design and technology, directing, theatre education, and theatre entrepreneurship.
Professor Steve Ray, head of the Department of Theatre and artistic director of the UTC Theatre Co., said creating separate departments shows the University’s commitment to the arts.
“This does say UTC is committed to the arts being an important part of the four-year experience. It promotes the arts on campus and we get to celebrate,” Ray said. “We have a wonderful four-year experience. We look like a small private liberal arts college at an amazingly economical price and people like to come here to have that traditional nostalgic experience.
“The arts are part of that. It’s not just pep rallies and football games; putting the arts back into the students’ lives creates a fantastic experience.”
The UTC Theatre Co. has four performances per academic year—two during the fall semester and two in the spring. The next production is “9 to 5 the Musical,” with six performances from Feb. 27-March 2 in the Fine Arts Center’s Dorothy Hackett Ward Theatre.
In recent years, updates in the infrastructure of the UTC Fine Arts Center—which opened in 1980—have taken place, including completely renovating the 456-seat Roland Hayes Concert Hall and the 256-seat Dorothy Hackett Ward Theatre.
Theatre space was expanded for making costumes, designing stage sets and dressing rooms. Rehearsal rooms for all music ensembles were refurbished with new acoustic sound materials to make them suitable as instrumental spaces. Speakers were replaced and new doors were installed to control sound getting through.
Behind the scenes, new mechanical equipment has increased the efficiency and speed when raising and lowering curtains and moving stage sets.
“In addition to the updated rigging systems, new curtains and new stage flooring, we have completely updated our sound and lighting systems to make us a truly state-of-the-art facility,” Ray said.
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