Theater Group Booted from Hutchinson Hall

Kevin Hall
Daily Reporter

The show must go on.

A group of undergraduate actors who have presented the show Theater Dangerously every other Friday night since October were told Feb. 4 that they could no longer use Hutchinson Hall's Cabaret space or the name Theater Dangerously.

In effect, they were kicked out.

Rachel Johnson, the group's director, said the drama department was taking Theater Dangerously back and that it would be run exclusively by drama undergraduates.

Mark Siano, co-head of the Undergraduate Theater Society along with Iftiaz Haroon, notified Johnson of the decision to disband the group.

He said the core of the issue was that the most recent Theater Dangerously members were primarily non-drama majors.

At the time, Johnson said, only one or two members of the 16-person cast were undergraduate drama majors.

Siano explained that UTS is a loosely organized group of drama majors dedicated to informing and helping theater majors and people interested in drama about opportunities in theater, and that UTS, albeit informally, oversees Theater Dangerously.

“The people who were doing Theater Dangerously were comprised mostly of non-drama majors,” Siano said. “Since the Cabaret is a space for majors and the people doing Theater Dangerously weren't majors, it was simply a matter of who has rights to that space.”

Anne Stewart, general manager for School of Drama productions, said that the Cabaret is filled with classes during the day and is used by undergraduates for practice and rehearsals after 5 p.m.

Siano said he and Haroon told Johnson that “this group, this ensemble they'd created would not be able to use the Cabaret space, and that they would not be able to use that name anymore.”

Johnson said Haroon mentioned several times during their discussion that “it was under his tutelage three to four years earlier, that the face of Theater Dangerously changed to include non-drama majors, but that it was 'getting out of hand.'”

Even though the changing face of Theater Dangerously had included non-drama majors for the past four to five years, Siano didn't have an explanation for his and Haroon's decision to halt the present group's activities.

“It's been a concern in the department for a while, that's about all I can tell you about that,” he said.

Siano said he and Haroon had discussed their concerns with School of Drama director Sarah Nash Gates and undergraduate program director Robyn Hunt, both of whom approved Siano and Haroon's decision.

“Theater Dangerously had become an exclusive ensemble,” Siano said. “Not that it had become totally alienated to majors, but people saw it as a group of actors who did a certain show. It kind of metamorphosed from what it was originally intended to be.”

That intent, Siano said, was to be an outlet for drama majors to express their theatrical creativity, not to “turn into an ensemble of non-drama majors creating a show.”

Siano admitted that formal rules for membership into Theater Dangerously have never been drafted, but that it was always implied that drama majors bore the bulk of the work.

“We had no qualms with what they were doing, other than that it had become an exclusive group,” Siano said. “They'd try to initiate people to join, I shouldn't say that they didn't try, but people didn't because of the way it was perceived as exclusive.”

In her e-mail response to The Daily, Gates wrote that the Cabaret space is reserved exclusively for drama majors.

“The School of Drama moved into Hutchinson Hall in 1986. The Cabaret space was designated for use by the undergraduate majors at that time.”

The origins of Theater Dangerously are shaky at best, with no clear foundation recalled by anyone involved with the project or the drama department. Johnson said it began about eight or nine years ago.

As for keeping the name Theater Dangerously within the realm of the drama department, Siano claimed it was “an implied copyright” belonging to both the drama department and UTS.

Although no such legality for “implied copyright” exists, one explanation for keeping the name within the drama school was offered from Gates.

Included with her e-mail response to The Daily, Gates wrote: “My memory of the origin of the name Theater Dangerously is less precise, however, I believe that it has been used by drama majors for the late-night shows held in the Cabaret for well over 10 years. While there may be no legal grounds for the use of the name, there is the strength of that decade of tradition.”

Titles cannot usually be copyrighted, although trademarking the name Theater Dangerously is a possibility, noted one UW law professor. Either way, for legal ownership the title would need to be registered formally.

For now, Siano said, Theater Dangerously will be revamped and will reappear sometime in the spring.

“It's going to try and resurface itself,” he said. “And it will hopefully be driven by majors.”

He added that UTS hopes to help out the cast-out members, possibly by providing funding or some type of support.

The former members of Theater Dangerously, who number between 14 and 20, have remained together and renamed themselves V.A.T. Though they hope to begin playing shows again, they have yet to find a home.

“But we're looking, and we're still dangerous,” said V.A.T. member Jason McDonald.