At the first town hall meeting of the semester last February, provost Tim Marshall announced that the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, the New School for Drama, and Mannes College will soon combine to form the New School for Performance. Richard Kessler, the current dean of Mannes College, will lead the new Performing Arts division.
Kessler told the Free Press that the Board of Trustees took the decision to combine the three schools into one in March. Administrators from the performing arts divisions feel that the consolidation is necessary in order to both continue and encourage more collaboration between divisions.
“It’s just a rational thing to do,” the director of The New School for Drama, Pippin Parker, told the Free Press. “We are increasingly involved in areas that cross what were previously specific disciplines. Our students have been working with jazz students, Jazz and Mannes have been putting ensembles together; it just formalizes something that is already happening.”
Parker also said that Mannes sold its building uptown and will be moving into Arnhold Hall at the beginning of the ‘15-’16 academic year. Many students are confident that the consolidation will bring students together, if not figuratively, then at least physically.
“Mannes is way too far away from the rest of the school, and I can’t wait to actually interact with my fellow students,” EJ Couloucoundis, a freshman student at Mannes, said.
Many students are looking forward to more interaction and collaboration between the performing arts divisions.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Taylor Lahmon, an MFA first year acting student at the New School for Drama. “There is a lot of work we could be doing with other performing arts and even multimedia that we haven’t really gotten the chance to do yet. I think that building a community and those relationships will be incredibly beneficial.”
Joshua Yocom, prop master at the New School for Drama, told the Free Press that the collaboration would allow for the three divisions to help each other in planning and executing productions and performances.
“From a technical standpoint, it would be nice to coordinate the production aspect,” Yocom said. “We have three production managers here at the School for Drama, whereas at Mannes they’re focused on the singers and the instrumentalists, so they don’t really have any production support.”
While students at the New School for Jazz are also looking forward to the change, some were concerned about space and equipment.
“There are already too little practice rooms at the Jazz school as it is,” Jazz student Owen David told the Free Press. “I support Mannes coming down because we can share the auditorium and the performance space, but to join all three schools would be overcrowding.”
In regards to spacing, Richard Kessler informed the Free Press that Mannes is currently working with architects on renovating Arnhold Hall to ensure adequate space for equipment and practice rooms. In order to accurately improve the space, the architects interviewed faculty and students from Jazz, Mannes and Drama.
“We feel that the space in Arnhold Hall is more than adequate for what we need, particularly when you add in other university facilities such as Tishman Auditorium at the University Center, where the Mannes Orchestra will rehearse and sometimes perform,” Kessler said.
Despite space concerns, consolidation will undoubtedly create a more centralized learning environment for students.
“Bringing the performing arts divisions closer together in the New School for Performance should provide a fertile breeding ground for cross-disciplinary inspiration and collaboration,” Rohana Elias-Reyes, a director at Mannes, told the Free Press. “[It will] give students a deeper understanding and appreciation of where their own art form fits within a greater artistic and social context.”
Reyes also mentioned “from the perspective of a presenter,” that the consolidation will allow for the university to “present a more cohesive face to the public, which should increase awareness of the large number of fantastic events we present each year.”
NiQyira is currently an Arts in Context major at the New School. She joined The Free Press in Fall 2013 and enjoys writing for all four of its sections. NiQyira aims to pursue a career in photo journalism, traveling while using photography and writing to explore other cultures. She would like to write for a magazine like National Geographic one day. NiQyira's hobbies include being the sweatiest girl in the gym, wandering the city with a camera, watching cartoons, writing and eating too much peanut butter.
