Drama students at The New School take most of their classes on the ninth floor of Arnhold Hall on West 13th Street, and according to some students, both the program and the space need a makeover.
Arnhold Hall is home to the College of Performing Arts at TNS and hosts the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama. While Mannes and the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music have classes across all floors of Arnhold Hall, the Drama program largely operates on the ninth floor.
“Unfortunately, our learning conditions are sub-par compared to other buildings or other floors,” said Anna Volk, a drama major, at The New School College of Performing Arts.
Students have noted many issues of structural integrity on the ninth floor, including a window held together by tape and debris constantly falling from the ceilings.
“The ceilings, they’re falling apart, and it almost looks moldy. It just looks like dust, dirt, and soot. It’s falling down onto the floor everywhere and just getting in everyone’s faces,” Volk said.
In a statement to The Free Press, TNS said that the university has no plans to renovate Arnhold Hall, but “issues such as the broken window on the 9th floor of Arnhold Hall will be fixed as part of the general repairs that happen throughout campus.”
But, the window has been broken for nearly three months — since December — and remains taped together, according to Yarrow Hachey, a third-year CoPA student.
Another issue drama students complained of is the lack of rehearsal space for student use. “I think that in terms of creative expression and students’ ability to become their own artists and produce their own work, the school is incredibly unhelpful. Students don’t have their own space to produce their creative pieces,” Hachey said.
A TNS equipment center takes up the majority of the ninth floor, leaving limited studio space for students. “The only studio available for performance has been completely restricted to ‘non-curricular activities’ which means unless you are one of the few performances allotted by the school, you cannot perform,” Hachey said.
Hachey believes much of the ninth-floor’s architecture restricts students’ creative liberty. “The venting throughout the floor makes it so you can hear every class in any room,” she said.
Moving forward, Hachey hopes to see more student input in space reservation and allocation, including “more partnering with the school’s student production companies” to improve conditions.
The original version of this story’s headline incorrectly referred to “Arnhold Hall” as “Arnold Hall.” The story has been updated to reflect this correction.
This was super interesting!