Student Blog: Rams in the Performing Arts

When I was looking at colleges during my senior year of high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life or what I would major in or minor in, as is the case with many students heading to college. With this in mind, part of what made me choose my school was the broad range of artistic options available to me on campus, since I always knew I would want to be involved in the arts in some way. I attend Fordham University’s Rose Hill Campus in the Bronx, New York, and the theatre scene at my school is particularly diverse and interesting, though quite confusing to a casual onlooker because of the multitude of different programs and opportunities!

The first thing to understand about Fordham’s theatre scene is that the school is divided into four colleges and two campuses. The Rose Hill campus is in the Bronx, right by the Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Gardens, as well as Arthur Avenue (where students can enjoy amazing Italian food!). The other campus is in Manhattan, at Lincoln Center, a couple of steps from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and only a few blocks away from Times Square, the Theatre District, and Central Park. When choosing a school, I really wanted a traditional campus with accessibility to a city, which is why I chose the Bronx campus. On that note, many programs, such as my theatre minor, require you to take your classes at another campus, so I split my week: 2 days at Rose Hill and 2 days at Lincoln Center. Fordham even provides vans between the campuses! Each campus has both a Fordham College program and a Gabelli School of Business program. 

On each campus, the theatre world functions totally differently. On the Rose Hill campus, there are four theatre clubs that exist and allow non-theatre majors to continue performing and participating in productions. These include the Mimes and Mummers, F.E.T., T.O.P., and Fordham Backstage. All of these groups have different focuses and attributes that invite different students to share their skills in different ways. First off, the Mimes and Mummers is the oldest club on Fordham’s campus, and it produces four mainstage productions yearly. This year, they presented She Loves Me, Peter and the Starcatcher, and Alice By Heart, and are currently putting together Eurydice. The Mimes and Mummers have students assisting with all elements of production, but their directors and music directors are professionals hired for each production.

Fordham Experimental Theatre, better known to students as F.E.T., is another organization that helps Rose Hill Students engage their creative side. This group’s shows are fully student-directed and run, and they can also be student-written. F.E.T. leans into more abstract theatre and tends to produce more unique shows that are less likely to be seen elsewhere. Every weekend, F.E.T. presents a new production! Such productions include “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Fregley's in a Coma,” and a Glee parody called “Murder at McKinley High.” The organization is also home to four umbrella groups that also utilize the blackbox for their artistic improv, poetry, and comedy shows. These include Black Sheep Poetry, Street Legal Standup, Stranded in Pittsburgh (an improv group), and Free Pizza Sketch. 

The next organization is Fordham’s Theatrical Outreach Program, or T.O.P., a group that, like the Mimes and Mummers, produces 4 shows per year. This always includes a classical work, and this group aims to present theatre to the community through outreach initiatives in the Bronx and surrounding areas with each production. In conjunction with these community partners, this group goes out into the world to bring art to everyone. Their recent productions include Pride and Prejudice by Jon Jory, adapted from Jane Austen; Present Laughter by Noël Coward; Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare; and Our Town by Thornton Wilder.

Fordham Backstage is a group that assists with all productions across the other clubs and groups. They help run productions smoothly, assisting with behind-the-scenes aspects such as Sound, Lighting, potential taping of performances, and Front of House if necessary! They also provide deckhands and can help manage. They are the core of what helps productions at Fordham’s Rose Hill campus come to life.

On the Lincoln Center campus, on the other hand, there are the Theater major and minor programs, which branch into both Mainstage and Studio Productions. There are four mainstage productions a year, similar to the clubs at Rose Hill, and these are the largest productions that Fordham Theatre majors focus on. They are all under an umbrella theme each year, and students assist all elements of these productions, from performance to ticket sales and ushering. This year’s theme is Myth to Momentum: Stories of Reckoning and Renewal, and the productions are all plays, as Fordham doesn’t have a musical theatre major. This year, Fordham’s mainstage productions were By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage and The Tempest by William Shakespeare during the fall semester, and are now performing their play, A Lunar Rhapsody by José Rivera, before moving to Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice later this semester. Fordham Studio Productions are smaller blackbox shows often written by students, and give students another chance to perform within the Fordham theatre program. 

The final Fordham performance group is Splinter, a club at the Lincoln Center campus that produces musicals! This group allows students interested in participating in full-length musicals and showcasing their skills. They welcome students from all educational paths, and recent productions include Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods and the renowned musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812. They are currently working on their production of The Prom!