Heads up, Shakespeare. In two days, 40 Whitties will invade the theaters of Ashland, Oregon.
This Saturday, Mar. 14 the Drama Club leaves for their annual trip to the Ashland, Oregon Shakespeare Festival with the aid of ASWC funds.
With the subsidization, students only need to pay $40 to view two plays and spend two nights in a hotel.
This is the first year the Drama Club has petitioned for ASWC to subsidize the trip. Due to many different factors, the club lacked the money to finance the trip without help from the college. A shortage of usual donations and the departure of theater-involved staff members contributed to the club’s predicament.
“There were some miscommunications, so we ended up with a lot less money at the end than we had before,” said senior Drama Club president Rosie Brownlow. “We needed funding from elsewhere. We couldn’t have done it without ASWC.”
“It was a confluence of bad circumstances,” said senior Mark Kennedy, who both petitioned for money and to make the club an official ASWC club. “But it created good opportunities for us to get more connected with the college and the students, to have them recognize what we really do.”
ASWC granted the Drama Club $3,000 in order to subsidize their trip. The money came out of the Travel and Student Development Fund.
“The purpose of this fund is to provide clubs and other ASWC bodies the opportunity to travel and attend conferences,” said senior ASWC Finance Chair David Changa-Moon.
The Drama Club received funds even though requests for funds have risen this year.
“I am not sure whether [the increase is due] to the economy, to our publicity efforts or to a decrease in funding available from other departments,” said Changa-Moon. “Maybe it is an effect of all three.”
“They really funded it because of the services that we provide to the school,” said Kennedy.
The Drama Club is one of the largest and most active clubs on campus, with around 150 involved members.
Although the student-run Drama Club is separate from the theater department, the two collaborate often. Club members volunteer to usher and sell tickets and concessions at plays for the department. In return, the department allows the club to keep the proceeds from the musical at the end of the year.
The money from the musical covered the debt the club had accrued last year, but was not enough to provide the club’s usual surplus.
“[The ASWC funding] was a one-time thing,” said Kennedy. “We wanted to get back to where we had been […] and then what we hoped was that in the future we would have the surplus that we usually get through the musical.”
Individual students as well as the overall club benefit from volunteering. Students get credit for volunteering throughout the year.
“If you get involved in the theater, you gain credits. You get to reap the benefits of those credits,” said Kennedy.
The Ashland trip isn’t simply a social excursion. The different plays provide educational opportunities.
“[The trip] does two things: it allows you to see professional theater […] and it is a team-building trip,” said Kennedy. “Theater is all about a community of artists that have to work together in order to make something.”
Non-actors are just as welcome to go to Ashland and be in the Drama Club as actors. The Drama Club is open to anyone who wants to become active in theater.
Drama Club members fund-raise for themselves as well as volunteer for the theater department. Their surplus is usually used to fund things such as play rights and guest artists as well as the Ashland trip.
ASWC’s funding has enabled the Drama Club to continue their Ashland trip tradition.
“Ashland is our Mecca,” said Brownlow. “It’s kind of like Stratford-upon-Avon, except in America.”
