9 ms·

Can a puppetry major survive a flagship’s financial crisis? Should it?

25 points by prismatic 3y ago

throwawaysleep 3y ago
Nobody wants to attend. It serves no critical purpose. Axe it.
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > It serves no critical purpose. Axe it. Well, there goes pretty much everything interesting in college.
  - hospitalJail 3y ago
    Engineering and sciences are super interesting. Heck, puppets sound sooo boring. Literature sounds incredibly boring. Theatre? So boring professors had to give extra credit so people would attend. Meanwhile our robotics senior project had a huge portion of the school watching because we were shooting projectiles. (but really my favorites were chemistry lab, and quantum chemistry(PChem2), maybe my programming classes too)
    - ramesh31 3y ago
      t. HN poster
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      I seem to recall one pretty famous CEO talk about how their company was successful because "it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing". But yeah, let's throw all that liberal arts shit overboard - who needs it.
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        There are plenty of liberal arts that are more than entertainment.
      - drewcoo 3y ago
        > because "it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing". Liberal arts includes the humanities. There's something distinctly Oedipal about that company . . .
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Different people find different things interesting. Literature and theater can certainly be interesting even if some tech people find anything outside of STEM boring. Never personally had anything to do with puppetry but found plenty of stuff outside of engineering/sciences interesting (and did basically no programming in college).
    - DiscourseFan 3y ago
      Robotics also sounds cool, but while I'm sure the showy performances for the students were interesting, the nitty-gritty of programming and fine detail probably wouldn't be. Whereas in literature, it is the deep analysis of a text that brings greater richness and makes it more fully satisfying to read, the pleasure is not necessarily from the spectacle but its careful consideration. Borges is an author who many of my friends in the sciences enjoy. He explores ideas that you may find interesting; try The Library of Babel [0], its very short and easy to read (like most of his works). Another novel which you may find perversely enjoyable is Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel, which contains a series of descriptions of strange and fantastical machines in fine detail, each associated with a different and increasingly deranged tale. You might also be interested in the intersection of literature and computer science with Sanskrit, the first formalized language claimed to have been made "context-free" 2500 years ago (though I wouldn't say so), which has a rich literary tradition deeply intertwined with its structure and logic. There are many other examples of literatures you may find interesting, but I'll leave that pursuit up to you! [0]https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Borges-The-Library-of-Babel.pdf https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content...
      - hospitalJail 3y ago
        Idk, my kid thought it was super cool seeing I could blink LEDs with programming. No thanks on the Fiction. If I am going to waste time, I'm going to play minecraft with my kid.
    - leviathant 3y ago
      I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm. This... > Heck, puppets sound sooo boring. ...followed by... >Meanwhile our robotics senior project had a huge portion of the school watching because we were shooting projectiles. ...sure says a lot. You can draw a direct line from the art of puppetry to the evolution of robotics. My degree is in computer science, I wrote code for ages, now I'm a presales engineer regularly meeting with C-suite types and their engineering departments. Nearly every year for the last decade, I've also on staff at the annual National Puppetry conference (as a musician) where I get to work with some of the quick-witted, talented problem solvers I've met. Working in puppets means working in costume design, set design, creative writing, storytelling, engineering, lighting design, sound design, project management, the whole gamut. I credit the experience I get working with puppeteers for helping advance my career as a 'computer nerd' What I find bizarre is that we're in such a consumer-driven culture, but taking humanities out of focus in education has changed how people perceive creativity. The most boring people in the world are talking about using AI to create derivative art, while ignoring centuries of history around training for the arts. >Literature sounds incredibly boring. Theatre? So boring professors had to give extra credit so people would attend. To each their own, but oof.
    - jjulius 3y ago
      >... my favorites... Ah, therein lies the rub. Your post reads like you're applying your own tastes/interests to, well, everyone. You are not everyone else.
      - DiscourseFan 3y ago
        People's tastes do not develop in isolation
        jjulius 3y ago
        And yet what's trash to one person is still treasure to another.
JKCalhoun 3y ago
Archive: https://archive.li/ZOk1t https://archive.li/ZOk1t
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jkingsbery 3y ago
Not everything that we learn has to be learned in college. Not sure if 100% accurate, but a quick google search shows WVU tuition is about $9k for in-state, $25k out of state... does it really make sense for someone to spend $100k (or $36k, for West Virginia residents) to learn puppetry? If that's your thing, great, why not go apprentice yourself somewhere to learn that skill instead? Or offer a class or two in puppetry, that someone as a theater major can take. Not everything that isn't STEM is "liberal arts" - as this article says, puppetry by itself is pretty niche, and the point of liberal arts is to be more broad.
- nvahalik 3y ago
  > why not go apprentice yourself somewhere There has been a big push in the last 20 years or so to make sure that everyone makes a "living wage". This, in turn, makes it nearly impossible for people who want to learn a trade while making something (anything) from actually doing so. Their work and time is basically worthless. They can't be paid accordingly, so they just don't... Unless you want to volunteer, but most organizations don't value volunteer time because it isn't "real work".
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Many people object to unpaid or minimally paid internships but that's pretty much the only option for many types of apprenticeships where the apprentice is learning but isn't really doing anything very useful.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Either that type of work will die out, or the demand for it will cause the price for the work to increase allowing pay for the apprentices.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Or things just continue as they have for decades.
  - 3y ago
stolenmerch 3y ago
I received a BA and MFA in small, idiosyncratic arts programs even more niche and unmarketable than puppetry. After graduation and realizing I'd never be employed, I set off taking free online CS courses and programming tutorials. In hindsight, I really wish I would have done it exactly opposite. Study computer science in college and take a couple of arts classes as electives or pursue it as a part-time hobby. It all worked out, but it reminds me how many of these arts and humanities programs are legacies of a bygone economic era. They are also a product of credentialism, in which it becomes difficult or impossible to demonstrate your knowledge in Literature, for example, without having the degree.
- crow_t_robot 3y ago
  Everyone knows that Cormac McCarthy wouldn't have gotten anywhere in the literature world without all his advanced degrees in literature.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - stolenmerch 3y ago
    English Lit and Creative Writing are usually not the same programs or degrees. The point being, if you don't have a marketable product (like a novel) and instead only have papers you wrote in school, the degree is your marketable product.
- _fat_santa 3y ago
  the argument for liberal arts education I always heard goes like this: "college is not to learn a specific skill, but more to better yourself for the real world" and I can't help but think how devoid that is from reality today. Maybe back in the 60's and 70's you could go to college to "broaden your horizons" but today only the wealthiest can afford to do that, everyone else needs a "reason" (that is what sort of job are you getting on the other end). I think those classes are from a bygone era of when college was affordable and you could take a course "just to learn". Higher ed today is very different, I almost look at colleges are higher level trade schools if you're in CS, Engineering, etc.
leviathant 3y ago
Hacker News and puppetry, a relevant-to-me crossover I never thought I'd see, and here I am at the start of the business day with no time to really dig in, because of the day job. "Two years ago, the number of students hovered near zero" - I get the larger picture, but any guesses as to what might have hurt attendance to a performing arts major in 2021? Puppetry is everywhere once you pay attention, and the skills you learn in puppetry can go well beyond, you know, the entertainment industry. But arts and humanities in the American education system have been gutted over the last few decades, starting in primary education, and continuing up into higher education. I stumbled across the puppetry community over a decade ago, and it's been one of the most enriching parts of my life ever since. It's a real shame how much of a struggle it is to get support for the fine arts in this country. Edit: This is a really great read. Thanks for sharing!
- awesomeMilou 3y ago
  > Puppetry is everywhere once you pay attention, and the skills you learn in puppetry can go well beyond, you know, the entertainment industry. I am genuinely curious to hear where in the day to day of the tech industry you'd draw parallels to puppetry.
  - akiselev 3y ago
    The most widely used browser automation frameworks for scraping, end to end testing, and so on is literally called Puppeteer [1] :-) [1] https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer
  - leviathant 3y ago
    >I am genuinely curious to hear where in the day to day of the tech industry you'd draw parallels to puppetry. The line you're replying to is more general purpose (puppetry as a vehicle for storytelling in television, movies, theater, parties, festivals, concerts, one-on-one conversation, etc.) however to address your curiosity, a few thoughts since I'm between meetings: Puppetry involves problem solving and story telling. Maybe we start off with the idea of bringing the novel War Horse to stage - you can't teach a horse to act, so you've got to do puppetry. You choose a framework: is it shadow puppetry? Rod puppets? Marionettes? Bunraku? Hand puppets don't scale, you're not going to do that. The technology you choose will shape the end result, and it's tempting to go with something flashy and huge, but a seasoned puppeteer can make you cry just by using a sock on their hand. (see also: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/news/war-horse https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/news/war-horse) Some styles of puppetry are going to need more skill in manipulation or crafting than others, which is going to affect what hiring looks like, and what training looks like. Some of the easier styles of puppetry are more popular, and certainly work on smaller projects like a puppet slam - but won't be as effective at getting results on a large scale production. Putting on a puppet show involves project management and collaboration. Depending on the size of the production, it could be a one-person show, although even those often have one or two people helping to run, for example, light and sound cues. A larger scale production could have a director, a writer, multiple crafters, multiple manipulators, a project manager... These are almost direct analogies to PMs, engineers, developers, department directors. Projects can be small scale - a more personal puppet slam piece performed in front of an audience of 50, and a talking monstrosity of a cake as part of a Saturday Night Live set piece might involve similar amounts of work, but one's going to pay better than the other. On the far end of the spectrum, you have projects like The Dark Crystal series on Netflix - which is analogous to an enterprise project. Multiple systems operating together, up against tight deadlines while simultaneously taking years to complete, compromises are made that few who see the end result will ever see or recognize... And in both tech and puppetry, a lot of the people who put in the hard work never get recognized :D
driggs 3y ago
WV is among the bottom 5 poorest states in the US, with West Virginia University critical for providing affordable in-state college education. WVU is urgently dealing with a $45-million budget shortfall. I know two graduates of the Puppetry program, and neither of them work professionally in any puppetry-related career. They may as well have graduated with any liberal arts degree. The Puppetry major gave them a way to prove their "quirkiness" in college. Here's the course requirements for the BFA in Puppetry: http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcreativearts/divisionoftheatreanddance/theatre/bfa_theatre__puppetry__creative_dramatics/#majortext http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcreativearts/d... It looks like there are two puppetry-specific courses, with the vast majority of courses coming from the more general Theatre program with Liberal Arts core. I don't know what the Puppetry BFA costs the university, but it's always been a joke to WVU students, and doesn't seem to serve West Virginia residents in a meaningful way. (Source: WVU grad and local, who received an affordable in-state CS/Engineering degree, and now works in and supports WV's tiny but growing tech industry)
- leviathant 3y ago
  I think the local culture or lack thereof is an important factor to point out. It's got to be incredibly challenging to encourage creative young liberal artists to move to West Virginia for any period of time. "The real estate is cheap" only gets you so far - speaking generally, puppetry jobs are in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta to some extent, and... abroad.
- ChainOfFools 3y ago
  Like most of these humanities programs that are ridiculed as being superfluous, the name of the program only describes about 20 or 30% of the coursework involved. The rest of it is going to be a fairly standard trip through most of the usual lower division classes required for any four-year, plus a number of courses that are not related to the core subject but from which the core subject, say in this case puppetry, becomes a kind of base camp from which your exploration of other more practical and/or conventional subjects (i.e. psychology or marketing or foreign relarions) is conducted. These people aren't literally learning how to build puppets and put on shows everyday for 4 years.
nuc1e0n 3y ago
Yes it blooming well should. Culture is important. Not to mention puppeteers will be in demand in an age of VR chat and avatars.
pridkett 3y ago
I live near another university with a puppetry degree (University of Connecticut), and while I’m well past undergraduate, having gotten my doctorate from a school that has a bagpiping major, the presence of a puppetry degree has made my and my family’s lives richer. There’s definitely a place for fine arts such as puppetry. It has made me wonder about difficult topics (not all puppetry is for kids), laughed during musicals, explained difficult concepts to kids, and most importantly brought joy into the world. However, we just haven’t figured out how to financially support it as a society. I’m glad that Connecticut continues to support such a program.
webnrrd2k 3y ago
Has no one ever seen The Muppet Show? Seassame Street? Farscape? Labyrinth? The Peawee Herman Show? It's important to preserve these academic programs, with Theater Arts, and the Humanities in general. The real problem is with the outrageous cost of higher education. The time has passed when people could get an eccentric degree, and get a good job right out of school based on simply having a degree. With that said, the reality is that the times have changed. It's not worth it in the long term (at least to me) to graduate with a bunch of debt and no concrete education towards getting a job.

25 points by prismatic 3y ago

throwawaysleep 3y ago

Nobody wants to attend. It serves no critical purpose. Axe it.

JKCalhoun 3y ago
> It serves no critical purpose. Axe it. Well, there goes pretty much everything interesting in college.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Engineering and sciences are super interesting. Heck, puppets sound sooo boring. Literature sounds incredibly boring. Theatre? So boring professors had to give extra credit so people would attend. Meanwhile our robotics senior project had a huge portion of the school watching because we were shooting projectiles. (but really my favorites were chemistry lab, and quantum chemistry(PChem2), maybe my programming classes too)
  - ramesh31 3y ago
    t. HN poster
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    I seem to recall one pretty famous CEO talk about how their company was successful because "it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing". But yeah, let's throw all that liberal arts shit overboard - who needs it.
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      There are plenty of liberal arts that are more than entertainment.
    - drewcoo 3y ago
      > because "it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing". Liberal arts includes the humanities. There's something distinctly Oedipal about that company . . .
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Different people find different things interesting. Literature and theater can certainly be interesting even if some tech people find anything outside of STEM boring. Never personally had anything to do with puppetry but found plenty of stuff outside of engineering/sciences interesting (and did basically no programming in college).
  - DiscourseFan 3y ago
    Robotics also sounds cool, but while I'm sure the showy performances for the students were interesting, the nitty-gritty of programming and fine detail probably wouldn't be. Whereas in literature, it is the deep analysis of a text that brings greater richness and makes it more fully satisfying to read, the pleasure is not necessarily from the spectacle but its careful consideration. Borges is an author who many of my friends in the sciences enjoy. He explores ideas that you may find interesting; try The Library of Babel [0], its very short and easy to read (like most of his works). Another novel which you may find perversely enjoyable is Locus Solus by Raymond Roussel, which contains a series of descriptions of strange and fantastical machines in fine detail, each associated with a different and increasingly deranged tale. You might also be interested in the intersection of literature and computer science with Sanskrit, the first formalized language claimed to have been made "context-free" 2500 years ago (though I wouldn't say so), which has a rich literary tradition deeply intertwined with its structure and logic. There are many other examples of literatures you may find interesting, but I'll leave that pursuit up to you! [0]https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content/uploads/sites/226/2015/12/Borges-The-Library-of-Babel.pdf https://sites.evergreen.edu/politicalshakespeares/wp-content...
    - hospitalJail 3y ago
      Idk, my kid thought it was super cool seeing I could blink LEDs with programming. No thanks on the Fiction. If I am going to waste time, I'm going to play minecraft with my kid.
  - leviathant 3y ago
    I honestly can't tell if this is sarcasm. This... > Heck, puppets sound sooo boring. ...followed by... >Meanwhile our robotics senior project had a huge portion of the school watching because we were shooting projectiles. ...sure says a lot. You can draw a direct line from the art of puppetry to the evolution of robotics. My degree is in computer science, I wrote code for ages, now I'm a presales engineer regularly meeting with C-suite types and their engineering departments. Nearly every year for the last decade, I've also on staff at the annual National Puppetry conference (as a musician) where I get to work with some of the quick-witted, talented problem solvers I've met. Working in puppets means working in costume design, set design, creative writing, storytelling, engineering, lighting design, sound design, project management, the whole gamut. I credit the experience I get working with puppeteers for helping advance my career as a 'computer nerd' What I find bizarre is that we're in such a consumer-driven culture, but taking humanities out of focus in education has changed how people perceive creativity. The most boring people in the world are talking about using AI to create derivative art, while ignoring centuries of history around training for the arts. >Literature sounds incredibly boring. Theatre? So boring professors had to give extra credit so people would attend. To each their own, but oof.
  - jjulius 3y ago
    >... my favorites... Ah, therein lies the rub. Your post reads like you're applying your own tastes/interests to, well, everyone. You are not everyone else.
    - DiscourseFan 3y ago
      People's tastes do not develop in isolation
      - jjulius 3y ago
        And yet what's trash to one person is still treasure to another.

JKCalhoun 3y ago

Archive: https://archive.li/ZOk1t https://archive.li/ZOk1t

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jkingsbery 3y ago

Not everything that we learn has to be learned in college. Not sure if 100% accurate, but a quick google search shows WVU tuition is about $9k for in-state, $25k out of state... does it really make sense for someone to spend $100k (or $36k, for West Virginia residents) to learn puppetry? If that's your thing, great, why not go apprentice yourself somewhere to learn that skill instead? Or offer a class or two in puppetry, that someone as a theater major can take. Not everything that isn't STEM is "liberal arts" - as this article says, puppetry by itself is pretty niche, and the point of liberal arts is to be more broad.

nvahalik 3y ago
> why not go apprentice yourself somewhere There has been a big push in the last 20 years or so to make sure that everyone makes a "living wage". This, in turn, makes it nearly impossible for people who want to learn a trade while making something (anything) from actually doing so. Their work and time is basically worthless. They can't be paid accordingly, so they just don't... Unless you want to volunteer, but most organizations don't value volunteer time because it isn't "real work".
- ghaff 3y ago
  Many people object to unpaid or minimally paid internships but that's pretty much the only option for many types of apprenticeships where the apprentice is learning but isn't really doing anything very useful.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Either that type of work will die out, or the demand for it will cause the price for the work to increase allowing pay for the apprentices.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      Or things just continue as they have for decades.
- 3y ago

stolenmerch 3y ago

I received a BA and MFA in small, idiosyncratic arts programs even more niche and unmarketable than puppetry. After graduation and realizing I'd never be employed, I set off taking free online CS courses and programming tutorials. In hindsight, I really wish I would have done it exactly opposite. Study computer science in college and take a couple of arts classes as electives or pursue it as a part-time hobby. It all worked out, but it reminds me how many of these arts and humanities programs are legacies of a bygone economic era. They are also a product of credentialism, in which it becomes difficult or impossible to demonstrate your knowledge in Literature, for example, without having the degree.

crow_t_robot 3y ago
Everyone knows that Cormac McCarthy wouldn't have gotten anywhere in the literature world without all his advanced degrees in literature.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- stolenmerch 3y ago
  English Lit and Creative Writing are usually not the same programs or degrees. The point being, if you don't have a marketable product (like a novel) and instead only have papers you wrote in school, the degree is your marketable product.
_fat_santa 3y ago
the argument for liberal arts education I always heard goes like this: "college is not to learn a specific skill, but more to better yourself for the real world" and I can't help but think how devoid that is from reality today. Maybe back in the 60's and 70's you could go to college to "broaden your horizons" but today only the wealthiest can afford to do that, everyone else needs a "reason" (that is what sort of job are you getting on the other end). I think those classes are from a bygone era of when college was affordable and you could take a course "just to learn". Higher ed today is very different, I almost look at colleges are higher level trade schools if you're in CS, Engineering, etc.

leviathant 3y ago

Hacker News and puppetry, a relevant-to-me crossover I never thought I'd see, and here I am at the start of the business day with no time to really dig in, because of the day job. "Two years ago, the number of students hovered near zero" - I get the larger picture, but any guesses as to what might have hurt attendance to a performing arts major in 2021? Puppetry is everywhere once you pay attention, and the skills you learn in puppetry can go well beyond, you know, the entertainment industry. But arts and humanities in the American education system have been gutted over the last few decades, starting in primary education, and continuing up into higher education. I stumbled across the puppetry community over a decade ago, and it's been one of the most enriching parts of my life ever since. It's a real shame how much of a struggle it is to get support for the fine arts in this country. Edit: This is a really great read. Thanks for sharing!

awesomeMilou 3y ago
> Puppetry is everywhere once you pay attention, and the skills you learn in puppetry can go well beyond, you know, the entertainment industry. I am genuinely curious to hear where in the day to day of the tech industry you'd draw parallels to puppetry.
- akiselev 3y ago
  The most widely used browser automation frameworks for scraping, end to end testing, and so on is literally called Puppeteer [1] :-) [1] https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer https://github.com/puppeteer/puppeteer
- leviathant 3y ago
  >I am genuinely curious to hear where in the day to day of the tech industry you'd draw parallels to puppetry. The line you're replying to is more general purpose (puppetry as a vehicle for storytelling in television, movies, theater, parties, festivals, concerts, one-on-one conversation, etc.) however to address your curiosity, a few thoughts since I'm between meetings: Puppetry involves problem solving and story telling. Maybe we start off with the idea of bringing the novel War Horse to stage - you can't teach a horse to act, so you've got to do puppetry. You choose a framework: is it shadow puppetry? Rod puppets? Marionettes? Bunraku? Hand puppets don't scale, you're not going to do that. The technology you choose will shape the end result, and it's tempting to go with something flashy and huge, but a seasoned puppeteer can make you cry just by using a sock on their hand. (see also: https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/news/war-horse https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/news/war-horse) Some styles of puppetry are going to need more skill in manipulation or crafting than others, which is going to affect what hiring looks like, and what training looks like. Some of the easier styles of puppetry are more popular, and certainly work on smaller projects like a puppet slam - but won't be as effective at getting results on a large scale production. Putting on a puppet show involves project management and collaboration. Depending on the size of the production, it could be a one-person show, although even those often have one or two people helping to run, for example, light and sound cues. A larger scale production could have a director, a writer, multiple crafters, multiple manipulators, a project manager... These are almost direct analogies to PMs, engineers, developers, department directors. Projects can be small scale - a more personal puppet slam piece performed in front of an audience of 50, and a talking monstrosity of a cake as part of a Saturday Night Live set piece might involve similar amounts of work, but one's going to pay better than the other. On the far end of the spectrum, you have projects like The Dark Crystal series on Netflix - which is analogous to an enterprise project. Multiple systems operating together, up against tight deadlines while simultaneously taking years to complete, compromises are made that few who see the end result will ever see or recognize... And in both tech and puppetry, a lot of the people who put in the hard work never get recognized :D

driggs 3y ago

WV is among the bottom 5 poorest states in the US, with West Virginia University critical for providing affordable in-state college education. WVU is urgently dealing with a $45-million budget shortfall. I know two graduates of the Puppetry program, and neither of them work professionally in any puppetry-related career. They may as well have graduated with any liberal arts degree. The Puppetry major gave them a way to prove their "quirkiness" in college. Here's the course requirements for the BFA in Puppetry: http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcreativearts/divisionoftheatreanddance/theatre/bfa_theatre__puppetry__creative_dramatics/#majortext http://catalog.wvu.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcreativearts/d... It looks like there are two puppetry-specific courses, with the vast majority of courses coming from the more general Theatre program with Liberal Arts core. I don't know what the Puppetry BFA costs the university, but it's always been a joke to WVU students, and doesn't seem to serve West Virginia residents in a meaningful way. (Source: WVU grad and local, who received an affordable in-state CS/Engineering degree, and now works in and supports WV's tiny but growing tech industry)

leviathant 3y ago
I think the local culture or lack thereof is an important factor to point out. It's got to be incredibly challenging to encourage creative young liberal artists to move to West Virginia for any period of time. "The real estate is cheap" only gets you so far - speaking generally, puppetry jobs are in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta to some extent, and... abroad.
ChainOfFools 3y ago
Like most of these humanities programs that are ridiculed as being superfluous, the name of the program only describes about 20 or 30% of the coursework involved. The rest of it is going to be a fairly standard trip through most of the usual lower division classes required for any four-year, plus a number of courses that are not related to the core subject but from which the core subject, say in this case puppetry, becomes a kind of base camp from which your exploration of other more practical and/or conventional subjects (i.e. psychology or marketing or foreign relarions) is conducted. These people aren't literally learning how to build puppets and put on shows everyday for 4 years.

nuc1e0n 3y ago

Yes it blooming well should. Culture is important. Not to mention puppeteers will be in demand in an age of VR chat and avatars.

pridkett 3y ago

I live near another university with a puppetry degree (University of Connecticut), and while I’m well past undergraduate, having gotten my doctorate from a school that has a bagpiping major, the presence of a puppetry degree has made my and my family’s lives richer. There’s definitely a place for fine arts such as puppetry. It has made me wonder about difficult topics (not all puppetry is for kids), laughed during musicals, explained difficult concepts to kids, and most importantly brought joy into the world. However, we just haven’t figured out how to financially support it as a society. I’m glad that Connecticut continues to support such a program.

webnrrd2k 3y ago

Has no one ever seen The Muppet Show? Seassame Street? Farscape? Labyrinth? The Peawee Herman Show? It's important to preserve these academic programs, with Theater Arts, and the Humanities in general. The real problem is with the outrageous cost of higher education. The time has passed when people could get an eccentric degree, and get a good job right out of school based on simply having a degree. With that said, the reality is that the times have changed. It's not worth it in the long term (at least to me) to graduate with a bunch of debt and no concrete education towards getting a job.