Student Resources

College of Fine Arts Resources

Incite Arts Festival

The Incite Arts Festival manifests our belief that the work of the School of Theatre, and the College of Fine Arts in which it resides, can serve a broader audience by presenting new work and revivals of challenging work outside of the city of Boston. The InCite Arts Festival, established in 2008, was conceived as a showcase of the dynamic artistic strengths and synergy of BU’s College of Fine Arts, throughout its schools of Music, Theatre and Visual Arts. Each school offers new and interdisciplinary collaborations with compelling titles and eclectic works, presented and performed by professional artists, faculty members, alumni, and students.

Each March, the College presents itself through performances in New York City. The College will expand that outreach with an arts festival in greater Washington, D.C. in fall 2009. The Spring 2009 InCite Arts Festival: Art Never Backs Down included:

  • La Tragédie de Carmen adapted by Jean-Claude -Carrière and Peter Brook—The popular tale of a doomed romance between a sensuous gypsy and a Spanish army officer, told in a powerful one-act adaptation. A collaboration between the School of Theatre and the School of Music Opera Institute and Symphony Orchestra.
  • Pope Joan by Michelle Poynton (CFA ’08)—A -compelling drama about the ninth-century woman who, legend has it, disguised herself as a man and rose to lead the Catholic Church for two years. A -production of the BU New Play Initiative.
  • Performance Showcase and Design and -Production Exhibit—These annual showcases serve as a celebration of the accomplishments of the graduating class and the group’s formal introduction to the professional theatre industry.

For more information about our upcoming InCite Arts Festival: www.bu.edu/cfa/incite.

College of Fine Arts Academic Computer Lab

The College of Fine Arts Academic Computer Lab is open to 波士顿大学 students, faculty, and staff only. However, students enrolled in College of Fine Arts courses that meet in the lab have priority for the completion of specific course assignments.

Undergraduate Advising

Faculty Advising

Beginning freshman year, CFA students are assigned to a faculty advisor in their school. Students must meet with their faculty advisors prior to registration each semester in order to obtain their Academic Advising Code. We encourage students to consult their faculty advisor whenever they have an academic concern. Advising can assist students in understanding program requirements, semester course selection, and study abroad options, among many other issues.

Peer Advising

All CFA students are assigned peer advisors during their freshman year. Peer advisers establish a personal connection between current and new students by offering advice and guidance during this transitional time.

Additional Assistance

Each school in CFA has staff that work closely with students and are resources to discuss academic and personal concerns. Students should feel free to stop by, call, or email the program office in their school.
The College of Fine Arts also has an Enrollment Services team in the Dean’s Office. The Records Manager and the Manager of Student Services are valuable resources for CFA students. The Manager of Student Services works with students to understand program requirements and assists in overall guidance, whether it is personal or academic in nature.

Graduate Faculty Advising

Graduate students are assigned a faculty advisor during their first year of study. Students must meet with their faculty advisors prior to registration at the start of each semester to obtain an Academic Advising Code, and are encouraged throughout the year to seek advice and support of their advisor throughout their course of study.

The Manager of Student Services also serves the graduate population with concerns about program requirements, degree completion, and overall academic guidance.

The CFA Green Committee

The CFA Green Committee was established in 2008 by a group of concerned CFA staff members who were dedicated to making the College of Fine Arts an environmentally friendly college.

Initially, the CFA Green Team sought to expand the College’s successful paper recycling campaign. In fall 2008, CFA Green established a cost-effective, sanitary recycling program for plastic, glass, and aluminum cans and bottles. Save That Stuff proved an important partner in this initiative. CFA boasts paper and co-mingle recycling stations on each of the College’s six floors at 855 Commonwealth Avenue and also in the Fuller Building at 808 Commonwealth. CFA staff and Work-Study students provide the necessary manpower to sustain this recycling initiative.  The College has  implemented numerous additional initiatives intended to lessen the College’s negative environmental impact:

Long-term, the Committee hopes to implement additional “green” initiatives to make CFA among the most environmentally-friendly colleges on campus. Additionally, working with other BU departments, the CFA Green committee looks forward to helping the University’s Campus Sustainability Steering Committee maintain a variety of campus-wide green programs.

Want to speak up or offer a hand?  Contact the CFA Green committee by email with your suggestions, requests, and feedback.

School of Music Resources, Professional Organizations, and Honor Societies

In the main building, 120 spacious, acoustically sealed, fully ventilated, individual and ensemble practice rooms were recently installed, creating an exceptional studio atmosphere. There is a 485-seat concert hall; three halls for large ensemble rehearsals; a recording studio; two electronic music studios; an academic computing center; and a keyboard instruction lab. Opera rehearsal and coaching studios are located in a spacious facility across the street from the College of Fine Arts. The Tsai Performance Center, three blocks away on the -波士顿大学 campus, is an outstanding concert and rehearsal space for the major performing organizations of the School of Music. The Opera Institute performs at the 波士顿大学 Theatre, which is also the home of the Huntington Theatre Company.

The library within the School of Music maintains a large collection of scores, recordings, and books. The 波士顿大学 Mugar Memorial Library contains a distinguished research collection of books, microfilms, and journals, and offers a full array of library services such as reference, electronically delivered information, course reserves, and interlibrary loans. Mugar Library’s Gotlieb Archival Research Center includes significant music-related holdings of manuscripts, letters, and first editions.

The following are open to qualified 波士顿大学 School of Music students:

  • The 波士顿大学 Student Chapter of the National Association for Music Education (MENC).
  • Pi Kappa Lambda is a national honor society whose primary objective is the recognition and encouragement of the highest level of musical achievement and academic scholarship.
  • Mu Phi Epsilon and Sigma Alpha Iota are open by invitation to School of Music students.

School of Theatre Academic and Student Resources

Building a Bridge from the Classroom to the Profession

The School of Theatre has a long tradition of embracing the value of the professional theatre’s participation in the education of our students. We have now arrived at a landmark number of professional theatre ventures that embrace the possibilities of building strong bridges between the study and practice of the theatre arts.

波士顿大学 Professional Theatre Initiative

The Professional Theatre Initiative (PTI) reflects our belief in the necessity of strong artistic relationships with the theatre profession. PTI provides opportunities for stimulating, creative interactions between participating theatres and the BU School of Theatre community. Many of our students, faculty, and alumni are linked with a variety of professional theatres of many kinds, sizes, and missions to provide experience and interaction that serve both the participant and the theatre company itself.

Our long history of association with the Huntington Theatre Company, in residence at 波士顿大学 for its entire quarter-century of existence, is proof of this long-held belief. In recent years, theatres as varied as the Olney Theatre Center, National Players, Potomac Theatre Project, Vineyard Playhouse, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors’ Shakespeare Project, and the Pendragon Theatre, among others, have joined this initiative. Project-based interactions have been successfully forged with theatres such as the Guthrie Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Primary Stages, and The Arden Theatre.

Often, PTI member theatres provide professional opportunities in acting, directing, and design and/or career development opportunities through internships. In some cases, our interactions with these companies result in new play development and opportunities to conceive new approaches to existing works.

For a full list of our professional partners in this endeavor: www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/professional/pti.

波士顿大学 New Play Initiative

The New Play Initiative expresses our commitment to the School’s participation in the development of new work.  This special initiative provides playwrights, directors, designers, and actors with a variety of developmental options to support the collaborative creation of new work for the theatre. Students, faculty, alumni, and guest artists are given the opportunity to utilize the creativity of the rehearsal room to develop their plays, which are then presented through workshop productions. But the life of these new plays doesn’t end on the BU stages. Many New Play Initiative productions are later fully produced by member companies of our Professional Theatre Initiative or featured in our InCite Arts Festival.

For example, recent New Play Initiative highlights include:

  • Translations of Xhosa by Kira Lallas (CFA ‘02). The playwright’s account of her personal journey while studying abroad in South Africa. Honored by the Kennedy Center and produced professionally by Olney Theatre Center in 2003. Recipient of the prestigious Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play.
  • Brendan by Ronan Noone (CAS ‘01), a former Huntington Theatre Company playwriting fellow. The story of an Irish immigrant’s struggle to acclimate to his new life in America. Workshopped by the School of Theatre (2005) and professionally produced by HTC (2006). Winner of the 2007 Independent Reviewers of New England (IRNE) award for Best New Play.
  • Lizzie Stranton by Lydia R. Diamond, BU School of Theatre assistant professor and author of the critically acclaimed plays Stick Fly, Voyeurs de Venus, and The Bluest Eye. This re-imagining of Aristophanes’ classic comedy Lysistrata was workshopped by the School of Theatre in 2008 at the Boston Center for the Arts Calderwood Pavilion.

For more highlights of the New Play Initiative, visit www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/professional/npi.

Boston Center for American Performance

The Boston Center for American Performance (BCAP), our newest endeavor, serves as the professional production extension of the School of Theatre. Expanding the definition of the College as an “artistic home,” BCAP is designed to foster significant interaction between members of the professional performing arts world and the College. Creating productions in one of our many venues in our home city, BCAP employs professional artists to collaborate directly with student artists in a way that encourages intergenerational learning not only through the forging of strong teacher-student relationships, but through the creation of artistic collaborations between artists of differing levels of experience.

This initiative encourages interaction among professional faculty artists, alumni, students, and other affiliated artists both locally and nationally. It is the College’s conviction that such collaborations will have a profound impact on our educational mission, become a significant source of inspiration for the creation of new work and/or new approaches to existing work, and provide the College with a professional extension of its expanding and diverse aesthetic.

In fall 2008, the BCAP initiative debuted with a three-week run of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, featuring faculty and student actors working collaboratively with a student, faculty, staff, and alumni artistic team. In spring 2009, Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife featured two recent MFA Directing graduates—Jeffry Stanton as director and David Gram as performer—supported by a design and production team comprised of both alumni and student artists.

The 2009/2010 BCAP season will feature two provocative, modern classics—A Question of Mercy by David Rabe and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive. www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/professional/bcap

Productions & Facilities

All School of Theatre productions are designed, built, and performed by students, making opportunities for performance, design, and production plentiful at 波士顿大学. The School of Theatre produces:

  • Six fully mounted productions each season—two on the BU Theatre Mainstage, two at the Boston Center for the Arts Calderwood Pavilion, and two in the Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley Studio 210.
  • A series of projects for the School of Music Opera Institute, including two mainstage operas and two additional opera one-acts during the annual College of Fine Arts Fall Fringe Festival.
  • An additional 35 to 45 workshop projects each year, produced in a variety of venues within the College of Fine Arts and also at the BU Theatre.
  • Two to four additional productions from our professional extension, the Boston Center for American Performance, plus a collection of shows for the annual InCite Arts Festival.

The School of Theatre offers a variety of spaces in which to realize our students’ creative visions:

  • The majestic and expansive BU Theatre Mainstage.
  • The Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts in Boston’s South End, a cultural center supported by the Huntington Theatre Company and home to two theatres, rehearsal studios, and event space.
  • A versatile and newly renovated black box, the
  • Stewart F. Lane and Bonnie Comley Studio 210.
  • Three modern black box studios at the College of Fine Arts, generous gifts from David J. Copeland and Friends and the family of Juliane Ethel Leilani Miller.
  • Three classic Dance Studios appointed with sprung floors and mirrored walls.
  • The BU Theatre Production Center, with state-of-the-art shops (Scene, Paint, Props, Costumes, Dye, and Crafts) shared by the School of Theatre and the Huntington Theatre Company.
  • Additional production spaces at the BU Theatre including a light lab, sound studio, and design studios for each Design, Production, and Mangement academic concentration.
  • The School of Theatre Greenroom, a hub for roundtable discussions and student gatherings.
  • The intimate proscenium stage known as the TheatreLab@855.

Take a photo tour of our spaces: www.bu.edu/cfa/theatre/about/venues

School of Visual Arts Student Resources

The Visual Arts Resource Library

The Visual Arts Resource Library is a reading room servicing School of Visual Arts faculty members and students as well as members of the larger University community. The Library is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; these hours are subject to change.

The Artist Development Series

The School of Visual Arts is committed to ensuring that its students can find jobs and funding in the competitive art world. Each year, the Artist Development Series conducts events geared towards developing new skills by bringing in working artists, gallery professionals, and other creative experts to facilitate discussion and answer questions. Past events have included intensive workshops by artist Carson Fox, presentations by Christian Roman (CFA ’91) and Paul Topolos of Pixar, panel presentations by alumni, and visits to local galleries.

Galleries at 波士顿大学

The galleries at the School of Visual Arts comprise both professional and student-run exhibition spaces that serve to compliment and augment the educational experience. The Sherman and 808 Galleries present professionally organized exhibitions by contemporary artists in all disciplines. The Commonwealth Gallery and Gallery 5 are dedicated to rotating exhibitions organized by graduate and undergraduate students.

Visiting Artists

Each semester, the School of Visual Arts’ Contemporary Perspectives Lecture Series presents a series of lectures by various professional artists, including renowned painters, sculptors, printmakers, graphic designers, art educators, and art critics. Undergraduate and graduate students benefit from exposure to the lecturers’ work, engaging with them in dialogues about the art-making process, as well as benefiting from individual studio visits and critiques. Visiting artist lectures are free, and open to the public.