The ART SCHOOL of the Theatre
by John Ezell

Art is born in attention to detail and it is attention to detail that has the greatest staying power in a work of art.

Discipline, the handmaiden of detail, is essential to work in the theatre, but discipline itself is not the point...creativity is.

To have a real relationship with creativity one must take the time and care to cultivate an intimate, affectionate, and playful relationship with one’s own-individual-artistic nature.

As a result of single-minded dedication to professional training, UMKC is in the forefront in the development of new transforming methods of learning that have attracted international attention.

Furthermore, the adoption of sophisticated literary standards and vigorous collaborative processes essential to an artistic enterprise have propelled the scene design program to the forefront. For example, one of many innovations in design training developed at UMKC is the charrette method of learning which provides students intimate design experience with theatrical luminaries including Tony Award winning playwright and director Mary Zimmerman, renowned scenographer Ralph Kolti, film and stage star Fiona Shaw, Broadway designer Santo Loquasto, Royal Shakespeare Company director Barry Kyle, Tony Award winning producer/director Ricardo Khan, and Deborah Landis, president of the Hollywood Costume Designers' Guild, among others.

The UMKC training program is identified nationally as a unique art school of the theatre.

Following European precedents, UMKC has assembled an extraordinary community of professional artists-in-residence as teachers of design, collaboration, design drafting, drawing, painting, computer painting, and Florentine-style life drawing that is, in the opinion of the New York Times “the ultimate learning tool.”

With an appreciation for a glorious theatrical past, knowledge of current practices in work theatre, and fervent pursuits of radical yet responsible theatrical innovations for the American theatre of the Twenty-first Century, students of the UMKC Professional Training Program in Scene Design invariably transcends their own, perceived limitations in the service of art.