On the rainy night of Sept. 5, the first day of classes for the fall semester, a small group of theater enthusiasts met in Boger Hall. The new organization, the Students Performing Arts Resources Committee (SPARC), is made up of representatives of all major student performing groups on campus. The organization’s aim, at the outset, was to solve the problems of the Patricelli ’92 Theater. Known as the ’92, the venue has been inaccessible to student performers following the dissolution of Second Stage, which was formerly the biggest theater group on campus, and managed operations and productions at the ’92.

“A problem with Second Stage’s presence on campus was that it essentially monopolized the student theater scene, being prioritized for using the ’92 space and its resources over other groups,” Charlotte George ’24, a founding member of both SPARC and Spike Tape, a student-run theater organization that launched last spring, said. “SPARC’s goal is to decentralize student theater and to ensure that no one group has greater or more ready access to the resources available for student-run theater groups.” 

SPARC held discussions with the Theater Department, the Center For the Arts, and the Dean of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Music Roger Grant, who met with these students over the summer and agreed that it was in Wesleyan’s best interest to have the ’92 functional. Together they came up with a system that did not have a single organization dominating student theater on campus, as had been the case under Second Stage. Thus, even though most of SPARC’s founding members, George, Drew Weddig ’24, Amanda Morris ’24, and Kyra Kushner ’24, were affiliated with and were the leaders of Spike Tape, it was important to create a separate body that would eventually have equal representation from different performing arts groups on campus.

“SPARC is made up of representatives from different performing arts groups on campus, including SHADES, Ensemble Theater Collective, Wit’s End, Absent Toast, New Teen Force, Hysterics, etc,” George said. “[W]ithin this group of representatives, we delegate the ‘92 venue and resources to these groups in an impartial way. This way, we avoid the monopolization of a certain group over theater resources on campus, because this provides a structure in which, if one group somehow gets disbanded, Wesleyan student theater isn’t completely halted, as we have observed in the past.”

The group plans to write a constitution in the near future which will enable them to make more firm decisions, and give each performing arts group one representative and one vote to officially sign off on a resolution.

On the issue of campus politics regarding SPARC, the committee’s chairman Henry Owens ’25 said that he hopes SPARC does not become a controversial or political body and that it remains a conduit through which student groups can showcase their craft. 

“My hope is that SPARC comes to decisions as a whole and ratifies things as a whole, but ultimately I do know that that is optimistic and in the event that controversy does arise, there will be a democratic system in which clubs will get to cast their votes and come to a decision,” Owens said. “We don’t want SPARC to be worried about producing works or what art is being made or censorship or anything of the sort. The role will be limited to scheduling things in the ’92’s space, making sure the lights, sound, and other logistical issues are taken care of.”

The group has already officially scheduled a production of “Assassins,” which will be taking place later this semester, and productions of “Masquerade” and “King in Yellow” are in the pipeline. 

When asked about the collaboration between the Theater Department and SPARC, the response from Owens was generally positive. 

“We are so grateful to Dean Grant for helping us through this whole thing,” Owens said.

SPARC also hopes to employ student workers. While its predecessor, Second Stage, had three student workers who were paid a weekly stipend and ran operations at the ’92, handling equipment and overseeing safety, SPARC hopes to make theater work more accessible by increasing the number of student workers from three to 12. This would allow the work to be more evenly distributed and ensure no students go uncompensated. Owens believes that these workers were essential to the running of the ’92, and were previously overworked and underpaid. SPARC’s proposal also asks for hourly wages for these workers. The Theater Department, however, was unable to meet with them over the summer and has yet to schedule a meeting to discuss this issue with them in the fall.

“Student theater at Wes has always had to be scrappy, but when Second Stage stopped functioning, the loss of institutional knowledge and weight meant that student theater-makers had to be even more resourceful than before,” Malaika Fernandes ’23, an active theater enthusiast and a former student worker under Second Stage, said. “It was messy and far from perfect, but at least I believe there was less monopolization of resources within the student body.”

“Theater is complicated,” Owens said. “There are a lot of aspects and moving parts which go into producing a work of theater, so I get why organizations like Second Stage had their problems. There are a lot of grey areas when it comes to decisions, so I hope that SPARC can help solve at least some of them.” 

As a whole, SPARC and its founding members are enthusiastic to reform and improve student theater on campus.

“At the end of the day, we want student-run theater to be safe and fun for everyone involved,” George said. “What we’re doing right now may work, it may not work, but we will do anything we can to reach this goal, because the safety and well-being of students is far more important than the quality or quantity of productions we put on.” 

Owens also laid out the vision for SPARC, “Limited, Effective, and Stable,” at the beginning of their first meeting. 

“I don’t want SPARC to evolve into a big group which starts dictating the theater scene on campus, instead it should aim to stick to its core function of making theater resources available to students,” Owens explained.

So far, this passionate and enthusiastic group of students has kept SPARC right on track.
Suryansh Dalmia can be reached at sdalmia@wesleyan.edu.