University Times

Feeling necessity's sharp pinch in the form of budget deficits and changing academic priorities, Pitt will discontinue its Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival (TRSF) at the end of September.

However, the University will continue its Shakespeare in the Schools Program, through which Pitt theatre arts students perform in about 100 tri-state area schools.

Theatre arts department chairperson W. Stephen Coleman said the decision to discontinue the 16-year-old festival was made with deep regret, but was necessary for financial reasons and because TRSF no longer adequately supported the department's academic mission.

"The original intention of the festival was for a sort of co-mingling of the professional theatre ethic within the academic mission of the department," Coleman said. "But the festival changed over the years until it became an entity with its own priorities. It became more like a professional theatre in residence on a university campus rather than an integral part of the department." Money problems also played a role in eliminating the festival. Coleman said TRSF ran deficits totaling more than $100,000 during its last two summer seasons, losses which the University absorbed. And the festival narrowly survived a near-death experience in 1992, when fiscal problems forced cancellation of the season-ending production of "Pericles" and TRSF was rumored to be shuffling off its mortal coil.

"At a time when resources are limited and must be concentrated to advance our high-priority academic goals, we are not in a position to underwrite additional festival losses," Coleman said.

Theatre arts professor Attilio "Buck" Favorini, who founded the festival in 1980 and managed the festival until 1992, when Laura Ann Worthen took over, said: "In the last three years since I relinquished my role as producing director, the festival has preoccupied the department in a way that became a distraction. Consequently, I think it (TRSF) should be thought of as something that is in the department's glorious past rather than in its equally promising future." Coleman emphasized, "We are seeing the demise of the festival, but it's not as if theatre at Pitt is going to die. I'm hoping we can take the money we would otherwise be spending on the festival and put it into hiring guest actors and guest directors for our mainstage shows, which are better integrated with our curriculum during the regular academic year." The Shakespeare in the Schools Program will live on because it is one place where "festival and department activities are melded," Coleman said.

— Bruce Steele