Shahroze Rauf | Assistant News Editor
Featured image courtesy of Jordan Chu
From Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, Professor Sara Bay-Cheng has now been appointed as the new Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design (AMPD). She will be replacing the former interim dean, Professor Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt, who held the position for the past two years.
In an official statement issued by York President and Vice-Chancellor Rhonda Lenton, a search committee was established last year. The committee included faculty, staff, and students, and a president’s designate, chaired by the provost, and vice-president academic.
“This is a crucial time in the school’s development as it continues to build on historic strengths while responding to emerging developments impacting the field and expanding in areas such as digital media and computational arts,” Lenton said.
Aside from her accomplishments as a professor, scholar, the chair of the theatre and dance department since 2016, and a co-host of On TAP—a podcast that discusses issues in theatre and performance studies, Bay-Cheng also participated in a TEDx talk just last year in July.
In it, she discussed the concept of theatre as a vital part of the future—or, as she describes it: how one can use theatre to tell the future. She first asks that to believe in such a concept, there is a need to think of a theatre PhD, or what she calls “a PhD in dress-up,” as a “theoretical theatre-ist”—similar to a theoretical physicist.
“A theoretical physicist understands, analyzes, explains, and predicts natural phenomena using mathematical models and abstractions. A theoretical theatre-ist also uses models and abstractions to analyze, understand, explain, and predict artificial phenomenon,” said Bay-Cheng.
She continued to discuss historical pieces that have ‘predicted the future,’ from Ubu the King by Alfred Jarry (1896), Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights by Gertrude Stein (1938), and Krapp’s Last Tape by Samuel Beckett (1958).
“I am a professor of theatre and performance studies teaching different kinds of theatre history and theory, experimental performance, and researching the intersections of media technologies and performance, both historical and in contemporary culture,” Bay-Cheng said on her website.
Bay-Cheng will be serving as Dean for a five-year term, starting July 1. With a long list of qualifications and being the end of a year-long international search by the committee, Lenton holds high hopes as Bay-Cheng takes her role as dean.
“I look forward to working with her in the coming years as she undertakes this important role in advancing AMPD as a leading school of the arts and design in Canada and internationally. I know that all members of the school and the University will join me in congratulating and welcoming her,” Lenton said.
