Tony Hagopian understands how important the University/Resident Theatre Association is: He went through it and took part in its unified auditions before entering Temple University. He’s now the director of communications and contract services, helping other students get the training they need to enter the theater arts.
What’s URTA’s purpose?
Our mission is to support the American theater by maintaining the highest possible standards in theater in training. Our most well-known program is the National Unified Auditions and Interviews, which combines MFA auditions. They happen every January and February in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. We have 39 member universities recruiting MFA candidates in acting, design, theater management, stage management, and so on. Candidates can come to a single location instead of having to set up 15 individual auditions. Some of our other major services include a contract management program. It’s used a lot by university theater programs that want to bring in a professional union guest artist to perform with their students or teach a class. There are a lot of impediments for universities to engage those services, but for the students, having an artist like that work with them when they’re still in school—there’s nothing like that.
What are some of those impediments?
It could be something as simple as Actors’ Equity saying that their members are paid on a weekly basis and a university may not operate like that. But there are also statutes or university policies that may prohibit them from contributing to a pension fund. They may not be able to sign a union contract in a right-to-work state. There’s a ton of red tape and hurdles that come up, but we try to smooth out the kinks and make it happen.
What makes URTA so vital?
It’s really important to nurture the theater and theater artists. Our contract programming works with small nonprofit theaters that want union actors. It allows them to have the infrastructure to work with them.
What’s your experience with performance?
I’d been an actor for many years, and at a certain point I was getting exhausted doing the regional work that, for a New York actor, is the lion’s share of our work. There are a lot of great things going on, but there’s also a lot of productions of old standards and classics that actors have been in many times. It’s also hard to maintain social relationships when you’re on the road.
How does URTA level the theater-making playing field?
Someone said, “URTA sets the stage,” which I liked as a tagline. Whether it’s the graduate auditions or providing our contracting service for a small nonprofit company to put on a production, we provide the tools, and it’s up to the artists what to do with them.
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