Hansel Tan, MFA - (2024)
Why did you decide to go to graduate school?
Like many others who had a "come to the light" moment during the Pandemic, I was burnt-out from the cyclical grind of the acting profession and realized that there were many facets of performance work I still wanted to investigate. Although I had many successes in my time with the commercial industry, I was looking for a change of purpose and pace. Going back to graduate school meant making a deliberate choice to invest in myself without the distractions of an ad hoc artistic life at the mercy of market forces.
Why did you choose to pursue your degree at Pitt?
My journey to Pitt was entirely serendipitous! I had started coaching actors virtually during the pandemic and quickly found that I loved the rigor and intensity of the practice, perhaps more so than in the rehearsal room. I came across Pitt's program while researching MFA Performance Pedagogy Programs and saw an invitation to visit the program via a Facebook post. It so happened that I was also in Pittsburgh at the time working on Quantum Theatre's production of Lucy Kirkwood's Chimerica, and became smitten with the local arts scene. After the campus visit, I knew Pitt was the right balance of research, artistic opportunity, and interdisciplinary learning I wanted from a graduate program. There really was no second choice!
How did the degree program help prepare you for your career?
At Pitt, I immediately began teaching and learned through many successes and failures in the classroom. As an integrated graduate student rubbing shoulders and sweating over lesson notes with fellow PhD candidates, I was exposed to many other facets of performance research and honed my ability to contribute to the academic circulation of ideas through required courses. Not only did the program challenge candidates to pursue artistic opportunities and develop research projects, they actively encouraged it, and I found myself absorbing new acting methodologies, contributing to academic conferences, and gracing local stages even within the same semester. It was also at Pitt that I discovered the research paradigm of performance and Cognition, an area that I continue to investigate in my current position at Villanova University.
What is your current position and what does it involve?
I am a Tenure-Tracked Assistant Professor of Performance in the Department of Theatre and Studio Arts at Villanova University, an R2 Augustinian Liberal Arts Institute in Pennsylvania. In my role, I teach courses in embodied performance and practice to the student body, and I also oversee and coordinate the undergraduate Theatre Minor Program, which includes shaping its curriculum and strategizing its future direction. At the same time, I am faculty advisor to Villanova Student Theatre and Villanova Student Musical Theatre, two highly ambitious student organizations that produce 5 shows a year. In my (little) free time, I am an occasional advisor and full-time cheerleader for graduate students in the Theatre Master's Program.
Thoughts and/or advice for current graduate students?
Trust your current and future students to tell you what they need (verbally or nonverbally). Fail fast and fail often. Make big mistakes in the classroom and laugh over it with your students. Be curious about the work done by your colleagues, and the many miracles happening outside your department. You will rewrite your syllabus endlessly. You will question what you know constantly. There is no correct way to learn acting. There is no correct way to teach acting. There is only what we can accomplish as a community in 15 unfathomably short weeks. Take your breaks, dance to music, touch grass: if we don't demonstrate it, how will they know? Above all, share the joy you have for the arts with this generation — they need it more than they know!