The Show Must Go On
THE SHOW MUST GO ON
The Show Must Go On
UNCSA’s Chancellor Cole looks to the school’s bright future
By Billy Ingram
Over a quarter century has passed since my last visit to what was then simply known as “School of the Arts.” (Don’t call it that today — they’ve graduated!) Touring their campus over the summer, I was amazed at University of North Carolina School of the Arts’ expansion, with the addition of three enormous, Hollywood-style sound stages, extensive wardrobe and wig departments, an airplane hangar-sized set-painting facility, state-of-the-art imaging studio, and even a quaint city street backlot facade alongside a three-screen movie theater where the RiverRun International Film Festival is held each year. During that late-1990s visit, I donated a bundle of movie posters I had labored on years earlier in Tinsel Town, one of which (Superman IV) was framed outside the theater’s entrance.
I have returned to meet with Brian Cole, now in his sixth term as chancellor of UNCSA. This year marks the 60th anniversary of the university and, while there will be cake — there’s always cake — Cole is aggressively fixated on a future fraught with unprecedented challenges fueled by rapidly evolving technology and ingrained predaceous business practices threatening to upend every aspect of the arts. He’s clearly up to the task.
UNCSA concentrates on five core disciplines: drama, music, filmmaking, design & production, and dance, with both high school and college curricula. Cole comes from the symphonic side. His pro career started when he apprenticed with the Cincinnati Symphony under the tutorage of one of music’s most eminent maestros, Grammy-winning Paavo Järvi. He went on to teach at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music before circling the globe waving his conductor’s wand before a multitude of illustrious orchestras.
“I think arts and artists are critical to our society and this place plays a critical role in producing those artists,” Cole asserts, seated in his window-rimmed chancellory overlooking a busy corner of campus. “Creativity is why we are successful — because artists are the ultimate problem solvers.”
UNCSA is home to a wealth of expert educators connected to and, in many cases, still actively participating in their attendant industries. “That hands-on experience is something we’re known for,” Cole says. “Producing people ready to create, being job-ready on day one, especially in the production areas. That’s not something other places can really claim to the same degree.” The school is on track for record enrollment this fall, maybe because of its almost unmatched media exposure in recent months. “People know of us because of the training, but also because we’ve had this incredible impact on all these industries with some notable alumni who are doing amazing work.”
Our media landscape is inexorably shifting, Artificial Intelligence being well past its nascent six-fingered-hands phase. The unexpectedly rapid acceleration of AI’s ability to seamlessly (shamelessly?) complete complex artistic tasks is a pedal to the, ahem, mettle of anyone with creative aspirations.
“We’re having some substantive conversations right now about creating a strategy for this,” Cole says. “It is definitely starting to have a substantial effect on the film and TV industry, on the visual arts, and the music industry. It is an incredibly disruptive technology that has vast potential for good and bad.” A Chancellor’s Task Force has been convened to address how to navigate a new world emerging out of generative AI. “We’re looking at our industry partners who might be able to provide resources for students, faculty and staff. What are the positive ways this is already being used? What are the negatives and how can we get out in front of that?”
While a number of universities are investing heavily in AI, there’s a tendency to focus on so-called hard skills or STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). “I don’t hear as much from arts-training institutions. One of the most important things is, whether it’s music or a poster or a film, if you don’t hear or see the human’s voice in it, then it’s a failure.” Cole quotes a sports analogy coined by Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh about AI: “It’ll help you get down the field quicker, but it will never get you into the end zone.”
This administrator has faced game-changing outbreaks before, having barely transitioned from dean of the School of Music to chancellor when COVID shut everything down. “Solutions we came up with were incredible because of the passion and the creativity of the people on this campus,” says Cole, who may have had in mind that well-worn trope: The show must go on. “I have not seen any other institution in the country from that time period that was doing more, or, in many cases, anywhere near as much as we were and doing it safely.” Carrying on with musical, dance and drama performances, the students were on stage, but the audience caught it via livestream.
Chancellor Cole is equally mission driven when it comes to establishing an intellectual property paradigm for emerging talent. What exactly would that look like? “A nonprofit media publishing arm promoting the work of the artists of our ecosystem,” he explains. Those artists include “alumni and faculty, but to some degree current students when they are in that launch period.” For now, UNCSA Media is primarily concentrating on music with plans to venture into other artistic avenues represented on campus. “We’ve got four or five albums out or in the works. The key to creative and career success in the future is leveraging the ownership of what you create. And often that had been the thing leveraged over artists.”
It’s called show business. Taylor Swift’s years-long, multimillion dollar effort to wrest control of her early albums and songwriter royalties is an au courant example of an artist signing a lopsided deal in exchange for industry advancement.
Cole recalls discussing that conundrum with legendary pop star John Oates over dinner one evening. “Hall & Oates is the most successful musical duo of all time, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame . . . you’d be surprised how much longer it took in their career to really make any money.”
Perhaps not as well known to the public is UNCSA’s live-in high school curriculum, which emphasizes artistic pursuits while simultaneously offering more conventional course work. “We have alums that come from very small towns and now they’re in really substantial, incredible careers in the arts,” notes Cole. “There was nothing for them in their hometown but they met someone who knew of this high school in North Carolina that was training students in the arts, where you could also have a great academic education as well. For North Carolina residents, there was no financial barrier — our state supports that.”
The chancellor aspires to enroll an additional hundred high schoolers once a larger dorm is completed. “We already have programs in music and dance and drama and visual arts. We want to certainly expand those but we also want to create a filmmaking concentration. I don’t think there is another one in the country at the high school level.”
As if Cole didn’t have enough to do on-campus, he is also overseeing one major off-campus project, an $85.3-million renovation of the Stevens Center. “It is essentially our biggest high-tech classroom and learning laboratory,” he says, “an important cultural center for professional organizations in our community and for what UNCSA does there.” When completed, it will be a venue where all departments collaborate to mount major productions utilizing actors, dancers, musicians, backstage crews, costume, lighting and set designers, even atypical variables like “animatronics and robotics technicians working in live entertainment. We’re very fortunate that, through the generosity of the state, we’re keeping those skills on pace as well.”
Cole still allows time for conducting, both in country and abroad but less so on campus. “We have great artists and teachers here, so I don’t want to take too much away from them. For the last two years I conducted our Nutcracker production at the Tanger Center. Big success.” For 2025’s holiday tip-toeing at Tanger, however, Cole will pass the baton to someone else. “It’s good for students to work with different conductors — not just for the orchestra, but also the dancers.”
Reflecting on the passage of 60 scholastic cycles since that inaugural class of ’65, Chancellor Cole muses, “The founders were thinking we would be like the Juilliard of the South. And it very much was. Now I kind of think of Juilliard as the UNCSA of the Northeast.”
Just kindly try to refrain from referring to it as School of the Arts.
Behind the Curtain
Cynthia Adams
Susan Turcot, whose parents live in Greensboro, went on to have a distinguished film and television lighting career in Hollywood after attending UNCSA. Her credits include mega-hits Independence Day, The Negotiator, Titanic, Panic Room, Pleasantville, The Rat Pack and The Bird Cage. Her skill set? Dimmer board, lighting and rigging, among other specialties.
Her proud parents, Bud and Sharon Turcot, rented out a Sedgefield theater for a private showing when Titanic premiered.
“They gave out tissues and Life Savers,” she recalls with a laugh. Guests filed out of the theater wiping their eyes and Susan regaled them with stories about the set, cast and crew at an afterparty. That Titanic gig, however, couldn’t have delighted her folks more as it grossed over $2 billion, becoming the highest grossing film of its time.
She self-deprecatingly jokes that only her parents’ friends know she has rubbed elbows with the rich and famous and never name drops. Turcot also worked on the top-rated TV sitcom Two and a Half Men.
She didn’t enter UNCSA intending to specialize in dimmer board and rigging: “When I was there [at UNCSA], it was different.” She graduated in the 1980s with a concentration in design and production.
“Of course, there was no film [concentration] then, only theater. It was dance, drama, music, and design and production.”
Turcot left after graduation to pursue opportunities in California and found her niche. She keeps work options open, she says, even if she has been remiss about keeping her resume current. Now, at home in Los Angeles, where she has lived and worked most of her adult life, Turcot says a lot of her fellow graduates are active in the industry there.
In its 62 years, UNCSA has graduated alumni who work in a multiplicity of artistic careers, grabbing headlines well beyond the Triad. Many become notable musicians, actors, screenwriters, directors, producers and dancers. Much larger numbers who graduated from UNSCA’s five professional concentrations work behind the scenes in performing, visual and moving image arts.
UNCSA’s arts-based education produces many unsung heroes of the industry. Imagine a film when the lighting is too harsh — or dim. Or the sound is faulty. Or the casting is all wrong. Or the makeup and costumes are amateurish.
Those in “above the line” roles belong to composers, graphic designers, photographers, producers, directors, actors, musicians and writers. Those who execute on a technical, granular level, include “below the line” professions such as casting directors, production designers, costume designers, editors, cinematographers, camera work, set design, sound recording, makeup artists, sound, electrical and lighting technicians.
Many of those names are not always known to the arts and entertainment audiences. But you do know these talented alumni by their work.
Paul Tazewell, BFA ’86, concentrated in costume design and technology as a student from Akron, Ohio. Since then, he has steadily contributed to a body of creative work recognized as artistically and historically significant.
On March 2 earlier this year, Tazewell made school history when he won the Academy Award for Costume Design for Wicked, becoming the first UNCSA alum to win an Oscar.
He also made Oscar history as the first Black man to achieve that distinction. Plus, he has two Tonys on his shelf, for Death Becomes Her and Hamilton, plus a Primetime Emmy Award.
As an extra feather in the school’s cap, UNCSA quickly posted the news that Wicked was not only nominated in 10 different categories, but won two, scoring a second Oscar for production design. The original stage director, Joe Mantello, and the film’s casting director, Tiffany Little Canfield, both alums, contributed to the stage and screen versions.
Tazewell attributes much of his artistic identity to his N.C. alma mater.
“It was here that I first began to love myself — to trust my own voice. To trust my own vision of myself. And that love has shaped everything since,” he recently said in a commencement speech delivered to the school’s newest grads.
As UNCSA graduates have steadily migrated into professional careers in film, in touring productions, in music, and on Broadway — others are entering newer fields in digital media.
Photographer and director David LaChapelle attended high school at UNCSA, which he has since called his “big break.” This coming from a man whose early work was with Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. His museum-worthy body of work has appeared in the world’s top magazines plus a vast collection of music videos and includes signature photographs of celebrities such as Michael Jackson, Uma Thurman and Elton John.
Earlier this year, the North Carolina Museum of Art hosted two exhibitions of LaChapelle’s work. On display at its two locations in Winston-Salem and Raleigh were more than 80 prints, drawings and videos.
Tanase Popa, who graduated in 2006, studied stage management. Now, he pairs the right talent with the right project. He has since earned a Peabody and an AFI award, and has had multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for his work in television and film. He has worked on popular series including Glee and American Horror Story.
The press-averse alum eschews the spotlight. “I want to be the one behind the scenes putting it together,” Popa said in a 2020 interview for the school’s website.
“I never looked at myself as someone who was creative in the sense that I need to write or be a director to put the pieces together that way. I always loved finding the right people for the right project.”
Not every career is spent on the Great White Way or working behind the Klieg lights of Hollywood. Training in production and design easily lends itself to work in an artful aspect of consumerism.
If you’ve shopped at Saks Fifth Avenue, you’ve seen the work of UNCSA alum Connor Matz, who directs the mega-retailer’s windows, visuals and interiors.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurial alum Destinee Steele has built a successful business and career in Florida working as a wig-and-makeup artist since her professional training at UNCSA.
In each case, their creative work is their calling card.
And when you’ve finished a movie that was so good, you just don’t want to leave the theater as the cast of characters behind the scenes scrolls on and on, remember that it’s a reminder how many people work in any production. These unsung creatives get little credit beyond the mention of their name.
Finish your popcorn and read on. Odds are good that those talents — with names like Turcot, Tazewell, Mantella, Canfield and Poppa — honed their skills at UNCSA.