PSU Magazine Spring 1993

The fine art ofcreative management ! l ~ ichard Toscan's resume reads like that of a highly polished, creative profes– sional whom you would expect to find in any of the country's art capitals: Manhattan-born theater historian and stage director; teacher and playwright; producer of award-winning radio dramas; arts administrator credited with making the drama department at the University of Southern California one of the top– ranked schools in the country. Yet these days Toscan is not holding court in New York or Los Angeles, but sitting at a desk in a first-floor office in Cramer Hall. And, as Portland State's new dean of Fine and Performing Arts, he couldn't be happier. Why would someone like Toscan leave Los Angeles' established artistic community for Portland? Part of the appeal for Toscan was an opportunity to work with PSU's arts faculty, whose depth is remarkable considering the modest facilities and resources that historically have been available to the school. "The fact that the University is located in the heart of the city means it was really able to attract and hold onto the kind of faculty who, if they were elsewhere, would be fought over." IOPSU The Florestan Trio in the music department is just one example, he says. "They are first-rate teachers, well respected in the profession and really care about their students-the sort of people who, in a conservatory program, you would kill to be able to hire." Now nearly 10 months into his new post, Toscan is just as impressed by students at PSU. Just this winter, he taught a playwriting seminar and watched his students plow through 15 weeks of material in just 10 weeks, a remarkable pace compared to his classes at USC and other universities. "You get a very different kind of student here from what a more conven– tional university would get. They are very committed, very motivated, they have a lot of life experience both in the profession they're interested in and just in terms of living. So it makes teaching really exciting." And then there's Portland's arts community, which though small by comparison, is in Toscan's opinion more exciting in many ways than what he has seen in Los Angeles. Part of it has to do with access, he says. "It's so easy to get to a large number of arts presentations here. You don't have that kind of physical barrier that you have in Los Angeles. And Richard Toscan, PSU's new dean of the School of Fine and Performing Arts, works with the local arts community to create collaborative efforts. By Leslie Cole there is such a tremendous audience interest in the arts, both the performing and the fine arts here." Audience interest in Portland actually surpasses levels in most major cities, including New York, he says. Unlike other cities, however, Portland's donor support remains thin. Toscan sees signs of this changing, as the business community begins to recognize that "the arts are kind of a key for keeping a central city alive ... [they're] a natural magnet for bringing people to the city." One of the few remaining U.S. cities that still works in terms of its downtown, Portland's future in many was rests on continuing support for the arts-not just the major institutions, but also events like ARTQUAKE, says Toscan. "(Portland is) safe by national stand– ards, you can walk around at night, it doesn't roll up the sidewalks at 5 o'clock and a lot of the businesses in the Portland area actually live off of that fact. The arts are one of those generators that make that possible." Toscan hopes to add power to that generator with his ambitious plans for PSU's School of Fine and Performing Arts. His primary interest lies in setting up partnerships with professional arts ·