Ryan Grippi and Mikey Rosenbaum
In a year that has demanded new approaches to even the most rudimentary tasks, aspiring for greater connectivity and collaboration would seem a lofty ambition. But in light of the shifting education landscape in 2020, students and educators continue to adapt to a virtual environment by innovating new methods of accessibility and communication.
As co-presidents of Tisch’s Graduate Student Organization (GSO), Mikey Rosenbaum (‘21 Musical Theatre Writing) and Ryan Grippi (‘21 ITP) are charged with fostering collaboration among the grad student body through sponsored social events, speakers, art conferences, and film screenings. They are also at the helm of GSO’s interdepartmental grants, designed to fund interdisciplinary projects within the Tisch community (the 2020-2021 application is now open). Across 2020’s decidedly virtual setting, Grippi and Rosenbaum have emphasized a socially distant collaboration with the student body that is different from ever before, but may just provide the hard reset necessary for a better future.
Meet the entire GSO Board, learn more about their work, and/or contact them at the GSO website. Below, we catch up with GSO co-presidents Mikey Rosenbaum and Ryan Grippi as they reflect on a year that has put the grad community to the test and produced a new way of thinking about their work.
What propelled your involvement in the Tisch Graduate Student Organization, particularly from a goal-oriented perspective?
Ryan Grippi: I completed my undergrad in film and television in 2015, and I’ve been working for the school full-time since 2016 as a production center technician. Now I go to grad school at night at ITP, so I’ve been at the school longer than most grad students and I know NYU pretty well. Prior to being co-president I was an events coordinator in GSO and when the pandemic hit it was more or less, “I know how to navigate the school, but I want Mikey and Reese and all the people on the board to do their amazing work, too.”
I love the grad students and I love Tisch. I used to say that everything I love in the arts exists at 721 Broadway. I’ve always liked GSO because it’s a place where I can meet people in other departments, and my goal has always been to bring more of that collaboration together.
Mikey Rosenbaum: Once I was nominated, I agreed to join as a representative from my department, which is Graduate Musical Theatre Writing. I’m a huge proponent of cross-program collaboration, and the network at TIsch is so vast that it’s easy to stay in bubbles from program to program. Something I’m really passionate about is breaking those bubbles and figuring out how we can foster a community that serves us while at school, but also after we graduate.
In a year that has presented so many unforeseen obstacles, what are some examples of the GSO’s more consequential achievements?
Mikey Rosenbaum: Due to the obvious challenges that we’ve been facing, it’s been difficult to take an organization that is built around in-person events and transfer that to the current climate. As the board of graduate students, we are some of the busiest people on campus. So how do we involve folks amidst our classes and other responsibilities? It has been a challenge, but we’ve been meeting since over the summer to continue to answer those questions.
We held Tisch Tavern after our orientation this semester, which was a fun way to get to know students from across programs. We’ve also received approval for the LGBTQ+ pitch workshop series, which Ryan can talk more about. Additionally, Reese Antoinette, who is our director of diversity, has championed The Leagues, an organization within Tisch that encourages more relationships between faculty and alumni and current Black students.
One big part of GSO is encouraging cross-program collaborative grants, and we recently launched our application process. So we’re hoping that over winter break students will be able to find peers from other programs to collaborate with on a project, and then we have an allotment of budget that we can allocate toward these grant proposals next semester.
Ryan Grippi: This is the first time we’ve had a member of every Tisch department involved with GSO. Because we are virtual, we are able to meet a lot more efficiently. I love this board and I feel like we are very tight this year.
One of the things that I’m excited about is Pitching Queer Stories: A Cross-Tisch Project Development Workshop that we launched this week. I want it to be seen as a case study for the school on how Tisch can do its own take on the “safe space.” Essentially, creating safe spaces where we can work on art together. For example, if you’re a queer student trying to read your story to your class, that’s a different experience than reading that to other queer people with different life experiences and getting feedback. So we’re addressing this idea of developing content with people who come from similar experiences. If this works out, I hope we can replicate the format for other groups and continue making inclusive spaces here at Tisch.
It should be noted that this is a safe space and workshop for students developing LGBTQ+ stories and not exclusively for LGBTQ+ identifying students. People can be drawn to telling a certain story for a hundred different reasons and it's important not to make assumptions of a person. Still, fostering conversations of representation is important. We have this terrific LGBTQ+ storytelling organization called "The Generations Project'' upcoming to help facilitate that.
In that same vein, challenging circumstances often compel creative breakthroughs. Where have you seen examples of growth and innovation across GSO and the student body?
Mikey Rosenbaum: I’m an artist and a student who is constantly searching for those silver linings. There is the possibility of more involvement right now because we have access to things we wouldn’t normally have access to, simply through our Zoom windows. A lot of access has been taken away from us, of course, but there’s a lot more connectivity and participation from afar that I’m seeing.
As artists we are constantly given hurdles to jump over. This is just one big hurdle that we’re facing. I’m really excited for the future of theatre, for the future of art, not only in this city, but in the rest of the world. What brilliant technology is going to be developed because it had to? What collaborations are going to be born from the availability and ease of virtual participation at this time? We’re seeing mainstream theatre and other art forms shook up in terms of representation, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility—all of those themes that have come out of this hard time will lead to positive change in our industries.
Ryan Grippi: Every artistic choice we have comes from a technological limit at that point in time. If a movie is shot in black-and-white, that's because at one point there was no color. If a portrait is painted and not photographed, that's because at one time there was no camera. I see words like artist and activist as verbs more than nouns. They keep doing things because they'll have it no other way.
In terms of interdepartmental collaboration, it’s not that people don’t want to be involved with this work, it’s just about streamlining and making things efficient. I don’t want this virtual setting to go anywhere—that is, in terms of having something like our student council meetings on Zoom. But I would like it to go further in terms of things like project databases, and making it accessible to see what other people are working on and want to get involved in. We need to create more environments that allow people to find each other.
Heading into next semester, do you have any words of advice or final thoughts to share with the graduate student community?
Mikey Rosenbaum: I won’t pretend that it hasn’t been a difficult semester. I hear from students and faculty that we are more present than in years past, but as a GSO board we would love to be even more active than we are. It is my hope that we can find even more opportunities to encourage collaboration next semester. We really want to hear from the students about what other opportunities we can explore within the constraints that we find ourselves in. I look forward to hearing more from our constituents about the future of our time at Tisch, but also beyond that. If we can put in place more pillars of what’s important to our community and address them through active programming, then hopefully we can plant that seed that can grow after we graduate.
