University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Published: December 1, 2005

By JESSICA KELTZ
Reporter Contributor

Although Sarah Bay-Cheng enjoyed the four years she spent teaching at Colgate University, she said that nothing really compares to being at a major university.

Sarah Bay-Cheng says her joint appointment in the departments of Theatre and Dance and Media Study has offered her the opportunity to meet and work with a wide range of people.
PHOTO: NANCY J. PARISI

"There are just things that a university like UB has—resources, people, variety—that even the best liberal arts college can't really provide," she says. "And I liked the idea of moving to a city. There's something really lovely to be said for Central New York and rural living, but I grew up in a city and I missed being in that kind of environment."

Bay-Cheng began teaching at UB this semester, with a joint appointment as an assistant professor in the departments of Theatre and Dance, and Media Study.

"Through new faculty events I've met a lot of interesting people," she says. "I've been very excited by the range. Being able to have access to both of those worlds—I feel very lucky."

The joint appointment, especially, has worked out well because she gets to spend time around academics who have a broad range of interests. Additionally, she explains, her work has always been about the common ground between different methods of human expression.

Bay-Cheng first became interested in theater when she was growing up in Sacramento, Calif., learning about puppetry from her father, who practices the art. Later, she earned a B.A. from Wellesley College, then moved to Ann Arbor to work toward a Ph.D. at the University of Michigan, which she completed in 2001.

In Michigan, the program in which she studied integrated research and production. Bay-Cheng wrote critical analysis and worked on original theater productions while there.

"There's the perception that you can't do too much or you won't do anything well," she notes. "But my career has evolved with these combinations of different things."

This semester, Bay-Cheng teaches one course in each of her departments: an introductory course in the theater department and a media study course on the theory of avant-garde cinema and popular culture. In the media study course, she and her students examine techniques that started as part of the avant-garde, then surfaced in more popular-style works further down the line.

"Is the term (avant-garde) devoid of meaning in a contemporary context?" she asks her students. "Have we moved beyond it?"

In addition to teaching, Bay-Cheng is working on a variety of other projects, including a book about Gertrude Stein, an anthology of poetic drama and a look at the plays of contemporary playwright Martin McDonagh. She's already written one book about Stein, which looked at the playwright's life and her drama, examining emerging queer identities and avant-garde theater through that lens. The new book will look at Stein and cinema—the playwright's negotiation between popular work and more esoteric writing.

The McDonagh project, she points out, is still in a very early phase.

"It's sort of starting with him, but I'm also seeing the book in terms of (larger views of) film and mass culture," she says.

Bay-Cheng moved to Buffalo over the summer with her partner, Laina Bay-Cheng, an assistant professor in the School of Social Work. They live in Buffalo with their two preschool-aged children.

"I really like living in the city," she says, adding that she lives close to Buffalo State College and one of her neighbors teaches in the theater department there. "We live close to the park, so we see other kids relatively often."

Bay-Cheng also enjoys Buffalo's lively theater scene, something she didn't have access to when living in a more rural area.

Next semester, she's looking forward to teaching a class in mask performance in conjunction with Elliot Caplan, professor and director of the Center for the Moving Image in the Department of Media Study. The course will be integrated with an advanced seminar on the moving image. "The inclusion of media," Bay-Cheng says, "will allow theater students the opportunity to see themselves in mask, and to consider the collaborative possibilities between live performance and pre-recorded media.

"The mask itself is one of the oldest forms of performance," she notes, alluding to the combination of new and old media the class will encourage. "I'm really excited to teach that class. I think it will be a lot of fun."