Ken LaZebnik will lead the new School of Performing Arts.
Ken LaZebnik knows the entertainment business. After nearly 30 years producing film, theater and television across the country, his work will soon bring him back to his childhood home. In June, he will leave Hollywood to be dean of a new school of performing arts at Stephens College.
Rex Stevens, vice president of academic affairs at Stephens College, said he thinks LaZebnik’s success and experience, including work as supervising producer for “Star Trek: Enterprise” and “Touched by an Angel,” will allow him to build a school that combines various entertainment studies such as theater, dance, film, television and radio.
“We looked for someone who had significant professional experience in a wide range of these disciplines,” Stevens said. “In Ken, we found someone who is well-known and will immediately see the interrelationship between these disciplines, allowing him to create an artistic vision.”
Although Stephens’ theater department received a fourth-place ranking in the 2005 Princeton Review Survey, which ranks colleges and college programs, the school has struggled with the efficiency of maintaining six distinct performing arts departments. With an undergraduate population of more than 500, and 150 of those studying performing arts, according to Stevens, he said the college is simply too small to do so.
Stephens is in the midst of a five-year transformation plan that includes changes to the college’s curriculum, eliminating majors with little interest and adding majors that include educational partnerships with MU. Creation of the performing arts school is in line with the college’s survival plan, but is also meant to broaden the students’ experience.
“The entertainment business is one business,” Stevens said, “and people move fluidly from one part to the other.”
LaZebnik agreed in the value of developing Stephens’ artistic vision.
“We are training them for a specific discipline,” LaZebnik said from California, “but by having a chance to experience artistic expression across the disciplines, they will bring
a richer palate into the professional world.”
Not only is LaZebnik eager to start his work at Stephens, he is also eager to return to Columbia. Because his father, the late Jack LaZebnik, taught English at Stephens for almost 30 years, Ken LaZebnik said he has an emotional attachment to the college.
“I think I might be able to pass something on to inspire the next generation of performing artists,” he said.
Even though LaZebnik will begin his work in Columbia this June, he said he will be a “bi-Midwesterner” for the first year as he commutes between Hollywood and Columbia.
“Stephens loves the idea that the person in this chair is still engaged in professional life,” he said. “It will be a win-win situation for the college and myself.”
LaZebnik plans to continue his work on a screenplay in an effort to maintain contacts with people in the entertainment industry. He said that although he will have a full work plate, these contacts will remain valuable for him and the students.
“I’m a writer,” he said. “I can write anywhere.”
Plans for the School of Performing Arts include community involvement through theater and film. When he was last in Columbia, LaZebnik said, he met with Ragtag Cinemacafe in hopes of making Stephens an active partner in the city’s art life. He said he is thrilled at the idea of making Columbia a richer center for an artistic community and hopes the mutual work among Stephens and other arts groups can further that goal.
“More than anything, the arts need encouragement,” he said. “When they are encouraged, the arts will grow and flourish.”