History, Art, and Live Theatre: Students and Professors Spend Four Days in NYC

Dustyn Forbes’s first trip outside of New Brunswick was a memorable one.

The third-year student from Hampton, NB, was one of 29 students that spent four days in New York City with professors Tania Breen, William Forrestall, and Dr. Brad Cross connecting in-class learning to the city’s history, art, and live theatre.

Forbes was focused on seeing as much as possible and soaking in all the Big Apple has to offer.

“I was able to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Historical society, and the Natural History Museum,” Forbes said.  

“I was also fortunate enough to see Waitress on Broadway—a truly emotional and inspirational experience.”

Forbes, who is honouring in Fine Arts and majoring in English with a concentration in Drama, had the opportunity to meet and talk with the cast of Waitress after the show.

“Seeing people doing what I plan on doing for the rest of my life further solidified my ambitions,” he said.  “I was able to pick up on specific techniques the performers used throughout the show and have been working with those in mind.”

Cross, a professor in the Department of History, is part of the New York trip every year. He feels it’s important to provide students with broad, multi-faceted experiential learning opportunities.

“It was essential for me to partner with professors in other disciplines so we could offer a variety of perspectives to students on this experiential learning field trip.  Over the years, Visual Arts, Theatre, Science and Technology Studies, and Music have been great complements to History.”

 Just having the opportunity to experience New York was a thrill for Forbes, but to do so with other dedicated students made it even more rewarding. 

“I feel so fortunate to have been able to take in so much history and art with a group of students who all cared greatly about what was being taught.”