Good Theatre & Teaching Philosophy All Rolled Into One

I wrote this recently and while it is a little less polished than it should be, I had a lot of revelations about my thoughts on theatre and teaching theatre that I think are important to share.

---

As a working theatre artist, my philosophy on teaching is deeply intertwined with my philosophy about theatre as an institution. Thus, let me quickly outline my thoughts on what makes good theatre.

First, good theatre is truly collaborative. By this I mean it is more than a few artists coming together to make one artistic piece. True theatrical collaboration is about a few artists coming together to influence each other’s work and input in creating one cohesive artistic piece. In order to do this, a scenic designer must not only welcome suggestions from the lighting designer about, say, what material is used to build the set in order to facilitate an interesting look scenically and through light, but also know enough to suggest specific alternative footwear to the costume designer if the deck poses trouble for an actor who is supposed to appear barefoot. Furthermore, I believe truly collaborative theatre allows the designers to work alongside, rather than subordinately, with the director so that all ideas can and will be considered.

Second, good theatre is more than the final product and the bottom line. While it is important to create a product that will garner recognition enough to get the proverbial “bums in seats,” theatre cannot be an example of “the ends justify the means.” Theatre is an art form that has allowed countless playwrights, directors, designers, actors, and audience members explore society from new and engaging ways. When we answer “Why are we doing this show?” with answers like “It is a crowd-pleaser” or “It will make money” we are not doing the art justice. As theatre artists we must engage with the production from start to finish, finding the important reasons to tell any story, from Oklahoma! to Orpheus Descending, from The Cherry Orchard to The Little Mermaid. Furthermore, theatre is a living, breathing art-form. It changes in the design, rehearsal, and performance process because of the many different people—including the audience—that are a part of making it happen. Good theatre and good theatre-artists recognize that not only are the public performances important, but also the journey from conceptualization to realization.

Lastly, good theatre is vital to our society. Sadly, theatre’s popularity is rapidly dwindling in the face of the instant, often-free media offered up by our ever-wired life in the twenty-first century. Too often theatres face concerns over the rising age of their dwindling audiences. Nevertheless, as theatre artists we know that theatre is important. Why else would we be in the business? But, more than that, good theatre is important. As hinted above, it is easy to look at theatre as merely a money-making operation and pander to many audience’s desires to be transported from their mundane lives by special effects and happy endings. While there are some truly remarkable plays and productions that do happen to have those elements, more often than not, much of that theatre is Peter Brook’s definition of deadly theatre. Historically accurate, devoid-of-life productions of Shakespeare for the Canon’s sake. Ridiculous farces that make the audience laugh but leave them with hardly a new thought in their head about life. But good theatre, vital theatre, is more often the spark that reignites the people’s passion for our art. Productions of August: Osage County, Ruined, Next to Normal, Spring Awakening, Rent, The Lion King, to name a few, all brought audiences back to the theatre through gripping stories or amazing theatrical magic (or both). And all of those productions of good theatre proved to artists and audiences alike that good theatre is a vital, unmatched way of dissecting and understanding our world. Only through this live, collaborative art form can the audience commune in real-time with living, breathing, nearby people on and off stage. Through these types of productions theatre becomes, even for an instant, important again.

Now, how does this translate into my teaching philosophy? Do I envision myself using my role as teacher and mentor to grandstand about these points on theatre? No. My passion to be an artist who makes and takes part in good theatre drives me to be an inspiring and demanding teacher of theatre. I want to give my students the tools to define good theatre for themselves and know how they can contribute to that theatre if they choose to pursue it as a career.

Theatre as a collaborative art form is most directly applicable to my work as a teacher. While I was more than content to work solo on projects during my time as a student, group work and discussions allowed me to grow the most as a critical thinker and artist. As a teacher I translate my desire to bounce ideas off of people into encouragement of a collaborative way of learning and, thus, creating art. As a design professor I envision projects that mimic the collaborative process of designing with 2 (or more) other designers and even a director. This teaches students about the process of designing, and encourages a growth in communication and public-speaking skills. It also can create the space for students to learn about very important traits as a collaborative artist: humility and compromise. Undergraduate theatre students often have the most exciting ideas about art (because they don’t know what is “impossible” yet) but also have the most challenges either overcoming or building up their egos. A good theatre teacher will nurture the exciting possibilities that the untested artist brings to the table while identifying which students need to learn how to step back and those that need encouragement to step forward in sharing ideas about a given project.

My second assertion that theatre is more than the final product and the bottom line is more in line with my philosophy on (theatre) education as a whole. It speaks to the question of what is more important, the process or the product. Many of the educational institutions I have had contact with have struggled with this concept. It is easy to say on paper that the theatre department is committed to the process of putting on a show, but, when push comes to shove, the product takes precedence over the process because of ticket sales or institutional oversight. I firmly believe that my role as a theatre teacher and mentor is to highlight the process as a learning opportunity for the student as student and as artist. In her book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp asserts that the best productions for her have been critical failures because she learned the most from them as an artist. Through critical evaluation of the artistic work during and after the process, I wish to instill in young artists critical thinking both for their own, their peers’, and their mentors’ work. As well as encourage them to see that the act of making art is as vital as the final artistic product.

Furthermore, as a woman in a male-dominated area of theatre with an underprivileged childhood, I personally have struggled to define what the process of design is for me. As a teacher I not only expose my students to the traditional design process as discussed by the forefathers of design (Robert Edmund Jones, Adolph Appia, Lee Simonson), but also encourage students to define their own process based on how they artistically interpret and experience space. During my time at UNCG I was fortunate enough to read and discuss new design pedagogy, including that of veteran theatre professor Richard Isaacks of UT Austin. He has challenged the script as the sole jumping off point for design, instead creating exercises that force students to create the visual narrative and then apply it to the written word. As an artist I’ve challenged myself to break out of the process in this way with great and eye-opening results. As a teacher I aim to challenge my students to approach design from every angle and to question not only what they are choosing but why they are choosing it to represent the world of the play. This ties directly into my paper on the intersection of feminist theory and the design process, which is less about a gendered approach to design but more about the individual’s response and synthesis of their world into the picture created for the stage and what role that plays in creating meaning for the actors and the audience.

Finally, as a student of theatre for seven years I was painfully aware of the professors that no longer cared about our art. I worked with professors who had been in academic theatre for so long that they were out of touch with the current trends in theatre and only viewed the art form through an academic lens. While academic theatre can be vital, it is often too bounded by curriculum and community desires to challenge its audiences and artists. As a theatre teacher I believe it is important to continue to work professionally. This not only allows me to continue to grow as an artist, but keeps me up to date with artistic and thematic trends that my students will face as they pursue a career in theatre. I aim to mentor them on their theatre, not merely my own.

Paula Vogel on Darwinian Theatre and Love Letters

This evening I had the opportunity to listen to Paula Vogel in a question and answer setting at UNCG. Like Tony Kushner last year, my head feels like it is about to explode. In a good way.

Professor Vogel said a lot of really amazing things, much of which I am still trying to process. But one thing she mentioned was the importance of theatre pedagogy that does not insist that there will be only one person standing at the end of the program. Instead, fostering an environment that encourages people to collaborate (shock!) and work together, to lift one another up in our pursuits and, in turn, be lifted up by our peers, that is what we should be striving for in education (and the art form). As a student and (soon-to-be) educator, I definitely agree with this opinion. I sincerely believe that it's not about hoarding the opportunities and connections, but instead sharing with peers, students, mentees, and fellow artists the same things you hope to have shared with you. It goes back to Twyla Tharp's idea about generosity and how, in this collaborative art form, we must work together as a team to make our art viable, desirable, and beautiful. From these two amazing women is an important idea about art and theatre. I will definitely keep coming back to this because I know I was fortunate enough to have people who were generous and did not treat my education like a Darwinian fight for survival.

The other thing Professor Vogel mentioned was that her plays are Love Letters to the actors, directors, audience, and people who inspired her. I love that. I love the idea that as a playwright she is in conversation with everyone who will make her play come to life (and that she admits that designers [and directors] will know where the furniture should go) through her work. Sometimes I feel like designers don't give the play enough credit as a piece of work by a person. They take it for face value and don't wonder about who wrote it, what had happened to them, what was going on around them. I think it is important to remember, just as we were taught in our English classes, that to understand the written word, one must understand the writer. Oh, so important. And to think of it as a Love Letter, written to the creative team, that makes it that much more special and important.

In short, this was an amazing evening. I feel energized to work with amazing artists and put my philosophies to work. Thank you to the anonymous donor that helped pay the honorarium for Professor Vogel's visit. And I cannot wait for Suzan-Lori Parks keynote next weekend!

Feminist Design & Design Realized

This is going to be quick since I am running behind today already and, well, there isn't much to say right this second because there is going to be a lot to say in about a week.

First thing, I am still reading Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit and I had a realization today about how useful this book is employing feminist design techniques and, thus, how much I wish I'd had this book when I wrote my paper last year. (And I'm attempting to get this paper presented at conferences... but have no time to update it with this new bit. Sadness.) Anyway, there was a passage today that specifically struct me as pertinent to my feminist design ponderings. In the chapter about spine, Tharp says the following:

"There's an obvious reason why, as a choreographer, I am constantly groping for a spine. Dance is preverbal; it doesn't have the writer's advantage of using language to establish meaning and intent. The vocabulary of dance is movement, not words. So I need something more in the form of an idea, an image, a memory, a metaphor to make my intentions comprehensible to the audience. I have to articulate this to myself because I won't be using words to articulate it in public."

In my notebook I wrote: Yes! This is why it is important to analyze your visual language as a female/feminist designer: you do not have words--it's all nonverbal! One must know your visual cues and those of the audience. Otherwise communication fails and either nothing is understood or the wrong thing is understood.

To elaborate, in Ringer's four questions about feminist design she calls on us to ask these questions: "How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages? How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?" In being aware of how I process visual language, I can better make decisions about how to communicate my ideas to the audience because I am cognizant of how visual language is created in myself and thus the population as a whole. And to be aware of how nonverbal the art of theatrical design is, is necessary in order to not just assume what I put on stage is going to make sense to the audience.

Take Oklahoma! for instance (which is the design realized part). I was giving a mini-talk about it to my stagecrafts class last week. I began by talking about my inspiration and process of turning that inspiration into a design. And then today, I got to see the theatrical realization of that design (in part) before the cast's first rehearsal in Aycock. The translation of my idea into reality has a bit of disconnect because the cast (as they are the only ones that have seen it yet) don't know the awe-inspiring, personal connection I have with the landscape of Northern California that I was inspired by. HOWEVER! My ability to interpret that into a majestic backdrop of sky and clouds atop a sumptuous yellow "waves of grain" gave them pause. They were swept up. I had achieved the awe-inspiring by creating the magic, even if the personal was left to be my own secret in my concept.

Now, think, if I had been more versed in how I viewed/interpreted/created the visual cues and how important my role as the nonverbal story-teller, how different (or better?) would my design be?

With this rolling around in my head I am ready to work on Pericles because nothing is getting by me now.

Generosity

Another installation of my thoughts on Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit. I've designated a journal I had laying about to write thoughts and notes in as I read the rest of the book, each page full of things that could jump-start a conversation or a blog post. However, at the end of her chapter entitled "Accidents Will Happen" she discusses the importance of generosity.

In the chapter itself she discusses the idea that luck is not so magical and fleeting as many would have you believe, but instead is a skill born of preparation and dedication to your project, and the willingness to and ability to notice when to take an opportunity when it presents itself.

"You have to allow for the suddenly altered landscape, the change in plan, the accidental spark--and you have to see it as stroke of luck rather than a disturbance of your perfect scheme" (120).

I could speak specifically about her call for planning and preparation that does not hem in the creative process, but instead let me go back to the activity that follows this chapter about being generous because it speaks to more than this creative habit she writes on.

"Generosity is luck going in the opposite direction, away from you. If you're generous to someone, if you do something to help him out, you are in effect making him lucky." (136)

Tharp's discussion of luck really being the skill to recognize opportunity is great. But this call to, essentially, create good karma in order to generate luck as well is the most fascinating. The highly collaborative nature of theatre is like a microcosm of the world at large. No one exists in a vacuum and people's happiness and goodwill is dependent on the happiness and goodwill that is given them from those around them. In theatre, the free exchange of ideas is an act of generosity. No one artist claims importance in the process by insisting that they are the mastermind of the artistic product of the team. There is no expectation that if the lighting designer makes a suggestion that turns into the solution that gels the entire design together that the rest of the team owes it to them. And so collaboration becomes an exercise in being completely selfless and generous with your fellow artists.

Tharp goes on to say that generosity is also linked to good teaching:

"... you invest everything you have in your [students]. You have to be so devoted to them and to the finished creation that your [students] become your heroes. It takes courage to be generous like that, to believe that the better the [students] look... the better the scene will play and the more satisfying the work itself will be. Without generosity, you'll always hold something back. The finished work shows it, and your audience knows it." (136-7)

This struck a chord when I first read it and I wrote quickly and furiously in my little notebook about how important this is to educational theatre. (By the way, I replaced "dancers" with "students" in the above quote, just to make it more relevant to my point, rather than Tharp's life as a choreographer.) I believe that the most successful productions at the educational level benefit from teachers and mentors that wholly adopt this idea of generosity as the guide the students towards success. There is no room in educational theatre for a teacher to grandstand, even if they are the designer or director or actor. Even in those instances, being generous with your process and knowledge pays forward to your students' own endeavors and will mean that the world will hand you the opportunity to be the recipient of someone else's generosity.

On an even more simple level, I think about my first day teaching Intro to Stagecrafts this semester. As I stood before the class, basically regurgitating the exact same spiel about the syllabus and handouts as the faculty and staff lecturers had just the section before, a lifelong dream became reality. That's right, ever since Kindergarten I wanted to be a teacher. I saw value and importance in the act of filling young minds with information about the world. Even though college students can be jaded punks at times, this semester has been one affirming day after another that teaching is a part of my future. And though I had always thought it was a bit cheesy, I told them, as I explained how the class would work and where they could get their notes and when I would be available to answer questions if they got lost, I said in earnest, "We want you to succeed. So don't be afraid to ask for help." Truly, though I'm only responsible for laying the foundation of knowledge about lighting instruments and actual measurements of lumber, it's also about inculcating in them a sense of empowerment and responsibility to their art form if they so choose to follow theatre as their path. Sure, it will mean more time answering silly questions or more time preparing extra lectures (about design!), but the gift of knowledge is my act of generosity. I've had some wonderful teachers and I hope to continue to have the opportunity to work with amazing mentors. I hope that this generosity will bring me that luck.

Quietness Without Loneliness

I realize it is not quite Sunday, dear readers, but I was reading Twyla Tharp's book The Creative Habit before nodding off to sleep here in Georgia and was struck with inspiration for this week's post. I suspect that this book will be a source of many posts over the next few months as it was recommended by and now required reading for one of my professors.

The premise of the book is a discussion of how to make creativity habitual, something that does not leap out at us blindly, but a product of our imaginations that we can conjure as we need to. Tharp discusses the necessity of schedules and rituals, and, in the most recent page, the importance of solitude and lack of distractions.

For the last few months I have, miraculously, had the graduate office space to myself. My apologies to the recent graduates and incoming students, but this solitude has been a blessing. I joked, at first, about the emptiness of it and how lonely it felt, but the honest truth is that I work best when I am alone.

This has often been the case.

I did not do well in group projects in school, often ending up doing it all on my own. The year that I shared a room with my younger sister in high school was, perhaps, the single worst year of school I ever experienced. And, up until this beautiful, lonely summer, I work in my apartment bedroom more than my office despite not being equipped, really, with any supplies or proper space because of the simple fact that I can close the door and shut out the world.

Now, Tharp argues against distractions of all kinds (from watching movies during the lifespan of a project to ignoring numbers to not playing music in the background). These things make sense. But she also discusses the importance of solitude, and the state of mind that is a "quietness without loneliness." She says it is a form of meditation, but instead of clearing the mind, you let it wander. You embrace the mind's randomness and pay attention to the patterns that emerge while it is allowed to flit about unfettered.

Because I do prefer to have some background music and I don't intentionally avoid movies or TV during a project (though it seems to happen for time reasons alone), this idea of letting the mind wander captured my attention. But even more so, because of the place I am at personally and a philosophical conversation I am currently embroiled in, I feel that "quietness without loneliness" is applicable to life at the general level.

In the statement alone, I feel there is a call to accepting the quiet moments, the lulls of life, without seeing them as dull and lonely. In a society obsessed with relationships, practically screaming for a constant search for your "one and only soul mate," we often forget the importance of the time we have just for ourselves. This time that allows us to realize who we are as a single person, what our hopes, dreams, likes and dislikes are without the complications of another person whom we are trying to please.

I feel that for theatre artists, especially, the moments unfettered by relationships/family can provide us with the perfect time to not only explore dreams and opportunities we could not otherwise, but also to see how our creativity arises from within ourselves alone.

I suppose that this post is directly related to last week's, and I appreciate how life seems to present answers in due course when I am at my most confused and befuddled. After last week I did send an e mail to Anita regarding work with her next year. I have also begun making plans to visit potential theatre communities that I am not yet familiar with in order to decide upon places I could move to and start working. Nevertheless, it is in Tharp's words that I see the necessity of this time in my life as a honing of my creativity and thus myself. I feel that this moment in my life is what is needed and was meant to happen in order to allow all of my thoughts and ideas and feelings to be heard. And to understand and feel and know that quietness of all kinds is not a lonely venture.