Theatre Education, Pedagogy, and Training

In this last post in his series, Stephen Spotswood reports on the piece of theatre his students devised, and muses on its successes and everyone’s willingness to participate.

In this installation, David Dudley interviews Christopher Shinn of The New School’s MFA playwriting program about how this educational option works.

Wendy MacLeod shares her experience at the Kenyon Playwrights Conference, a June intensive where students get to workshop their writing and learn from many people in the field.

In this installation, David Dudley interviews David Henry Hwang of Columbia University’s MFA Playwriting Program, a program that believes there is more than one way to write a good play.

David Dudley talks to Caridad Svich of NoPassport about the origins of the alliance, and what kind of education her model can offer potential collaborators.

Based on interviews with local teachers and students about the current educational climate, Forgotten Futures creates space for discussion of the dysfunction plaguing Chicago Public Schools.

The Theatre School at DePaul University has been around for a long time. It's no wonder, given that they offer degree programs in nearly every discipline one could hope for, from playwriting to directing, scenic design to arts management, costume design to dramaturgy, one can acquire a top-notch education at DePaul, where theory and practice are afforded equal emphasis. This round, I interview John Culbert, Dean of The Theatre School at DePaul.

I was often cast in small roles or the chorus. I learned to watch and listen. Creating a point of view about everything that happens onstage—even when I didn’t have a single line—was invaluable experience. I could make up whatever backstory I wanted. The many pages and youths I played didn’t have strict binary restrictions, so in my heart I was the saucy kitchen wench.

When we teach, how do we discuss something truly important? Specifically, how could I talk about the murder of an unarmed black man the same age as my students? What is taught in the not teaching? What is not covered in a course? When we omit difficult conversations or troubling current events, what does that teach students about what is important, worthy of attention, urgent?

Despite profound decentering from its source, Cuban theater has had a consistent representation in Miami. Mirrored by a repertoire of embodied theatrical practices, Cuban theater constitutes an important system of knowing and transmitting knowledge about Cuban culture. Using its own positioning, these epistemologies, in conjunction with actor’s training have gone unrecognized; yet, they have survived expatriation in the midst of divergent perspectives on both how to perform theater as knowledge, as well as how to generate knowledge through theater. Sainetes (or one- act farces), musical comedies, zarzuelas, and serious dramas in particular, are the fabric of this historically and culturally specific communicative process. Overall, the retention of the art form and the formation and maturity of Miami’s exiled actors has depended on the Cuban modern theater performed in exile.

Anne Towns shares an overview of the Alliance Theatre Collision Project. 

Whether it is race, place, ethnicity, or personhood, Cuban and Cuban diasporic performances push the boundaries of linear logics of the body towards a tapestry of experiential becoming. Here, I would like to offer my experiences and reflections of this kind of world-making practice from my fieldwork with Cuban spirit mediums, or espiritistas.

Since 1984, Steppenwolf Theatre Company has offered internships to students, graduates, and others to experience the inner workings of a professional theater from every angle. The company has developed a collection of programs purposed to identify, train and mentor a diverse group of students, graduates and early-career professionals in arts administration, stage management and production.

Ashley Laverty and Rivka Rocchio reflect on maintaining relationships during a theatre production

Making the decision to acquire an education is more often than not an easy one. To do most any job in America, one must acquire a bachelor's degree. For those who wish to pursue a career in the theater, this is no different: one must undertake a program of education or work-related training. If you have decided to pursue a career in the theater, and are in the process of gathering meaningful information to help determine which programs you ought to give serious consideration, this blog series is for you.

The Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC) in downtown Los Angeles is looking for ten arts leaders of various backgrounds who represent the future leadership of the American theater to apply to our newly minted Artistic Leaders Fellowship. The Fellowship will take place from October 1 through November 21, 2014 at The LATC, and run concurrently with the 2014 LATC Encuentro—the largest National Latina/o theater festival in over twenty-five years. // El Los Angeles Theater Center (LATC), localizado en el centro de Los Ángeles, busca a 10 diversos líderes en las artes que representan el futuro liderato del Teatro Americano para que soliciten la nueva beca llamada Artistic Leaders Fellowship. Este programa se llevará a cabo del 1 de octubre al 21 de noviembre en el LATC en paralelo con el Encuentro LATC 2014—el festival nacional latino más grande en la nación en los pasados veinticinco años.

Playwright Gabriel Jason Dean and Director Lindsay Amer discuss "risky plays", queer characters and narratives, and young audiences.

Theater for students of color is needed in the University: to speak about these issues and at the same time to break the “Berkeley Bubble” by showing that issues students study about in their classes—including, race, class and gender—have a real impact on campus life.

Before college, I found myself in the stories of Shanley and Shepard—but now I was only getting cast in parts such as Mexican pregnant girl, homeless person, or getting included in all non-white casts. I am half Mexican and a quarter Lebanese, but that never mattered before. Growing up, white stories were reflected all around me so much that I thought I was white.

The only reason that I am alive, sober, and surviving is because I have community and the performing arts. The performing arts community offers the perfect setting to share my story without being judged or condemned. It has been the performing arts that has kept me from being yet another veteran statistic. By examining and acting Shakespeare through my veteran lens I was able to understand what happened to me.

Dani Snyder-Young writes about the Chicago-based Albany Park Theatre Project, a youth theatre ensemble. She reviews APTP's 2014 remounted production of God's Work, at the Goodman Theatre.

Holly L. Derr gives an overview of new and professionally-tied graduate theatre programs in Los Angeles.

We produced "A Christmas Carol" and adapted our own versions of "Peter Pan" and "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe". The students reveled in the attention from their sold-out audiences. These children weren’t just spectators; they were the stars of the show. To a child who is constantly told, "You won’t be able to do that," by teachers or medical professionals, this was an unexpected feat.