Theatre Education Response Papers

Dear Readers,

Here are my Theatre 430 Response Papers from Spring 2007. Enjoy. Some of them are really crazy. Especially the second one. You should read the second one for sure.

[this first one does not have a title]

Recently I read the foreword, introduction, and first chapter of Learning to Teach Drama: A Case Narrative Approach. I found the foreword, which defended the setup of the book, to be very interesting. It said that the book attempted to bridge teaching theory and practice, and that made sense to me. Sometimes I feel like theory and practice are two separate worlds that never really meet up and do lunch. Rather, in textbooks, theory and practice are like oil and water. But Learning to Teach Drama attempts to, and so far I believe its doing a good job, bridge the gap

In the Introduction, the author writes, “When we frame and structure a previously lived event, the meaning of the event can change… after the recounting of an event, we understand it differently.” I agree. I do believe that an event and the recounting of that event are two very different things. Once you talk about something, you change it. Viewpoints are not perfect, memories fade, and so, as Robert Frost said, Nothing Gold can stay” Moments come and they leave and we can never get them back. We can only remember them through the images and words we have attached to them. I loved it when my high school drama teacher talked about the performance of a play as a moment in time that can never be retrieved. Even a video recording of a play cannot do justice to what the play actually was in that magic moment of performance. I feel as though my feelings would best be described with a poem, “Silentium” by the Russian poet Fëdor Tyútchev.

Silentium

Silence: hide yourself, conceal
your feelings and your dreams –
let them rise and set once more
in the abyss of your spirit,
silent, white stars in the night –
wonder at them – and be silent.

How can one’s own heart speak?
How can another know?
Will they see what you live by?
A thought once spoken is a lie:
troubling the streams, you cloud them –
drink from them – and be silent.

Know how to live deep inside –
there’s a universe in your mind
of mysterious thoughts, enchantments:
they’ll be drowned by World outside
they’ll be driven off by daylight –
hear them singing – and be silent! …

But, as romantic as the idea of escaping into the universes of our minds is, we have to interact with other human beings. Physical and emotional well-being depends upon this interpersonal interaction. Not only that, but, if we are to learn from other people, those other people must talk to us about their experiences. Yes, something is lost in translation, or in changing mediums, but, what else are we gonna do? We’re not telepathic. So, if we are to communicate with others, and if we are to impart of the wisdom we have accrued, we have to blah blah blah.

On to the stuff about acting.

In the first case scenario, the author was worried about throwing students into performing scenes before they were able to handle it. The author seemed to think that progressing in drama was somewhat of a linear process. That is, you start with easy roles and move on to difficult roles. Although I agree with the author somewhat, I don’t think it does irreparable harm to let a middle-schooler play Hamlet if the middle-schooler really really wants to play Hamlet. In fact, I think it’s healthy to let students perform the roles that they are interested in. Sure, a great performance might not result from letting a middle-schooler do Shakespeare, but, hey, it’s not about the performance, it’s about the process.

Overall, it’s a good book so far and I expect it will only improve.

[this second essay does not have a title either, but it's really good!]

To be honest, the first thing to cross my mind when I read chapter 2 was, “Hippie!” Yeah, the student teacher had dimmed the lights and was playing Enya and had the students meditating. The teacher only needed to light some incense and turn on some psychedelic lava lamps to complete her hippiness. But, I shouldn’t be mean. The situation was real and the student teacher is volunteering his or her experiences that we might learn. Uh… I wonder how related guided imagery is to drama. I do find guided imagery kind of neat and relaxing, but I doubt that it’s closely related to theatre. The first scenario was just weird from the get-go. Let me get this straight, the teacher was doing guided imagery to help them come up with ideas for their masks? Why not just brainstorm like normal people by drawing bubbles and lines and words on a piece of paper? The teacher seems to think that altering your state of consciousness and retrieving some subconscious stuff is good to tap into some primeval imaginary land. But I think there’s mental states I don’t wanna get into. Our subconscious is, by definition, below our consciousness, and we ought to keep it that way. So what if in my subconscious I’m cankered with rage or I’m in love with my mother and I wanna kill my father? I’m busy trying to suppress that stuff! I believe that ultra-fanciful imaginations should be chained up, locked up and stricken from the record. The good of society rests on the fact that people suppress their desires, forget the unmentionable, and smile for the camera. Are social norms and mores bad? No! They’re fabulous! They keep my clothes on and my hands to myself! Let us not be deceived by weirdo pseudo-actors who claim their trippy acting methods are better than our straight-laced acting methods. Plenty of wonderful actors act greatly without tapping into the swampy unknown grey matter. Right now I’m taking Asian theatre, and in ancient Asian style, there was none of this Stanislavsky stuff. Acting in ancient Asia was pretending. It was storytelling and performing. Acting was not the metaphysical channeling of spirits or the mystical experimentation of astral projections in dark rooms with people chanting, with sensual elements so arranged to trip you out! (Have you ever heard of astral projection, man?! Some people have claimed to voluntarily leave their bodies, float around and go spy on people, undetected. Or sometimes they go visit dead relatives. Hmmmm…. Sounds a lot like guided imagery to me!) Seriously though, I worry about the intervention of evil spirits. There are ghosts around us, some good, and some evil. If we put our minds into a weird state, such as the state provoked by guided imagery, we’re opening the floodgates to evil-spirit land. Some forms of guided imagery is essentially saying “Come on in, evil specters! Possess me if you want! It’ll help me act for the Spring musical!” Listen, Barb, I’m trying to fight off insanity the best I can. At times, I desperately cling to reality. I defend my identity through normal interactions with other human beings, who help me define myself. Without the constant assurance of loved ones and acquaintances, I might act in ways unbecoming of a gentleman, to say the least. And I’m sure there’s others out there like me. Surely, some students are like that. And I’m not saying that students have mental problems, I’m saying that there’s a real spirit world out there, undetected by science, encroaching on our lives. Theatres are haunted enough as it is. We don’t need ghosts helping us get into character. We don’t need spooks distributing advice on script analysis. And we certainly don’t need demons doling out ideas for papier-mâché masks! So… what have we decided? We have decided 3 things: 1) “guided imagery” and other such exercises invite metaphysical bullies into our classrooms. 2) Enya should be listened to only on private property. 3) Stanislavsky was a bearded Viking whose hobbies included astral projection. Now, Barb, I might sound crazy but I don’t think I’m too far gone. And of course I would be able to tell, through rational means, if I were crazy.

Cracklebop:
Capitalism and Diplomacy in Twenty-First Century Arizona

Wow, the kids in the first case of chapter 3 were pretty bad. Methinks a new teacher would do well to put the Fear of the Teacher into their hearts. I’ve heard that a teacher shouldn’t smile too much in the first few weeks of the school year, that way, the students are afraid of you and they’ll behave. I don’t know if I’d go that far, but I think teachers need to be forceful now and then. How forceful? I don’t know. Depends on the situation, I guess. Classroom management is rough; I’m not experienced enough to preach about the way to classroom perfection.

I was struck by a line on page 40: “I learned that listening and trust building is best when it comes out of the drama itself instead of being forced on students.” I believe that a proper study of good drama will get a class to behave sooner than a discussion about behavior will get them to behave. Let me tell a personal anecdote that should explain what I mean. I was bit by the acting bug during my sophomore in high school, when I was enrolled in my first drama class ever. Our class wrote (well, our class brainstormed it and then the teacher really wrote it.) and performed an anti-drug play in front of the whole middle school. I played the little brother of a drug addict. I had done some acting stuff in front of twenty or so of my classmates, but this was the first time I had done anything in front of a whole sea of people. I was so nervous, and I thought there was no way they could all hear me, so I delivered my lines really really loud. (By the way, some of the best acting advice I ever got was from my Dad. He said, before one of my plays, “Now Telemoonfa, be sure n’ talk real loud n’ real slow, so I can understand what yer sayin’.”) Being on stage in front of that many people was a rush. It was a thrill. It was electric! It was magic! Plus, being in that play, I got to rub elbows with Brian Downing, the oh-so-serious 11th grade actor! From then on, I loved drama. That performance really matured me. I treated my drama class differently after that performance. And while I’m sure I caused some problems in my drama classes after that, I could never forget the magical afternoon when hundreds of middle-schoolers saw me act.

I really think that if students have great experiences like the one I had, then they will come to respect drama. The students will want to learn the craft, the history, and the theories of theatre. Therefore, if the students love the subject, there should be no classroom management issues. Of course, this is a little idealistic. No matter how much a teacher or a student loves drama, there are certainly going to be bad days.

But I want to return to the line that struck me. “I learned that listening and trust building is best when it comes out of the drama itself instead of being forced on students.” I hope that when I’m a teacher I can let the drama itself work its magic. Do you really have to be an awesome teacher to teach an awesome play? The work stands on its own. The teacher needs to not get in the way of students loving a book, or a play. My European Literature professor said that an old wise teacher once told him, “If you’re ever teaching Don Quixote, and don’t know what to say, just flip open the book to anywhere, start reading aloud, and it will be good.” Miguel De Cervantes has done the hard work for you, says I. Let the students get Quixote from Cervantes, not filtered through a mediocre teacher. Let the students feel the magic. If they feel the magic, there shouldn’t be any classroom management problems.

But again I must confess, teenagers can be cruel, and no matter how much you love drama, they might not love it too, and they may even think you’re nerdy for loving drama. Alas.

As I read Learning to Teach Drama, I hear a lot of “Oh, the class isn’t ready to handle performance.” I don’t completely understand what this means. I guess if the students were rudely interrupting monologues, then the students wouldn’t be ready to perform. But I think sometimes you just need to be thrown into the spotlight. Ready or not, here performance comes! I refer you to my previous anecdote. I could have been prepared more; I could have been made to suffer through an eternity of embarrassing trust exercises, but instead, the teacher saw it fit to put us all in the spotlight. And I turned out just fine.

For the rest of this response, I refer you to the following quote on page 42: “Our school practices teach our students to be self-centered. At school we see the honor roll, the prestige of athletic competition, the refocusing of programs to individualized computer instruction and modularization, and the concentration on job skills rather than education.” Amen. Today’s schools are tragically driven by competition. In our capitalistic society, there are too many contests happening. Students feel constantly ranked and graded. Students aren’t encouraged to look after each other so much as they are encouraged to beat one another at a sport or get a higher test score, or whatever. But wait, there’s hope! It starts with a D. The second letter is R… OK I’ll just tell you it’s DRAMA! Yes, Drama! Drama can save the school by offering a cooperative learning environment. The very nature of theatre requires collaboration! Everyone’s a winner!

Now wait, I know what you’re thinking: “How can performing a few silly skits divert the primeval human urge to conquer one’s perceived foes?” To you, my hypothetical dissenting reader, I say drop dead.

Shame, Learning, Page 71, Marx, Theatre’s Historical Marginalization, and Perfection: All Explained in Five Easy Paginal Installments! (Paginal: of or refering to pages)

It’s a shame that drama is often the last fine arts option for students. Sadly, when kids get kicked out of band or choir or whatever, they come to drama. And so drama classes are sometimes composed of a disproportionate number of rabble-rousers. But part of me roots for the underdog. I’ve seen the movies where a new teacher in an inner-city school gets a group of gang members and ragamuffins and whippersnappers and then voila! An hour or so later, the kids are going to Harvard! It would be great to show a school administration what you could do with a troubled drama class. But then again, maybe that stuff is just movie stuff.

Learning is a two way process. It requires effort on the part of a teacher and a student. To a certain extent, the learner is responsible for his or her own education. Sadly, many students don’t see it that way; some students expect the teacher to wave a magic wand to fill up their heads with knowledge and skills.

Page 71 says “I do feel it’s important to make sure that there is some type of performance or presentation of students’ work.” I agree. In a dram classroom, there must be a show. Humans are generally, speaking, social creatures. They need interaction with other people. They also need a sense of real-world context for their classroom activities. Showcasing or publication is not only important in a drama classroom, but also in an English classroom. An indispensable part of the writing process is publication. (Publication could mean real publication in a magazine or journal, or it could mean just reading a poem in front of the class, or in front of elementary students, etc.) When students feel that their work connects to the real world, the work immediately becomes more meaningful, and their work improves. (I could go look up some research to back me up, but whatever.) I’m afraid that students feel that nobody listens to and nobody cares about them. If we want meaningful learning to occur, we must give students frequent opportunities to interact with the real world, instead of the sometimes forced and hokey school atmosphere. Examples showing interaction with the real world include reading the newspaper and looking for bias and propaganda and connotation, or publishing a school newspaper, or performing a children’s play for an elementary school, or putting on a real play for the public, etc.

I’m not sure how connected my next paragraph is to teaching drama, but... Students feeling disconnected from their schoolwork might be like workers feeling disconnected from their work. I remember reading in an anthropology textbook a while back the definition of alienation, and I think it had to something to do with the effect of modern work on people’s lives. Work changed immensely during the industrial revolution. Henry Ford changed factory work even more with his assembly line. Often times, in an industrial society, a man has to work in a factory, doing something as mundane as pushing one button, over and over and over, all day, every day, on an assembly line. The man receives a paycheck, which he exchanges for paper money, which is again exchanged for food. Besides being boring, this could be damaging to the man’s soul. You see, the connection between pushing one button and sustaining life is too far removed. Inside humans is a whole lot of instinct to hunt and gather, and maybe to sow and to reap, to provide for one’s self and loved ones and offspring. (Some disagree with me here. It’s always risky when you talk about human nature; people have been trying to figure out what that is for years.) But I feel there is a primal urge in a man to survive, to manipulate the naturally occurring elements about him to survive. Hunting, planting, harvesting, eating, warming: these things are natural, in a Henry David Thoreau type of way. How romantic is the idea of a man planting his own garden, eating his own food, teaching his young the ways of survival! He sees directly the correlation between his toil and his bread. In stark contrast to this type of work, modern industrial societies require factories. Thus modern workers feel alienated. Workers feel that they are a tool. I don’t claim to be an expert on Marx, but he came up with great thoughts on this subject. Here’s some stuff I copied and pasted from the Internet:

Alienation in the labour process

In a nutshell Marx's Theory of Alienation is the contention that in modern industrial production under capitalist conditions workers will inevitably lose control of their lives by losing control over their work. Workers thus cease to be autonomous beings in any significant sense.
In Marx's thought, the worker under capitalism is alienated because the products of his / her labor are removed from the worker's direct control, and replaced by "foreign", "alienated" products (e.g. money).

As the concept of alienation is developed in Marx' Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), the worker is seen to be alienated in several interconnected ways: (1) from the product of his work (which departs from him into the "system"), (2) from work itself (and hence - since Marx conceives of the human being as a fundamentally creative animal - from himself, from his innermost essence as a creative being), (3) from the species-nature of humanity as such (since creative, productive activity ceases to be a goal in itself and is transformed into a means for individual survival), and (4) from other humans (since their survival competes with his).

Perhaps this is a bit of a stretch, but students feel alienated because they don’t have enough interaction with the real world. To the students, their work is meaningless- it produces nothing valuable. The only person who sees the results of a student’s toil is the teacher, who grades it for a minute or so, records it in his or her grade book, and then usually forgotten.

We must restore man to his garden.

We must return students to their natural world.

Moving on, drama has been slighted historically. In Shakespeare’s day, rowdy guys left London City limits to go see a play. Hollywood is constantly demonized by Christianity. Drama seems unscrupulous, etc. Drama people look bad on the outside. When approaching a drama teaching position, I feel that we should acknowledge the underlying subconscious American thought stuff if we are to understand why drama classes get snubbed in high schools. Drama classes, many think, is where the weirdoes and stoners and homosexuals and losers go. It’s a sad thing, but I feel the belittling collective American attitude about it. And I don’t think I’m being too much of a victim here. But we who practice the arts of theatre know the grand secret. We are experienced in the magical truth. We know from whence our life-juice cometh.

Once again moving on, the book said, “I was disappointed that I couldn’t get more accomplished.” After talking to the students when the show was over, I felt quite differently. They told me how much they had learned and that it had been a wonderful experience.” Sometimes I want perfection in a performance. When I get less than perfection, I may consider the undertaking to be a failure. But I bet plenty of people learned in the process. I need to remind myself, “It’s OK, I’m doing better than I think I am, etc.” Even if a show doesn’t go so well, well, hopefully the cast and crew learned stuff anyway.

Moving on again, I’m scared to have special needs students in my classes. I have not had too much interaction with these types of people in my life. This article got me thinking about it though. I did have this epiphany: I could theorize forever about the ideal school, about mainstreaming vs. segregation, the purpose of special education, and the way society views drama, but eventually I have to get down to the nuts and bolts. I have to accept what I’m given and do the best I can. Perfection is not to be attained in this life; perfection is to be sought. Jesus and Plato back me up on this one. While we seek perfection, we need to operate in this world of imperfection.

Tough Times for Teachers

“Expect the Unexpected” was an emotionally hard chapter to read. I hope I don’t have to deal with any of these hard situations, like an extremely disturbed student, suicide, or sexual harassment, when I’m a teacher. One part of me thinks, “Why did we read about this? There were no answers to these troubling situations.” But this uncertainty is exactly what I appreciate about Learning to Teach Drama. It seems to me to be an unorthodox textbook, and I like that. There aren’t clear-cut answers to everything in life, and it’s nice not to have to read about all the answers that textbook-writers have contrived.

In response to the first case, some people are just downers, and you need to get away from them. I have this friend, who I have not seen or communicated with in a long time, and she’s poor and she’s manic depressive and she’s smart but she dropped out of high school. Every time I talk to her it seems like the world is unfair, everybody’s a jerk, and I just feel sad. But I get away from her for a while and it seems like everything is good again, when I surround myself with happy people. Rick, the emotionally messed up kid in chapter 6, seems like a downer to me. People are better off when he’s absent. Dang, that’s harsh. But true. Rough stuff. Emotionally hard. Sometimes people need to be removed from class. Where will they go? I don’t know- away from my class; that’s all I know. I can’t speak from real teaching experience; I have not been a teacher. But I do think that rules must be imposed upon students. They are not mature enough to handle freedom. They are aware of what they are able to do, but unaware of what they should do. Rules rules rules. Rules are important.

In response to the second case, about suicide: Rough. No answers. All I would say is don’t exploit the death. Don’t try to turn the tragic situation into a learning experience. Don’t do improv. exercises about the death. Don’t reenact the suicide- don’t try to learn, in a classroom, from anything so close to home. Be quiet. Be respectful. Behave like you would behave at a funeral.

In response to the third case, about sexual harassment: Yikes. Bad situation. I feel like since I’m 24, married, and kind of mature, a situation similar to the woman’s in “the Places I Went” won’t happen to me. But I’m sounding self-centered and self-absorbed. It’s a shame that stuff like that happens anywhere to anybody. I think the student teacher and the problem student should have been separated.

Now that I’ve finished the book, some general concluding remarks are in order. I loved the personal quality of Learning to Teach Drama. By “personal quality” I mean I really felt as though I was part of a conversation. A friendly conversation. I felt like I was conversing informally with student teachers and hearing about their experiences. And at times I fancied while I was writing these response papers, that the writers could hear me. Great book.

Sincerely,
Telemoonfa