Critical Links Year 2

We're back in Cincinnati for the first of three meetings in year two of our Critical Links in Theatre Education project. The original 12 teachers are now ten. It is amazing, really, that ten theatre teachers could find the time to commit to this process. As one after the other of us noted today, our school years are packed full of shows and all the rehearsal time leading up to all those opening nights.

It isn't uncommon for a high school theatre teacher to be responsible for 8 or 9 productions per school year. And at the same time, we have lessons to plan for all the classes we teach. As a middle school teacher, I don't direct as many shows -- however, I always find ways to cast many students in my shows and I can testify to the exhaustibility factor in working with 50 - 80+ 4th through 8th graders per production!

Nevertheless, the ten of us found the time and the motivation to investigate a critical teaching question last year. Our projects are almost ready to be revealed online. We had a sneak preview today and we were all suitably impressed with not only the individual work, but with seeing a collection of research studies in educational theatre. Once the work is officially released to the public, I will post a link here for sure.

Looking at the work today was a powerful stimulus for beginning this "critical" second year of the project. Each of us have been asked to become facilitators of the project in our home districts. We will be leading other teachers through the process of rigorous inquiry into individual teaching questions. We are also being encouraged to work on a question along with our team members. It could be continuing the question from the first year or a new one entirely. I have a good idea what mine will be and I do intend to report on it in this blog as I did with the voice and movement training from last year.

On a personal level, I am so grateful for this opportunity to meet with my peers to investigate problems in theatre ed. Going through the process has already made permanent changes in the way I approach my teaching. I am much more interested in collecting evidence on student improvement. This year, I've begun a monologue project in every grade level, for example -- one per semester. I plan on video-recording the monologues and keeping them in electronic portfolios for each student so that we can observe growth over the years the students are in the program.

So thank you Educational Theatre Association, Critical Links, Arts Education Partnership and the Ohio Arts Council. Not just thank you for my own personal growth and benefit from participating in this project, but thank you for the support that benefits our students in the theatre classroom, and ultimately for helping us all to show how theatre education makes essential contributions to every child's learning process.

You know your idea is stupid when...

...somebody makes fun of your high-falutin' words on another blog. A blogger was complaining about how she keeps seeing "mindfulness" referred to all over the place and wondered why we don't want to use "pay attention" instead. (Sorry I can't remember which blog this came from.) The question is a good one and worth examining.

Wikipedia gives us a rundown on the term mindfulness. It has a direct connection to the art of acting in its initial definition.

"Mindfulness (Pali: Sati; Sanskrit:smṛti स्मृति ) is a technique in which a person becomes intentionally aware of their thoughts and actions in the present moment, non-judgmentally..."

Where it gets tricky is in the religious/spiritual connections, and interesting within the psychological realm. Yet, what I really want to look at is this (from the same entry):

"...mindfulness does not have to be constrained to a formal meditation session. Mindfulness is an activity that can be done at any time; it does not require sitting, or even focusing on the breath, but rather is done by bringing the mind to focus on what is happening in the present moment, while simply noticing the mind's usual "commentary".

The following is a possible description of what it is to act a role (in performance situations).:

"One can be mindful of the sensations in one's feet while walking, of the sound of the wind in the trees, or the feeling of soapy water while doing dishes."

The big difference is that the actor is being mindful of the sensations and thoughts of another character's mind. It is kind of a super-mindfulness or double mindfulness. Or perhaps it is more like those Russian dolls that nest one within the next. Within the actor, lives a character who also may be playing one or more roles within the circumstances of the performance.

Looking at a performance, we never want to see the actor acting. We want to believe that the character is alive before us, responding to the situation, the environment, and the other characters.

Here are some concrete examples of an actor not succeeding at mindfulness:

1. Breaking character by laughing or apologizing for a mistake.
2. Allowing habitual gestures to creep into a characterization.
3. Blocking another performer.
4. Dropping a prop or tripping over something on stage.
5. Eyes drifting in a direction that does not further the story or inner development.
6. Cutting off someone's line or not picking up cues quickly enough.

Better late than never

As a participant in the Critical Links Theatre project, we were asked to keep a diary of our process. Here I am four weeks before the February meeting, finally putting my mind to the task of looking for the critical links in my teaching process.

To review, last fall, twelve theatre teachers from all over Ohio met in Cincinnati to enter into a heightened engagement with our work in class and on stage. Over the course of a weekend, we participated in a sequence of stimulating exercises that were designed to focus us on our teaching with the goal of coming up with an Inquiry to pursue.

It looks like this:

1. Create a learning community
2. Develop a question for inquiry
3. Create an inquiry plan
4. Collect evidence
5. Share initial findings
6. Organize and weigh evidence
7. Share conclusions from inquiry

At the end of the weekend, I had a question for inquiry. I'm looking at it right now and I think it is completely stupid! It is too broad and too vague. So I'm going to throw all that out and think about my theatre teaching process as we end the first semester this fall and then come up with a more focused inquiry for the next semester.