Soap Box

I came across this recently. Hmmmm.


Statement of Teaching Philosophy

In the context of a liberal arts education, study of, and participation in the theatre supports our inherited Greek belief in the interconnectedness of knowledge, critical thinking, and the well being of the individual and society. Although the performing arts were not one of the original seven liberal arts, a study of the theatre strengthens the bonds between history, literature, psychology, theology, and questions of the human condition. Participation in the theatre builds a student’s critical thinking, empathic capabilities and self-confidence. It is also an educators opportunity to expand upon the lively interactivity today’s students have with the entertainment world that surrounds them by adding an historical context, vocabulary for criticism, and a general understanding of the processes that bring to life these cherished entertainments they devour. To the extent that we engage the student in the rich tradition of the legitimate theatre we go a long way toward insuring society’s well being by building the next generation of theatre-goers, who’s appreciation and support will provide for the survival of our theatrical legacy.
Heretofore my primary academic responsibilities have had to do with the introduction of acting methodologies to the near novice. The one imperative I hold dear is the necessity of setting a beginning student on the right path with respect to how she thinks about the process of acting. The task of working with a student of great potential who has unfortunately, because of earlier experience, been inculcated with a wrongheaded approach is daunting. I therefore work quite hard in my efforts to dissuade the beginning actor of common misconceptions regarding a result-oriented approach to their work and strive to build a very basic set of tools that will hold them in good stead.
My approach and the tools I offer are substantially borrowed from Constantine Stanislavisky’s approach to a psychologically based understanding of what motivates a character at any given point in time: The objective of a character being actively sought through the playing of actions, during the completion of activities (the mundane tasks of the character) and in the face of obstacles. If a young actor can trust in this way of thinking about acting, then a foundation will undoubtedly be built that will service her through the wild variety of experiences she will encounter during a successful career.
Additionally, concepts of ensemble, trust, observation, and playfulness are introduced, the main goal being to construct an atmosphere of experimentation and risk- taking supported by a non-judgmental, supportive, fail-free environment. A typical course structure includes a steady ramping-up from games to exposure exercises, to non- verbal action-exercises, to content-less scenes, to scripted scenes from contemporary American plays of the naturalistic oeuvre. These exercises and assignments introduce and consistently support the constant articulation of objective, action, activity and obstacle.
Deviations from my several years of introductory classes have included workshops in specific acting skill sets, sometimes geared toward working professionals, sometimes toward graduate or undergraduate students at various levels of achievement. The endeavor of gaining command of one’s body, voice and speech are the staples of advanced acting courses and the Conservatory or MFA program, but a consistent touchstone has to be the psychological life of Character as it manifests itself through motivation. It is in the pursuit of perfecting an ability to live truthfully within imagined circumstances where we can begin to measure the success of a performance with our most exacting metric, believability.
If the spectator believes in the veracity of a performance she will experience that performance with a kind of sympathetic harmony, like neighboring strings on a violin. It seems logical then that degrees of believability should be used as a scale for evaluating our students. Although I am a proponent of the discussion of believability among professionals and at the upper levels of training, I do not consider believability much at all when evaluating the beginning and intermediate student, even though it is positioned as our primary goal.
Instead I consider individual progress, application, effort, and risk when assessing a student’s navigation of a particular course. These are aided by objective measures of acquired knowledge in vocabulary, scene analysis, acting concepts; critical thinking in response to plays read and productions viewed; and other normal measures of attendance and participation. The fine and performing arts are uniquely positioned in an academic environment with respect to the evaluation process. Indeed, assessing achievement in the arts is the subject of books, studies and more. It is an area in which I continually find myself making adjustments, often responding to a particular institution and its norms, the general tenor of the student body, the goals of the curriculum and many other tangential factors that bring considerations to bear. If it were possible to lift artistic pursuits to another level of evaluation, free of the worrisome fear of academic harm, but demanding in its own right, I would welcome it. Until then I have developed an approach to the evaluation of my students that rewards growth by virtue of effort as the paramount subjective criterion.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge”, said Albert Einstein. I’m not sure all in academia would agree, but we can safely say that both the capacity to imagine and the capacity to know are uniquely human and deserve celebration. It is incumbent upon those who can, to pass on an understanding of, and an appreciation for all of humanities achievements, and to encourage the young to engage with our collective past and carry us forward. In the Theatre we can continually experience the power of that most improbable moment, when gathered spectators, sometimes in the thousands, turn their collective attention to the stage, willfully engaging suspension of disbelief, yielding up their imaginative powers to the trickster, the shaman, the actor. Why do we do it? Because we have the capacity, because we can.