TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

The act of teaching in a creative field has three main components; process, craft, and communication. Each must be taught, developed and critiqued. In my time with students, I maintain a balance between the development of creative process, technical skill & knowledge, and the students’ ability to communicate their ideas.

In a technical theatre course where technique is emphasized above all else, students do not experience the joy of discovery, since at every step of the work there is a result that is explicitly stated, which requires very little creativity. As an artist and educator, it is my responsibility to challenge and support my students in pursuit of three learning goals: to become familiar with the particular visual language that theatre uses; to learn and refine the basic skills of design for theatre; to develop a manner of questioning what one sees and experiences. It is my belief that these are the fundamental building blocks of an effective design course. For some of my students, the time that we spend together may be the first and perhaps the only time that they put concentrated effort into theatre design. Yet regardless of specialization, the moment that students step into the room, they are treated as artists.

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Robert Edmond Jones states it best by explaining that, “the energy of a particular play, its emotional content, its aura, so to speak, has its own definite physical dimensions.” It extends just so far in space and no farther. The walls of the setting must be placed at precisely this point. At the beginning of the process I always ask the questions, “What is the story we are trying to tell” and “why are we telling this story?” Those two simple questions lead me down the path to designing a space that will eventually answer them. It’s my insistence on these matters that allows and yes, requires the engagement of the audience that, in turn, leads to a richer theatrical experience.

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Very often, students take a theatre class convinced that being an artist involves a technical skill that they do not possess. While it is true that learning these skills holds great importance, I feel that it is not the most necessary or interesting skill in the act of designing for the theatre. One of the goals in any of my classes is to teach the students that the simplest of gestures can carry with it more weight of meaning than the most flawless reproductions. I use a curriculum that relies on several short exercises in which students gradually refine their technique by reacting to their impulses. Much like science, technical theatre often starts with a series of questions, addressing them through experimentation and trial and error, and interpreting the result. A curriculum that is based in inquiry offers many opportunities for active learning, creating an atmosphere in which students take responsibility for their own learning.

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I want my students to leave my course with a larger grasp of how to interpret their world and work abstractly, and how meaning is created and expressed.