The Long Distance Drama Teacher

"You do an eclectic celebration of dance! You do FOSSE FOSSE FOSSE, you do Martha GRAHAM Martha GRAHAM Martha GRAHAM, or Twyla! Twyla! Twlya! or Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd Michael Kidd, Michael Kidd, or MaDONna! MaDONna! MaDONna! ...but you keep it all inside." If you don't know where the above quote originates , we can't be friends until you fix this. This year I've been working my way through Twyla Tharp's "The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life" - see, there is a connection here to the above quote! I am not a dancer by any stretch of the imagination, but I've found Tharp's perspective, wisdom, and practical activities and exercises for stimulating creativity to be enormously helpful. Some of them I've been working through on my own, some of them I implemented in my last directing project, and all of them have clarified and affirmed my intent and perspective as an artist. It's a fantastic book, and I highly recommend ...

Like most of you, I have zero experience in how to adjust to life in a pandemic. Not in my wheelhouse, that one. However, like most of you, I do have loads of experience in facing down impossible odds to effectively create art. No budget, ever-looming program cuts, lack of volunteers, limited resources, materials that push me to my limits, tight schedules, and the need to get through it all with as much grace and integrity as we can muster while creating opportunities for growth, self-expression, and joy for everyone involved? Yeah, theatre teachers and artists know how to do that. Because this is such unknown territory, I find myself having to go back to what I do know. I know my kids, at least what they have been brave and kind enough to share of themselves. I know lesson planning and curriculum development and all those skills they drill into us when we get our credentials. And after 15 years of directing youth theatre, I like to believe that I know how to create and facilitat...

This is never how I envisioned teaching theatre arts. What I love more than anything about my discipline is the magic of connecting in the moment. In a world full of noise and stimuli competing for our attention faster and faster every day, a theatre arts class is a chance to gather in an empty space with no other end goal than to tell a story. It's such a primal, beautiful thing. We come as we are, with our stresses, fears, hopes, joys, sorrows, irritations and anxieties, and no matter how big the physical space - a classroom with desks shoved to the side; the wide expanse of a stage - the space is big enough to hold all of us. The space doesn't ask that we compromise or hide, the space doesn't blame us or ridicule us for being less than or too much, the space doesn't want anything but our presence in it. Everyone needs a space like that in their lives, and that space is critically important in high school. Whether a student decides to pursue a career in the perfor...