Teaching Artist Interview

February 14, 2011 by  

Recently interviewed by Michael Wiggins (@teachingartist) for the Association of Teaching Artists blog. Here is a quote to get your curious, “Teaching artists are the migrant workers of the arts education field.”

Filed under: Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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General State of Blogging & Writing

January 1, 2011 by  

Tom Loughlin and I seem to be at the same place in regards to our blogging efforts, more specifically the lack of blogging. (Side note: Great news about Loughlin pursuing entrepreneurial theatre degree for the SUNY Fredonia students.)

I know a part of that comes from the feeling that a blog post should be this great source of information on a given topic, with paragraphs flowing and flowing. I usually save the short, quick stuff for Twitter (@dennisbaker). That being the case, I am giving my self the freedom to post smaller messages. This might motivate me to use the WordPress iPhone app more, instead of waiting until I have hours in front of the computer to write a profound post, in which those hours never come.

Spending the first semester as a new adjunct at two universities, as well as family life, has kept me away from writing and performing. As I enter the second semester, two of my four classes remain the same so I hope to have a little more time to get some thoughts down. I am excited to be advising a group of students, and alumni, who are interested in devising, ensemble-based new work. As the advisor, I will take on a more reflective work coming into their rehearsals a couple of times a month (they will be meeting once a week) observing and helping them form and articulate what they want to create. I think this will help sharpen my reflective practitioner skills, as I will be able to help facilitate, while at the same time have some distance to reflect and write more formally on the experience. I need to start submitting to academic journals, and I think this project will be my first article topic. That being said, the actor in me wants to be in the mix of it and part of the physical creation, but unfortunately the timing of the meetings, and the extra finical burden of driving out to the school one more day in the week, will not allow me for deeper involvement.

I have also been commissioned by Theatre Journal to write a performance review of the Los Angeles Poverty Department’s production of State of Incarceration that runs January 28th and 29th. I saw a workshop production of it back in November and was struck by the topic of the California prison system filled to 150% capacity and the stories created by an ensemble, some prisoners once themselves. Hopefully all goes well and I will be published by the end of the year.

Filed under: Arts Entrepreneur, Civic Theater, Devised Work, Ensemble, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Don’t Think, Act.

June 12, 2010 by  

Doing a lot of reading in preparation for the Sojourn Theater Summer Institute. Here are some that are sticking with me:

Educating the Creative Theatre Artist by Sonja Kuftinec
“Should we be training students more pre-professionally, undergraduates for performance jobs and graduates for teaching jobs? Or should we focus more on interdisciplinary collaborations across fields that would redefine students as inquirers and artistic entrepreneurs? Surveys…suggest a focus on redefining undergraduates as artistic entrepreneurs, while experience with graduate students…suggests a model for more explicit teacher training.”

“…when asked what they would teach and what they wish they had been taught, reveal what might be lacking in some of our undergraduate training: collaboration, ensemble building, idea development, interdisciplinary approaches to creating art, listening, conflict resolution, community engagement, and application of artistic skills in a wide range of settings.”

“Conventional [undergraduate] production (and I would add BFA pre-professional) training tends to recycle a system that emphasizes the passivity of the individual actor rather than graduating students who can think critically and creatively about the value of theatre in society and who act upon those thoughts.”

Rehearsing Democracy: Advocacy, Public Intellectuals, and, Civic Engagement in Theatre, and Performance Studies by Jill Dolan
“A member of the acting faculty in my department at the University of Texas at Austin has a decal pasted on his office door designed in the ubiquitous Ghostbusters symbolic style that transliterates as “Don’t Think, Act.” Although I very much respect this man and his work with students and department productions, walking past this declaration of his values each day challenges everything I believe in as a theatre educator.”

Filed under: Acting, Arts Entrepreneur, Educational Theater, Graduate School, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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MFA Theater Degree Pyramid Scheme

March 7, 2010 by  

“The discouraging truth is that MFA degrees were created largely to provide-and then satisfy-a prerequisite for obtaining teaching jobs. This in effect rendered the entire system a pyramid scheme.” – Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland

Replace the term “pyramid scheme” with “ponzi scheme”.

It sounds like the MFA Theater Ponzi Scheme that Mike Daisey was talking about.

Filed under: Acting, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Must Read Theater Education Blog Posts

February 10, 2010 by  

I am a HUGE fan of the newly created website Theatre Arts Curriculum Transformation (TACT). ‘Tis the season where I am receiving emails and questions about my process for applying to MFA acting schools and my experience with the Rutgers MFA acting program.

If you are considering applying to theater schools, or considering what schools to attend, you need to stop everything you are doing and read TACT’s five blog posts about Theater Education written by Tom Loughlin, Professor of Theatre at SUNY Fredonia. Start here with Tom’s experience with MFA programs, and note that unfortunately the mindset in MFA programs have not changed much from 1977.

Filed under: Educational Theater, Graduate School, Rutgers, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Truth About Theater Education

January 28, 2010 by  

I am catching up on the last week of theatrosphere blog posts, and while Scott Walter’s whole blog post is a must read, his comment about what he tells his theater students, is what stuck out to me.

I say: “You are getting a degree at a liberal arts university. I am not offering you ‘pre-professional training’ because, frankly, there IS no profession. I am educating you, not training you. I am offering you a lens to see the world through that, should you decide to try to make a life of artistry (which is different from a CAREER in the arts), then you will have four years of reflection and experiment from which to work. If you want to be buffed up for the so-called profession, you need to go down I-40 to Winston-Salem and the NC School of the Arts.” Now, what are others saying? I conjecture that they are selling the Cinderella Myth, pointing at a couple alums who are working occasionally, and teaching their students that what separates the successful from the unsuccessful is that the successful want it more (which is a huge lie, but that shifts the blame for their failure to the students’ shoulders and absolves the teacher entirely). It is a con game, plain and simple.

Filed under: Acting, Educational Theater, Graduate School, Teaching, Theater/Theatre
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Development of an Educational Theater Company

July 27, 2009 by  

This past year I was accepted to a program called TA 101 which was developed by Dr. Carol Fineberg, a researcher and frequent writer about arts education, and Master Teaching Artist Dale Davis, one of the founders who now serves as Executive Director of Association of Teaching Artists.   The course, for teaching artists relatively new to the field, was underwritten by grants from the Dana Foundation and New York Community Trust to the New York State Alliance for Arts Education.

Teaching Artist 101 Program

The program participants met every four weeks for four hours and explored a different topic each month.  We started with “Understanding School Culture” where we learned about schools and the various people that we would be working with in the school system.  We also learned about best ways to collaborate with the teachers in planning sessions.  We learned to develop curriculum, which was especially valuable.  Another important unit was the seminar on psychology and using what we know about in our work with schools.  We also learned about partnerships and grant writing.  Additionally, a unit that I especially loved was the seminar on different learning styles in the classroom.  As classrooms are more inclusive, this seminar was also very helpful.  TA 101 began in September of 2008 and concluded in March of 2009.  Participants were given ample time to feedback their responses to each session as well as the total experience. 

Reflection

I was very impressed by the other teaching artists in the room who were also invited participants.  Some of them had PhDs in Theater, some were already running their own theater companies, and others were already marketing their art to museums and schools.  I learned a lot from their questions to the speakers.  For each seminar, I became more organized and focused with information. I learned how to relate my lesson plans to the New York City DOE Blue Print and NYS Standards as well as various populations.  This was very empowering as I became organized and was more able to plan ahead for what it was that I wanted to do.   Most importantly, it got me to really think about partnerships that I could create.

Work Developed from TA 101 Sessions

I am using the lessons that I learned from TA 101 towards the development of an educational show that I hope to market to the NYC Public Schools.  To start, I am throwing a fundraiser.  

The fundraiser will be August 12th at 8: 30 pm at The Producers Club located at 358 West 44th Street. Tickets are $20.00 which include two drinks, raffle tickets for Coaching sessions, Shakespeare texts, gift bags and other goodies. We’ll have singing of Shakespeare songs by Kelly Nichols and Joe Crow Ryan’s folk singing.

Carrie Edel Isaacman is a regular guest blogger, look for her monthly posts to come out on the 27th of the month. She is currently working as an Adjunct Lecturer through CUNY and substitute teaching in the NYC Public Schools while she pursues her MS in Educational Theater at City College. She is also involved in TA 101 with New York State Alliance for Arts in Education.

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Filed under: Teaching
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TEDtalks: Sir Ken Robinson says School Kills Creativity

May 25, 2009 by  

“In the next 30 years more people world wide will be graduating through education than since the beginning of history. Suddenly degrees aren’t worth anything. When I was a student if you had a degree you had a job and if you didn’t have a job it is because you didn’t want one. Now you need an M.A. where the previous job required a B.A. and now you need a PhD for the other. Its the process of academic inflation. It indicates the whole structure of education of shifting beneath our feet.”

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4 days left to win the Twitter Ticket Contest. Click here to Retweet (RT) the free one ticket giveaway for the May 31st performance of New York Theatre Workshop’s Things of Dry Hours.

Filed under: Creativity, Graduate School, Teaching
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Theater Heals

March 14, 2009 by  

Yesterday I went to a teaching artist observation as part of my class in Special Topics with the Manhattan Theater Club. The company has a playwriting/acting residency where students write on themes from current plays they have seen. I visited a school where the students have very advanced life experiences for their age. Some of the students have been in jail and some have just had really rough lives. The writing that the students produce is so full of feeling. As the teaching artist observed, “They get conflict really fast”. That day a situation came up where in a writing exercise that the students prepared, a scene between two characters on the theme of betrayal, a female student wrote on some serious issues involving suicide. The theme of betrayal came from the recent viewing of the MTC’s production of American Plan. The teaching artist and the two visiting actors handled the situation with such sensitivity. During class, they discussed the scene by asking the female student how serious the character is about the violence? After the students were dismissed the teaching artist, actors and our class instructor discussed the student’s writing and the possible issues behind it. Apparently the teacher had already talked with the student at the end of class and there were further plans to talk with the school about it. At that point I said my goodbyes and thanked the teaching artist. I asked if it would be alright to come back. (Technically in the Special Topics class we visit twice for field observation for each play.) He invited me to visit for the culminating event. I will do this, so that I can see the very rich plays that the kids produce, but also to see how that student that I mentioned is doing.

I left the field observation having felt great concern for the student, but also relieved that she will get the help that she needs. In a way, healing took place through the fact that the girl revealed something that she needed: help. And because she asked for help via the writing she may just get that. In this case Theater may have just saved a life.

Carrie Edel Isaacman is a regular guest blogger who is currently working as an Adjunct Lecturer through CUNY and substitute teaching in the NYC Public Schools while she pursues her MS in Educational Theater at City College. She is also involved in TA 101 with New York State Alliance for Arts in Education.

Filed under: Acting, Educational Theater, Teaching
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Living Underneath the Hyphen

February 11, 2009 by  

On one of the first days of class with Jennifer Strycharz at City College of New York in the Drama in Education, the first course in the MS in Educational Theater, she stated, and I regretfully do not remember who she was quoting, but she was quoting someone who talked about being a teaching artist as “living underneath the hyphen”. I really liked this saying about teaching artists and what they do. We are artists who teach.

I hate to sound too over the top but it is just the truth when anyone says the arts will inspire and motivate in a way that traditional learning may miss. In today’s economy where arts are being threatened it occurs to me that to make a commitment to work as a certified teacher in the arts and as a teaching artist it is not enough just to teach, but I have to be an arts advocate.

Some areas that I have taken a real interest in towards including in my work and education is Disabilities in the Arts. During the Teaching Artist 101 course I was so inspired by the representatives that talked about the organization of VSArts.org. I am thinking about purchasing the diversity kit from VSArts.org site. I was so inspired by all that I found there. They even have forms that can help a teaching artist to adjust lesson plans to the particular population that they are working with. I also love all of the informative articles there as well.

I also love to work in any grade level including college age students. I am really enjoying being in education again.

FOLLOW UP: It is Jonathan Neelands is the one who started the term “live beneath the hyphen” . He has several books with wonderful games and exercises that we use in class. Enjoy!

Carrie Edel Isaacman is a regular guest blogger who is currently working as an Adjunct Lecturer through CUNY and substitute teaching in the NYC Public Schools while she pursues her MS in Educational Theater at City College. She is also involved in TA 101 with New York State Alliance for Arts in Education.

Filed under: Educational Theater, Teaching
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