Theatre Education Part 2.1 -- Addendum to Tom Loughlin

Tom Loughlin's description of theatre education's Big Lies does an excellent job of laying out the false advertising most theatre departments use to sell their programs to the young and hopeful. Given the way "The Biz" is currently configured, academia is churning our far too much theatrical cannon fodder to be considered rational or ethical. Even at liberal arts colleges such as my own, whose focus should be less on pre-professional "training" than on using theatre as an educational "lens" through which to learn about the world for four years, we teach semester-long courses in auditioning. Auditioning! The end result of all this pre-professional careerism is a bevy of actors who are simultaneously desperately needy (to quote A Chorus Line, "I need this job, oh God I need this show!") and incredibly passive ("I'll do whatever I'm told") and ultimately lacking in a sense of personal aesthetic values to guide them in deciding what they will or will not do with their artistic energy.

My focus in this essay will be on the undergraduate, since that has been my occupation for the past nine years at a university that has no graduate programs. I am ambivalent about graduate programs; I learned a great deal at Illinois State University (MA) and City University of New York Graduate Center (PhD). But much of what I learned came from constant practice -- the ability to focus entirely on my art form and the expectation that I would constantly produce (productions at ISU, and essays at CUNY). Trial and error under the watchful eyes of instructors with very high standards was where I learned the most. What I absorbed came more from the values my teacher's lived than anything specific that they taught me. At ISU, every day I was marinated in the doctrine of risk, of making choices that had high stakes; at CUNY, every day I was marinated in the doctrine of critical thinking and rigorous professionalism. Nevertheless, I agree with Tom: I could have learned a whole lot using that $75,000 to produce play after play or article after article -- with the caveat that I would want a very demanding critic to visit each production and respond to each essay.

But on to my topic: undergrads. Let's start with the American Theatre ads Tom mentions in his essay, and the ubiquitous offer of "training." In an interview with Ian MacKenzie at Theatre Is Territory, I snapped "Dogs are trained, not artists." When you train a dog, you train him to obediently respond to orders from his master in a skilled, unquestioning way. You don't want a dog who, when you say "sit," decides for himself whether he wants to sit at that particular moment, or questions whether sitting is really the best option. The same is true when we "train" actors -- we're not creating independent and critical thinkers who bring their own ideas to the table, but rather "performers" who can produce efficiently and effectively whatever effect a director decides he wants. We train for compliance; we should educate for artistry.

Furthermore, we train, for the most part, solely for technique. Students are rarely asked to wrestle with the larger questions of theatre's purpose, theatre's value to a contemporary society, theatre's viability as an art form in an age of mass media domination, theatre's usefulness to those who might buy a ticket, theatre's relationsip to its audience, or alternate purposes theatre might serve. They are rarely asked to develop their own values concerning these questions, much less come to terms with the values of artists past that might provide grist for their own mill. They are trained to accept without question that the status quo is the best of all possible theatrical worlds, and to see their role as being to develop the technique necessary to fit within it. They are also trained to believe that the theatre will always survive because, well, it always has survived before. I call this the Tinkerbell Syndrome: if we believe in theatre hard enough and clap our hands, it will always survive, a faith that supports the passive complacency required to become a theatrical cog. It is the faith of the Cowardly Lion running full speed down the Wizard's corridor frantically repeating "I do believe in spooks! I do I do I do I do!" -- just before he leaps out a window.

This emphasis on compliance and complacency is particularly crippling when it comes to 18 - 22 year olds who have not yet developed enough life experience nor intellectual ballast to offer resistance. They are easily molded by any adult with a strong personality and rhetorical flair.

None of these complaints are new or original with me nor with Tom. In fact, Richard Schechner expressed them all powerfully in his essay in the Summer 1995 issue of TDR entitled "Transforming Theatre Departments." In the dozen years since he published his proposal, few theatre departments have addressed the questions he raised, much less changed their approach to theatre education in light of those questions. Perhaps this lack of response connects to my previous post about how we got where we are -- most college theatre instructors are not scholar-artists, and they probably have never read TDR or any other journal of theatre ideas.

For anyone who has followed this blog over the years, you know that I am very smitten with Tony Kushner's Association for Theatre in Higher Education keynote speech which I heard him deliver, and which was published in American Theatre as "A Modest Proposal." In it, he calls for the abolition of drama majors, and proposes that all undergrads be liberally educated in the great ideas of the past and present rather than narrowly focus on the acquisition of theatre skills and technique. The idea is that, by doing so, we will educate artists who have something worthwhile to say, rather than performers with well-trained vocal chords but not a thought of their own worth vocalizing.

But that is for another post.

Theatre Education Part 2 -- Loughlin's Take on The Big Lie

Another great post by Tom Loughlin at Poor Player. It's called "Theatre Education Part 2 -- The Big Lies," and it is a great post...if a little unnerving.

Theatre Education Part 2 -- Loughlin's Take on The Big Lie

Another great post by Tom Loughlin at Poor Player. It's called Theatre Education Part 2 - The “Big Lies."

Great stuff, if a little unnerving!

Theatre Education Part 2 -- Loughlin'

Congrats, Ian, You've Had Your First American Blogger Controversy

Over at Parabasis, there is a discussion about how to have more productive discussions in the theatrosphere.

Ian, from "Theatre Is Territory," wrote in the comments box: "One theory that keeps coming up is that the U.S. was founded on a particularly individualist note (its what gives you your right to bear arms – i.e., "don't get between me and mine.") that has never really left the public conscious. And why should it have?"

Here is my response:

Ian,

As an American blogger, I am deeply offended by this sweeping generalization. I demand that you provide specific and broadly based evidence to support your assertion. When you do, I will then discount said evidence as unrepresentative and provide as counter-evidence posts by six American bloggers who are really nice and never get angry at all, and I'll demand that you apologize to all my American homies. When you assert that the counter-examples don't invalidate the general assertion, I will demand to know how many American bloggers you know personally, which of them you like, and how much time you have actually spent in America in the last 12 months. When you question the relevance of this argument, I will accuse you of dodging the question, call you a damned Canadian hoser and post at least six questions about the topic that I will demand you answer pronto. I will also get my blogger posse to do the same, filling your comments box with dozens of questions and insults. When you finally become frustrated, I will point out that obviously it isn't only Americans who get angry, and that you have invalidated your point yourself. I will then accuse you of beating a dead horse, insult you personally, remove you from my blogroll, and refer to you only as "The Canadian Blogger" from then on. And it will be your fault for provoking me.

Congratulations, Ian, you've now experienced your first American blog controversy! ;-)

The Older I Get...

...the more Moliere's Alceste makes sense to me...

"Esteem, if it be real, means preference,
And when bestowed on all makes no sense."

"A man should be a man, and let his speech
At every turn reveal his heart to each;
His own true self should speak; our sentiments
Should never hide beneath vain compliments."

Act One Scene 1 between Alceste and Philinte reminds me of some blog discussions I've had. Perhaps Dan Trujillo should have set his rewrite, which he called Angry Young Man, in the theatrosphere instead of the theatre! Meanwhile, over at Parabasis, Isaac raises the question of how we can have less vitriolic discussions. At the moment, I have a headache and am out of ibuprofin, which makes me cranky and prone to snarkiness. Nevertheless, Tony's proximity rule seems a good one: "would I say it if I were in the same room"? I've had a lot of passionate discussions in my day, and learned a lot from them. But if somebody impugned my honesty to my face... well, I'd call in Don Hall to punch their lights out! Anyway, like Alceste, I get tired of being scolded for speaking my mind. Of course, for Moliere, Alceste was an comic figure whose extremism was cause for ridicule and Philinte was the voice of reason.

Of course, Moliere himself played Alceste and not Philinte -- he knew an interesting role when he saw one...

Political Mashup

What if the progress in the War in Iraq was evaluated in the same ways schools are in the horrible No Child Left Behind Act? Bush is pretty lenient in his evaluation of Iraqi progress while being harsh with schools who have struggling students and serious socio-economic challenges. But then we shouldn't expect consistency, right? Why not??? Isn't it time we stopped smiling cynically and expressed our total outrage? I marvel that I have allowed myself to shake my head over all the Bush offenses. Suddenly, I understand how the German people let Hitler come to power and stay in power. Yes, Hitler! And Stalin. And Mao. And every other totalitarian dictator throughout history. We must stop this creeping fascism!