HowlRound: Why do I have to take this class? It’s the unspoken question every student carries through the door. When we’re teaching theatre majors, they often come with their own answers: I’m taking movement class so I can more fully realize my characters. I’m taking design so I can participate in the storytelling process. For non-majors in theatre appreciation classes, we have to provide a bit more scaffolding. You’re here because this will help you become well-rounded, cultured, empathetic. When our students—mostly majors—bring this question into theatre history class, they often don’t come with an answer, and neither do we. Learn these dates, the uses of these ancient costume pieces, the names of these dead playwrights, actors, designers, because...because I had to, and so do you?
4 comments:
I think it is so incredibly important for everyone to take a theatre class at some point in their life. One thing that has truly changed me as a person is the ability to empathize with other. Theatre has taught to me to try to understand why people do the things they do, even if I do not personally agree with them. It has also opened my eyes to many social issues that are continually occurring. Plays are a way to address many issues, and many play wrights do, and so when people read them, they get new viewpoints on a matter. And if the students are required to perform what they are studying, it furthers this even more because they have to walk in that character's shoes. There is a saying that you will never understand what someone is going through until you have walked a thousand miles in their shoes, and I think this perfectly applies to theatre. Theatre forces people to think in new ways and to create new worlds that they are not used to living in.
i think this is an exceptional way to learn not only theater history but history itself and other subjects. The process of teaching and learning has become so regimented that students learn to test well and that is it. We need to be encouraging independent research. Finding what students want to know about and have them actively seek out the information. not only dose this stick better but furthers the understanding of the lesson. the article brings up the importance of asking why and i believe this is not done enough. Its one thing to know dates but nothing is really applicable to real life situations and arguments if we dont know why. I think theater history was the perfect example for this because if taught traditionally it becomes incredibly boring. With abstract ideas such as theater and emotion you need to understand the why before you can really absorb the facts.
The entire concept of studying theater history is complex within itself, since performance has been happening for so long and there has definitely been a push lately to create theater outside of or even in spite of what has preceded us in order to create work that is politically and socially important as oppose to simply traditionally theatrical. Outside of our foundations of drama and special topics classes we don’t get many direct looks into theater of the past from our professors. Even in those classes we’ve done more work analyzing older plays, studying the playwrights of yesterday, and analyzing theater theory (such as that of Aristotle) than we have actually investing ourselves in how all of the elements were brought together to tell stories in a different way than today. I totally agree that it makes your art “clearer and better” to contextualize it within the art that has come before.
Even before getting too deeply into the article I have a few feelings coming to light. First, I would love a theater history class. Theater people need to be able to talk to other theater people, and a big part of that is understanding the history of theater because of how internal that is to theater today. Also, an understanding of history will provide a reference point from the second one receives a script or walks into a production as an observer. I also think that a general arts history class or class series would also be exceptionally valuable for designers to not only understand theater history, but it would assist in knowledge about not only what the world the show is taking place in, but what was the world was built in. I also think that the point about how MFA programs to not teach how to teach is true, but that is what makes Stagecraft 1 really cool for Grad students.
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