“Students tend to better remember and understand a historic event when exposed to its story via live performance — particularly live theater,” Amanda Mayes, Convocations’ manager of education, said in an email.
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
Study finds live theater enhances student learning, empathy
“Students tend to better remember and understand a historic event when exposed to its story via live performance — particularly live theater,” Amanda Mayes, Convocations’ manager of education, said in an email.
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I honestly cannot think of a better way to experience the emotions of others than through a live theatre experience. Not only do you follow characters while they experience heavy emotions and events, but we do so with other audience members, each having unique experiences. So I'm not really shocked that students who are exposed to theatre more have enhanced empathy. I also think that the critical thinking skills discussed in the article are a product of the increased empathy. When you understand how others feel, you can more easily process complex thoughts and analyze human events and relationships. Obviously, the moral of this article is that theatre is good for young people and they should see it. But, I think for the most part, people know that. The issue is that students who go to schools that barely have enough money to fund basic academic programs have absolutely no way to access it. So, if we're to believe the studies in this article, we need to come to terms with the fact that our apathy towards these low-income students' access to the arts means that we're stunting students' emotional and educational development. Yeah, that's really messed up, right? The more messed up part is that we've known these things for quite a while. People have been explaining the effects of the arts in kids' lives for a really long time, yet it hasn't changed. So, what will it take for us to finally acknowledge the gap in access to arts between high and low income students.
I will always be an advocate for theater education in high schools! Its where I learned a lot of life skills and where I’ve seen others learn skills that can’t be taught in a textbook. The storytelling of the performance side of theater and the skills learned through involvement in the technical production element of theater are great for students to be involved with. Theater teaches students to think more creatively and teaches students how to become a better team member and community members. I think there are also a few studies about how students involved in the arts do better on tests like the ACT and SAT. I still wish that the stigma of theater students being stupid or spacey would go away, students that go into theater are typically very bright (and sometimes yes theater students aren’t the most academically accomplished students) but theater teaches very different skills than once learned in a common classroom. Theater can be a home for anyone and can teach people skills that are very hard to learn once you get into the “real world”.
This article said it all...theatre can literally teach you so much. Not talking about physical skills (like the design and techy part of it), I think one of the most valuable things that theatre can do is emotionally connecting people and experiences. You don’t even need to practice theatre to do this, You emotionally connect to characters and such even just from seeing a show. As the article says, it can teach empathy, other concepts which are nearly impossible to teach through textbooks or lectures. In terms of learning content, like historical events, theatre is one of the best ways of gaining understanding of what happened, and actually remembering it. In Hong Kong, I didn’t study American history up till my senior year (because I’m wasn’t in the U.S. makes sense). The stuff I did know was through self-study and reading. But I only bothered to learn and started to remember events because of…yes… Hamilton. As cheesy as it sounds, that musical made me want to learn about how the States came to be in order to understand the context of the story. It prompted me to dig deeper and actually study it for a History research paper during my junior year. Now, I agree with Elena’s point above, theatre is very inaccessible. In the States, funding for theatrical arts is often minimal or even non-existent. Little money would go to theatre programs, especially for schools with a low-income student majority. Even just watching shows cost A LOT (profit…). We all know theater does wonders but we actually need to implement it into the education system to benefit kids.
The very first theatre education I had was at a public elementary school in New Jersey. I was in the first grade, and we were doing a short play about the Montgomery bus boycott for our history class. Although I only had one or two lines, because I was still in ESL (English as a Second Language: extended program for students with limited English proficiency), acting as a black woman boycotting to use the bus left a big impression on me. Certainly, I was not aware of racisms in the States and other western countries against Asians, as I am now, but, being in the role helped me understand WHY my family gets eyes from people when we go to shopping. It is understandable that the States, where it is considered to be racially and ethnically diverse, is leading the industry of theatre education. However, diversity applies to every country, nation, or anywhere. I really hope for the day; which theatre is considered as a core class in education.
Empathy is a complicated concept and is highly subjective to the environment someone is in. I'm a strong advocate for theater in environments that are rough and demands people to look at perspectives that aren't theirs. I think that in many ways, theatre has the ability to sort of foster and create a social conscious. This article shows that there is more than theater than just putting on a play- which is an idea that I constantly grapple with and am very conscious all the time. What people don't often look at is the notion that education is equally important to theater as the practice itself- its a method of creating a change in ideologies and habits that have plagued the industry for far too long and with the creation of more theatre ensembles that are committed to creating environments that are empathetic, we will be able to change people slowly for the better,
I was not very in tune with theatre until I entered high school in America. The theatre program at my high school would take semesterly trips to see a show at the regional theater, which recently received a Regional Theatre Tony Award. Sometimes the show was simply not good, not because of the technical elements or the talent of the actors, which were always of high caliber, but because the script itself or the story was weak. However, I always left with more thoughts and feelings than I had when I entered the house, for better or for worse, but it always opened me up to more possibilities and ways of thinking. Art, specifically live theatre, has so much potential to encourage learning, personal growth, and emotional discussion where other forms of education do not. I cannot wait to see where theatre will take us in the future.
I have said it before and I will say it again: the most important aspect of our lives, our jobs, and our societal responsibility is increasing and advocating for accessibility to the arts. Art has so much power. It is so endlessly beautiful. It truly has transformative properties. It builds a community that brings people together, by presenting relatable situations that prove to people that no one is alone in this world. We are a collective system, as long as we open our hearts to each other. We all know how the arts have affected us, have brought us out of our shells, and have helped us grow. Why not make that world accessible to everyone who needs it? We need more articles and research like this, because we are all aware of this power that the arts possess, but we need the world to be more aware of it as well.
This research doesn’t particularly surprise me. Theater make you feel things whether you want to or not and it would be really difficult not to empathize with the characters in a show. The article said that a live performance causes the viewers to retain the information more efficiently, which makes sense because it is an all encompassing performance and you’re watching real people, which is easier to empathize with. I also find interesting how it improves your critical thinking skills. I always tend to think critically about plays and come up with ideas while I’m watching them. There’s a reason people go see live theater instead of just reading the script, because it’s so much more personal. The words on the page are just the beginning of the play. Every single one of your senses is engaged when watching theater and that’s why I think it’s such an awesome artform.
This article was pretty much everything I had hoped last week's article (which inevitably revolved around how exciting it was to be at the Tony's) would be. In agreement with some of what others have said above, I am not surprised by what I'm reading here, but it is so good to see the actual results of the experiments and the data to prove it. It's all so interconnected that it works: seeing historical events live in front of them made the story more accessible to audience members, who were connecting with the characters onstage, seeing the story from multiple different perspectives, which got them to think critically about what it was they were seeing and how to interpret it, and the intimacy of the story brought to life made the audience feel more empathy for those live characters onstage. It's the exact same as Fairy Tales: the story or the moral itself is too large to discuss, and would come across as preachy in a lecture. However, if you provide a separate platform (live theatre or fairy tale) for the story to be presented on, you make it more accessible and the message more easily connected with.
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