TYA TODAY SPRING 2013

today spring 2013

growing up in tya in our own words

George Saunders

“A profound, funny fable about sharing and selfishness and stupidity and independent thinking and how the world is versus how it ought to be.” — Entertainment Weekly “A delight for all ages … a fanciful production that pleases the eye and warms the heart, as Capable learns the value of selflessness, adaptability and forgiveness … truly inspired.” —Los Angeles Weekly

The Ver y Persistent Gappers of Frip

Musical. Book and Lyrics by Doug Cooney. Music by David O. Based on the novel by George Saunders. Gappers are fuzzy orange creatures that cling to the goats (whom they love) in the three-family village of Frip, jeopardizing the community’s goat-milk-based economy. One day, the pesky critters target only one of the families, and the neighbors unexpectedly refuse to help. Ten-year-old Capable must cope single-handedly with the Center Theatre Group/P.L.A.Y. at the Kirk Douglas Theatre, Culver City, Calif. gapper invasion—which she does with her own special brand of compassion and resourcefulness.

Photo: Craig Schwartz.

A Child’s Garden of Verses

Comedy with optional music. By Barry Kornhauser. Music by Scott DePoy. This multi-sensory, highly interactive Theatre for Very Young Audiences was inspired by the poems of Robert Louis Stevenson. A few actors, puppetry and a musician help preschool children as young as 15 months grow their imaginations as they play in the leaves, feed a bird, sing in the rain, dance with the wind, build a boat and discover treasures, including the greatest of them all—friendship.

What’s Bugging Gregg?

Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. (l-r) Mark St. Cyr and Gregg Mallios.

Photo: Tony L. Arrasmith, Arrasmith & Associates, Inc.

Poster: Samuel Gorena.

Comedy by Gabriel Jason Dean. Winner of the 2012 Kennedy Center ACTF Theatre for Young Audiences Award. A magic-filled, multiple award-winning play for all ages about two boys who become friends in spite of their differences. It examines the consequences of misused language, provides insight into the lives of Mexican immigrant children and explores the issues of genderidentity and homophobic bullying.

(815) 338-7170 •

Coterie Theatre production, Kansas City, Mo. (l-r) Heidi Van and Alex Espy. Photo: J. Robert Schraeder.

The Transition of Doodle Pequeño

Atypical Boy

Comedy/Drama. By Laurie Brooks. Boy cannot conform. Others try to “fix” him, but neither they nor he can change his nature. Exploring the timely issues of belonging, conforming and individuality, this play is a metaphor for invisible disabilities and disenfranchised youth ... a cautionary tale about the beauty and danger of being different in a world where conformity is valued and individuality is feared. Commissioned by the Jim Eisenreich Foundation and premiered by the Coterie Theatre. An entertaining fable for all times and all ages.

Comedy. By Darrah Cloud. Winner of the Macy’s 2011 New Play Prize. Young Greg Samsa wakes up one morning to discover that he has turned into a giant cockroach. What will he tell his friends? How can he face his schoolmates? Can he still perform the lead in his school play? Will his mom ever hug him again? Or is he doomed to be a science exhibit for the rest of his life?

This absurdist comedy touches on issues of friendship and self-confidence, as well as body image and disability.

www.DramaticPublishing.com

• (800) 448-7469

(on the cover) Aubrey Peeples, center, and the cast of Charlie and The Chocolate Factory by

Richard R. George, based on the book by Roald Dahl. Orlando Repertory Theatre, Orlando, FL. Photo by Eric Blackmore.

tya today spring 2013 / vol 27 / num 1

editorial 4

Growing Up In TYA – In Our Own Words

By Anna Jaoudi and Aubrey Peeples

feature 7

Let’s Talk About Sex

By Lisa Kramer

international 16

Assessing the Future of the Field: An International Convening of Thought-Leaders in Theater, Dance, Disability, Education, and Inclusion

By Barry Kornhauser

education 22

Arts Integration and Beyond: Leaping from Service to Sustainability in the Classroom

By Karen Weberman

page to stage 28 (L–R) Felix Teich as ‘Paul Guilbert’ and Ian Shain as ‘Aaron Fricke’ in Boston Children’s Theatre’s World Premiere production Reflections of a Rock Lobster by Burgess Clark, based on the book by Aaron Fricke. Boston Children’s Theatre, Boston, MA. Photo by Saglio Photography, Inc.

TYA Today is a journal published by tya/usa, a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation founded in 1965, which is the United States Center for the International Association of Theatre for Children and Young People. It is the only theatre organization in the United States which has the development of professional theatre for young audiences and international exchange as its primary mandates.

Statement of Policy The comments and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the official policies and standards of tya/usa.

Childsplay’s Sun Serpent

by José Cruz González with music by Daniel Valdez

interview 30

Pulling the Strings: The Business of Puppetry

By Emma Halpern

book review 34

Membership Information or Additional Copies Theatre for Young Audiences/USA c/o The Theatre School DePaul University 2135 N. Kenmore Ave Chicago, IL 60614-4100 (773) 325-7981 info@tyausa.org www.tyausa.org

Signs of Change: New Directions in Theatre Education, Revised and Amplified Edition

By Joan Lazarus Reviewed by Courtney Blackwell

coda 36

One Theatre World 2013: A Conversation with Artists

By Alicia Lark Fuss and David Kilpatrick

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tya today We welcome your comments and opinions.

Please send any reader responses to: info@tyausa.org

spring 2013 / vol 27 / num 1 TYA/USA Board of Directors Elissa Adams The Children’s Theatre Company

Karen Sharp President, TYA/USA Seattle Children’s Theatre

Megan Alrutz The University of Texas at Austin

Daphnie Sicre New York University

Doug Cooney Playwright

Pamela Sterling Arizona State University

Julia Flood Secretary, TYA/USA Eckerd Theater Company

Deborah Wicks La Puma Composer

Stan Foote Oregon Children’s Theatre Jeff Frank First Stage Children’s Theater Tamara Goldbogen The University of Pittsburgh Brian Guehring Officer-at-Large, TYA/USA Omaha Theater Company Marty Johnson iTheatrics David Kilpatrick The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Kim Peter Kovac Representative to ASSITEJ International, TYA/USA The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Steve Martin Childsplay Gillian McNally Vice President of Membership, TYA/USA University of Northern Colorado Rosemary Newcott Alliance Theatre Ernie Nolan Vice President of Communications, TYA/USA Emerald City Theatre Company/ DePaul University Joette Pelster Treasurer, TYA/USA Coterie Theatre

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Alicia Fuss Nashville Children’s Theatre Stephen McCormick LaJolla Playhouse

For information on advertising, sponsorship, or membership please contact: Chris Garcia Peak, Executive Director cpeak@tyausa.org Thank you to The Theatre School at DePaul University for their generous hosting of the TYA/USA office.

For more information on TYA/USA please visit www.tyausa.org

Talleri McRae Stage One Family Theatre Honorary Board Members Scot Copeland Nat Eek Harold R. Oaks Ann Shaw TYA/USA Executive Director Chris Garcia Peak TYA/USA Administrative Assistant Rhiannon Falzone TYA Today Staff Meggin Stailey Managing Editor Meghann Henry Editorial Associate Talleri McRae Book Review Editor Makeworks Design and Production Courtney Blackwell and Anne Negri Editorial Assistants Publications Committee Megan Alrutz Doug Cooney, Chair Julia Flood David Kilpatrick Kim Peter Kovac

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spring 2013 Main Street Theater,A Wrinkle in Time based on the children’s classic by Madeleine L’Engle.

Pictured L-R are Charles Wallace (Kyle Curry) and Meg (Lindsay Ehrhardt), photo by Kaitlyn Walker

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growing up in tya

Anna Jaoudi at Write On! 2012, an event hosted by Philadelphia Young Playwrights, Philadelphia, PA. Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Young Playwrights.

Connecting Our Experiences

By Anna Jaoudi A room full of students is having a thoughtful discussion.

Today, they’re talking about how historical events impact us.

Yet there are no desks, no assignments, no textbooks, because they’re not learning about history, they’re experiencing it.

I recently attended Re-Vision 2012, a two-week, historythemed summer playwriting retreat hosted by Philadelphia Young Playwrights (PYP). Philadelphia Young Playwrights, an “arts education organization that taps the potential of youth and inspires learning through playwriting,” realizes the importance of imagination and creativity. As a young writer, I am constantly searching for inspiration. We were given the creative license to “alter history” in Re-Vision and imagine the consequences for our modern world.

From inspiration to performance, Re-Vision 2012 was an exceptional theatrical experience.

This wasn’t my first run with theatre. I connected with Philadelphia Young Playwrights around two years ago when I took an English class at school that focused on the basics of playwriting. As someone who enjoys live theatre

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in our own words

from the audience perspective, I realized this would also be a great opportunity to utilize my creativity and challenge myself as a writer with a new format. I spent that school year writing and developing a play that could then be sent in to PYP’s annual playwriting festival. I honestly wasn’t very optimistic about my chances. I thought my lack of experience with live theatre would affect my ability to construct an interesting story for the stage. I was beyond thrilled when I found out my play had won first place in the Philadelphia area. This meant my play would be performed during the Philadelphia Young Playwrights 2011 Saturday Reading Series at Philadelphia’s Art Alliance.

Revising my play, working with the actors, and hearing it read aloud is a process I will never forget – this was the first time my writing came to life.

After my unique experience with PYP, I have a new admiration for Theatre for Young Audiences. It is a fact that everyone is affected differently by theatre. This project allowed me to experience history, travel a city, find inspiration, and watch my work come alive in a forum that many other writers don’t have access to. I’m amazed at how TYA has the ability to encourage people, whether it be as an actor, director, playwright, or audience member. We are each given a singular experience.

We as young people involved with the arts appreciate how theatre has an extraordinary ability to broaden our perspectives. I discovered how to lend my voice to a powerful message and make it come alive, a skill that has proven useful to me in other, non-theatrical writing pieces. Who knows what TYA will continue to do? Maybe it will make us embrace that young person who learned how interesting history can be beyond dry facts from a textbook. Maybe we’ll applaud an aspiring actor, or inspiring show. Or maybe we can all celebrate one young person’s discovery of making her voice heard in a loud world: because now, they too know how to connect and affect others by telling her own story.

Anna Jaoudi is an aspiring writer. She is on her school’s newspaper and debate team. Anna’s other writing projects have included poetry, monologues, news reports, and radio. Her interests also involve clarinet, ceramics, and lacrosse. Anna is currently a sophomore at Strath Haven High School in Wallingford, Pennsylvania.

spring 2013

Moving Forward

By Aubrey Peeples Every actor feels as if she has belonged to a million families during her lifetime. Like a family, the performing arts seem to have a way of pushing you forward. And yet, the arts are there to catch you when you fall. The acting community exists as a paradox: it is passionate and loving but at the same time a very competitive business where hard work is not only essential but the only means for enduring success.

I don’t know if I can speak for everyone, but as I grew up in theatre, I always felt like many of my competitors were also my biggest supporters. They are like parents cheering at a junior high track meet from the sidelines – “Go! Go! Go!” I would guess that this sense of community is what attracts many to the arts. I think that people are drawn to performing because it is an outlet – but it is an escape that does not let you avoid the world’s problems or run away from yourself.

Performing forces you to come face to face with conflict – to look at yourself in the mirror and discover who you are.

That is what drew me to acting. I feel that it is the best venue for understanding people and the problems they face each day. Acting parallels the world, and it is the only place where seemingly mundane struggles are placed under a spotlight.

The minute my parents first took me to a show, I knew that I wanted to be involved with the humanistic experience that theatre and the arts offer – the process of learning about people. To me, the arts are the world’s post office, the largest medium through which messages are sent out and translated all across the earth. I’ve always felt that acting is the closest thing we mere mortal humans have to eternity – to magic.

To a child’s mind there is no difference between theatre and magic. A child sees a show where life is created on stage and believes it is a miracle. Children believe in impossible feats, where a witch disappears out of thin air, or where the nanny can fly. The most vivid encounters I had with a child’s allencompassing ability to believe I witnessed while performing as Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Orlando Repertory Theatre. Quite often, kids would ask me after the show if I was “okay” after being thrown down the garbage chute, and they wondered how I had survived. Every time I was asked this, it was a surprise, to know that what we had done onstage was believed and taken as truth. But

spring 2013

Photo by Michael D’Ambrosia

that is the whole purpose of performing, isn’t it? As actors, we strive to not lose that childlike ability to believe.

Growing up in the arts, I have learned more than I ever could have out of a textbook – because the arts don’t teach you inflexible facts, they teach you about ever-changing people.

The arts are concerned with humanity, and at the end of the day, what could possibly matter more? People are not math problems and therefore cannot be taught in a classroom. I think that performing arts should be accessible, for all young people, because the arts help you grow infinitely as a person.

They teach you to look inside yourself in order to understand and touch those around you and across the globe.

In everything I do, I try to apply the advice, wisdom, and lessons I’ve learned from growing up in the arts community. The arts teach youth to be strong in the face of conflict, to be brave when facing your deepest fears, to not be afraid to look inside yourself, but also to not hesitate to reach out to others. The arts provide a series of paradoxes that breeds confidence and humility, courage and vulnerability, passion and a determined work ethic. As I move forward in life, I still hear those voices I’ve learned from all these years whispering, “Go! Go! Go!”

Aubrey Peebles is an active singer and performer, appearing on various television shows as well as singing the national anthem at major league sporting events. Recently, she collaborated with Orlando Repertory Theatre in a cabaret fundraiser for a family friend dealing with cancer. She currently resides in Los Angeles focusing on her film and music career.

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BFA Theatre Arts

Theatre for Young Audiences Concentration

Be a part of their ďŹ rst theatrical experience... *Applications due January 15th

theatre.depaul.edu | 773 325 7999 | theatreadmissions@depaul.edu

By

Lis

ak ra me r

let’s talk about

Lauren Rosen in don’t u luv me? by Linda Daugherty. Dallas Children’s Theater, Dallas, TX. Photo by Linda Blase.

spring 2013

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P

icture a darkened theatre filled with an audience of both children and adults. When the lights come up the audience sees a gigantic balloon of a nude woman that almost fills the stage. As music builds, this mother figure gives birth to the characters who will then share a story through movement, sound, and no real words.

This memorable production of Magic Power, written and directed by Søren Valente Ovesen of the Danish company Batida and performed at the 13th ASSITEJ International Congress in Tromsø, Norway in 1999, prompted intense debate (often between Americans and Europeans) about whether or not sexual content is appropriate for young audiences.

Fast forward to 2012. In a blog entitled “Confessions of a Reluctant TYA Playwright” posted on HowlRound (a journal of the Theater Commons for sharing resources between theatre artists found at www.howlround.com), Chicago playwright Sarah Gubbins discusses her experience writing fml: how Carson McCullers saved my life for Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.

The play tells the story of an openly lesbian parochial school student in La Grange, IL who finds a connection between her own sense of isolation and that found in the character of John Singer in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. At one point the audience hears the offstage physical abuse of the main character, while witnessing her thoughts through multimedia staging. Gubbins asks, “… Was this a TYA play? Or was it just a play with characters who were teens struggling with what it meant to confront homo­ phobia and bullying in high school? In the following months I’ve thought hard about this question. Especially as literary managers at various theatres decisively tell me the play is too much of a TYA play for their main stage and too mature for their TYA programming. What makes a play a TYA play?”

American companies are beginning to program plays that challenge the line of what is and is not appropriate. In a world where young people reach puberty at earlier ages, and where sexuality has become ubiquitous in most forms of media and even in political discussion, many artists have begun to ask the difficult questions as well as explore responsible ways to present complex issues in a field which straddles the line between arts and education.

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Disclose, Disclose, Disclose “Disclose, disclose, disclose,” says Jeff Church, producing artistic director of Kansas City’s Coterie Theatre. This seems to be the general consensus of any practitioners who attempt to venture into material that challenges people’s perceptions of what is considered appropriate for young audiences. The Coterie Theatre established the “Coterie at Night” series, which Church says enables them to “break away from being slaves to the gatekeepers like teachers and principals to present works that have nothing to do with school curriculum.” By bypassing the need for school shows, the Coterie is able to offer productions like their 2012–2013 season opener, Spring Awakening. Of course, this is not without risk. In publicizing Spring Awakening, the Coterie emphasized the play contains “VERY MATURE content” and “only 13 and older admitted.” The description about the production provided in the Coterie’s publicity is explicit about content: “Spring Awakening goes back in time to explore what’s changed – and what hasn’t – on the path to understanding sex. It is a story of first love and lasting regrets. But most remarkably, it’s a musical contemplating questions that teenagers have been asking forever.”

Julie Arvedon, director of public relations and marketing for Boston Children’s Theatre (BCT), took a similar approach when publicizing the world premiere production of Reflections of a Rock Lobster in 2012, with the major difference being that BCT was marketing the production to schools. “We talked about the story because it’s a true story,” Arvedon says. “Obviously bullying is so much in the forefront; that’s a big component. A lot of curriculum is being developed around it. We laid it right out there what this story was about. We didn’t shy away from that.” BCT’s season brochure is also explicit about content: “Reflections of a Rock Lobster is based on a true story of a 17 year-old gay student from Cumberland, Rhode Island who sued his high school in 1980 for the right to escort his boyfriend to his high school prom. Adapted by

spring 2013

Burgess Clark from the autobiographical book by Aaron Fricke, the play makes a powerful statement about bullying, intolerance, and hope … With this production, BCT hopes to continue to enlighten new audiences with positive messages about tolerance and acceptance. Parental discretion is advised.”

In both these situations, full disclosure led to successful runs of the productions without any major complaints. “We got one hate mail,” Arvedon says, “and we were prepared. We were ready.”

BCT Executive Artistic Director Burgess Clark explains, “This gentleman’s basic point was that it was anti-religion” because it includes the character of a priest and other references of religion throughout the play. The popularity and demand for the production led Clark to decide to remount Reflections of a Rock Lobster in March 2013. The Coterie was also successful in bringing in audiences, without any complaints. “The issue about sex and romance with teenagers,” Church says, “is not about complaints.

We’ve worked through that. The question is: are you going to sell tickets if you scare people by announcing the content? We found a way to ensure teenagers coming on their own volition.

The last two weekends, the population became more heavily teenagers. They were coming with their gangs, packs, clusters.”

This shift allowed the Coterie to achieve one of its goals with this work. “Part of the Coterie’s posture with and purpose in the schools is about getting teenagers the information they need.”

However, even the most complete effort at disclosure and ally building does not guarantee full acceptance of a production by the gatekeepers for certain communities. When preparing for the tour of her play, And Then Came Tango, playwright and University of Texas - Austin graduate student Emily Freeman worked with the school district, including principals, and provided them with “full disclosure” as to the content of the play. The educational and publicity material includes this description: “And Then Came Tango tells a beautiful story about love, family, perseverance, and standing up for your beliefs. The play is inspired by the true story of Roy and Silo, two male penguins living at the Central Park Zoo who formed a pair bond, built a nest, and were so determined to be parents that they incubated a rock. When given an orphaned egg, the pair successfully raised a baby fledgling. The play takes audiences on a journey to the penguin exhibit where Lily, a young visitor to the zoo, learns to understand the consequences of doing what she believes is right when faced with a public outcry about Roy and Silo’s same-sex pair bond. This original work for young audiences weaves dance, storytelling, and live music with audience interaction through a story that celebrates families of all shapes and sizes.” Freeman also worked with a UT-Austin psychology professor who “studies young people’s attitudes about sexuality and stereotypes” to ensure the age appropriateness of the material. However, after the first performance, the Austin Independent School District (AISD) administration cancelled the tour because of concerns about the subject matter.

Magic Power by Søren Valente Ovesen.

Teatergruppen Batida, Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo by Gorm Valentin.

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So why then, did the school district cancel the play? Despite all the preparation and full-disclosure, Freeman suggests that it might have to do with the possibility that “homosexuality is immediately associated with sex and seen as not a ‘normal’ relationship.” Clark has a similar concern. “One of the things that irritates me a lot,” he says, “is the way that gay people are so often identified or profiled by their sexuality or sexual lives.

Being gay isn’t just about having sex. It’s about who you are and the community you’re a member of, etc.” Both Freeman and Schroeder-Arce emphasize that And Then Came Tango is about love and family, not about sexual orientation. According to articles on the cancellation, part of the concern lay in presenting an issue that parents may not be ready to discuss with their children. In the case of UT-Austin’s production, the difficulty may lie in the fact the play is intended for elementary school audiences, but this doesn’t discount the importance of doing this kind of work. “Most of my work is with underrepresented populations,” says Schroeder-Arce. “In this case it’s children with same sex parents. When there are so many hetero-normative stories put forward that say ‘my family is not normal,’ it becomes important to do shows like Tango.”

Despite the actions of the AISD, UT-Austin has found other audiences clamoring to see the production and is touring And Then Came Tango to private schools, high schools, middle schools, and two elementary schools. Ultimately, as SchroederArce points out, the controversy “brings more attention to the issue by bringing it to the forefront. It keeps reminding me how conservative and discriminating the world is, but at least I’m doing something about it. That feels great.” She also says that she “is in a fortunate place to not have to make money with my productions” as this tour was free and part of the academic program for her students. “It’s an intricate thing to think about what’s going to be the thing that people will take,” Schroeder-Arce says, especially when box-office is a concern. A look at the season programming at the Coterie, BCT, Dallas Children’s Theater (DCT), and other theatres around the country shows that many people are finding ways to balance the need to produce seat-

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filling fun plays with their desires to produce material that asks our audiences to question and think about social norms.

“We have an obligation as theatre people who work with young people,” says Linda Daugherty, playwright in residence at DCT. “We all want to do the fun stuff, but we also have to look at the darker side – sex, drugs, alcohol.” Daugherty is passionate about presenting plays that explore social issues in order to “get the information out there” to teens and parents who need to understand and discuss. She bases a lot of her work on real statistics and true stories. “Whether we like it or not,” Daugherty says, “in too many middle schools and high schools, students are sexually active.” According to several studies, the average age for teens to start having sex is 17, but there is a wide range, possibly starting as early as 12 or 13.

Any expression of physicality is fodder Anyone who has watched a show with a young audience will recall the inevitable reaction to any moment of romance or physicality. Church points out that this is true even for the youngest audiences. “When doing Shrek, the Musical,” he says, “every kid wants to see everyone paired up. Donkey must be paired up with the dragon. It’s very important that the universe has order. It’s about organizing things.” He goes on to explain that in a production of Playwright Y York’s adaptation of Witch at Blackbird Pond “the audience goes crazy when Nat takes off his cap and his intentions were romance.”

“Any expression of physicality is fodder,” says Clark. This leads to important questions about how directors stage this kind of material and how that relates to the overall purpose of producing shows that challenge social issues. “How do we approach the reality of romantic/sexual relationships in a way that honors our audience where they are in their own development and yet doesn’t shrink from truth-telling?” asks Julia A. Flood, artistic

a b “ I t ’s ou a tw ni n th hat tri at ’s ca pe go t e t op in hi Ro xa l g t ng nn eS e w o b to ch ro ed il l e t th er t -A a k he ink rc e e.” th ing

“The play is absolutely beautiful,” says Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, faculty of UT-Austin and director of the production. “I love the idea of the interactive role. It’s open-ended and constructivist.”

The show includes protest signs that contain symbols, such as pink and blue penguins, hearts, and a hand indicating stop. The symbols represent both sides of the issue; on one side a positive and the other a negative. The audience is asked to think about the issue and make choices. “Everything I do is theatre for social change and asks people to think about how they react to issues,” Schroeder-Arce says. “What do they think about? What does it mean to stand up for something?” This play asks its audience to think about what it means to stand up for something against others, and what defines family.

spring 2013

(L–R) Caroline Drage as Wendla, and Will Amato

as Melchior in Spring Awakening, music by Duncan Sheik and book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Coterie at Night Series, The Coterie, Kansas City, MO. Photo by J. Robert Schraeder.

director of Eckerd Theater Company in Clearwater, FL. “I don’t believe in hiding things from kids – forbidden subjects always lurk in the background, and we all know that the imagined reality has very strong seductive powers (just look at the Victorians) – but I do believe in giving careful consideration to unintended consequences when dealing with any potentially controversial staging.

Theatre is very powerful, as we all know, and it is important to be responsible and respectful to our audience when we use it.”

Of course, at times we can’t anticipate how people will react, particularly the gatekeepers who give or deny access to our audiences. “Nobody has sex, it’s not implied,” Schroeder-Arce says about And Then Came Tango. “If you see a pregnant woman on stage, she had sex. In the play, they talk about mating. Like any show that deals with those issues, that’s how this play is about sex.” Freeman explains that the play, which initially started as a movement piece, relies heavily on “penguin movement vocabulary” which includes a “ritualistic dance penguins perform when they solidify their pair bond that involves bowing and neck nuzzling.” This movement “is about love, being in love, and affection,” says Schroeder-Arce. “They are also affectionate with the babies. This includes all the penguins, not just the same sex couple.” However, as Freeman points out, “You can’t get away from the fact that the penguins are human actors, and some of those actors are male.” Could this be the thing that motivated the complaint leading to AISD’s decision? Freeman says that

spring 2013

audiences were “intrigued by the movement, finding it funny, and enjoying it. For these audiences, the conflict is not that they are boys, but that they couldn’t have a baby.”

Staging any play is, of course, up to the discretion of the director and other artists working on the production, but the choices made by TYA practitioners may influence the perception of “appropriateness” of the production. Church marketed and directed Spring Awakening in a very different way than the Broadway production which “glorified sex” even through its poster that showed “a man mounting a woman.” “This is an intimate theatre with 250 seats,” Church says. “We didn’t have nudity. The audience would see body parts through break-ups in lighting, and the emphasis was on the ensemble passing an apple in a circle around the moment.”

The boys’ relationship in Reflections of a Rock Lobster starts with a kiss early on. This was an intentional choice on Clark’s part: “I thought, let’s just have this expression of these two boys’ affection for each other and then just move on from there.” By not putting too much emphasis on the staging of romantic love, it seems to enable the audiences to acknowledge its existence and then move on. “With our production of I Never Saw Another Butterfly,” Flood says, “…We are careful in staging the young teen romance because we know that the romance speaks directly to the young teens we are performing for. We want it

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“Se

The Last Taboo The issue of age appropriate casting adds another layer of complexity to the discussion. Church points out a line that he wouldn’t cross: “To do Spring Awakening correctly, with real teenagers – with a real 14 year old – you’d be shut down.

Age appropriate casting – that’s the final line, the last taboo.

Nobody disputes that teens should see it, but actually using kids in it just crosses the line for a lot of people.”

In contrast, Clark feels that this line, in some cases, should be crossed. Other than some of the adult roles in Reflections of a Rock Lobster which were played by professional actors, the cast ranged from ages 14 to 19. “About two years ago,” Clark says, “I started a workshop with a group of selected teens from various communities, socioeconomic backgrounds, races, sexualities. I had them all read the book first, and then we just began to improvise and workshop the project. Doing things like this, I was a little trepidatious, and that’s why I wanted to work with teens of this generation because I believe the equality movement will be one of the most defining elements of this generation.” This workshop process led to the development of the script, and the teens played an important role in ensuring the relevance of the script. “The kids were actually the ones that said, ‘I don’t think you’re going far enough with this,’” Clark says. “Certain things were woven into the script direct from their experiences, both gay and straight. It was a very interesting education for me and that was all affirmed when I saw our first student audience. They were right with it. They were absolutely behind the story. So even though it’s a 30-year-old story, I think it’s absolutely relevant for today.”

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lly

Clark didn’t find it difficult to stage the more intimate moments with a cast that was made up of gay, straight, and questioning young people. “I was enormously impressed with how mature the kids were when they handled this material,” he says. “I still remember the moment when they kissed in the scene. The boys that were playing the two leads didn’t tell me they were going to do that. They were just off book, we really hadn’t talked about it, and all of a sudden they just went for it. It was a little startling, I don’t think for them but for the rest of the cast. But you could hear a pin drop and everybody applauded after that. All of the cast members were very much concerned about expressing the story honestly.”

a re sa e i l.” nc t oo m a ul h ro rf Churc nd we Jeff x a po

to connect them more deeply to the play and its message, to make it relevant and real for them. We don’t want it to distract them from the message of the play, the loss and aloneness of the main character through the horror of the Holocaust.”

Daugherty’s work also incorporates authentic teenage voices.

Daugherty’s play dont u luv me? presented by DCT in 2009, explores the issue of dating violence and asks audiences to recognize the small signs that something might be wrong in a relationship. Although the lead roles in dont u luv me? were played by professional actors, the cast included teens who participated in DCT’s educational programming. “It’s interesting when you rehearse with teens,” Daugherty says, “because they’ll tell you when something doesn’t ring true. Once they feel safe, they’re forthcoming.” She believes that audiences want “to see their story told” which enables DCT to do these productions without too many complaints. “I never thought we would be able to put these issues onstage – that the audience wouldn’t be ready, but they were.” She points out that the few complaints they had, which could be “counted on one hand,” were usually not about the sexual content. In the past, Daugherty has received a few complaints from schools around the country who presented her 10-minute play Send found in The Bully Plays from Dramatic Publishing. The play is about “sexting naked pictures” that leads to the bullying of the main character who then falls into deep depression. “Educators wanted to cut the word ‘crap,’” Daugherty says, “but that’s the only thing they objected to. Language seems to be the biggest complaint.”

Finding Allies in the Community “I think that in dealing with this or any topic,” Flood says, “it’s most important to respect the kids where they are, not according to any agenda of our own, and to be responsible in giving information. This is also being respectful of teachers and parents whose trust we engage when we invite them to bring their children to us. They will not thank us if we open up a Pandora’s Box irresponsibly and leave them to clean up the mess.” BCT Executive Producer Toby Shine emphasizes that one way to present this kind of material responsibly is “about finding the allies in the community and trying to begin to facilitate change … teachers are absolutely our best allies.”

DCT relies heavily on allies and bringing in appropriate people for talk-back sessions. dont u luv me? “was based on lots of conversations with The Family Place and other local shelters,” Daugherty says. “The relationship starts with romance but

spring 2013

then it becomes too much too soon, with the senior boyfriend controlling her every move. I try to tell the story of a girl. She’s not a victim.” The play shares a story familiar to its audiences.

“After the show,” Daugherty says, “I can’t tell you how many mothers and daughters said, ‘That’s my story,’” including a mother whose daughter had been murdered by an abusive boyfriend five years earlier. In the play, Daugherty also included “two kids in a healthy relationship. The contrast is important so they can see models of behavior that they should see.”

Daugherty emphasizes the importance of having talk-backs after shows that deal with issues like these. “We need to bring into our work health care professionals and police officers, people who really know the law. We are responsible for getting that information out there.” In an article entitled “Children’s Theater Teen Scene: Innovative Therapy” posted in Psychology Today, Julie K. Hersh, mental health advocate and author of Struck by Living: From Depression to Hope writes about her experience attending DCT’s Teen Scene Festival that included dont u luv me?: “As I listened to the interchange between teens and the counselors in the discussion session after the show, the open communication showed a new form of partnership. Counselors and teens dissected the emotional issues presented as a team, using the actors as their clients. No one felt pegged as the one at fault or in need of a cure.” These kinds of talk-backs support Daugherty’s hope that TYA companies get the appropriate information out and provide young people with understanding about what can happen in the real world.

Providing appropriate resources was also an integral piece of Spring Awakening. The performances were preceded by a short documentary about the Coterie’s Dramatic Health Education Project which, according to the company website, is “An award winning collaborative program between the Coterie, UMKC School of Medicine and Pharmacy, and the KU Medical Center School of Nursing to educate teens about the transmission and prevention of STDS and HIV/AIDS.” Church suggests the documentary may have helped frame acceptance of the production. “The theme of Spring Awakening,” Church says, “is they are not equipping kids with the information they need. A couple of people said that, by presenting the video first, in context you can really do anything. It’s all about the framework.”

PFLAG (Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays) helped create a strong framework for last year’s production of Reflections of a Rock Lobster, so BCT partnered with them for the remount. “This has to be a total experience,” Clark says. “It’s not just coming to see a play. You have to do prework in which you inform people and open the discussion, take it through the project itself, and then do follow up. This coming production we’re actually partnering with PFLAG,

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and it is specifically because they became so integral last year to our production in doing follow up conversations.”

Why is it TYA has to neuter everything?

These examples show that there has been some change in American attitudes towards what is considered appropriate programming, but there are still many challenges and questions we need to ask. Should we be exploring social issues for all age groups? “The young ones are where you hope to address sex and gender,” says Freeman. “… I think it’s something we shouldn’t shy away from. Kids really enjoy the same kinds of stories we do as adults. They’re about humanity. We need to think about if we are activists with our art. Art is activism.”

It’s almost impossible to attend an ASSITEJ International Congress without seeing nudity in at least one play, even some geared toward the youngest audiences. Studies show that European attitudes toward sex education are very different from American attitudes. In many countries, they start sex education as early as Kindergarten and continue throughout the school years. These same studies suggest that the countries with stronger sex education programs have fewer teen pregnancies, STDs, and abortions, and that teenagers in those countries have a greater understanding of sexual health and responsibility.

However, a play that is only tangentially about sex can struggle in more conservative American communities, especially if the target audience is in elementary school. Does that mean we shouldn’t be presenting challenging works to our youngest audiences?

This doesn’t make much sense in a world where children are exposed on a daily basis to mature content in every media. “It used to be in my day,” says Clark, “that you could take more risks in theatre than you could on television. It has kind of reversed now. We need to be the ones that are taking the chances.” “Sex and romance is a really powerful tool,” Church says – a tool that has existed in theatrical productions for a long time. He offers Romeo and Juliet as an example. “And we still can’t talk about it?!” Church asks. “Why is it TYA has to neuter everything?”

Perhaps the answer lies in an adult desire to see childhood innocence last longer. Yet, the statistics show that desire doesn’t make reality. “57–67% of girls will have sex as teens,” Daugherty says. “We better deal with it.”

Lisa A. Kramer, Ph.D. is a freelance theatre artist, educator, and writer who teaches adjunct courses at universities throughout New England.

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Walking the Tightrope

by Mike Kenny

“...a simple play beautifully told.” —KCRW “...breathtaking and transcendent.” —Bitter Lemons “...something incredibly special.” —Backstage “...pure theatrical magic!” —Stage & Cinema For touring information, contact theatre@24thstreet.org LA TIMES CRITIC’S CHOICE • LA WEEKLY GO! • OVATION RECOMMENDED

24th STreet Theatre

Los Angeles’ Daring Theatre for Young Audiences

24thSTreet.org • 213.745.6516 24Street_TYAToday_02.indd 1

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3/7/13 5:57 PM

On Sunday, September 15, 1963, a bomb exploded at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham Alabama, killing four little girls:

Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.

This deadly explosion marked a turning point in the American Civil Rights Movement.

Fifty years later, on Sunday, September 15, 2013, WE REMEMBER!

PRESENTS

DESIGNED BY TROY LAMBERT/AFROBLU

A NATIONAL BENEFIT STAGED READING

Presented in association with over 50 organizations internationally.

For more information visit PROJECT1VOICE.org

Proceeds from these events will benefit ongoing arts and arts-related programming nationally. For a complete listing of national and international locations, venues, participating organizations and additional information visit PROJECT1VOICE.ORG

(L–R) Mark Foster and Sam Alty with audience

member Nur in Pool Piece for young people with profound and multiple learning disabilities

by Tim Webb. Oily Cart, United Kingdom.

Photo by Jesus Gamon.

By Barry Kornhauser

Please visit the Kennedy Center website at tinyurl.com/brzxe2f to read the full report on this historic convening.

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An International Convening of Thought-Leaders in Theater, Dance, Disability, Education, and Inclusion

The plan was nothing short of audacious. It had never even been attempted before. But the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Department of VSA and Accessibility, managed to pull it off, and in so doing accomplished something quite extraordinary, the implementation of a truly seminal event for a field so complex, so diverse and multifaceted, so fraught with passions, sensibilities, and ideas that no common ground has yet been met on even what to call it.

For the purposes of this article, let’s use the term ‘disability arts,’ for, according to a recent article in the ASSITEJ Magazine by the Kennedy Center’s Director of Theater for Young Audiences, Kim Peter Kovac, that is the tag with the widest global recognition. An exact definition of the field is also elusive, but Kovac gives it a shot, offering that “maybe it’s as simple as theatre and dance by, for, with, and/or about persons with disabilities.”

What the Kennedy Center fashioned was the very first international convening of leaders in this field, brought together from around the world with the express purpose of “initiating the beginning of a larger global conversation about performing arts, education, and disability.” As Betty Siegel, the Kennedy Center’s Director of VSA and Accessibility, recognized, “Gathering thought leaders and setting an agenda focused on the future for inclusive performing arts will be a crucial first step in advancing the field at all levels of practice.”

Participants attended from across the spectrum of disability arts and across the globe, 54 individuals from 17 different countries, representing every continent except Antarctica. The three-day gathering was entitled “Assessing the Future of the Field: An International Convening of Thought-Leaders in Theater, Dance, Disability, Education, and Inclusion,” a thoroughly acronym-proof designation, but clearly a nod to the thorny polemics surrounding

the field’s nomenclature. Conversation was to be open and honest, but never judgmental, and everyone given a chance to speak and be heard, with an understanding that there are multiple languages and modalities for conveying information. To that end, the convening was fully accessible. Accommodations included sign language interpretation, Computer-Assisted Real-Time Translation (CART), assistive listening devices, audio-description, as well as Polish and Japanese language translation.

Although Siegel at one point defined the convention as a “Search Conference,” perhaps the term “Thought Laboratory” would be a more fitting label. “Allow the conversation over the next few days to challenge presumptions and assumptions,” advised Siegel.

“Our charge is to discuss what as a community of arts and disability workers we can do to reach our preferred futures. We are framing the conversation for the future. This is a gathering to ask questions.

It’s not about finding answers … We are not here to solve problems; we are not here to fix things. We are here to think, to question, to wrestle with, to envision … We want to identify a few things that individually or as a group we can take responsibility for, and that we can accomplish rather readily, an agenda for what happens next.

But most importantly, our charge is to luxuriate in the opportunity to think, to explore ideas of where as a field we should be moving in order to get to our tomorrow.”

(L–R) Daniel Durant, Eddie Buck (face obscured),

Troy Kotsur, Ipek Mehlum and Maleni Chaitoo in Cyrano by Stephen Sachs. A co-production of Deaf West Theatre and the Fountain Theatre, Los Angeles, CA. Photo by Ed Krieger.

spring 2013

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“Framing The Conversation” – An Exploration in Three Forms Discussions Most of the convening’s hours were spent in small group open-space discussions, allowing for a rich and productive interchange of ideas.

The first day of these was devoted to asking questions that would inform our thinking about the future, the second to envisioning that future, and the last to identifying a few first steps that will help us reach that future.

Facilitators encouraged participants to be open to new thoughts, to whatever captivated the interest of the group even if the practical value of the conversation was hard to articulate. They were reminded that good discussions do not necessarily end in agreement or conclusion, but rather in clarity of differences and an agreement to disagree (although not everyone may agree with this).

Judith Smith lead participants in a non-threatening improvisational movement experience, designed to “get us out of our heads and into our bodies,” moving together and connecting with each other nonverbally.

After opening remarks and introductions, the convening officially began with an interview.

Facilitator Lawrence Carter-Long of the National Council on Disability asked questions of Jenny Sealey, artistic director of Graeae Theatre, the United Kingdom’s flagship disability arts company, and Daryl Beeton, artistic director of the children’s theatre Kazzum, noted for its adventurous, often outdoor, work celebrating difference and diversity. Both of these leaders with disabilities had just come from creating the opening ceremony of 2012 Paralympics in London. Sealey was its co-director. Beeton danced for the Queen on top of a five-meter high sway pole, and alongside 40 other performers with disabilities, flew high over the arena audience.

Pecha Kucha A transliteration of an onomatopoetic Japanese term meaning “chit-chat” – a sort of arts-infused amalgamation of speed dating and “show and tell” developed by a couple of architects in Tokyo.

This presentation technique, in which a maximum of 20 slides are show for 20 seconds each (for a 6 minute and 40 second total) with accompanying narration, keeps things concise and very directed.

Participants were invited, on a first-come-first-served basis, to share a current or recent program of their own using this fastpaced format. This provided an opportunity for everyone to learn about the extraordinary depth and breadth of work in the field.

The presentations were eye-opening for their power and diversity, everything from a South African company of “kooky misfits” devising purely visual theatre to the stark contrast of a UK theatre creating multi-sensory immersive performances with cutting-edge technologies that make it possible to reflect the experience of people with visual impairments by “relocating the dramatic action within bodily experience.”

Workshops The convening also included a half-dozen workshops or lecture/ demonstrations, interactive in-depth explorations of various aspects of participants’ work. One of these, conducted by Josette BushellMingo, artistic director of the Tyst Theater Center for Deaf Dramatic Arts, explored what happens when actors encounter sign – how they are changed physically, how the experience changes the way they look at words, with the work generating a veritable “transformation of language – the word no longer a word, but a three-dimensional energy.” Utilizing the various national sign languages of the convening’s participants, Bushell-Mingo also provided a vivid example of the ways creative access can become a catalyst for innovation.

The work of Axis Dance brought disability arts forthright into the mainstream popular culture when viewed by some 30 million people on So You Think You Can Dance. The company’s Artistic Director

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“ We have this huge, massive responsibility to bring up the next generation of thinkers.”

Jenny Sealey Sealey talked about her struggles trying to find a thematic center for the ceremony, until she went to work on a production of The Tempest with an actress named Charlotte who is autistic playing the role of Miranda. Just as Miranda looks at her “brave new world” without judging, so did Charlotte look at her own. And that really struck Sealey. Moved by this actress’ portrayal, it became the place “where everything else fell away.”

Jenny Sealey had found her show, one that would ultimately feature hundreds of performers, including Stephen Hawking, Sir Ian McKellen as Prospero, and a Miranda in an airborne wheelchair. Putting the enormous spectacle together was hell, remarked Sealey, but “the most gorgeous sense of hell” for the event became “the biggest showcase of disability arts the world has ever witnessed,” watched by 62,000 people in the arena itself, and over a billion worldwide.

Asked why they had agreed to attend the convening after their literally “Olympian” labors, Beeton got a laugh exclaiming that he was simply “excited to be called a thought-leader.” What really drew him in? The “rare opportunity to meet with a group of people with a global perspective, and the idea of not having to come away with an actual plan or anything like that, but just to think and talk.” Sealey was excited by the convening’s “unlimited” possibilities. “This is not an end,” she suggested, “It’s the beginning. We are all part of this whole new beginning. We have this huge, massive responsibility to bring up the next generation of thinkers … I am here out of a sense of responsibility. But also to learn from everybody else.”

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Dancers Rodney Bell, Janet Das, Alice Sheppard and Sonsherée Giles in AXIS Dance Company’s “Vessel,” choreographed

by Alex Ketley. Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts, Oakland, CA. Photo

by Andrea Basile.

Forging A Future Following Lawrence’s lead, it was then everyone’s turn to ask questions, questions about the field they felt needed to be asked, and that would spur further discussion. The small group conversations were animated and intense, the questions broad-ranging. Identifying common themes that emerged from these questions was the next task of the convening. Many were suggested and discussed, and, in a nod to an election year, a vote determined the top six themes for further exploration. They were: THE FIELD (Who’s the “We?”), EDUCATION, LEADERSHIP, COMMUNICATION, CREATIVE REVOLUTION, and QUALITY. These themes became the areas of focus that would frame the continued conversation.

The Field “We need to answer ‘Who’s the We?’ or concede that the field is just too diverse to pin down, then move on. No matter what, there is a need for a cohesive community and a ‘tellable’ story, or stories, that anyone in the field can adapt and use as needed. This underpins Leadership, Communication, Education,” so asserted CEO/Executive Director of VSA Georgia, Elizabeth Labbe-Webb. That said, a small task force should be assembled to establish a common terminology and to once and for all define this inclusive field in terms not so broad as to be meaningless, yet not so specific as to inadvertently exclude. The task force should be comprised of representatives

spring 2013

from around the globe and of the various constituencies of the field – artists, administrators, educators, perhaps even arts therapists, and people of all differing abilities. The group could meet via the internet and solicit input from the broader field, perhaps answering not only the question of who we are, but also who we might become.

Education Maybe we can’t singlehandedly build the universal design model school of the future, but we can each provide a brick or two, by helping to educate educators about our work. One course of action is to “infiltrate” university theatre conferences (such as that of ATHE here in the U.S.) with workshops and panels, and campuses themselves with symposia and mini-conferences. [For more on “infiltration” see CREATIVE REVOLUTION below.]

During the convening there was much talk of “getting ‘em young,” bringing disability awareness and experiences to children. Some ways to accomplish this would be to unify and intensify advocacy efforts directed towards making the Arts a core curricular subject in all of our schools to include disability arts as part of teaching training programs, and to develop and disseminate professional development opportunities in universal design for learning to working teachers.

Outside of schools, there are theatre and dance companies among us that already serve youth audiences. Another recommendation

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“ Quality is not only a goal, but also a philosophy, a commitment and an expression of the respect of the artistic work.” Cecile Teurlay would be for other companies to follow suit, to connect young people to performers with disabilities (as well as performers to young audiences with disabilities).

Scholars in education or psychology should be welcomed into the creative process to share their expertise on child development

and behavior. A research component that provides a statistical analysis of the work’s impact could serve as an academic endorsement of the field (which, in turn can be used to educate funders, schools, and social service agencies about the import of disability arts).

Leadership Kate Larsen, outgoing CEO of Arts Access Australia came to the convening with incoming CEO Emma Bennison, who happens to be blind. Larsen felt that it was important for her organization to be led by a person with a disability and so planned her own succession with that purpose in mind. (Read about it at www.artsaccessaustralia.org/ news/45-talk-the-talk) It is recommended that the current leaders of the field follow Larsen’s example – not by planning themselves out of a job – but by beginning to actively seek and nurture a next generation of leaders from within the community of persons with disabilities, through pro-active recruitment, mentoring, apprenticeships, and peer-to-peer support.

Communication We need to expand and further circulate resources such as The Kennedy Center Database of International Theater, Dance, and Disability Organizations. Setting up some sort of internet hub or website would offer opportunities to do so, while also providing a forum for bringing others into the conversation, sharing information and contacts, offering tips on access and inclusion, posting new developments, and hosting a virtual library of papers, resources, reviews, Pecha Kucha presentations, and short videos of best practices. This would give both experienced and emerging practitioners, as well as other partners, a broader sense of what is going on in the field, while at the same time boosting its visibility.

“Creative Revolution” This was a term coined by Ana Rita Barata, artistic director of Portugal’s CIM – Integrated Multidisciplinary Company, to suggest how the power of the fire inside us (our “passion and rage”) can

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ignite a greater conflagration capable of consuming the entire world of the performing arts, and so necessitate a rebuilding of its future, one that may start with “Infiltration.” Although there’s a certain subversive connotation to the word, what is meant here by such “infiltration” is largely just another form of access. Rather than incurring the cost and complications of hosting a gathering of its own, the disability arts field can tap into existing networks, bringing a presence to festivals, conferences, university symposia, and other such gathering places – as “satellite” programming.

As Kim Peter Kovac noted, this was done at the most recent ASSITEJ World Congress in Malmo, Sweden, with the TYA-UK Center of the association presenting a “Whose Theatre Is It Anyway Day” which had a substantive impact. As a consequence of the presentation, disability arts has now become a major thrust of this international association, and the “infiltration” will be continued and expanded at the 2014 Congress in Poland. Other such opportunities beyond the ever groundbreaking TYA genre, should be sought.

Quality “Quality is not only a goal, but also a philosophy, a commitment and an expression of the respect of the artistic work,” said Director of Development of Compagnie de L’Oiseau Mouche, Cecile Teurlay. Among other expressed concerns in this arena is the need to establish further serious training programs and rigorous creative processes with space to experiment, risk, and fail. As regards the serious training of performers with disabilities, arts administrators, arts educators, directors, designers, and all other arts/cultural-based professionals, one ready goal might be for companies that excel in these programs and processes to share their best practices with the rest of the field by offering webinars, writing articles, or inviting colleagues to observe their practices.

As to the creative process itself, let us follow Samuel Beckett’s dictum: “No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Strive to fail at least once in the coming year. (Failing that, if nothing else, you will have failed to fail!) And, as we are forging our tomorrow, it would serve well to also remember these words of UK freelance theatre artist Jonathan Meth: “People with disabilities are fantastic at thinking differently. Given the opportunity to make creative work they will not only flourish but innovate our entire industry, for diversity is the crucible of future culture.”

Final Thoughts During one of the many discussions over the three days of the convening, Artistic Director of UK’s Oily Cart, Tim Webb, noted that if young children have “100 languages” (a Reggio Emilia Approach perspective), then the community of persons with disabilities must have 500! He later continued, “I believe we are beginning to evolve a new artistic sensibility which harnesses the myriad ways – those 500 languages – that the minority, frequently alienated groups in society perceive and reflect on the world. This will involve more

spring 2013

than ‘accepting’ or finding a separate space in which the voices of … people with physical or intellectual disabilities can be heard. It must be a celebration and synthesis of the many, many ways by which human beings interpret reality … There are a lot of different ways of being alive on the earth, and this can be celebrated in the arts.”

Everyone seemed to agree – or at least to hope – that such a celebration was at hand, that we might at last have reached a kind of tipping point where this work will be moving into a new realm of acceptability and influence, taking its deserved place as part of the greater conversation in the arts. Coming on the heels of the game-changing Paralympics, this first-time ever assembling of many of the field’s global leaders was perhaps a true watershed moment, the start of a worldwide movement. “The opportunity to meet and speak with international colleagues is incredibly valuable,” exclaimed Larsen, “and I believe will produce ripples for years and years to come.” That it can, but only if we and our colleagues around the globe continue the work that was set in motion at this convening. In three short days, the Kennedy Center took us from a “gorgeous sense of hell” to an enticing glimpse of heaven. It gave us precious moments of introspection and affirmation, challenges and revelations.

So now we need to strive to continue the dialogue in 500 different languages, welcoming co-workers and collaborators into the conversation. For in a field that confronts barriers every day, the biggest one may be insularity. This convening knocked a huge hole in that wall, connecting, for the first time ever, those who work in arts and disability from every corner of the earth. It was, as Jenny Sealey suggested early on, “not an end, [but] a beginning,” setting us off – together – to build a brave new world.

Barry Kornhauser spearheads Millersville University’s Family Arts Collaborative. He is the recipient of the Charlotte B. Chorpenning Cup, Helen Hayes Outstanding Play Award (Cyrano), Ivey Playwriting Award (Reeling), two AATE Distinguished Play Awards (This Is Not A Pipe Dream and Balloonacy), Bonderman Prize (World’s Apart), Pennsylvania’s “Best Practices” Honor and its first Educational Theater Award “for outstanding contribution by an individual to theatre education in the Commonwealth,” and his youth theatre program for at-risk teens and those living with disabilities has been honored at the White House as one of the nation’s top arts-education initiatives. Barry has also received grants/fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Doris Duke Foundation, TYA/USA, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and PennPAT. His plays have been invited to New Visions/New Voices, One Theatre World, San Diego International TYA Festival, Provincetown Playhouse Festival of New Plays, and the Playground Festival, and have been commissioned by the Kennedy Center, Childsplay, and such Tony Award-winning regional stages as the Children’s Theatre Company, Alliance Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, and the Shakespeare Theatre.

Makeworks was really able to take our branding to the next level.

Their focus on the development of a strong visual aesthetic has helped us in all aspects of marketing and promoting the organization.”

CHRIS PEAK · EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, T YA/USA

CRAFTED COMMUNICATIONS MAKEWORKS spring 2013

DESIGN STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT ART DIRECTION LET’S GET IN TOUCH HELLO @ MAKE-WORKS.COM

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By Karen Weberman Leaping from Service to Sustainability in the Classroom

Arts integration developed from a critical need to shift traditional teaching and learning methods.

(L–R) Pre-K Classroom Teacher Paris Doss with

Interchange Teaching Artist with students from Jefferson Elementary School. Saint Louis, MO. Photo by Janelle Brooks.

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spring 2013

For decades, arts organizations and institutions across the country have passionately committed to partnering with schools to facilitate arts integrated residencies that bring teachers, students, and visiting teaching artists together for in-classroom learning experiences connecting the arts to core curriculum. These residencies are like snow flakes, no two are the exact same. An endless array of variables shape the flow of a residency, as residencies are a living, breathing, and shared learning experience. How are different arts organizations and institutions supporting and encouraging teachers to implement arts integrated instructional strategies into their classrooms beyond the residencies? What discoveries have arts administrators, teaching artists, and classroom teachers made along the journey? Are there best practices that have formed that have taken initial residency services to sustained arts integration in classrooms?

CURRENT REALITIES OF FOUR PROGRAMS Challenging Assumptions in Saint Louis, Missouri Arts program directors and administrators continuously reflect on what’s working, what’s not, and where they would like to see in-school programs go. Interchange is an “arts education collaborative program” of COCA (Center of Creative Arts) in Saint Louis, MO. Interchange follows a collaborative residency model in which it partners with arts organizations in Saint Louis to bring together teaching artists and classroom teachers for long-term residencies ranging from 8 to 16 one-hour classroom sessions. School Programs Manager Janelle Brooks speaks to a shift in Interchange’s thinking. “We’re finding out that some of the things we had made

spring 2013

some assumptions about are not as effective as we want them to be. Like that pairing a teaching artist and classroom teacher and doing a residency together, it’s not a way to change teaching practice.

It’s a way to have a great experience, and it is a way to impact learning in the classroom, but bringing this artist in and having them work with the classroom teacher and then the artist goes away … Maybe the classroom teacher keeps a game or an attention getting device, but as far as integrating the arts in their classroom on a continual basis, we’re not having that kind of impact on teachers through these experiences once we leave.”

While Interchange offers a series of professional development workshops and an annual 2-day Summer Institute where teaching artists and classroom teachers participate in a variety of interactive workshops and partner together to develop prospective residencies, they are currently in a strategic review process proposing a more systematic, school-specific approach to professional development for teachers.

This approach would provide ongoing professional development workshops on-site for teachers at their schools in addition to the classroom sessions with the teaching artists. These workshops will cater to school-specific needs pre, during, and post-residency, in addition to the handful of broader-based professional development workshops Interchange currently offers to all participating teachers in St. Louis Public Schools during the school year. Interchange Program Director Mark Cross reflects on teacher practice in the current collaborative residency model.

“I think we have had some good results, I wouldn’t say that we have teachers who have become arts integration specialists in their classrooms but I think they’ve come to appreciate how the arts can support academics and how it can draw kids in that often have behavioral problems or don’t learn in a traditional way.”

Financial Investment in Portland, Oregon In order to provide ongoing support for classroom teachers, arts organizations and institutions continue to address sustainability from a practical financial perspective. The Right Brain Initiative (RBI) in Portland, Oregon follows a collaborative model in which it partners with arts organizations to conduct residencies and professional development trainings. RBI carefully scaffolds how the process is funded to foster commitment from schools.

RBI Program Manager Marna Stalcup says, “Each year, school districts contribute $15 for every child in every participating school that becomes a fund for the school to bring in the artists. This program is designed so that the first two years a school is involved, they come on board gradually, and at no cost to the school district. In their third year of program involvement they’re in full implementation and that’s when the money kicks in. We call this the ‘infusion’ phase. In these schools, teachers and teaching artists co-design arts integrated learning experiences reaching every student at the school.

That’s a requirement.”

Funding for all of the other components of the Initiative, including professional development for classroom teachers and teaching artists, staffing, evaluation and documentation, and other program components come from an almost 50/50 public/private partnership of funding from the city to support the sustainable funding model. Forty-eight percent of public funding comes from the City of Portland, counties, state, and school districts. Fifty-two percent of private funding comes from foundations, corporations, individuals, in-kind, and other revenue. The Regional Arts & Culture Council manages the Initiative, and the contractual commitment required at a district level ensures that

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funding is secure regardless of any leadership changes in individual schools. RBI Implementation Manager Carin Rosenberg believes that slowly folding in the whole school to the process benefits teacher practice and funding. “In order to make the program sustainable and affordable, we are helping schools learn the collaborative process required of the Initiative. It’s our intention to have every school move from having an arts integration coach to take on the planning and implementation of arts integration themselves. We see that schools understand it and are doing it well. We look forward to the day we’ll be at scale in over 200 schools.”

Development Of Teachers And Teaching Artists in Austin, Texas As the field of teaching artistry continues to develop, there is a movement to provide practical and academic training to emerging professional teaching artists.

Drama for Schools (DFS) is “a collaborative professional development program model in drama-based instruction in association with The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre and Dance.” MFA candidates in the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities program are “drama specialists” who facilitate professional development sessions and collaborate with classroom teachers to implement in-school residencies rooted in drama-based instruction (DBI). DFS Drama Specialist Lara Dossett says, “All of the grad students who work for Drama for Schools are specialists. In the outside world, we’re called teaching artists. Katie Dawson, the Drama for Schools director, gave us that title to empower us.”

DFS has existed for over 10 years partnering with schools and districts throughout the country, and while it will continue to remain its own entity as a university program, they are now setting out on a new collaboration with MINDPOP, the coordinating body of the Kennedy

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Center’s “Any Given Child” initiative in Austin. Dossett says, “The Any Given Child initiative has partnered with Austin Independent School District, MINDPOP, and the City of Austin to transition all public schools to ‘arts rich’ campuses in 10 years. This includes in-school and out of school arts programs and performances, as well as professional development for teachers in the district in arts-based instruction and arts integration. Every school will have access to the arts: theatre, visual arts, dance, music, and media arts.”

DFS is playing a substantial role in planning and implementing these professional development programs for teachers.

Sarah Coleman, a graduate of the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities program and former DFS drama specialist, holds a newly created position as MINDPOP/Drama for Schools professional development manager, serving as a con-

sultant to MINDPOP from DFS. Coleman speaks to the challenges and benefits to DFS. “DFS is a program within a university, it’s not a non-profit arts organization that’s working towards traditional increments of growth. This can be a huge challenge for us and a huge gift. The biggest challenge that DFS faces is the turnover. We have graduate students with us for 3 years, and it often takes a full year for them to learn the pedagogy, learning how to make a relationship with the teacher who is new to this work. One of the things that’s so important about this program is that it’s within a university setting, allowing you to learn through the work. As a grad student, it’s such a rich in-depth practical experience. Students can go and continue this quality work wherever else in the country they may end up. After graduation, when former students continue to implement DBI in schools with teachers, that’s another way of viewing sustainability.”

spring 2013

with up to 3 core groups of students.

The TAP is an arts integration model for 60 days in one classroom, where the teaching artist and classroom teacher are co-teaching and there’s a debriefing structure. The process goes really deep in just one classroom. So the TAP is a real level of commitment from the school, teacher, and artist.”

While the TAP model is so new that Dunlap is able to reflect solely on the first completed TAP residency, she’s noticed great shifts. Dunlap says, “We can really see the significant impact these projects can have on not only the students, but the teachers and artists as well.”

3-D models of the 2012 Summer Institute Teaching Philosophies; Drama for Schools (DFS). University of Texas at Austin. Austin, TX. Photo by Elizabeth Walsh.

Deepening Commitment With Teacher Artist Partnerships in Pennsylvania One of the greatest challenges residency programs face is access to minutes in classrooms. The negotiation of residency length is a delicate one. The Arts in Education Division of the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts is exploring how a deeper commitment to in-school time benefits teacher practice and student experience.

The Council primarily focuses on arts in education partnerships through a de-centralized model with 13 partners in 67 counties in the state.

Program Director Jamie Dunlap speaks to a shift in residency focus in a newer model called TAP. “The Teacher Artist Partnerships (TAP) model, they’re different than our standard residencies.

Standard residencies are 10 to 20 days

spring 2013

COLLABORATIVE NOURISHMENT IN THE CLASSROOM Collaboration exists at the heart of all of these residency programs. As teachers move through the layered process of a residency, how does collaboration feed into their comfort with applying arts integrated instructional strategies into their classrooms?

Sixth grade teacher Shawna Munson at Quatama Elementary School in Hillsboro, Oregon describes how Right Brain Initiative’s (RBI) professional development workshops have fostered ownership of arts integrated strategies in her school. “When we go to these workshops our principals have us come back and teach the staff the strategy we learned. Every other week we have what’s called ‘academic seminar.’ So, two times a month we have different teachers who spend 15 minutes of our staff development meetings teaching an arts integrated strategy. It trickles down.

We’re kind of like teacher/leaders. We

all take the responsibility to teach one another. I think having all your teachers on board is really important for that.”

Munson emphatically discusses a change in her teaching practice. “There’s been a huge shift in my teaching. When I’m developing my lessons, I’m looking at ways to have movement and collaboration and different types of art forms within each lesson. We have what we call in my class ‘Tableau Tuesday.’ Tableau Tuesday is the highlight of my week!”

Co-teaching and mentorship helped 4th and 5th grade teacher Amber Pleasant at Austin Discovery School (ADS) embrace her experience with Drama for Schools (DFS). “I was working with a DFS coteacher when drama-based instruction was first introduced at ADS, and they did a really good job scaffolding how to do that with the teachers. The process began with presenting and then teaming us up with a mentor who would lesson plan with us and then come in and teamteach with us, gently guiding us towards independently planning and leading the lessons. The way that it was introduced really helped ease us into being more comfortable with it.”

The DFS 2-week Summer Institute also inspired Pleasant and her colleagues to continue applying techniques learned throughout the year. “I just think whenever teachers have an opportunity to share plans together, share ideas, that’s when we get creative and get confident. We come in and observe each other. When the team of teachers went to the institute last summer, one of the things that we left with was a real desire to have teachers observe each other and build strategies and keep a file of plans. There’s already a DBI website, but we thought we’d localize one for our campus.”

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“Is it our goal to work ourselves out of a job?”

Janel l e Brooks

Sixth grade teacher Julia Goodon at Mason Elementary School in Saint Louis, Missouri says her experience collaborating with Interchange supports and enhances core content, particularly social studies, for which she doesn’t always have time. “We breeze through these topics in the textbook but when an artist comes in we work more in-depth and it really makes an impact. This really does make an impact in students’ memories, very extensively. I think this really builds their confidence, and they feel comfortable. I know it’s important for me to participate and not just sit back and watch. Because I’ve observed the artist and participated in it, I can do it again.”

Fourth grade teacher Jane Gilrain at Freemansburg Elementary School in Freemansburg, Pennsylvania brings a unique perspective to the TAP she is currently participating in, as she was a theatre and teaching artist for 25 years prior to becoming a teacher. “What’s unique about the TAP model is the ‘debriefing’ process that happens between the artist and the teacher. In my 25 years of experience working in artist in residence programs in schools, I never participated in such a process. At the end of every TAP session, the observer (teacher or artist) objectively describes the lesson without value judgment, while the presenter (artist or teacher) listens. The presenter, then has a chance to agree or disagree on the details. Once an agreement is reached, both presenter and observer discuss the learning outcomes and plan for the next lesson. Finally, both artist and teacher evaluate the analytical process that occurred during the debriefing.

I have found this regular feedback to be extremely valuable to me as a teacher.

It is wonderful to see and hear a reflection of all the details that go into creating the classroom environment and the learning experience.”

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ENVISIONING SUSTAINABILITY As residency programs continue to figure out how to best meet the needs of teachers in an ever-evolving education system, the discussion of transitioning from service to sustainability stirs up a variety of reactions. Is it a realistic residency outcome to change teacher practice? What does sustainability of teachers continuing to apply arts integrated instructional strategies on their own look like? Is it possible to hinder future employment opportunities for teaching artists if the goal is to make this work sustainable for teachers?

Interchange and Metro Theater Company teaching artist Roxane McWilliams brings up part of a larger conversation that teaching artists are having nationally. “I don’t feel that we’re out there to change teacher practice. I feel that we’re out there to partner with the classroom teachers.

They have specific strengths and we have specific strengths … maybe it’s just shifting teacher perspective.

If we’re just bent on changing teacher practices then what’s the point of us sustaining ourselves as teaching artists?

Because then they’ll have everything we have and we’re a non-entity.”

Brooks has also spoken about the proposed outcome of residencies with colleagues and wonders, “Is it our goal to work ourselves out of a job? Is that where we want to end up? Do we want them to be self-sustaining? And I really think the answer is no. Because it’s just a shifting of the role of the arts in the classroom. There will always be something to be said for team teaching and there will always be something to

be said about what the artist brings to the experience. So it’s not that the teaching artist goes away at the end, it’s that the nature of the relationship has changed.”

Munson speaks from her own classroom experience. “I think it’s very powerful to have the artist bring their craft and skill that they’ve mastered and really teach the kids about the art form. Because as a teacher I’m pretty much a generalist, so there’s a lot of things I can do, but by no means am I an expert at any one art form. My own practice is sustainable to a certain point, but an artist coming in can only enrich and strengthen my own teaching experience.”

RBI teaching artist and Director of Education and Outreach at Oregon Ballet Theatre Kasandra Gruener believes that professional development is an important component to supporting classroom teachers on a long-term basis. “Teachers have a lot of pressures put upon them. I just feel so respectful of the hard challenges teachers face. They have economic problems in their schools, causing them to struggle for resources.

When the professional development they get from outside sources is supported and funded in all they do, we as teaching artists are able to effectively support teachers. The sustainability part of arts integration staying in the academic world, staying in the classroom comes from teachers having had professional development in the arts.”

TAP visual art teaching artist Judeth Hawkins completed a 2 year 90-session residency with a 4th grade teacher and reflects on teaching artists in the field: “I think integrating the arts into classroom curriculum is headed in the right direction.

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We need to work with more teachers and encourage the teachers who have had a successful experience with an artist to mentor other teachers. I strongly believe that it is important to allow the artists to remain primarily artists and not turn them into art teachers. It is a significant difference. There is a fine line to walk and a tricky balancing act in becoming a successful teaching artist. Unfortunately, simply giving lesson plans to a teacher does not create arts integration. It is important for teachers to observe artists in the classroom and experience working with artists. We must offer, maybe even require, arts integration classes to education students in college.”

Dossett passionately shares what sustainability looks like to her. “I am of the belief that every teacher can teach through the arts, and I believe that every teacher can

teach through the arts well with training.

If we can create spaces where teachers feel supported to understand the pedagogical and practical nature of the work, then I think that sustainability looks like classroom teachers who take our work and make it work for their context. That’s one of the reasons I believe in arts-based instruction and arts integration, I think anyone that really wants to can own a piece of this work for themselves.”

Thinking about follow-through after a residency is over, Dossett says, “You never want to leave them entirely, its always really important to ‘leave the door wide open, call me anytime you need, email, we will make time.’

You and I now have a professional and personal relationship, I want this to be something that is useful and meaningful and something that you are going to use in your practice for a long time.”

While different residency programs approach, view, and accept the chal­ lenging quest of leaping from service to sustainability in various ways, they joyfully hold the continual sharing and practice of arts integration in the classroom in the highest regard. While arts administrators, teaching artists, and teachers may not know exactly where they will land in the residency process and beyond, they continue to leap again and again.

Karen Weberman is the education director at Metro Theater Company in Saint Louis, Missouri. She holds an MFA in Theatre for Young Audiences from the University of Central Florida.

Chicago Playworks for Families & Young Audiences Presents:

Hansel and Gretel

by Moses Goldberg directed by Ann Wakefield

OCT 15 NOV 16, 2013

Number the Stars

Jackie and Me

by Dr. Douglas W. Larche with Susan Elliott Larche based on the novel by Lois Lowry directed by Ernie Nolan

by Steven Dietz directed by John Jenkins

JAN 18 – FEB 22, 2014

APRIL 8– MAY 10, 2014

at DePaul’s historic Merle Reskin Theatre 60 E Balbo Dr, Chicago | 312 922 1999 | theatre.depaul.edu

spring 2013

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page Childsplay

Performance Childsplay’s Sun Serpent by José Cruz González with music by Daniel Valdez

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to

Sun Serpent

stage

Photo (L–R) Andres Alcala, Andrea Morales, and Ricky Araiza in The Sun Serpent by José Cruz González. Childsplay, Tempe, AZ. Photo by Heather Hill Photography.

José Cruz González’s The Sun Serpent , produced by Childsplay, relates the brutal conquest of Mexico as seen through the eyes of a young boy.

“This scene is titled ‘Lament for the Dead,’ one of the most beautiful and haunting moments in the play. The massacre has just happened.”

Playwright José Cruz González

Night. A blood red moon. Xochitl, a young pregnant woman, sits near a lifeless body covered in a shroud. Lifeless masks appear onstage. Xochitl sings a song in Nahuatl.

Young Anáhuac enters and stands, quietly watching and listening.

Script

“During a two-year devising process, one of our central questions was how to convey the epic nature of the Conquest with multiple characters and only three actors. Early on, this image came to me: a woman wearing a dress of masks. The masks represent all the people who were massacred and each mask tells a different story. I drew a rough sketch of my idea – and Connie took it from there.”

Director Rachel Bowditch

“Rachel went wild when she saw the masks in my collection. The actors’ personal masks are made of plaster bandage and paper clay to fit perfectly, a process I developed after studying masks in Japan. I call them “invisible masks” because they tend to disappear on the face. The dangling translucent masks are made of vacuform plastic over a collection of wooden Noh masks I had carved in Kyoto. Their translucence produced an other-worldly effect.”

Mask Designer and Builder Zarco Guerrero

“We needed thirty masks for one costume – on time and budget. I work with a costume wizard named Daniel Hollingshead who researched making a vacuform machine from a hotplate and common hardware store items. It worked beautifully; we knocked out thirty masks in a day.

With a bit of trial and error – and hooks and wire, we secured the masks to live through a fast change without the sound of Velcro.”

Costume Designer Connie Furr-Solomon

“The textilene projection walls erupt into flames with a dramatic Spanish guitar and the sound of shouts and cries. Xochitl appears in the dress of masks and we hear a drum beat. She sings a lament in Nahuatl as the masks are placed on the trees.”

Director Rachel Bowditch

spring 2013

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By Emma Halpern

The Business of Puppetry 

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney and illustrations by Anita Jeram, adapted, directed and designed by Jim Morrow, music

by Steven Naylor, and narrated by Beau Bridges.

Mermaid Theatre of Nova Scotia, Windsor, Nova Scotia. Photo by Margo Ellen Gesser.

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spring 2013

Puppetry has been in existence for as long as people have been performing for each other.

Yet for many TYA practitioners, the logistics of getting puppets from the idea phase to the stage are a mystery.

Several artists who work in a variety of different puppet traditions were asked about the nuts and bolts of their productions.

They include Shari Aronson and Chris Griffith, co-founders and creative directors of Z Puppets Rosenschnoz in Minneapolis, MN; Margot Fitzsimmons and Spica Wobbe, co-founders of Double Image Theater Lab in New York, NY; Linda Hartzell, artistic director of Seattle Children’s Theatre in Seattle, WA; and puppet artist Jamie Donmoyer based in Orlando, FL. The process varies, but no matter the type of puppet or motivations for working with the medium, incorporating puppetry into a theatre piece is often a big financial investment and always requires a lot of time, labor, and innovation.

DESCRIBE THE TYPE OF PUPPETRY YOUR COMPANY USES IN ITS PRODUCTIONS. WHAT ROLE DOES PUPPETRY PLAY IN YOUR COMPANY’S MISSION? Shari & Chris · Z Puppets’ work combines handcrafted puppetry with zany comedy and live music. We have used hand, rod, shadow, and blacklight puppets – sometimes all in one production. Our current repertoire of five touring shows ranges from a glow-in-the-dark ping-pong ball circus to a puppet yoga rock opera with a four piece band.

Margot & Spica · Double Image Theater Lab focuses on

shadow theatre. However, we also apply all different kinds of puppetry and art forms in our productions, for example: toy theatre, object theatre, pop-up art, and flamenco art.

Double Image Theater Lab’s work explores the world of the past and the present through object and light manipulation, music, dance, and poetry.

Linda · We’ve used every kind of puppet you can imagine.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, our puppeteers are seen onstage, in the Asian tradition. In The Tempest, the puppets were four to five feet high. In Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like, they were three feet high. The decision to use puppets often comes because there’s an interesting challenge in a show as far as traveling through time, dealing with scale, or other specific events in the story where puppetry can solve things in a very clever way.

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WHAT IS YOUR REHEARSAL PROCESS LIKE? Shari & Chris · Z Puppets’ ideal process is to start with a storyboard, design and build puppets, rehearse with puppets, [and] work with a director or bring in someone as an “outside eye” to respond to what we have devised. All sorts of factors, [such as] budgets, schedules, multi-tasking, and sudden inspiration throw the phases of our ideal process into a centrifuge. We still get to each step, but often in a different order and compressed for time. We find the only way to fully develop a show is to get it in front of a live audience.

Margot & Spica · In the beginning of our rehearsal process

we explore different subjects that are personal to our lives. We brainstorm by free writing, storyboarding and then we get up on our feet and we play. In between rehearsals we research, collect objects, or build objects to use in our rehearsals. Throughout the process we are brainstorming, researching, and playing and making new discoveries. We normally have two puppeteers for the early stages of the rehearsal, and towards the end of the process we work with a director, musicians, and designers.

Jamie · Rehearsing with puppets is a layered process. For me,

I usually need to see the character before working out a voice to match. Then, as I work out the pitch and tone I also get to know the basic mechanics and idiosyncrasies of the puppet itself. Mirrors or live feed video are essential in this process.

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Once I have defined my character’s needs, I must organize the puppetry aspects and transitions to make the performance possible. Performing alone requires puppets, props, and sets to be accessible to me at all times. Working with others, sometimes puppets need to be handed off while still onstage. In those cases I need to make sure that I am matching the movements of my fellow puppeteer for a seamless transition. There is a lot of trust involved when working with others.

Linda · The decision to include puppets in a show is made

long before rehearsal begins. Puppets are built months in advance, so the actors can be trained by the puppet coach on choreography with the puppet. When we did Jack & the Beanstalk, the giant was 15 to 20 feet high, and it took five people to operate him. It’s so challenging and the work dealing with puppets is so specific, you’ve got to work that motor memory and build those muscles.

HOW DOES THE INVOLVEMENT OF PUPPETS INFLUENCE OTHER ELEMENTS OF A PRODUCTION’S DESIGN? Shari & Chris · We perform in a wide range of venues, from state of the art performance centers to informal settings. Informal settings have more variables in regards to available lighting, so we often design sets that are selfcontained [with] lights mounted onto the set. It is important to consider the size of the potential venues in order to determine the size and type of puppet. To tour, we need to engineer sets with flexible design to match the versatility of the venues. Each set must meet the demands of traveling: unloading, setting up, striking, loading, and repeating – up to three times a day. Excellent engineering and thoughtful design can mean that the loading, set up, etc. does not dominate the work of performance.

(L–R) Don Darryl Rivera, Khanh Doan, and Timothy

Hyland in Everyone Knows What a Dragon Looks Like by Bret Fetzer. Seattle Children’s Theatre, Seattle, WA. Photo by Chris Bennion.

Jamie · Different styles of puppetry can affect the design

of production in different ways. Since puppets can vary in size, they allow for scaled sets and forced perspective.

Deciding where the puppeteers will be can affect placement of scenery and props, whether trying to hide the puppeteer or not. Raising a set up for puppeteers to perform from below, drilling holes in floors and scenery to allow a puppet to sit on something, building a bridge for marionettes to be performed from above, all of these things are considered when working with puppets. Human/puppet combined performances can make these decisions even more complex. Giant holes in a stage for puppets to pop up from can be a hazard to human or costumed characters, and extra care must be taken for the safety of those onstage.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CHALLENGES IN WORKING WITH PUPPETRY, BOTH IN TERMS OF FINANCIAL AND OTHER COMMITMENTS? Shari & Chris · From the design, build, devising of script, and rehearsing, puppetry is very labor intensive. It is very tricky to get the script or outline far enough along to go into design and build so you can have your puppets finished by rehearsals. But, the most effective scripts are developed with puppets in hand; scripts written in advance of the puppets often ring false for what that puppet really can do. It is common to find puppeteers who do their repertoire of shows for their entire careers because you have to invest so much to create puppetry works.

Margot & Spica · Financial challenges in the arts are universal,

not just in the puppetry arts. However, we think puppetry has an advantage of being more creative and versatile. One puppeteer

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spring 2013

Linda · It’s like adding a choreographer or a music director. First

there’s the designer fee, and the puppet coach fee. If it’s one tiny little moment, the director can do it, but if a puppet needs to have life, you need to have a puppet coach, someone really skilled, just like a fight choreographer for a fight scene. And then there’s the cost of making puppets. A puppet that has a harder carved look to the face, has hair on it, fabric on the costume, that puppet can cost $3500. Yes, you can put buttons on a sock, but a fully designed puppet that does extra things costs more money.

Building a turtle that retracts into the body, that’s going to cost more money. If you’re adding mechanisms in the puppet, that costs more money too. You have to plan for that engineering.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO TYA COMPANIES THAT ARE NEW TO PUPPETRY AND ARE THINKING ABOUT INCLUDING PUPPETS IN A FUTURE PRODUCTION? Shari & Chris · Ask yourself, “Why puppets?” If you’re using puppets to do something actors can do, why is it important to use puppets? Once you choose puppets, allow for the labor intensiveness in how you budget the time and money. As much as possible, derive the script out of the abilities, limitations, quirks, character, and heart of the puppet versus building a puppet to fit into a script. The puppet has such a better chance of really coming to life if it gets to help shape what it is doing and saying!

Linda · You need to start early about how and when to use

them, and find actors with a specific, clean kind of movement.

Find someone in your city, whether it’s a company that’s already doing puppetry and get to know them. Start with what’s gone before you. Go and watch, learn. Everyone will let you come into a rehearsal, maybe a design meeting too. If you have the money and can go oversees to festivals in Europe, companies are using puppets in really innovative ways there. I think TYA is way ahead of some adult companies because it’s so connected to what they’re doing overseas. can play many different roles and the set can fold up in one suitcase. This gives us a financial advantage in terms of how we want to travel and perform. We choose to only perform with two people, but we think of that as an artistic challenge.

At the same time it gives us an advantage of traveling light.

Jamie · One of the greatest challenges is finding collaborators

who respect and understand the art of puppetry and how challenging it can be to make something look good. I often explain that it’s a trained skill just like dancing, or playing an instrument and requires certain trained muscles and an understanding of the mechanics behind the character. Audiences may not always realize when they are seeing a good puppetry performance because they are so taken in by the realness of the character, but nothing takes an audience out of a scene faster than a flopping, poorly performed character.

spring 2013

Budgets, schedules, personnel, and design elements are just a few of the concerns that producers and theatre artists consider when incorporating puppetry into their work. Companies can work within these constraints to a number of different ends.

Some create versatile pieces that can easily tour to any number of venues, while others utilize their institutional resources to create large and complex creatures. Like most things in theatre, when puppetry is done well all of the hard work behind the scenes can seem effortless, and all of the moving parts can come together like magic.

Emma Halpern is the associate artistic director of Making Books Sing in New York City.

She holds an MFA in Dramaturgy from CUNY Brooklyn College.

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Book

Signs of Change: New Directions in Theatre Education, Revised and Amplified Edition author

Joan Lazarus reviewed by

Courtney Blackwell

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n a recent conversation with a kindergarten teacher, she shared with me, “I think educator training needs to be about mindset change and how you’re teaching instructionally.” This comment struck me as innovative and intuitive at the same time. As a theatre educator and current graduate student studying how teachers integrate arts and media into their classrooms, I’ve never thought about classroom change in this way. Instead, I often focus on the external influences of school and government policies: funding, teacher education, and changes to school administration that might promote or restrict a teacher’s ability to integrate arts and media into the classroom. But rarely do I take a moment to reflect on how a teacher’s “mindset” – their personal teaching philosophies – may need to be revised, reworked, and ultimately changed in order to embrace a revised teaching practice.

This idea of reflecting on ever-shifting teaching mindsets is at the core of Joan Lazarus’ new revised edition of Signs of Change: New Directions in Theatre Education. Lazarus focuses on middle and high school theatre educators, asking teachers to reflect on not only what they do in the classroom and how they do it, but deeper reasons why they work the way they do. She asks theatre educators to think of “what is, what could be, and what ought to be,” as a way towards mindset change to make “what could be and what ought to be” realities in the classroom.

Signs of Change is particularly unique in the way it brings together three related, yet distinct, elements: original field research of middle and high school theatre teachers from around the country, theory on theatre education, and practical applications – ideas to use with students and strategies to reflect on personal teaching practices. This revised edition has more than 50% new material, and Lazarus’ honesty and dedication to theatre education is clear throughout.

The book is divided into seven chapters, each dealing with a particular concept related to theatre education, from learner-centered practice and socially responsible theatre to comprehensive theatre education. There is also a chapter dedicated to community-based theatre to extend the examples of theatre education outside of the classroom. In each chapter, Lazarus relies on examples of what she determines are “best practices” through field research and surveys. These provide educators and administrators with models and a better understanding of what these practices look like and how to incorporate them into their own work.

Each chapter mixes theoretical knowledge with quotes and classroom exemplars to help place the theoretical ideas in a more concrete context. Lazarus also provides sub-sections that provide a more in-depth look at the major theme. For example, in the chapter on socially responsible theatre, there are sections on poverty and social class, ability and disability, religion and spirituality, thus embracing an idea of

spring 2013

Each chapter mixes theoretical knowledge with quotes & classroom exemplars to help place the theoretical ideas in a more concrete context.

socially responsible theatre that reaches beyond the classroom community. Lazarus includes sections called “Voices from the Field” and “A Closer Look,” which provide more in-depth entries from leading middle and high school theatre educators and scholars engaging in best practices in their classrooms. These essays provide lengthier personal experiences as well as general thoughts and beliefs about theatre education. Finally, each chapter ends with “Ideas for Further Reflection,” which moves the conversation from theory to practice as readers are asked to actively engage with the philosophies of the text through journaling. This last section is perhaps the most practical section for achieving Lazarus’ ultimate goal of mindset change. As a theatre educator, these activities reminded me that while I often encourage reflection with my students and in my classroom activities, it is just as important for me

spring 2013

to pause and reflect on my teaching practices and philosophies through a series of questions relating to “what is, what could be, and what ought to be.”

While Signs of Change is expertly written, the book is at once inspiring and overwhelming as chapters are jampacked with stories of best practices, classroom activities, and personal reflection questions. In an ideal world, I would be able to regularly engage with these reflection questions, and bring my new knowledge of self and practice into my work in a theatre classroom. In reality, after an already full day, completing the long list of reflection questions feels challenging. Indeed, reading about the best practices and sample lessons makes me want to enact them in my own classroom, but getting there sometimes seems impossible or out of reach. In one chapter, Lazarus shares a 18-week lesson plan for producing a play as an example of comprehensive theatre education, and while I would certainly love that much time to put on a production, this is often not possible given the time and resources given to arts specialists working in many middle and high school theatre programs.

Despite feeling occasionally overwhelmed, the practical examples and reflection activities provide an impetus to think about mindset change even if getting there is still somewhat ominous.

Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of Signs of Change is simply getting readers like me to think about what could and ought to be in relation to

what is. While the content of the book is targeted at theatre educators working in middle and high school classrooms, the philosophies of best practices and mindset change could be pertinent for the larger Theatre for Young Audiences (TYA) community. Indeed, readers can choose chapters “a la carte” depending on their focus or interest, and individual classroom activities and reflection questions could be consulted independently of larger chapter themes.

Signs of Change is not simply the declaration of how to change or the change itself – it is true to its name as a catalyst for change. Just as many TYA professionals seek to be the guides of young people and their pathways of growing and learning, so too Signs of Change becomes a guide on this journey towards altering, and perhaps ultimately changing mindsets in approaching theatre with and for young people.

Courtney Blackwell is a PhD student at Northwestern University in the Media, Technology, and Society program studying media in education. She holds a master’s in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a BA in theatre and English from Northwestern University.

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One Theatre World 2013

What is the first play you remember seeing that made an impression?

Rosemary: I grew up in Melbourne and had an amazing drama teacher who took our whole class to the Adelaide International Festival for three weeks in my final year of high school. I saw three productions by seminal director Peter Brook. The plays were The Conference of the Birds, Ubu and The Ik. They were staged in a quarry and its fair to say they blew my 16-year-old mind.

Quinn: When I was a teenager we often traveled from the Bay Area to Ashland Oregon to visit the Shakespeare Festival there. Year by year you saw the same actors transforming into wildly different roles in an incredible setting. I saw two productions that will stick with me forever and opened my eyes to the art of acting. The first was a production of Cyrano and the second was a production of The Iceman Cometh.

I entered into two worlds, was taken outside of myself for 3–5 hours and understood something about the beauty and pain of the human experience in both. The actors had presence; they were simple but iconic somehow. They could do very little and I leaned in to be near them, to let their pain be my pain. It was “immediate theatre” as Peter Brook would describe it. I think, subtly, I also began to formulate some

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By Alicia Lark Fuss and David Kilpatrick

Photo: Pig Iron Theatre performing ChekhovLizardBrain

In anticipation of Theatre for Young Audiences/USA’s biggest event – One Theatre World – held May 8–10, 2013 in conjunction with Cleveland’s PlayhouseSquare and their acclaimed International Children’s Festival, David Kilpatrick and Alicia Lark Fuss interviewed the keynote speakers and master class facilitators who will be a part of this historic gathering.

Get to know Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel; Artistic Director of Kazzum Daryl Beeton; Playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer; Artistic Director of Windmill Theatre Rosemary Myers; and Playwright Karen Zacarias. And then visit otw2013.org for more about these phenomenal artists and what TYA/USA has in store for YOU at One Theatre World 2013.

a conversation with artists

ideas about ensemble work when seeing this company of actors working together.

The ensemble in Iceman was extraordinary, like different players in a symphony.

If you could have a coffee (or an adult beverage) with someone in or related to the field of TYA (living or deceased), who would it be and why?

Karen: I would love to have a glass of wine with Marlo Thomas. I think her album “Free To Be You and Me” was the first thing I heard as a kid that started recognizing the complexity of being a child. I loved it as a kid. I still love it as an adult. I would love to have coffee with Suzan Zeder, Laurie Brooks, and José Cruz González; they all have such interesting, textured careers, and have moved the field forward in leaps and bounds. They are a real inspiration.

Finegan: I’d subvert the question by pluralizing it (sorry), and have the coffee with those unknown heroes both here and gone (Maurice Sendak, Shaun Tan, Roald Dahl, JK Rowling, Erich Kästner).

And then the beer with those TYA colleagues already known and liked (many of whom will be at OTW) – those adult drinks are for sharing with friends.

What advice would you give to a graduating student seeking to enter this field?

Finegan: If you find yourself making allowances for a child audience, acknowledge that these allowances represent not only what they can handle, but rather what you yourself can handle telling them. Then diligently work to explore where that fear in you comes from, and where you might be braver.

Quinn: Make connections with folks who have carved out their path in this field in a manner that seems thrilling to you and whose work you deeply admire and get yourself out there presenting your work. In this field you learn by doing, by performing and listening to the audience. If you’re not getting cast, cast yourself! Break a few rules and you’ll begin to understand what rules are important and what rules only uphold the status quo. Make the theatre that you want to see. Be vigilant about making work of the highest quality. Find collaborators who you can play with, who can play with you, who challenge assumptions but can also understand how to create momentum in a rehearsal room rather than blocking momentum.

Daryl: Don’t underestimate your audience, give it a go, take risks and listen to your audiences. Many people describe young audiences as the “audiences of tomorrow.”

For me this is an insult to our work and the audiences. Our role is to provoke the imaginations of today’s young audiences, so they’re inspired and want to come back tomorrow.

Alicia Lark Fuss is the director of education at Nashville Children’s Theatre, where she’s been a part of the team since May of 2009. She is also an adjunct professor for Belmont University’s theatre education program. Alicia holds an MFA in Theatre for Young Audiences from the University of Central Florida, a BA in Theatre Arts from Florida State University, and has also trained as an intern through the Kennedy Center Institute for Arts Management in Washington, D.C. Alicia is proud to support NCT’s mission through her work in Middle Tennessee, and to serve the national field as a board member of Theatre for Young Audiences/USA. David Kilpatrick is the manager of Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences. Prior to starting there in 2007, David worked in the education departments of Walnut Street Theatre and The New Victory Theater.

Lately he has also been creating work with Arts on the Horizon for the very young, including Drumming with Dishes and The Young Spectaculars. He received his MA in Educational Theatre from NYU and is a board member of Theatre for Young Audiences/USA. spring 2013

Save the Date!

2013–2014 SEASON Man of the House

A World Premiere Kennedy Center Co-Commission with Rain Art Productions Written and performed by David Gonzalez Master storyteller David Gonzalez returns with a brand-new, semi-autobiographical solo show about Pablito, a young boy of Cuban/Puerto Rican heritage who searches for his long-lost father while spending a summer in Miami. Age 9+ NOVEMBER 2-3, 2013

Elephant and Piggie’s We are in a Play!

A World Premiere Kennedy Center Commission Based on the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems Script and lyrics by Mo Willems; Music by Deborah Wicks La Puma

Best friends Gerald and Piggie find themselves on an excellent musical adventure in this world premiere adaptation of Mo Willems’s award-winning Elephant and Piggie books. Age 4+ NOVEMBER 23–December 31, 2013

Orphie and the Book of Heroes

A World Premiere Kennedy Center Commission Book and Lyrics by Christopher Dimond; Music by Michael Kooman Spunky and curious Orphie, a young girl in Ancient Greece, sets out to save storyteller Homer and his Book of Heroes in this humorous musical–a quest that takes her from the heights of Mt. Olympus to the depths of the underworld. Age 9+ FEBRUARY 8–23, 2014

Robin Hood

A U.S. Premiere Kennedy Center Co-Commission with Visible Fictions of Scotland Updated, inventive, and hilarious, this is unlike any Robin Hood you’ve seen before!

Scotland’s acclaimed theater company Visible Fictions returns to bring this classic tale to life with a few actors and lots of imagination. Age 7+ MARCH 29–APRIL 6, 2014

Performances for Young Audiences is made possible by

Additional support for Performances for Young Audiences is provided in part by Adobe Foundation; The Clark Charitable Foundation; Mr. James V. Kimsey; The Macy*s Foundation; The Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation, Inc.; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Park Foundation, Inc.; Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; an endowment from the Ryna and Melvin Cohen Family Foundation; U.S. Department of Education; Washington Gas; and by generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas.

Major support for the Kennedy Center’s educational programs is provided by David and Alice Rubenstein through the Rubenstein Arts Access Program.

Education and related artistic programs are made possible through the generosity of the National Committee for the Performing Arts and the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts.

MAY 16–18, 2014 | Family Theater

In 2014, New Visions/New Voices will include the best in new work for young audiences both nationally and internationally, as well as international playwright observers and ‘the translation project’, which will workshop the English translation of a play previously successful in another language.

For more information and online applications, visit www.kennedy-center.org/ education/nvnv.html.

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For more information please visit: kp.org/etp