Onstage: Keeping theater alive - Buffalo Spree - April 2013 - Buffalo, NY

For today's post I'd like to "re-post" an article by my friend and colleague Donna Hoke. Donna is a playwright, cross-word puzzle designer, journalist, and an editor at Buffalo Spree magazine. Below is the link to the article, "Onstage: Keeping Theater Alive".
Onstage: Keeping theater alive - Buffalo Spree - April 2013 - Buffalo, NY

In the article Donna discusses with educators and leading theater professionals in Buffalo, New York the issue of educating and encouraging younger people to visit and learn about theater. I'm quoted in the piece talking about the importance of arts in education programs for middle and high school students and how organizations such as Young Audiences WNY continues to bring quality programming into schools so that they don't have to deal with travel issues.

Bringing theatre to schools for kids to be entertained, engaged, educated and inspired are all pieces of the 21st century learning skills that we want and need our children to master.

Theater and all of the performing and visual arts all help to focus our kids in areas of study that often are seemingly boring or difficult to understand. I've seen kids transform from problem students to creative thinkers from exposure to the arts. I've also witnessed significant changes with kids behavior, and confidence through arts learning.

Math, science, social studies they can all be translated and reinterpreted using the arts. Since so many children learn differently it would be wise for us as parents and mentors to persuade government officials to include more arts in education programs in our children's curriculum.

The Wonderful Wizard of Ah's

Annette leads  the Underground Railroad Residency, "Letters From the Underground" workshop 

Being a Teaching Artist can feel like  a calling, like the ministry, or medicine, or magic!

I will use this moment to toot my own horn letting you know that on occasion classroom teachers and school administrators have called be a magician or a wizard when it comes to my teaching artistry. I can't take any supernatural credit for the feats except to accept the compliments while letting them know that the "magic" is in my enthusiasm. I always feel that if the audience sees and feels your love of theater they can catch the same fever.

Musician & teaching artist Rodney Appleby, accompanying a spoken word student performance from Annette's "Stories From the Microphone" residency 

It usually pans out, also having a solid lesson plan no matter how simple or basic. The lesson plan is really important. I know some of true "artists" may feel too creative to allow themselves time to create something as mundane as a lesson plan, but mark my words, when you are in that classroom with 18 to (Heaven help you) 30 students all wanting to tell you about what they watched last night, and how it connects to the theme you want them to write about today, you're going to wish you had a plan to look at and remind you what your objective and activities were.

 

Students ask questions during Underground Railroad residency

Also, schedule that a lesson plan helps you plot out is also of great value, especially when you discover that you and your charges are having such a good time you didn't keep your eye on the clock!

Sixth graders performing their original radio script with Annette's "Quiet In the Studio" workshop 

 

Using historical photos for letter writing inspiration during the UGRR residency workshops

CAO students learn public speaking skills in the "Stories From the Microphone" workshop

I think I mentioned earlier that I have become the Program Coordinator with an after-school program for teens most at risk of educational and societal failure.  Many of these kids are on probation, some are frequent runaways, some keep skipping school, they have domestic issues, and lots of other negatives that keep children struggling through the public education system as well as the social services systems.

I've been comparing the kind of experiences I have as a teaching artist in public and charter schools to the recent experiences I've had in this after-school program. 

They don't compare. 

There have been several days leaving the program in the evening when I think this is just too much work. In the schools I'm a celebrity, a wizard, getting kids and teens to write about themselves and create stories using historical references because they are so psyched with my storytelling skills.

But at the "program" I have to work pretty darn hard just to get them to focus on what we are doing and stop talking. My ego for success and enthusiasm for the theatre is losing shine.

Luckily for me I have an assistant who is also a theatre/writing teaching artist, she gives me encouragement throughout the day and reminds me that this is a pilot program.

"We had some successes today" she will tell me. "That whole conversation they had about love and money that was important!"
"Yeah," I'll add, "but they didn't write anything."
"It'll come soon, they have so many other things going on.  Most of them have never been in a situation where someone is asking them to think and play!"

Yeah, she was right. Some of the things we are asking them to do really don't make any sense to them.  Improvisations where they can only say one sentence any way they want but they have to remember they can only say that one sentence. Or playing games where they have to copy a neighbor's movement but say that they are doing something completely different. It drifts on the corny side, and sometimes seems quite anti-cool. However, most of them try it and most of them are so happy not to be under the requirements of curfew, they show up early.
So I'm putting my ego in check, because like always it is not about me, it's about the audience, and in this case the kids. The audience is king to the theatre artist and the classroom is the king to the teaching artist, the greater good and the really big reward is in that challenge that I face when I doubt my skills and talents.

I'm a rock-star! A teaching artist Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Ah's!
So I'll remember the calling.
Teaching Artist, is a profession,  a professional artist, who chooses also to teach.
AND:
The "magic" of teaching is in the "oohs' and "ahs' of the students when they have discovered something new.
AND:
"Ooohs" and "AHH's" from me, when the students have taught me something new about art, the world we live in, and myself.
Artists have always been life-long learners, we have to be, how else would we ease on down that yellow brick road to creativity?

"Ease on down ease on down the road, don't you carry nothing that might be a load, come on and ease on down, ease down, ease down the road!"

Those Who Can: Become Teaching Artists!

So the show has closed and I am back at the grind of school and work. I read somewhere from Confucius, "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life!"

I like that. I told everyone in my office. I think everyone got it because we all seem to love what we do.

I've told many people over and over again how much I love my job. I'm an artist, my tax returns say I'm a professional Performing Artist.

Granted I still get to the office a little late some days, and I sometimes get annoyed with some of the office politics and daily work related details I may be required to do but overall I love the job I have when I'm not actively working a stage or a microphone as a performer.

At Ujima Theatre playing "Little Sally Walker" with audience volunteers, while piloting the Underground Railroad Residency program Nancy Goes to Seneca Falls 

You're asking yourself what that great job is? I am an arts administrator, my actual title is Education Associate but before I acquired that title I was and still am a teaching artist. the organization I work with, Young Audiences is a national organization with 30 affiliates across the country. Our branch is Young Audiences-WNY, we bring arts in education programs to schools, libraries, and other cultural organizations across eight counties of WNY. So when I'm not on stage, I am either working with other artists and helping them develop their school time or after-school time programs, visiting schools to watch workshops and performances, talking with educators abut arts in education, or conducting workshops myself! My major project at the moment is an After-school program for teens most at risk of educational and societal failure. I coordinate this program and the kids, like all kids just want to know that they have value and someone is willing to take some time to listen and share with them. We have been making great strides with them and again I love my job!

Annette as Nancy Freeman,a wife, mother, and former slave living on the Erie Canal, in Nancy Goes to Seneca Falls

When I was a young actor I never considered being a teaching artist and I never knew what that meant either. I like many of us have believed the old phrase, "Those who can do, those who can't teach" and I wanted to believe that I can do, not that I can't. So I refused to teach, because I was a doer! However the truth is that those who can't get every theatre/TV/Film/Voice over booking that they audition for had better do something, whether it's waiting tables, bar tending, doing hair/nails, walking dogs, stripping, retail sales, construction, telemarketing (yuck), collections (double yuck) or maybe ... teach?

As a Teaching Artist and not a classroom teacher you get to be the visiting artist,or as my friends like to say, the Celebrity!  Your ego will be thoroughly stroked by your young students, especially if your workshops are preceded like mine with a performance. After the performances I have a series of writing workshops. Right now I have about 6 different programs that I offer, I do that so that I don't get bored and I want to try to provide experiences for youth that are connected to the school's curriculum in order to enhance their learning experience.

I know I am successful when students are inspired to continue writing and they are completely engaged in the work they are creating. I love learning from them because teaching, I feel, should be a marriage of learning and sharing experiences and younger people have different points of view that can be very relevant to a teachers life.  As artists we are sometimes more open to the language of continued learning or life long learning. That openness is something I try to share with students, the possibility of accepting life-long learning and discovering the education in the experience.

So if you have doubts about your own career or if you are an artist and you have been lacking inspiration and motivation. Consider being a creative-doer, and teach! You may find a job that you love...