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.

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...