On Practicing what you Preach

Recent teaching work has gotten me thinking about how I talk about and model gender parity while wearing my teaching artist hat.

This is still evolving, but here are a few thoughts:

1) if a girl brings in a monologue for a male character, a boy brings in a monologue for a female character - no judgement.  If they've read and understand the circumstances of the monologue and the play it's from, and the language speaks to them - do it & work on it - understand that this may not fly elsewhere, but the boy who brought in Tilly from  Gamma Rays and the girl who brought Charlie from Perks of Being a Wallflower - go! (although technically I said bring in monologues from plays not movies)

2) when I'm assigning scenes or monologues - check myself on writer gender parity.  For a program that ended with students doing 2 and 3 person scenes from published plays, I notice that for 8 scenes, I have 3 female writers, 6 male writers (one of the pieces was co-written by two women).  So I need to do better on this one - continue to educate myself on the women writers out there, so that I can assign, share, promote women writers.

What are other ways that we can bring gender parity to our teaching work?

And, if anyone's got suggestions for plays for teens by women writers, throw those into the comments section too!

Side note: Bay Area folks, if you don't already know about it, I strongly encourage you to check out worksbywomensf.wordpress.com, like Works by Women SF on facebook, and/or join the Works by Women SF group on meetup.com - we've got a few great outings planned to attend shows and support women making theater in the region - it'd be great to see you there, Bay Area.

My September Gig

In the mix of gigs and jobs this past month, I got asked to take on something new: I coached a kid actor in her first professional production.  The show is up now, and on reflection, this job had several really cool parts to it.

First,  it was a real hybrid of my skill sets - teaching artist, actor, and director.  Teaching artist me did some skill building, like theater vocabulary, cheating out, and projection/enunciation.  Actor me got to walk the role at a few rehearsals, exploring what my impulses might be in terms of stage movement and intention within those circumstances.  Director me got to work one on one with another actor to clarify moments and find keys to unlock the characters for an audience.

Something I hadn't thought of beforehand was that theater etiquette/professionalism was a big component of the process.  For someone who's never been in a professional production before, there's so much basic stuff to unpack! Signing in on the board, thanking your stage manager, having your pencil and script ready to go at your call time were all new concepts for this young actor.

Best of all though, was the point during tech week when the kid actor turned to her mom and said, "Do you think when this is over, instead of going back to my tennis class, I could maybe take an acting class instead?" 

Arts in Education Week

For one of my day jobs, I'm the admin for an arts education program.  And Sept 11-17th is National Arts in Education week, so I thought I'd talk about some of what I see firsthand.

1) Good arts education isn't about making professional artists.  It's about the life skills that come from arts-based learning, whether that's how to work with others, taking turns and problem solving in groups, or about confidence when speaking in front of groups, or learning a variety of communication tools to articulate your point.
2) Arts get kids excited to be at school.  It's a reason to show up.
3) There's a scary spiral thinking in our public schools.  School funding is tied to test scores.  Jobs are tied to school funding.  When test scores are low and jobs are on the line, the mandate becomes teach the test and nothing else.  It's drill baby drill and no room for 'extras' like arts.
4) Classroom teachers, especially at the elementary school level, work HARD.  Does your job require you to be 100% present with the task at hand for 6-7 hours with only a few short 'breaks' where you may still be supervising others?
5) There's almost nothing more amazing than a breakthrough in student growth.  I've got a classroom teacher partner who still gets tears in her eyes when she talks about a shy student who spoke actual words in front of the whole class for the first time in one of our workshops from two years ago.

Also, I wrote a letter to the editor about arts education, and it was published in the San Francisco Chronicle on 9/10/11.  A link to the letter is here.

Actor Slash ?

Here's something I've been thinking about this week: how so many folks I know (myself included) are actor/something else. 

I'm an actor/theater educator.  I know actor/directors, actor/writers, actor/theater administrators, actor/musicians even actor/massage therapists and one actor/flight instructor.  Actor/ is different than being an actor with a day job (like an actor who makes their money by walking dogs, or working chain retail). 

Actor/ means that you do multiple things for work, enjoy doing multiple things for work, and if people ask you what you do you might be tempted to say "I'm an actor and also a (fill in the blank)"  However, sometimes, depending on the parts of the slash, it may not make sense to promote all the parts at the same time, or in the same way.  If you were a preschool teacher/dominatrix, it's pretty obvious that you wouldn't want to bring up both in the same breath, but what about a police officer/cake decorator, or a voiceover artist/B&B owner?

If you pursue multiple careers simultaneously, you may want to check out the book One Person Multiple Careers by Marci Alboher.  (I got it from the library several years ago).   It's full of practical advice about how one part of your slash can compliment the other, and includes things like how you might negotiate if you are a /parent.  I thought it was a helpful read, and hopefully you will too!

Cake light

There's a movie or maybe a song or a novel where a character says that the most flattering light is the light that comes from birthday cake candles.  How everyone looks beautiful when framed by cake light.

I would use a similar analogy to say that one of the most flattering situations to observe human interactions is the lobby of a high school theater after the performance.  Last night was opening night for a group of students that I worked with through my day job.  After the show, I walked out into a lobby teeming w/love, excitement, positive energy, relief, and so much joy, it was as if the entire room were filled with people holding cakes, and casting that beautiful, flattering glow in every direction.

I am so proud.