Dramatic Performance as Outreach-Oriented Final Project

[Rochallor]

Bizarrely specific query incoming. I have an upcoming job interview (the same one I've been talking about in another thread recently). I'm aware that outreach (including beyond the university) is a major element of the position, and I want to come up with interesting outreach ideas for the interview. Since the tradition I will be teaching (tradition X) includes dramatic works, one of my ideas is to have a course focused on X plays. For the students' final assignment (or part of it at least), they would act in a production of one of the plays, which would be open to the wider community, thereby raising public awareness of X literature. This idea plays to my strengths in that I have a background in student theater from my own undergrad days. However, that was purely extracurricular, so this would obviously be a different undertaking.

I would love opinions on whether this is a promising idea or a terrible one.

[mamselle]

Unless you have experience as a director, or at the very least as a stage manager, don't.

There be lying nearby many, many dragons....just mounting a decent, viewable performance is a whole job in and of itself.

M.

(...who has had some of both and wouldn't chance it on a situation like that where the outcome could have strong bearing on the general perception of your job performance, and/or public perceptions of either the issues, your understanding of the use of theater in outreach situations, or both). 

[Hibush]

I'm in a field in which outreach is often a major component. There is a large body of practice and research informing what works and what doesn't. Therefore, as in teaching, you want to be creative and orginal but stay within the bounds of what works. People coming from research often have no idea where those bounds are.

One of the critical things, which people usually mess up, is that you have to start by learning what your prospective audience wants, and how that information fits in their world. A burning desire to teach the world about X, in a world that doesn't want to hear about X, is much too common and a sure failure.

For this position, it might be impressive to describe the outreach audience for which your X is relevant, and why they might choose to engage with you. If that audience is made up of fervent enthusiasts of student theater, your plan might work. But there's probably a different place in society where your X is more important.

[Caracal]

Unless you have experience as a director, or at the very least as a stage manager, don't.

There be lying nearby many, many dragons....just mounting a decent, viewable performance is a whole job in and of itself.

Also seems like it would be potentially involve a huge amount of time and work for students, well beyond what's normally required for a single class.

Even besides the work, appearing in a public performance is a lot to ask students who sign up for a class on Goethe or something.

I do teach a course where students work together to produce something at the end that could be available to a wider audience. It is really hard to deal with the different levels of student motivation to actually produce something collectively good at the end. Not all students in any class are going to have that intrinsic motivation. That's enough of an issue if you're trying to create some sort of website or poster presentation or whatever, never mind a public drama production where it is going to be really embarrassing for you if students phone it in...

[the_geneticist]

If the school has a strong liberal arts tradition and the students choose it so they can do "all the things" like double major in biology & English with a minor in Theatre while playing lacrosse and tutoring children in the bassoon, then it's fine to pitch at a job interview.  Don't make it the first thing you discuss, but you could pitch it as a "here's a really interesting and creative possibility.  Do you think it's a good fit for the students/program/etc.?"

[artalot]

I teach a few classes where the students end up producing public facing content, sometimes independently, sometimes alone. I have found these projects most successful when learning to produce the content is a major component of the course. So, in a course where students put on an art exhibition, that is the course - we read about curating, but we spend a lot (most?) of our time in class working on the exhibition. It's not an add-on to the course content, it is the course content. I have experience as a curator and gallerist, but it is still a lot more work than a traditional course.
So, if you want to do this kind of course, I would suggest that you re-orient it around acting tradition X, rather than simply a class on tradition X. I would also suggest that you have some experience teaching acting or that you team-teach it with someone who does. All to say, this is a great idea, but I probably wouldn't propose it during an interview.

[Rochallor]

These are wise and helpful points. Thanks a lot.

To those who do teach courses where students produce public-facing content (artalot and Caracal), if you have time to write more, I would really appreciate any comments on what works and doesn't.

A different idea I had was to have the students write blog posts that could be shared publicly. I'm also wondering whether the drama idea could be salvaged, less ambitiously, by having something like a dramatic reading instead of a full performance. It could also/instead be recorded and put online (though I like the idea of community members being able to be physically present).

[Ruralguy]

I think you could do the drama/theater thing. I've seen this very thing work reasonably well *if* there was a theater collaboration, so, as Mamselle said,
an experienced Director can work on it with you. But in line with what some others mentioned, I'm at a SLAC, so that sort of thing, though not the usual course, is certainly not rare.  That is, every semester there is some sort of "weird" collaboration thing going on! 

[mamselle]

That was my concern, without decent production values, it could turn out to be "hokey," which is not equally viewed by all as an endearing quality, just because it's a "cute student production."

Folks who work hard to get out decent productions could take against it, as an example of all they're trying to get their students NOT to do, and you'd have a lemon on your hands that people won't mis-remember.

As artalot notes, making the whole course about the production would be an honest, integrative process. Doing it "on the side," frankly, has a very faint whiff of what could almost be taken as insulting disrespect for a Theatre department's efforts (if there is one) to inculcate standards into student work.

As one who both researches and participates in the performing arts, a combination of the two is not additive--it's at least multiplicative, if not exponentially, more complex.

Other questions to consider:

   Who would your intended audience be, and how would you assemble/perform for them? (Online? In-person? What if Covid finds another Greek letter to pal around with and you're back in lockdown?)

   How would you advertise, and is there a student-performance clearing-house that helps keep you from booking up against, say, the school's new blockbuster production of 'The Scottish Play"?

  How would you organize rehearsal space and time in normal circumstances, let alone if individual health issues arose?

   Etc...

A modified effort--use something like the 'a capella' performance/collaborative online editing tool for theatre work--might be easier to manage, if you're so bent on getting this show"on the boards."

But be sure it's not just your own recollections you're wanting to air...

M.

[Caracal]

I teach a few classes where the students end up producing public facing content, sometimes independently, sometimes alone. I have found these projects most successful when learning to produce the content is a major component of the course. So, in a course where students put on an art exhibition, that is the course - we read about curating, but we spend a lot (most?) of our time in class working on the exhibition. It's not an add-on to the course content, it is the course content. I have experience as a curator and gallerist, but it is still a lot more work than a traditional course.
So, if you want to do this kind of course, I would suggest that you re-orient it around acting tradition X, rather than simply a class on tradition X. I would also suggest that you have some experience teaching acting or that you team-teach it with someone who does. All to say, this is a great idea, but I probably wouldn't propose it during an interview.

Yeah those are all good suggestions. And I tend to agree about it probably not being the sort of thing you want to propose in an interview. Whether this is actually a workable idea would depend a lot on the school and the department and a whole bunch of other things. By all means, you could mention that tradition x intersects with drama and you're really interested in exploring opportunities for collaboration and outreach in that area, but I wouldn't get into the details.

[dinomom]

I do this all the time! We stage scenes, but only once in the five times I have taught the course have we opened it to the public. For making sure you are teaching theater as performance, including theory and its application, I have found this to be fundamental. Happy to talk more about this via DM if it would be helpful. I have experience in an adjacent artistic field but am not a theater professional/director/actor etc. I don't know what would apply to your context, but there are ways it could work if the goal is not a shiny finished product but something in which the audience is also invested in process somehow.

[Rochallor]

I really owe everyone who posted here a huge apology. The interview occurred, after which I was so tired and busy dealing with the backlog of work I han't done while preparing for the interview that I never got around to replying. Anyway, I had the dramatic reading idea up my sleeve during the interview, but didn't actually get to it because there was so much else to cover. However, contrary to what you might all imagine from my silence, I found the discussion here very interesting and will save it for future reference!

[mamselle]

Thanks for the update!

M.

[Rochallor]

Another update: I got the job!

[Hibush]

Another update: I got the job!

Great to hear. Congratulations!