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Show page 16 , Spring/Summer 2003 PROFILES i-% Enter Writing, Cross to Center DAVID DYNAK, CHAIR DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE It is an old joke in academia that the difference between studying Shakespeare with a professor of English and a professor of theatre can be captured in the way the two professors treat the witches in Macbeth. Whereas the English professor might launch into a carefully wrought exegesis of the social, political, and cultural backgrounds of witchcraft in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and go on to explore how the "weird sisters" function structurally and symbolically in the play, the theatre professor might start by deciding where the witches enter from, where they cross to, and where they exit. Although there is a bit of truth in this characterization, there are far more similarities between these two professors-and their disciplines-than is often acknowledged. Texts-dramatic, fictional, expository, theoretical-are clearly at the center of both disciplines, and so is writing about texts. For example, in our gateway course in the department of theatre, majors grapple with the texts of leading contemporary theorists and produce papers that examine the essence of their chosen field of study. The questions "What makes theatre theatre?" and "What could you not do away with without doing away with theatre?" are vitally important to actors, designers, directors, teachers, playwrights, producers and researchers. Actors need to write about their process as their characters take shape in the rehearsal room. They create back stories that help frame their character work. They journal, reflect on research, and take notes from directors and stage managers to guide their work during rehearsals. And they continue to track-in writing-what happens to them as actors during the run of the show, how they continue to find new choices to ground their characters, how they master the communicative power of performance texts. Beginning in their first year of study, designers build portfolios in which they write about images and motifs that later are transformed into 2D and 3D sets, costumes, lighting and sound scores. Directors develop extensively researched notebooks (which are often months in the making) with production concepts, performance histories, and literal and metaphorical musings that might prove useful to the production team as the play moves from the page to the stage. Press releases are written and publicity campaigns are conceived and executed. At every turn, professionalism in written presentation is the target and expected outcome. One of the unique aspects of the discipline of theatre is the arsenal of strategies available to teachers to transform texts into performance experiences. Our theatre education majors have a rich opportunity to use these strategies in schools and as part of interdisciplinary partnerships with other departments on campus. One such partnership takes theatre education majors into education classes where they use expository texts as the springboard to stand on the shoulders-literally-of reading, writing, speaking and listening. To animate case studies that emerge from research into the issues of gender bias, sexism, discrimination and racism, theatre education majors craft tightly structured process dramas to help students embody those issues. If they are done well, these process dramas have the "feel" of a highly charged theatrical event, without the requisite six weeks or more of rehearsals. Each episode of the case study becomes a scene played out by the students in the class. Students go into role as teachers, administrators, community members. They write in role, create sound collages and sound scapes, and use their bodies in tableaux work that is collectively examined for meaning. In schools, theatre education majors have guided elementary school learners in animations of children's books (e.g., Where the Wild Things Are, The Very Hungry Caterpillar). They have collaborated with a host of area teachers on interdisciplinary inquiries that have led to the creation of dance/dramas (e.g., a presentation on the life and work of Shel Silverstein by fourth graders, an ensemble created by second graders that deconstructed the role of Christopher Columbus in discovering America). They have helped elementary school students write dramatic adaptations of literary texts. And they have |
