TEaching philosophy
IN OUR CLASS…
We are playwrights—builders of game; creators of theater. We analyze the world around us to see what fun we can bring to life. Functioning as a team and looking out for each other with massive hearts, we celebrate our differences and take big old risks that often leave us flat on our faces. But we get right back up again, because as John Dewey lays out, we’re on a journey together, and we have learning to do.
Theater is our way into this learning, even if we’ve never done it before. Viola Spolin says, “Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become stageworthy.” We take this as a calling. So, we learn to act—really act, and do a lot of improv. We learn advanced techniques that college kids can barely handle and we do scene work that we know they would run from. We put on great plays and musicals that we have no business doing. It doesn’t matter who gets what role or if it’s someone’s first show—our ensemble must be the one to succeed. We blow our audiences away with our performance. They’ve never seen anything like it. Others of us design sets and lights and props and do dramaturgy. Some of us produce. Wanna invest? We can handle it. We make it clear that great theater can happen anywhere. We read scripts, ask questions, and learn about theater history—and just cause we’re still young doesn’t mean we don’t understand Shakespeare. In fact, sometimes it’s the only thing that speaks to us. We write plays that we can see ourselves in, we learn to take up space with our bodies, and we find the power in our voices. We film movies, make puppets, dance, and sing. But most importantly we learn to listen, to make space for our friends, and to hear what they have to say. By understanding each other’s goals, we begin to comprehend our own. We figure out what each of us needs and how we can get there. We know that our classroom belongs to all of us and that each of us are leaders in charge of our own learning. We get good at self-assessment to keep track of where we are. We understand that some things take hard work, really hard work, but we’re not afraid of challenges. And we’re not afraid to tear down barriers that keep some us running in place. Day after day, we walk into Vgotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development, and day after day we see the limits of that zone shift.
“Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise.
Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become stageworthy.”
Dr. Immordino-Yang of the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC says that according to her research, “It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don’t care about.” So, we know that we have to care if we’re going to learn. That’s why we keep class fun and culturally responsive, using theater games whenever we can. We play classics like Bippity-Bippity-Bop and Zip-Zap-Zop, but sometimes we turn our focus to current events, our community, or ourselves. We understand the enormous power of theater and how it can be used to create change. If we put something in our sights, that something better watch out because we’re coming after it. We understand that our art must connect to our world and that so many of us connect to our world through our art. Theater makes it come alive.
In our class we care about life. We learn to navigate this Earth. We know that we have big dreams and big hopes. We spend so much time feeling like big people but once in a while we can still feel super small. We’re okay diving into complicated conversations and exploring what it means to be a human being—in ways that are familiar to us and in ways that are not. We don’t shy away from scary things; rather we run at them head on. We learn that sometimes stuff is boring, meaningless, and even downright awful. If we can, we talk about who made it that way. But we also learn that our potential is limitless and that the potential of our world is unbelievable. We learn that we can do things collectively that no one ever thought were possible—that the second you underestimate us we will make your jaw drop. All the way to the floor.
We learn to be a community and to make each other laugh. Our class is funny. Like, really, really funny. You’ll hear stories about it one day. We figure out how we can change the world because we know it’s our world to change. And we want you to join us. If someone asks us why we make change through theater, we know the answer is simple. Medicine might save lives, math might help develop new technologies, but only art—yes, only art—makes us human.