{"id":462,"date":"2012-03-23T08:46:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T12:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/?p=462"},"modified":"2012-03-23T08:47:08","modified_gmt":"2012-03-23T12:47:08","slug":"producorial-responsibility-2-an-emphasis-on-arts-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/2012\/03\/producorial-responsibility-2-an-emphasis-on-arts-education.html","title":{"rendered":"Producorial Responsibility #2: An Emphasis on Arts Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having made significant steps toward ensuring artist diversity, and so at least opening the door to audience diversity, the producer\u2019s next responsibility is to make an investment in arts education.\u00a0 Let me make no bones about it: the stigma that still clings to this part of our field among so-called \u201cserious\u201d producers is wrong-headed and self-destructive.\u00a0 I personally cannot take seriously anyone who calls themselves a professional artist who does not seek to use their artistry to engage youth; nor can I see a reason for any public entity to fund any organization that either does not have arts education programming or does not position what it does in schools and community venues firmly within its\u2019 artistic wing, where it can be held to the same rigorous standards as what appears on its\u2019 stages.\u00a0 I scoff \u2013 and so should we all, scoff \u2013 at the notion of an education department that is not firmly under the artistic wing with a direct line of accountability to the artistic leader of the organization.\u00a0 A marketing department sells the work; a development department funds the work; an education department is<\/strong> the work.\u00a0 It must be integral to every theatre, and every theatre artist\u2019s, why<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Why so strident on this?\u00a0 Because we as a field, working as we do in an active democracy, must be judged by the impact we make on individual social and civic participation.\u00a0 Our job is to help people enter and engage in the public forum, contributing to the challenges we face as a society.\u00a0 Theatre\u2019s base job has only ever been to convene the people of the community to address serious matters that challenge us all.\u00a0 We matter most, of course, when we can manage to bring to the convocation (and empower to speak) those who are the most oppressed, the neediest, the ones whose voices are never heard.\u00a0 The theatre provides the chance the political forum cannot: the temporary suspension of the political strata, such that every voice can have equal weight.\u00a0 Thus can Antigone\u2019s position finally be heard and young women everywhere know that their sacrifices may not be in vain; Falstaff can be wiser than a king; Fugard\u2019s and Wilson\u2019s characters can carry the hopes of multitudes for a more transparent and just society.<\/p>\n

And the truth is, in America today, our neediest communities sink beneath what I call a \u201ccycle of diminishing potential,\u201d a cycle that leads to less and less civic participation in each new generation, and the theatre only has two slender opportunities for intervention. \u00a0The most powerful by far is arts education, as we\u2019ll see, and for us to treat it as some kind of slightly-embarassing brother-in-law to public performance is disgraceful and foolish.<\/p>\n

The cycle of diminishing potential<\/strong> consists of the following six challenges:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 Poor education, specifically, unengaging<\/strong> education<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 A culture of \u201cimmediate security\u201d<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 Lack of economic mobility<\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 Few public forums to constructively express concerns<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 Co-dependent relationship with local government<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0 Lack of pro-active investment in education<\/p>\n

Which leads back to poor education for the next generation, which fuels the culture of immediate security: the need to get the best available job in the shortest amount of time possible.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s to support a family, yes, but often it\u2019s just what the culture has drilled in after absorbing what disasters befall poor communities during economic downturns.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s walk through this cycle from the perspective of a young woman growing up in a disenfranchised community, starting from where she first finds herself considering future civic participation (in the form of college, career, clubs, political participation, self-determined social affiliations, etc.): high school.<\/strong>\u00a0 The average high school in America\u2019s neediest communities will have no formalized arts education plan whatever, no accredited classes in more than one art form.\u00a0 The strongest schools will have 1-2 featured afterschool or internship programs per 400 students that are rigorous, year-long, and affiliated with a professional organization outside the school (such as a professionally-advised drama program or step group or robotics team); many will have none.\u00a0 There will be no clubs that are not academic in focus, like newspaper or debate, run as they will be by teachers, most with no prior expertise.\u00a0 Student council, in all but the rarest cases, will be a joke.\u00a0 The sports programs may be well organized, but in most cases, the facilities and resources will be so bleak that no amount of talent or training will make the team competitive with the private schools that share their leagues.<\/p>\n

In classrooms, the situation is bleaker.\u00a0 Students enter high school from a broken middle school system, and their skills are widely varied, generally low, and full of unpredictable gaps.\u00a0 As a result, the attempt to get the bulk of the class toward earning a passing grade on the year-end state exams (mandated under No Child Left Behind) means that instruction flattens out, becomes about lowest-common-denominator coverage.\u00a0 The teachers who care deepest lower their standards to try to get the kids to feel a sense of accomplishment (those that don\u2019t care just abandon standards altogether), and the kids appreciate it as freshmen but feel dubious about it as seniors, as they see their school through the outside eyes of colleges and employers.<\/p>\n

In this environment, the voices she grew up begin to have a clarity, no matter what her teachers and counselors say.\u00a0 These voices say \u201cget what you can now, as soon as possible; you are not equipped to grow into something larger than all that you see around you; sell now, you are not for all markets.\u201d\u00a0 As I write this, my throat thickens, my eyes itch, the old desperation rising which every good educator feels so often working in these communities.\u00a0 Because you remember their eyes, your seniors, when they tell you with a smile they decided to join the Marines, or become a medical information associate with a 18-month degree, or go to Florida for a job (why do they always go to Florida?), and they are just so earnest.\u00a0 They\u2019ve figured it out, finally, and it turns out it was just what they always knew and what their community told them: that no one has made, nor ever will make, any kind of real investment in them.\u00a0 But they\u2019re OK with that, because you\u2019ve<\/em> taught them to love themselves, to trust themselves, and they are damn determined to make you proud.\u00a0 As a medical information associate.<\/p>\n

As she enters the culture of \u201cimmediate security,\u201d her economic mobility drops immediately, as do her opportunities for social and civic affiliations beyond what she\u2019s already formed (which we\u2019ve seen are probably zero) because she is too busy and too isolated and there really is very little of this in her community.\u00a0 Without public forums – beyond the religious, which a surprisingly low number of urban persons of color participate in, church being primarily a white middle-class and rural endeavor – to build new affiliations and express economic concerns, she develops a co-dependence with local government.\u00a0 She\u2019s really not making enough to live (and support her boyfriend who just got out of prison on a possession charge and can\u2019t find a job, and her cousin who just had a kid), so she begins to participate in programs that help her, from food stamps to WIC to helping her mom get her disability payments in a timely fashion.\u00a0 As she spends more and more time in these offices, she begins to view the bureaucracy that surrounds her of a piece: the paperwork, the deadlines, the focus not on the individual but the protocols.\u00a0 And when she has her own daughter and that daughter enters high school, she\u2019s learned that her role in the machine is as passive recipient.\u00a0 She does her best to make sure her daughter follows the protocols, does well in school, uses whatever limited resources the school has to her best advantage.\u00a0 But she does nothing to improve <\/em><\/strong>the school \u2013 it\u2019s simply outside of her purview and understanding of her own capacity to impact her local government.\u00a0 And since no one else has either, her daughter has an even less engaging experience than she did, and eventually the worries of her mother that she \u201cget a good job\u201d win out over any ambitions she may have had.\u00a0 And outside, the professional worlds of technology and medicine and law advance so quickly that whatever entry-level jobs are now considered good for the daughter will be even further away from the world of economic mobility than those that were available to her mother.<\/p>\n

But we as theatre producers can intervene at two points in this cycle \u2013 in #1, the educational arena, and in #4, the creation of dialogue-rich public forums, the former providing the much more powerful chance.\u00a0 When a professional theatre artist works with a group of students in their school – specifically in high schools, where I believe they are most needed and useful – so many things change.<\/p>\n

First, theatre artists build projects (using little more than their own native artistry) that can be rigorous regardless of the disparities in skill levels each student brings to the project.\u00a0 Students who have trouble writing can create through improv; small roles are available and prove critical; everyone starts the text analysis process on difficult poetic text like Shakespeare from a very similar place.\u00a0 The ways in which students can express learning, and be assessed on that learning, are myriad, so everyone can be fairly expected to work to a very high standard (which is what young people really want \u2013 to be challenged).<\/p>\n

And these projects can build defenses against the outside pressures that perpetuate the cycle, as Epic\u2019s do.\u00a0 We use Augusto Boal\u2019s work to explore power and how we can beat our own \u201ccops in the head\u201d that keep us down.\u00a0 We use Keith Johnstone\u2019s exercises on status to help students understand the impact of daily transactions within bureaucratic structures on our psyches.\u00a0 We borrow from the world of social activism to teach students how to reach and influence critical stakeholders with persuasive arguments when trying to reverse unfair policies.\u00a0 All while working with theatrical fundamentals like character and dialogue.<\/p>\n

Next, theatre artists automatically create community.\u00a0 The nature of their work leads toward the feeling that the team has self-selected based on a desirous affiliation \u2013 each project creates a new family around it.\u00a0 This is why the negative connotation on the word \u201ccompulsory\u201d as applied to arts education bothers me.\u00a0 Why is that a bad thing?\u00a0 It may seem so tiny, but for the student who has never joined a club, never stated an affiliation, never chosen an art or a sport, the idea of simply identifying as a critical member of a team that is making a particular play in English class can be absolutely life-altering.\u00a0 We all want to feel a part of something, even if we were pretty much told we had to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

Next, professional theatre artists represent for the average student something truly exotic: someone who has chosen what anyone would consider an \u201cunrealistic\u201d ambition and yet are clearly succeeding at it.\u00a0 There\u2019s a moment of curiosity \u2013 is there a path outside of what is being drilled into me day after day, consciously and sub-consciously?\u00a0 Again, it\u2019s just a wedge, the tiniest sliver of wood that keeps that window of young ambition from closing today.\u00a0 But realize how resilient that window has been! \u2013 day after day after day of people trying to force it closed, saying it has no right being open at all, with the proof of that thesis demonstrably presented in 6 classes\/day, 5 days\/ week, 40 weeks\/year, not to mention the daily bleakness of the afterschool hours, and yet it is still open.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 It never closes, I don\u2019t think \u2013 it\u2019s just that one day the air it lets in becomes poisonous.<\/p>\n

And finally, in case it\u2019s not self-apparent, artists bring much needed doses of joy to the classroom.\u00a0 Again \u2013 not to be underestimated.\u00a0 Not trivial.\u00a0 You cannot work efficiently without joy.\u00a0 Sure, joy is frivolous without rigor, but no one is suggesting bringing anything less than our highest<\/em><\/strong> level of rigor to these classrooms; and rigor is worthless without joy.<\/p>\n

So we provide a much needed intervention \u2013 not in every student\u2019s life, but a surprising number are receptive \u2013 and suddenly we give students something tangible to present in their own minds against the pressures of the culture of immediate security.\u00a0 Do they become artists?\u00a0 Some, perhaps, but that\u2019s not the goal.\u00a0 The goal is that they feel empowered, at that critical moment, to remind their mothers of the dreams that were once articulated for them: a dream of a pilgrimage to an unknown place (like college) to capture that ineffable jewel of enlightenment, and then come back in triumph to jump above the system as it\u2019s understood in their community.\u00a0 To be a doctor, or lawyer, or poet, or engineer.\u00a0 And to give back.<\/p>\n

How do I know this is the true dream of these families and these communities?\u00a0 Because it is the universal dream.\u00a0 It\u2019s the hero\u2019s journey, and we all believe in it because it\u2019s part of what it means to be human.<\/p>\n

Knowing we can have this kind of impact through our art, shall we instead relegate it to the lower goals of aesthetics?\u00a0 Shall we define artistic greatness by anything less<\/em><\/strong> than how many lives an artist has changed?\u00a0 Shall we look up for approval from those we consider above us, when instead we could inspire everyday heroes?\u00a0 O, we make our art a paltry, paltry thing when we were to hold it to anything less than these most lofty goals of rigor, empowerment, the spreading of joy, and the raising of the potential of an entire community.<\/p>\n

And please, don\u2019t offer up the weak defense that you don\u2019t, as an artist or an organization, know how to participate despite your desire.\u00a0 If you are a real artist, trust me, you know how to reach teenagers through your art.\u00a0 Will you understand all of the procedural challenges of schools at first?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 You\u2019ll learn by watching.\u00a0 Will you be great at it at first?\u00a0 Absolutely not.\u00a0 They\u2019ll eat you alive.\u00a0 You\u2019ll feel broken.\u00a0 You\u2019ll question yourself.\u00a0 Just like that time you blew it on a professional stage somewhere.\u00a0 And then you\u2019ll toughen up, and you\u2019ll come up with something unexpected and surprise them, and they\u2019ll change despite themselves, and they\u2019ll, at worst, begrudgingly admire you, and you\u2019ll come out of it a better, grittier, more creative, more facile artist.\u00a0 That\u2019s who you\u2019ve always been, or you wouldn\u2019t be where you are today.<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re running an arts organization and feel shut out by your local schools, just demand<\/em><\/strong> to get in.\u00a0 Since when were you<\/strong> stopped by local bureaucrats?\u00a0 How do you have a working theatre if you haven\u2019t figured out how to work the post office, the fire department, the local cultural affairs office, the department of labor, you name it!\u00a0 You\u2019re really going to let these petty fools block your moral imperative <\/strong>to reach these needy young people?\u00a0 That seems a profound failure of the spirit, and I know I\u2019m right to expect more of you.\u00a0 Toughen up.\u00a0 Try again.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll see you all in school.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having made significant steps toward ensuring artist diversity, and so at least opening the door to audience diversity, the producer\u2019s next responsibility is to make an investment in arts education.\u00a0 Let me make no bones about it: the stigma that still clings to this part of our field among so-called \u201cserious\u201d producers is wrong-headed and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-a-strategic-approach-to-raising-artist-value","7":"category-producorial-responsibilities","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/theatricalimperative\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}