The Syllabus is a Lie: Spring Semester Shake-down
When I was a college student in Iowa I traveled around a fair amount moving between home and campus. The roads in Iowa wind and twist through the natural rise and fall of the landscape. If you have only ever seen Iowa from I-80 you’re really missing some of the most beautiful scenery in the midwest. Anywho, I had a standard route I would take from home to college and back. It was a 90 minute highway drive broken into four stretches. I traveled it hundreds of times. Snaking through downtown Grinnell, stopping at the Casey’s in Tama, the big turn just before Traer, and the endless final stretch just before Cedar Falls ending with the UNIdome and my theatre.
One day because of flooding, I went up through Marshalltown instead. I was unsettled and alert as I navigated my way on roads that were unfamiliar. This was before cellphones and GPS and cars that told you what direction you were facing. All I had was the Atlas my dad had given me when I first went away to college, now crumpled and stained with dirt and pepsi. It wasn’t rocket science. And I got there just fine. But I noticed something much later.
The entire experience was jarring. Nervousness and uncertainty led me to become more aware of not only what I was doing but of the landscape rolling out in front of me. I watched where roads lead, the map, the horizon. I saw details in my surroundings that were exhilarating and exciting. I did not fall into the sleepy trance of the road often traveled. And when I finally made it to my destination I was a little disappointed that the drive was over. Quite different from my usual feeling of relief and mild annoyance at so much time wasted.
That’s the way I feel about teaching sometimes. And I know that our students feel that way. I’ve seen it in their faces. I think that every professor wants to engage their students. I think that a lot just don’t know how. There’s a lot of different ways to go about doing that but I promise you that none of them work unless you are engaged in what you are doing.
Has the class you are teaching grown old and just . . . well . . boring? Throw it out. Start over. New textbook. New syllabus. Non-traditional space. Hell, get new shoes too. Too much work? For what payoff? When your class starts in 30 minutes how do you feel? Annoyed at being interrupted or excited to go get some shit done? It doesn’t always have to be the second but if it NEVER is, you’re doing something wrong. And if you are never excited about teaching then get a different job. There are thousands of passionate teachers who want to engage students and change the world, get out of the way, you’re holding up the evolution of my universe.
If you are still skeptical I have something I want to share with you. Just you and me. Everything you have learned about teaching is made up. All the teachers you learned from . . . well they learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from someone. There is no magic bible of teaching somewhere where the best message is writ never to be changed. You can do whatever you want. You can fail. It won’t kill your students. Some of my best classroom experience were later revealed to be horrible failures by my professors at the time. Education is a living thing.
Wake up with me and give it a try. The next step is waking up your students. This is not easy. Some will even resist. You will have to completely disassemble their well-traveled route. Change their landscape. Challenge their expectations. Give them ownership over the class that they are taking. Expect protestations. Expect bright eyes and misplaced smiles. Expect challenges. Expect magnificence. Expect frustration. Expect failure. Expect surprise.
When you leave yourself open to everything, you can be disappointed by nothing. But you, young teachers, old teachers. You have good instincts. You do not have to move within the confines of a system just because it is there. I am giving you permission to run up the down escalator. Where jeans and a mohawk. Throw the textbook out the window. We are the new generation of teachers. Teachers have alway moved and crafted their landscape. Why are we so reluctant in the classroom?
Reservations in teaching with Google Plus
Six months ago I started using Google+ as a more transparent and effective way of managing the communication element of my online classroom. The potential benefits of the platform were clear. Most of the complications I perceived in those first few classes were resolved as the Google developers team made upgrades to the interface and from my perspective, we were able to create a fairly dynamic and interactive experience for the students as well as for myself. However, over the course of the last six months I have noticed three major problem areas that have led me to reconsider just how effective teaching with Google+ might be.
Controlled Classroom
Google+ gives an instructor the opportunity to create a class circle but unlike a regular classroom (online or traditional) when a student drops or is dropped from a class or merely has issues with the instructor it is a much more complicated process of detangling them from the class. The professor can remove the student from circles but unless all the students in the class also remove that student they still have the capability of being “there”. Often this is not a big deal but in a situation where a student feels they are being treated unfairly it creates an opportunity for a lot of back channel communication that other students might feel is unwelcome and can add a layer of negativity that no one wants tainting their classroom. Additionally, because an instructor has removed the student from the class circle, they are unable to see the posts and communications as they happen and thus, lose the ability to moderate them.
Student Frustration
Not every student is tech savvy. Though the feedback from students about google+ has been largely positive there is a consistent number of students who really seem to dislike using google+ whether because it is new and they resent having to learn it or because it requires them to log into an additional “system” to access parts of their class. There are a lot of reasons why I tend to minimize this complaint personally. Most of the students have a learning curve for the LMS and google+ is no different. With google’s email alerts students get notifications about class posts to their student emails. It is possible to make them aware of what is going on in google without them logging in constantly.
There is a difficulty though. It isn’t possible, often, for students to understand just how much more they are getting from having such a dynamic platform in which to communicate with one another. Even if I explain it and my philosophy behind it, it is impossible to balance the two in the eyes of the student who is determined to see it as a hassle. I think about other courses where we ask students to do things that are unconventional or outside the mainstream student experience. In my acting class my students must get use to sitting on the floor. They must wear clothes that enable them to be able to move freely. Some complain. Some embrace it. The class cannot be successful without it. In this situation it becomes an issue of measuring how I define success for the course and determining if the inconvenience outweighs the benefits.
My Personal Expression
I love Google+. I have a lot of things that I post personally. That makes for a big problem however. Whatever I post to public turns up in their circle. Whatever THEY post to public turns up in the class circle. So far this is a minimal intrusion from the student end, but for myself, who engaged deeply with social media, I have had to curtail my own personal expression out of respect for the students’ need to have a fairly clean classroom environment. Even something as trivial as changing my profile photo becomes an issue. It seems like a bit of a design flaw that I cannot have students simply see the things I post to their specific circle with the rest of the information weeded out. I could employ the use of hashtags but that would add an additional layer of complication and for that, see problem #2.
I’m not saying that I’m done with Google+. I think from the educator standpoint it has so many rich advantages that I’m hesitant to completely close the book on it. But I also can’t ignore an honest assessment of the problems. It seems, in some ways, that the very things I love about it (the openness, ease of posting, dynamic platform) are the things that hold the root of the problem. And honestly, I’m not sure how to solve them.
Five traits of a successful professor . . . the student’s perspective
Every semester, in my Public Speaking class, I ask my students to write down their favorite teacher/professor and what they did that made them a favorite. Originally I envisioned that the students would talk about elements of speaking that would feed later lessons on being a quality speakers. Instead I found a list of stories that did have a commonality but it had nothing to do with public speaking skills. What I found equally intriguing was the fact that five elements emerged over and over again, semester after semester as traits that set some of their teachers apart from all of the others. This is that list.
1. Be challenging. Many of the students talked joyously about teachers and professors that expected great things from their students. Who set lofty goals. Higher than the student thought was possible for them to reach, and then gave them the tools to reach it. Never, not even in one of these descriptions did a student like a professor best because they were easy. As one student so succinctly put “I would rather have a teacher have high expectations than not care and just pass you.”
2. Relate your material to the student’s world. This is sometimes easier said than done, particularly if you have abandoned the world of the younger people. It’s understandable, but being completely unaware of the culture that makes up the framework of their daily lives creates a barrier, a distance between you and them. And the greater the distance the harder it is for them to hear you. And if your response to their culture is to shake your head and express your distaste, you might as well tell them that you value them at the same level. Our culture is no more than a reflection of who we are and no culture has more value than another’s.
3. Be available. If you are arriving 10 minutes before classes start and leaving 5 minutes after your obligatory office hour is up, you’ve got a big problem. When a student comes to your door unannounced, what is your response? What does your body look like? Are you still keeping one eye on email? Are there papers on your lap? Are you quick to hustle them through the conversation or do you stop and give them a chance to think and speak. Do you have rules with “no exceptions?” Professors want to fight for the right to be more than content experts. To do this we must act more like mentors and guides than lecture and grading machines.
4. See the individual and care about them. Your students have names. Learn them. They have majors. Ask. Find out who the people you are sharing this time with are and incorporate that into what you talk about. Students have been trained to behave a certain way. They might not care that you have no idea who they are. But then don’t expect them to care about you either. You are modeling a lot of different behaviors that you might never intend to. Your students learn more from you than the information in your content area. You are a classroom leader. They will model their own leadership styles after the ones that are demonstrated to them. Whether they work or not. “Be the change you want to see in the world.” A beautiful idea. Tough to execute. But then, all the best things in life have a little bit of effort to get to the payoff.
5. Show your passion. How many times have you taught the class? Does it excite you? Did it once? What about it made you so passionate? What was that idealistic vision you had walking into the first class you ever taught? If you’ve lost that feeling of excitement and passion think perhaps that it is not the repetition that watered it down, but that you made a misstep somewhere. We too, model our teaching off of those that went before and believe it or not, the ones that came before us didn’t know much more about teaching than we do now. Pick one class and find the things about it that you love. Things that speak to you. Let them see your excitement. Show them the crazy grad student whose mind reeled with new ideas. Help them to unlock the passion that is inside them.
And YOU, reading this thinking that not every student has a passion. You’re dead wrong. Start over or quit teaching. I so often hear colleagues venting their frustrations with students who are just not performing well. I have them too. It’s going to happen. But the dissatisfaction never leads to change. What I have difficulty accepting is the quick insistence that the way that has always been done is good enough. Good enough sounds like a C to me. Average. As professors we should be getting a 4.0 every semester. We are the Masters right?
So, a challenge, teachers and professors. Pick one class for spring and throw out all the notes and plans and systems that you have always used. Do something risky. Try something new. What on earth do you have to lose? And what might you gain?
Try it and see. I dare you.
Education happens everywhere
It was a couple of months ago now that I was asked to be the keynote speaker at a graduation that would be taking place inside a correctional facility near here. I didn’t think much of it at the time. One of the programs my college runs is prison college courses. It makes sense. Educating people who are incarcerated makes sense on a ton of different levels.
And so I wrote the speech. I love graduation speeches. They are always a time to talk about hope and change and dreams. Even for people who are currently not in the best situation. And I have to admit, I was pretty proud of the speech that I ended up with. It was sincere but honest. It touched on the realities of their situation but not without hope.
Going to the prison was another experience entirely. I don’t know exactly what I expected. I hadn’t really thought about it to be perfectly honest. I mean, I expected guards and things I guess. Fences. Uniforms. But when I arrived the experience that I had was much more intense. From the moment that we walked into the small receiving room. All I was allowed to take with me was my notes and a photo ID. My cellphone stayed in the car.
Once we were through the small receiving area we were walked across the grounds to another small building. Inside was a tiny gymnasium that had been set up with a small platform and several tables that held around 50 graduates. They proceeded in, in the traditional blue cap and gown, to Pomp and Circumstance. It was clear that many of them were triumphant. In spite of the meager surroundings and the small group, this was definitely a graduation.
The warden spoke briefly. I wondered about my own speech. I wondered a lot about these men, why they were here, how they felt, what this all meant. I wondered how effectively you could talk about hope to people in prison, about the future, about dreams. But I did. And I meant what I said. Because from my perspective, I cannot see the reason they were there in the first place. That is the job of the police and the judge and the rest of our judicial system. I have to see the person who is going to come out. As a teacher, as a leader, that is how I can help make my world better.
The speech went well. Most of them listened with open hearts. Clearly. After the speech I was able to shake each of their hands as they received their diploma. And though graduation was over, my experience was not. As I ate I spoke with some of the people that worked with the inmates in the education program. We talked for a long time about the life they lived in prison. About the effects of being told that you are worthless. About the effects of having something to be proud of. About how the mentality of an inmate on the inside ripples to the family on the outside. About how educated men and women are less likely to end up in prison again. About hope. About value.
Toward the end of the meal that had been prepared by the culinary arts class, one of the graduates came over to the table. He waited until the director I was talking with to turned to him and then he spoke to me. He told me that he really loved my speech. He asked if it might be possible for him to have a copy of it. As he asked his eyes shifted between mine and the director’s. I opened my portfolio and handed him my copy of the speech. He looked at the director before taking it and thanked me again.
But you know, it was me who felt thankful. For a lot of things.
Assassins: Opening Night!
Tonight we open our production of Assassins. I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about the process as a whole. Were auditions really September 6th? Music rehearsal, the rehearsal room. The stage. It all seems like a blur. Assassins isn’t the most complex project I’ve ever worked on but it’s up there. When you think of the sheer number of things that the actors and crew are juggling it borders on the absurd and they are doing a fantastic job. Yeah, the actors and crew. I sit in the audience now. Oh, and I unlock doors. Or I just hand my keys to people and take them back when they are returned. Yesterday I got 72 points in Words with Friends on one word before the show.
What it comes down to is that directing is weird sometimes. The way that it pivots and in the space of a few weeks you go from being the source point for the entire show to being a guiding observer. Nudging. Watching. Keeping your mouth shut.
I know almost nothing about how the show works backstage or what goes on back there. Honestly I always feel like I’m trespassing when I go backstage during a show. I’d rather not do it anyway. My eyes are on the product, what happens when they come on stage and the lights come up. The mechanics are the “how” and as long as they work and are safe, game on.
Directors shouldn’t be involved in the production side of things if they can help it at all. The people involved bond with one another and their bonds make the show richer, seamless. You have taught them to count on one another, and they do. That’s a wonderful feeling, if a little bit isolated. I’d rather be party-of-one in the audience though, and know that the cast and crew were moving together as one unit.
We take pride in what we have ownership over. Limit ownership and you limit investment.
Opening night though. Opening night is magic. It is the theatre practitioners official holiday. Somewhere between a birthday and thanksgiving. Over time the people who have theatre people in their lives learn that everything stops for that last week and a group of people push and pull and laugh and give up and start again until the day is here and we throw the doors wide and say to the world, “come in, we have saved a spot for you. Let us show you just what we have been doing these last few months.”
It IS magic. I went back this morning and counted and Assassins marks my 40th production. My 40th opening night. And it’s just as exciting as the first one. In 8th grade. Where I’m pretty sure I sang a song called “Puberty Blues”. Oh yes I did.
So happy opening night to my cast and crew and to all the other shows out there opening this weekend. Great job! Break a leg! Make magic! We’re all in this together.
Copyright and Royalties in the Theatre: How important are they?
There is a lot of business to the craft of theatre. It’s not the interesting or fun part of the job but it is a necessary one. One of the most important and most complicated parts of putting a production together is navigating the intricacies of the royalty agreement that you must enter into before you can present a play to the public.
That’s a very important bit. “before you can present a play to the public”. That is about all it takes to earmark your project a performance and therefore subject to laws that protect the copyright owners from having their work used without their permission and without compensation.
That means any performance, even free ones, that take place for the public. This also includes excerpts from the play or a song from a musical. Just because it’s not the whole thing doesn’t make it fair game. If people are coming from outside to see it and especially if you are charging admission, you must have an agreement with the publishing house who own the play or the author him/herself.
The agreement doesn’t end with simple permissions. Copyright agreements are filled with usually very strict guidelines addressing everything from cutting lines to how big the font size on the poster must be and what you must put on the poster regarding the company. Musicals usually have an insane amount of stuff they want on the poster. It’s really tempting just to skip it for aesthetic reasons. Believe me I know.
When I took the agreement to our graphics department as they were creating the poster for Assassins I thought the designer was going to cry. He’s an artsy kind of guy too, but we shared in our frustration and he did an excellent job incorporating all the elements from the royalty agreement into the poster.
Copyright isn’t just a problem for the producer of the play, it can affect everyone involved. Not only can a royalty house sue the person running the production but they actually have the right to go after everyone involved with the play and the venue that houses it if the two aren’t one in the same. Add to that the fact that copyright violation can be a criminal offense and you begin to see why it can be a problem.
They are more able to monitor production activity now than they ever have been. When I was studying copyrights in college, big publishing houses would use clipping services, people combing newspapers from various cities looking for announcements and adds. Heck, now all they have to do is set up an alert in google and in one minute they are looking at everything from your poster to the video you posted on youtube (which is also a violation of your copyright agreement).
In the end, the play or musical you are doing belongs to someone. It is their creation. Whether it is a broadway blockbuster or an obscure unknown show. Someone created it and if you are going to present it to the public they not only deserve credit, they deserve compensation. You are using it to get something, whether that is money, or visibility, without the proper permissions it is tantamount to stealing.
Rich Theatre: Silent Theatre
My favorite moments in theatre have occurred during complete silence. One actor on stage. Taking his time. Two people connecting. Quiet. It changes the momentum of the show. There is something weighty and lovely about the feeling in the house when an audience watches a person alone on stage who is not speaking. It feel intensely voyeuristic. Silence has its own power. A great underlying force that be like a welcome rain or press at you like a summer night when it is too uncomfortable to exist.
Yet you almost never see directors take advantage of the opportunities for silence. Lots don’t think about it. I guarantee your actors won’t. Not for a while. This word comes after this word. This sentence comes after this sentence. They don’t know what else to do with themselves so they say the next word. Their minds are ahead of them. They are at the mercy of a predestined future and so performances fall flat. It’s not wrong, it’s just the process of learning a part. It’s difficult to mimic thought and spontaneity so that the words seem to come from an actors heart, authentically, in the moment.
When I was an undergraduate our Acting 2 class did what would become my favorite exercise. The professor brought in copies of the script and had cut each actor’s lines out into little strips. And some of the strips he had divided up into smaller parts. He made the two actors sit facing one another, each with a “line helper” who would hand them the strip of paper with their next line on it just before they were to say them. The actors bodies changed. The urgency in the room picked up. They came alive. It was a remarkable exercise. It still is. Keeping your head in the immediate is hard. Not having a script to look at forced us to look at each other and listen to their words. Breath. The fundamentals.
But now we fret about slowing things down in a show. We fret that the audience might lose interest. We fret that someone will think that we have made a mistake or someone has forgotten their lines. Sometimes the opposite is true. I have found silence to be extremely powerful in the midst of chaos. Audiences are curious. A silent activity causes them to sit up, look closer, see just what the heck is going on down there. Watch next time you’re at a play. Assassins has one that is particularly engaging.
What kills me is that it isn’t new. It’s not even remotely new. One of my favorite silent sequences happens in August Strindberg’s Miss Julie. Jean has taken Miss Julie into the outer room to dance at the party and Christine, the cook as well as Jean’s wife, stays behind in the kitchen.
[Jean offers Miss Julie his arm and leads her through the glass door. CHRISTINE is alone. Faint violin music at some distance to schottische time. CHRISTINE keeps time with the music, clears the table where Jean had been eating, washes the plate at the side-table, dries it and puts it in the cupboard. She then takes off her kitchen apron, takes a small mirror out of the table drawer, puts it opposite the basket of lilacs, lights a taper, heats a hairpin, with which she curls her front hair; then she goes to the glass door and washes, comes back to the table, finds the young lady's handkerchief, which she has forgotten, takes it and smells it; she then pensively spreads it out, stretches it fiat' and folds it in four. Jean comes back alone through the glass door.]
Realistically this scene probably takes at least five full minutes to execute and that is quite a bit of silent stage time. But think of the audience, sitting, silently watching Christine go about her business as her husband dances with Miss Julie. Does she care? Does it bother her? We lean in, watch her movements, scour her face for a reaction. Did she frown? Is she curling her hair to appear more attractive to him? Or is she just bored? An excellent illustration of how much power the direction can have on a text are scenes like these where the difference between a tearful but stifled sigh and a playful/comic mirror bit literally changes the entire play without ever changing a line.
But we are uncomfortable with silence. It’s so rare. And it is true, the silence is dangerous. It is hard to control and an audience is easily lost if the moment you have built isn’t strong enough. But oh what it can bring done well. Hundreds of people breathing one breath, of one focus, the sparks of curiosity, winding up the machinery. Because silence makes us think. Puzzle out the situation. Even if it is something as simple as WHY aren’t they talking. Thought momentum is hard to stop. When it does, each push gets a little easier.
The Probation Circle – More fun with Google Plus
When google plus went public my influx of people adding me to their circles exploded, which was pretty cool. I can tell by a lot of the posters in my own stream that I was not alone. So far I’ve been pretty liberal about adding people but I quickly found out that as someone post came up in my stream I was met with questions.
Uh oh, this one seems to be posting about feeding her cat a lot. Or was that her before?
This guy is posting stuff from his wife’s etsy page, do I really want that?
This lady has nothing in her profile but the pic is super cool . . .
Is this guy being a jerk or just opinionated?
The problem was I had no good way to remember who was who as my stream updates almost constantly and I do want to give the group some latitude. I don’t care if you post your wive’s toaster covers now and again, but if that is all you post, I’d rather not have you in my stream.
So wednesday I created the “Probation” circle. When someone posts something I’m iffy about or even if their profile gives me pause, I throw them in the regular circles but I also put them in the probation circle. That way if I run across them a second time I know that I had already flagged them as questionable and can remove them without worrying that I’m going to miss out on content that I do want.
Good story, the end.
Diversifying Form: Rethinking how mainstream institutions approach arts education
I’ve been working with a really great group of students in acting class. It’s the kind of class where you see growth and dedication that leads to a really exciting classroom to be a part of. You know the kind, the kind where education is happening. Mine and theirs. I’ve had a couple of down days where I trudged off to acting class only to return feeling rejuvenated and eager to work more and not less. It’s also caused me to turn my focus to just how deeply different the methodology used in an arts class is, or should be.
I would argue that the structure of arts classes in generally needs to be reworked. Administratively, I can see the appeal to keeping general methodologies fairly cohesive across the board, but for arts classes, I think it’s time to move in a different direction.
When we are creating arts classes, first look at the desired outcome. Sure there are classes like history and analysis where it is possible to do a pretty spiffy job with a class in a lecture/testing paper writing format. But other arts classes are there to help the artist develop their primary skill. Beyond the very beginning introduction to the various techniques, the course cannot fit that same model.
Art teachers know this. (Or they should). We sort of sneak along and work with students and give grades even though we know that there is no assessment method that can speak directly to the students work and progress. Sure I can assign points to things, but how are those things graded? I can give a monologue 100 points. Let’s say 20 points for memorization, . . . but then what? Do I give them points for realism? How do we put that into a rubric? Characterization? Risk taking? Progress? And what if student #1 progresses from a 2 to a 5 and student #2 starts at a 6 but never progresses. Does student #2 get a higher grade than #1? And what determines progress?
Art classes don’t have an “end”. A student can take acting, or water color, or ceramics over and over and over and never be at their end of their creative journey. A good artist says that you are never at the end. How do I determine when a student has reached the end of Acting I?
Additionally each art student brings to the classroom their own unique set of problems, particularly in theatre. Most of those problems are a part of their past, their personality. Self confidence, repressed emotion, poor body image. Each student’s needs are highly individualized and I work with each student in turn, directing my work to address their specific needs. This isn’t something that is limited to theatre. Most arts classes are this way.
The acting classroom needs to be smaller, 8-12 max. When someone talks about putting 20 people in my acting class my head spins a little. No student will get the attention they need in that sort of setting.
Arts teachers need to embrace the subjectivity of arts instructions. Instead of feeling obligated to create items that can be quantified, embrace that each arts class will be unique and different and that the students learn as much from watching and communicating with each other as they do with you.
In this way, each student meets the course at the place where they are able and grows throughout the class at the best pace for them. Learning your craft is not a predictable series of events, but rather, a series of fits and starts. Huge leaps and frustrating limitations. By accepting each student at their arrival level you also avoid risking the temptation to norm your students the first week of class. “Yes, I recognize that you are far beyond the level of these other two students but just because the syllabus says that we must all do step 1 first and then step 2 and by the time you get to 10 you get an A doesn’t mean that because you came in at a 12, you get an A. You get to start at 12 and move forward from where you are and will be graded on that.”
And the really beautiful thing about dealing with individual students rather than a collective in an arts class is that that disparity between skill levels becomes an asset rather than a liability. Students watch each other. New students see the road ahead of them, the are introduced to land marks of the evolution of the craft. They also see when the more advanced students falter and struggle that their process will always have an element of backwards and that that is ok. The advanced student has the opportunity to review the basics, to watch less experience students being mentored, and they learn TO mentor.
I think the arts in general have suffered a little bit of industrial burn at the academic levels as the push to create quantifiable outcome results become more and more important. I also think that many artists generally shy away from pedagogy discussions on principle. I wish they wouldn’t. In a time when education in general is changing fluidly and rapidly, we should give the way that we approach arts education a closer look.
Artists, you need artists: An Open Letter
Artists,
When was the last time you made time to seek out other art and artists. See it with your own eyes? Art is popping up everywhere, every day. Blossoms of bacteria. Feeding on emotional vulnerability, hope, longing, humanity. The relationship is symbiotic. The more we need, the more there is. The richer the lives it feeds, the richer the artists it produces.
Until we have evolved to the point that we begin trying to define art. Impossible. But important that we try. The artists are everywhere. Keep your eyes open until you see the art in the child’s hand that drops the crayon into the dirt, until the old man playing the saxophone under the streetlight on an abandoned corner makes your heart yearn for something it has never known. Look further.
Run down dark alleys, crawl through the forest, float down the river. Go where all the people are, go where no one can be found. Chase, dig, unravel, until you find something that sets your hair on fire. A true master of the craft that sends you crashing blindly back to your creative space, digging through the supplies, hands shaking, heart exploding with what that singular contact has created.
Artists. One of your most important jobs is to seek out one another. Not to band together. Not to create an isolated community. Artists ARE isolated by nature. Inspiration lives in the artist’s heart but to connect with another artist, regardless of the medium. Regardless of the style, vision, genre. A hard connect with another artist is rocket fuel for the spirit.
So that you say.
“I have seen this thing. So perfect and inspiring that I felt something break in me, and be rebuilt. My hands felt empty because they were not working. The delight and passion has ignited a kindred cry in my own artist heart. To the work. To the work. To the work!”
And do not be fooled into believing that art lives in museums and in theatres and in institutes. Art lives and breaths wherever the artist happens to be. Trained or untrained. Traditional or free-form. If you are moved, the art is there, whether you are at a gallery showing or in an abandoned alley. Art knows no class, no culture, and no boundaries.
So our job is for them. The great Them. But our job is also for each other. Like a chemical reaction across a matrix of artists. Passing the momentum to one another so that one of us will go supernova and blow up the whole damn world. With Art.
Much love, Michelle
The Theatre Professor
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