As
an artist, I was surprised at how challenging this project became for me. From
the beginning of the project, I cared about our topic and felt that I had a lot
to say. However, the vision I had for my contribution and the end product varied
dramatically. I had originally planned to interview my sister in law and her
wife, the mothers of one son and two daughters. I wanted to feature parents who
don’t conform to traditional roles themselves, as both must double as care
provider and money earner, to see if and how they enforce gender stereotypes on
their children. However, due to schedules and camera rentals, they were
unavailable. Instead, I talked to my sister and her three children. She didn’t
say what I had expected her to (which was good, because that means she’s not
conforming to gender stereotypes), and my plans for my segment of the
performance had to change. Here was the difficulty: my plan didn’t work.
Normally, I would have no trouble shaking off a failed idea and trying again.
However, my anxiety in social situations has been increasing more and more, and
failing in a group was a terrible experience. During rehearsals, segments of
the performance which occurred before mine were given priority practice time,
rather than dividing the time evenly between each idea. When we performed our
preview, it was the first time we had run through my portion in its entirety.
And
it didn’t work.
That
feels obvious: how can something run smoothly with no rehearsal in a
performative setting? The commentary we received confirmed something I already
knew: it hadn’t worked at all. My group members made comments about rehearsing
that portion more, and I only began to worry. My segment had failed, and no one
wanted to bluntly tell me as much. Determined not to fail, I brainstormed and reconsidered
until I had created a new idea. I didn’t change the video footage, but I did
rework almost all of our interaction with it. Upon presenting it to the group,
I was met with confusion and doubt. I explained again and again what I planned
to do, how it would work, the upside of the change, the things that we would
have to sacrifice that were good about the original performance, etc. It took
thirty minutes before the group understood and accepted what I wanted to do,
and for that entire thirty minutes, I fought the urge to say, “You’re right, it’s
a stupid idea” and leave the room, probably crying. I know—really mature. Fortunately,
I didn’t do that, and it all turned out just fine. But I learned that the
vulnerability required to create art with a group is something that is more
difficult for me to access and deal with than it has been in the past.
That
insight, more than anything, helped me understand how this kind of project
would work in my classroom. Group work is always difficult, and devised theatre
is such a vulnerable undertaking—if it was harrowing for me as an adult to
accept that my artistic vision had failed and I need to try again, I can only
imagine how much worse it would have been for me at the age of my future
students. I would love to use devised theatre, but I think I would have to use
it in a lower stakes environment, especially during my students’ first exposure
to devising. Eventually, I’d love to be performing devised pieces with my
advanced drama students. But in a class like ours, wherein some students have
little to no theatre experience, I would devise as a classroom activity before
using devising as an assessment. I thought this was a powerful assessment tool
and there was adequate time and instruction given, but in implementing a similar
experience in my classroom, I would have to a) teach the class about devising
and allow them to experiment with it during class time, as an activity for
which they are only graded on participation and b) use groups which have been
constant over the semester. I think I would have done better with this project
if I had been really, really close to
the people I was working with. It’s a lot easier to accept rejection of an idea
from friends than from classmates. Had this group been the same as my lesson
plan group, or even if we had been in constant groups for the pedagogical deep
dives, the trust and support would have already been established. This project,
as well as many others I hope to assimilate into my own classroom (mostly
stolen from TMA 301), requires a very strong safe space. Were I to use devising
as an assessment, I would have to build and reinforce that safe space
constantly in my classroom.
