teaching artist
“Every day in which you have not replenished your education with even a small piece of knowledge that is new to you … consider it fruitless and irrevocably lost for yourself.”
-Konstantin Stanislavski
Manifest your view of the world in your work.
I do not believe in teaching craft. Craft as a rule, kills individuality. I am concerned with what students want to express about their own feelings, their thoughts. I stimulate students to create work out of a deep personal necessity, helping them to answer the question WHY this performance must be made NOW by THEM. I urge my students to explore and embrace their own relationships to any material they are working with, whether this is Shakespeare or devising a site-specific performance. My job is to help them find their own voice, shape their own artistic practice and process, and arm them with professional knowledge so they can amaze us with the originality of their individuality and the uniqueness of their view of the world.
Think visually and spatially.
In all my classes and workshops, I aim to inspire students to think beyond words and ideas, and extend their existing skills and practices in writing, directing and acting as they are exposed to visual tools for the development of a play or a performance. I teach the students to think theatrically, to think spatially, to think about performance as a magical event where the spectator meets performer. I see my students as visual directors, who deploy their scenographic imagination, spatial awareness, and vocabularies of visual dramaturgy to deconstruct and redefine performer/spectator relationships and develop new performance forms.
Generate collective multidisciplinary work.
In my teachings I lay the foundation for collaborative interactions among writers, directors, designers and performers. I encourage students to open up, question and expand their artistic practice by deepening and broadening modes of working within a range of different artistic fields. I advocate for a process where students remain open to discovery and bring together different performance elements in a way that does not privilege any of these aspects at the expense of others. In my classes I embrace the diversity of my student’s backgrounds and experiences, and their wide range of goals and outlooks. A key outcome of my teaching approach is the development of an ethos to inspire and respect one another’s process, while working towards a shared creative vision in a genuine artistic collaboration.
Create within a social and political context.
In my classes and workshops students develop a critical awareness of the position that theatre and performance occupies inside the current economic, social, and cultural terrain, with the aim to create socially and politically motivated work. Much of my practical work with students is focused on creating artistic work outside of conventional performance venues, to engage issues of community, participation, inclusiveness, and social change.