Theatre Students Research Articles

I’ll figure it out myself! Musical theatre students’ enhanced knowledge of embodied learning processes through application of the Alexander Technique

This paper aims to show how Alexander Technique (AT) can serve as a tool in embodied learning processes. The use of AT was explored with a group of 21 students, seven teachers, and three AT teachers who were practicing and performing musical theatre repertoire. Principles of action research methodology informed the projects. The research found that AT offered increased awareness of connections between thoughts, body and environment. Knowledge in embodied learning processes empowered the students in terms of better observation and rehearsal routines. We argue that these results might have implications for the field of embodied teaching and learning. Furthermore, the results may offer an invitation towards increased focus on embodiment in learning experiences within other fields as well.

Sustainability in technical theatre pedagogy and practice

In March 2023, third-year Technical Theatre (Production and Design) students at the University of Salford produced a festival of environmentally engaged design-led performance pieces focused on the climate crisis. All four productions were based on plays from Lighting the Way: An Anthology of Short Plays about the Climate Crisis (Bilodeau and Peterson 2020) and were devised and developed by the students, who were encouraged to be as sustainable as possible in both their designs and their execution. The festival was part of the first stage of our collaborative online international learning (COIL) project with Humber College in Toronto, which continued into 2024. In devising the projects, students were encouraged to consider concepts of affectivity, relationality and materiality in relation to expanded scenography (McKinney and Palmer 2017), the practice of scenography as a political act (Elnile 2020), and the ethics of ecoscenography (Beer n.d.). Using principles from the ABTT Green Book for sustainable productions (2021), all materials and equipment used in the final performances were either drawn from in-house stock or borrowed, repurposed or upcycled, encouraging further conversations around accessibility and our collective carbon footprint.

Cultivating ambiguities within higher music education – preparation for singers’ professional societal participation in opera conservatory and music theatre programs

Earlier research has stated the need for conservatory education to prepare aspiring musicians more thoroughly for a dynamic and changing society. A project that challenges the conservatory tradition is Sammankonst (TogetherArt) where students at a musical theatre program at folk high school level collaborate with intellectually disabled adults. Based on a phenomenological way of thinking, this article aims to describe and analyze the education of aspiring musicians for professional participation in society based on an analysis of experiences among conservatory students, music theater students and their teachers. Interviews were made with six conservatory students, 15 musical theatre students, and two teachers. The results show ambiguities when it comes to what voice students should be prepared for and how the choice of preparations influence the view of singing and musicians’ quality competence.

Student Views on Literacy in Music Education in Theatre DepartmentsBurcu

In this study, it was aimed to examine student views on music education in theater departments. Case study model, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. The study group within the scope of the research consists of 10 undergraduate-II students of Trabzon University State Conservatory Performing Arts Department. In order to obtain the data, an interview form prepared by the researcher was created with “Google Form”. Content analysis method was used to analyze the data. According to the data obtained in the study, it was determined that music courses in theater departments in Turkey are mostly “Singing” courses. It was found that the number of music courses in theater departments during undergraduate education is low. According to the opinions of theater students, it was concluded that music education is very important and necessary in their departments. In line with these results, suggestions were made to increase the duration and number of music courses in theater departments.

From acting to simulation: Contributions of theatre students to healthcare simulation

IntroductionThe use of student theaters as simulated patients (SP) can improve the learning process, but studies on the SP methodology in Costa Rica are limited. Thus, this study investigated the contribution of theatre students as SP, as perceived by faculty and nursing students. MethodsThis study used the action-research framework and the data collection included observational data and qualitative interviews. The data were analyzed through three phases: pre-analysis, exploration of the material, and treatment/interpretation. Results and discussionParticipants included 20 undergraduate nursing students and eight faculty members. The involvement of actors in the simulation increased the psychological fidelity and realism of the simulation, leading to deeper experiential training. Therefore, the inclusion of theater students as SP with acting training in nursing undergraduate or postgraduate courses can be an effective strategy to promote emancipatory learning and has potential for developing critical-reflective thinking skills when used in a constructivist pedagogical practice.

Plays or e-Plays? Informing a Theater Collection Strategy Using Student Input

Do theater students prefer to read print or electronic plays? Are there certain use cases, like memorization for audition or reading for coursework, where theater students have a strong preference? This article seeks to convey the findings of a recent survey given to undergraduate theater students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga regarding their format preferences for plays. The respondents indicated that most preferred reading plays in print and indicated a strong preference for print plays in several situations. This analysis contributes to the body of literature on format preferences and is insightful for librarians involved in developing collections in niche areas.

Theatre without borders: Evaluating e-book publication of play texts in the Nigerian educational space

The theatre ecology had embraced digital technology long before the Covid-19 pandemic entered our lives. The orange economy, as we know it, is driven by creativity from the arts and humanities as well as the sciences. Playwriting pedagogy, as was traditionally taught, pointed to the stage, printing press and elitist publishers as windows to the world. The theatre arts is a discipline that has a value chain of products and services. Adopting the survey and historical-analytic methods, this paper focuses on playwriting and the playwrightpreneur’s options to the conventional style of publishing for product spread and economic empowerment. The excitement and apprehensions of digitisation on this venture are interrogated via an online survey on consumers of play texts, on the one hand, and playwrights on the other hand. The researcher argues that the availability of online stores does not necessarily translate to the availability of e-books. The results show that even though we are in the digital era, the acceptability of e-books is low compared to hard- copy books. It also reveals that knowledge of online publishing is poor. The gains of digitising theatre projects are illuminated. Furthermore, teachers and students of theatre arts studies will find this option complementary to the age-long style of hard copy inventories as institutional or personal collections. The paper concludes that adequate information on how to publish play texts online is urgently needed especially for writers of dramatic texts. It recommends that workshops on online publication be organised for teachers and students of playwriting.

Individual characteristics in arts management careers: investigating the highly sensitive person scale on motivation to lead.

Research on personality in leadership indicates that self-selection to leadership careers and artistic careers correlates with diverging personality profiles. People in leadership careers traditionally display lower neuroticism and higher conscientiousness than artistic individuals. In between, there are individuals entering arts management careers. To study these individuals directly, we collected Norwegian data from 91 musical theater students and 102 arts management students and compared with 109 business management students. As expected, conscientiousness and neuroticism predicted artistic careers against business management careers, aligned with the "arts for arts' sake" myth of artists. Interestingly, arts management careers were not different from artistic careers. They weren't more motivated to take on leadership roles than performing artists either. However, the Highly Sensitive Person Scale indicated that narrower traits of sensitivity predicted higher levels of motivation to lead in many artists. Some arts and arts management students seem to bring unique talents into forms of leadership particularly useful for artistic organizations. Our findings are discussed in terms of how leadership characteristics operate in the field of art, and the effect of domain-specific characteristics in this setting.

Dramaturging Script Analysis

Abstract: Theatre students need an expansive view of art and storytelling in order to fully engage the diversity of the field of theatre and performance. We argue this can be accomplished by moving past a focus on the "play from the inside" of most script analysis courses toward a dramaturgical analysis. Dramaturgy offers a broader approach that fosters more complex critical and creative thinking skills, thus providing a stronger foundation for analytical ability. How can dramaturgy broaden the artistic discipline's approach to script analysis? What do we gain from applying a dramaturgical sensibility to script analysis? We suggest the employment of five themes to utilize in dramaturgical analysis: context, audience, creation, shape, and conceptual frameworks.

Taking the stage: Theatre design students and research

Theatre design research is multidisciplinary and highly visual in nature. Students of theatre design need to learn how to locate appropriate primary source images, as this is not necessarily intuitive for early career students. While multiple image repositories are available online, students usually rely on more convenient resources. This article describes a seven year collaboration between a librarian and theatre design professor working to develop the information literacy skills, as well as visual literacy and primary source literacy skills and knowledge of Theatre design students enrolled in Stage Makeup, Costume Design, and the History of Style and Decor at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ. This article adds a unique and innovative perspective to the library literature. Not only does it add to the limited collection of scholarly literature on the information literacy knowledge and skills training of theatre students, but since it focuses on theatre design students and their unique visual research needs, this article includes both visual and primary source literacy.

INTERNATIONALIZATION OF TRAINING METHODS OF PHYSICAL THEATER STUDENTS’ BY MEANS OF PLASTIC ART

Abstract. The relevance of the study is the interdisciplinary aspects of theater students’ psychophysiological training. The problem of the research is the differences in the approaches to education and students’ psychophysiological training of physical and stage schools. The object of the research is educational aspects in the educational process, based on interdisciplinary research in the areas of psychophysiology, ethnopedagogy, traditional Kazakh values, synthesis of physical and stage schools, education, and art internationalization. The subject of the research is physical theater students’ psychophysiological sports training using performing arts. The purpose of the study is to determine the educational aspects of physical theater students’ psycho-physiological training by means of performing arts. The task of the study is to reveal the theoretical and methodological basis to create a methodic for the students’ psychophysiological training by means of performing arts. The research hypothesis is that when defining the goals and objectives of students’ psychophysiological training of physical and stage schools, it is possible to identify educational aspects for teaching profile disciplines methodic by means of performing arts. The methodological basis is based on the interdisciplinary study of researchers’ works in psychophysiology, students’ physical training, ethnopedagogy, traditional Kazakh values, performing arts, education, and art internationalization. Research methods: review-theoretical, psychophysiological, historical-culturological, art criticism, methodical-pedagogical analysis. The theoretical significance of the study lies in the scientific and theoretical justification of educational aspects of students’ psychophysiological training through the synthesis of physical and stage schools. The practical significance of the study is guided by using performing arts, tools of ethnopedagogy, and traditional Kazakh values, broadcast by performing arts. The results of the study made it possible to reveal the educational aspects of students’ psychophysiological training methodology by means of performing arts.

Using the basics of Les Kurbas’s directing skills in the training of future specialists in higher education

The training of specialists in artistic higher education institutions should be conducted using modern methods, technologies, and developments and be oriented towards a modern audience, but at the same time, training should be based on established principles and views that have been tested by time. Les Kurbas is a personality whose views and principles of acting and directing can be a guide for contemporary artists, and therefore they should be used in the professional training of students of theatre and film education. The purpose of this paper was to cover the aspects of training future specialists in higher education institutions based on Les Kurbas’s directing craft. To fulfil this purpose, the following research methods were used: biographical method, methods of analysis and synthesis, method of comparison, method of abstraction, method of analogy, methods of deduction and induction. The paper covered the foundations of Les Kurbas’s directing craft and its influence on the development of modern theatre and directing, compared his principles and views with those of contemporary artists. The paper revealed the role of Les Kurbas and his work in preserving the identity of Ukrainian theatre and cinema and in the development of Ukrainian culture. A parallel was drawn between modern approaches to training future specialists and the foundations of Les Kurbas’s directing craft. The conclusion was made on the expediency of using the basics of Les Kurbas’s directing craft in the educational process of higher educational institutions. The paper described the specific features of using the basics of Les Kurbas’s directing craft in the preparation of future specialists for professional activity and provided recommendations for their implementation in the educational process. The results of this paper can be used by teachers of artistic higher education institutions when developing lecture materials and special courses, as well as by students for self-improvement and work on themselves and their professional skills, which underlies the successful development of Ukrainian theatre and cinema.

City Women: Managers and Leading Ladies at the City of London Theatre, 1837–1848

In the 1830s and 1840s, the female management of London theatres, conducted singly or in partnership, was surprisingly common. Charismatic actress-managers such as Madame Vestris and Mrs Keeley have long been familiar to students of British theatre, as too the establishments they managed. Much less well known is the City of London Theatre in Norton Folgate, one of several minor playhouses then active in the East End. Opened in the year that Victoria came to the throne (1837), during its first decade the City was unrivalled as a home for the so-called ‘wo-manager’. Although largely forgotten today, Lucy Honey, Eliza Vincent, Harriett Lacy, and Maria Honner added much to the cultural vibrancy of an important theatre district at a moment of significant social change. Stephen Ridgwell here explores an under-researched world of theatre enterprise, and argues that the marginality subsequently conferred upon these women in no way reflects their contemporary visibility and standing. The article also highlights the importance of Eliza Vincent’s collaborations with George Dibdin Pitt, a dramatist of growing interest to scholars across a range of fields, and proposes that further consideration of this partnership might usefully be undertaken.

Trans/Queer representation and drama: engendering new forms of empathy and relationality

ABSTRACT A dialogue between Taylor, a trans male Turkish-Canadian theatre student and Kathleen, a queer, cis-gendered female Scottish-Canadian theatre researcher considers some questions that queerness and trans identities in the drama classroom invite. Based on their mutual engagement in a virtual drama club in a Toronto high school in the 2020–2021 school year, they recall together experiences of performance, performative writing, and the strangely intimate relationality provoked by a global health pandemic. They are interested in the possibility of distinct individuals forming powerful collectives in art-making and in life through a reconsideration of the idea of ‘empathy’ newly imagined as relational.

Creating Supportive Feedback Practices to Address Applied Theatre Students’ Anxieties in a Higher Education Course

This article explores the ways in which two years of increased isolation due to COVID affected a cohort of applied theatre students and how their instructors addressed students’ elevated anxiety and disconnection from community. In the spring semester of 2022, I was working as the teaching intern for the course Applied Theatre Praxis taught by Professor Joe Salvatore at New York University. The students—who ranged from undergraduate upperclassmen majoring in Educational Theatre to doctoral students in various arts disciplines—were required to facilitate an applied theatre residency project with a community to which they were connected in some way. Students responded to having to work with one of their own communities with acute anxiety: many claimed they were not part of a community. This group response was due to a complex web of factors stemming from two years of increased isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, I will describe the teaching strategies Professor Salvatore and I used to help students overcome this anxiety by creating opportunities to rehearse and reflect on their facilitation practices and grounding student-facilitators in their values.

Exploring everyday resilience in the creative industries through devised theatre: A case of performing arts students and recent graduates in Ghana

The concept of resilience has become widely used to account for how people respond both to acute crisis and, increasingly, to protracted precarity. Yet, cultural studies theorists have also vigorously critiqued resilience discourse as a tool of neoliberal governmentality. In this article, we turn from the discourse of resilience to the practice of resilience. We argue, through a case of theatre students and recent graduates in Ghana, that the practice of resilience can be both individual and collective. Moreover, we show that resilience practices involve the exercise of agency at various scales through the specific practices of coping, reworking, and resisting. Finally, we show the merits of using artistic research methods, such as devised theatre, to unveil the complex ways that creatives practice resilience in the everyday.

A Note from the Editor

A Note from the Editor John Fletcher Returning to the classroom after a spring sabbatical, I realized that this fall was for me the first semester to feel post-pandemic. I met classes in the rooms I usually taught them. I gingerly reestablished some participation and attendance standards (with generous options for medical excuses, of course). Students and I interacted mostly without the distancing, universal masking, and HEPA-filter hum of years past. It feels new. Amid this newness, I've found myself struggling to talk about the former high pandemic period. I gesture vaguely to the last few years as a long, frustrating season for theatre students and teachers. We were not lethargic; emergency and innovation energized us. From the efflorescence of creative strategies for remote performance in lockdowns to the exasperated fury at assaults on Black lives and threats to democracy, the past few years kept us busy as artists, teachers, and scholars. Yet the fuels of rage and fear, potent as they are, can burn out easily. It has taken a long time for me to recover enough to feel new, to rediscover the passions that got me into theatre and the classroom in the first place. To be sure, stressors like the pandemic and rising white nationalism are not altogether gone; thus, pandemic innovation and emergency response will remain part of our collective toolkits. But we are perhaps moving past the time when these were our only options. I am refreshed, then, that this issue's offerings all in one way or another engage not just living but thriving. Each is about passion—a deep, durable yearning toward something beyond mere survival. And for the first time in years, I sense my own readiness to think about teaching, studying, and producing theatre in ways other than crisis reactions or desperate experimentation. I hope you are similarly primed to indulge in some passion. I am especially pleased to begin this issue with "Shadow Play: Visualizing Asexuality in New Queer Plays" by playwright and scholar Kari Barclay. This is the first article in Theatre Topics to engage asexuality directly. Barclay both provides a crash course in asexuality (and other identities within the asexual/aromantic spectrum) and showcases how several queer playwrights stage this identity category within the constellation of sexual and gender identities. Barclay adroitly dispatches any misconception that lives not centering on sexual desire means lives missing out on passion. The plays they survey in the article (including their own) deepen and expand possibilities for non-normative sexualities, playing in the shadows of more conventional identities' visibility politics. Such shadow play resonates with what Michel Foucault imagined in 1981 when he identified the most exciting element of homosexuality not as a new normative category for sexual expression but as "a historic occasion to reopen affective and relational virtualities" more broadly (138). That is, homosexuality (in Foucault's context) and asexuality (in ours) offer us the chance to reimagine possibilities for modes of life and friendship we haven't yet thought possible. Barclay and their cohorts help us start such a reimagining. Surely such a project is something to be passionate about. I look forward to seeing more work about asexuality in this and other theatre/performance studies journals. In "Contemplating the Afterlife," Bryan M. Vandevender addresses a more familiar source of passion: his students' love of musical theatre. He usefully names and grapples with a common pedagogical conundrum, that students' passionate fandom for musical theatre can sometimes hinder their willingness to engage such texts critically. Vandevender then elaborates a useful strategy for helping students deepen their appreciation for musical theatre by incorporating into his lessons the lens of [End Page 1] revival. Studying musicals as revivals, Vandevender demonstrates, can invite students into a higher critical awareness. They learn to see musicals not merely as static works (the singular cast albums or iconic stage versions they know best) but as iterative events that emerge, reemerge, and respond to shifting contexts. Such awareness also helps them to be more responsible producers, prompting them to pose vital historiographic questions about their own decisions of which musicals to produce and how or why to produce them. Vandevender helpfully provides several sets...

Oramics to electronica: investigating lay understandings of the history of technology through a participatory project

Oramics to Electronica was a 2011 Science Museum project designed to put the tools of museum participation in the service of research into public history, taking the history of electronic music as our example. The primary output was a temporary exhibition. Whereas the term ‘public history’ is often used to denote popularisation of academic history, in this inflection we are primarily concerned with how lay people like our visitors think about the past in general, and about the past of science and technology in particular. Taking the opportunities that arose, we worked with two ‘expert’ groups - of original 1960s participants in electronic music and of 12 recruited present-day music enthusiasts. We also enrolled a group of theatre students and another of writers to respond to the themes of the project and, in particular, to the ‘Oramics Machine’ a unique sound synthesizer created by Daphne Oram. In this essay, an account of our practice is bookended with consideration of related practice and reflections on the implications of the project. It is suggested that the project demonstrated the virtues of proceeding by way of engagement with micro-audiences to understand the ‘cognitive exclusion’ of potential visitors who do not see their interests represented in museum displays.

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

Something Beautiful and Powerful: Politics, Art, and Bread and Puppet Theater

Diskursive Aspekte der Sprachvermittlung an der Theater-Fakultät der Janáček-Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Brno/Tschechien

The article takes a look at some specifics of teaching German at the Theater faculty of the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (JAMU) in Brno/Czech Republic. Specifically, it addresses the question of how to enable students of theater directing to actively participate in discursive practices in German as a foreign language. In the following, the question of how the discourse skills acquired in Czech subject teaching could be made fruitful in German teaching is explored.