DMP Artist Educator Statement

 DMP Artist Educator Statement

            While creating this final product, I strengthened my love for the actual making of theatre—the way that the devising process permits theatre practitioners to be engaged in the act of creating what the piece is. This collaborative creative process has continued to teach me about theatre’s power to bind together individuals and strengthen relationships through the act of cocreation. As an artist, I’m interested in continuing to work on pieces and create art that fosters unity, because I think it develops us as artists and strengthens artistic work. As an educator, I want to use that attribute of theatre in the classroom to facilitate a cooperative space where we share interest and responsibilities as stakeholders in the work we do. I also continued to learn the value of the multiplicity of ideas that a group can bring to artistic work. Having a variety of perspectives and minds to shape an artistic piece allows the work to become something unique, personal, and more poignant. It’s important to truly listen, consider the value of, and experiment with each idea shared by peers.

            For our project, I helped shape our script, create and evaluate content, and bring and draw on various texts to be able to create our piece. I helped take notes to keep track of our thoughts and developing concepts. I configured the sounds, films, and images into a video for our project, as well as creating various sound pieces to put into the video. These pieces took a significant amount of time to develop, especially as we continued to make changes, develop pieces of our script and story, align the video with timing and movement, and create a product that would be impactful and significant. I’ve loved helping to create this piece, and I’ve loved learning from my teammates and seeing their incredible ideas come to life. It was powerful to create a piece that we all had a hand in and that we all deeply cared about.

            In the future classroom, I would love to do devised pieces together. I love the autonomy, imagination, and creativity that students would get to exercise with devised pieces, as well as the opportunity for collaboration it would enable. I think that it may be useful to have students create shorter pieces, especially if they haven’t done devised work/writing before. However, I would love to see the wide range of ideas and material that students would engage with as growing artists and practitioners. I’d love to get excited with them and help them explore a variety of ideas in the creation and performance of their concepts. I wonder how I could help students use media in similar ways—the programs and practices that I could teach them and help them become familiar with. I also am curious to see what my students will teach me—surely, a lot! Thank you for the opportunity to create and perform these pieces and learn together in this course!