Friday, July 12, 2013

GUEST POST: Victoria Chatfield, National Theater for Student Artists

Victoria Chatfield--founder and executive director of National Theater for Student Artists--and I have been talking a blue streak about making art with kids since the day we met. After visiting a rehearsal with her phenomenal crew of student directors, actors, designers and stage managers recently, we had an especially inspiring chat. Afterwards she agreed to put pen to paper in order to capture what we'd discussed and expand on her thoughts about student leadership.

I read what she sent and may or may not have gotten the slightest bit teary-eyed, we'll never be sure. In any case, I felt compelled to share her writing in its entirety. Here it is. (Also: Victoria Chatfield for president.)


When I first started pitching the idea of a national student theater company, everyone said the same thing to me: "The students can act in the productions. But don't expect them to direct, design, or produce. If you do that, your shows won't be any good." Despite the fact that I've been employing students as directors, designers, and producers for over a decade now, I still understand this knee-jerk reaction. It can be terrifying to give up control. As a teacher, I spent my first year in the classroom talking at my students instead of listening to them. I used to rationalize this, telling myself that my students were far behind and needed "a little extra help." It wasn't until much later that I realized that I didn't want to give them room to lead because that would mean giving them room to fail. And what kind of a teacher lets her students fail?

Answer: a good one.

I know, I know. Saying that you want to let your students fail in this era of accountability is tantamount to begging your principal to fire you.

I watch while teachers, principals, and entire organizations rationalize the same way that I did. "But they don't have any experience! The show won't be any good! They should practice in a classroom first!" They forget that most of these students have practiced in classrooms before -- sometimes for years. My directors are both graduating seniors from the John Wells Directing Program at Carnegie Mellon University; my technical and design team comes from LaGuardia Arts; and my actors were almost all cherry-picked from their high school plays (all of them played the leading roles, of course). 

But practice in a classroom can only take you so far. Eventually, you need to give students the chance to strike out on their own and put their work in front of the public. They need to be given a budget, a space, a staff, and -- most importantly -- they need to be given room to fail. 

This is a lesson that our friends in the UK have long understood better than us. They don't spend absurd sums of money on their West End shows; you certainly won't find plays being produced for $3 million over there. (Average price of a West End play? $500,000.) And because they keep their costs lower, even in their most prestigious theaters, they feel free to take chances on newer artists -- new directors, new playwrights, new actors, etc. The National Youth Theatre (NYT) even gets to put shows up on the West End from time to time! The UK knows that art is all about risk.

When did America, a country built on rebellion, become so terrified of risk?

So I can understand everyone's response that recruiting and hiring students for leadership positions sounds too high-stakes. We're living in a theater community where prospective Broadway shows go through rounds and rounds of regional testing, which dilute them until they're palatable to a crowd made up mostly of tourists (many of whom come to Broadway for the "flash and trash"). We don't take a chance on new designers or new producers or (most of all) new directors. Directors go through hundreds of fellowships and internships and residencies and other poorly-paid, temporary assignments--and most of them never get the chance to have their work shown on Broadway, off-Broadway, or in major regional theaters. No, we reserve that honor for the same five directors who always get to work in those theaters because we know that they've been successful in the past so we have to assume that they'll be successful in the future; they're a good investment

Why am I talking about Broadway productions when you wanted me to talk about student leadership? Because schools and NPOs are just like the Broadway producers. They want a good investment as well. They want an attractive, profitable school play that will please the parents and students and alumni. They let their high school theater teacher direct the show because they feel comfortable with him/her; they know that he/she will turn out a good product. They definitely don't want to take a chance on a student director -- especially one that might have a radical vision about what the school play should look like. They don't want to watch their school play fail. They want a "sure thing." No one likes upsetting the status quo.

But because organizations are more concerned about their own successes than the education of the students that they supposedly "serve," students typically don't get the opportunity to step up and lead until graduate school. No other art form blocks the means of production in the way that theater does. (The one exception would be film, but they're another art form suffering from the curse of the "auteur.") 

Alex Timbers started Les Freres Corbusier because coming out of Yale's MFA program, no theater would give him a chance. Therefore, he created his own theater -- and, within a few years, found himself directing on Broadway and across the globe. Talk about leadership: no one would give Alex Timbers the opportunity to lead his own show, so he decided to step up and lead his own company! The point is that if Alex Timbers hadn't stepped up and created Les Freres Corbusier, it's likely that the major theaters NEVER would have given him a chance -- and we would never have gotten Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson or Peter and the Starcatcher or Here Lies Loveor (god forbid) A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant. A really brilliant new voice of the theater would have been silenced all because of our aversion to risk.

The way that I'm talking right now, you might think that I'm totally doubt-free when it comes to having students step into leadership positions. Not at all. I've invested over $26,000 into my current project. That's the down payment on an extremely nice house in my hometown. And I've put all of that money behind directors that are fresh out of college. I've put all that money behind designers who have never worked in anything other than a high school auditorium before. And there are some moments when my directors or designers tell me about their plans and I have to literally bite my tongue to stop from saying something. "Chalk drawings? On the stage? REALLY?" "You want a set made entirely out of PLYWOOD BOXES?" But we need to allow our directors and designers the chance to try new ideas. (After all, a lesser producer might have said something to Donyale Werle like: "You want to make Broadway sets out of stuff you got out of DUMPSTERS?" Not realizing, of course, that her sets are spectacular Tony Award winning goldmines.) 

We do, however, give students support and guidance along the way. We've hired a mentor director who comes into rehearsal at least twice a week. If an idea simply isn't coming together, he'll let them know. However, they're the ones who decide if they're going to take his advice.

After all, they are the leaders of their productions.

At the end of the day, you need to believe in the students that you're working with. You need to have those high expectations. (You know, the high expectations that the education sector loves to toss out as a buzzword nowadays -- before giving our students "guided notes" and "fill-in-the-blanks worksheets." They call them scaffolds; I call them lowering expectations. Your students can learn how to take notes if you teach them correctly.) 

As I mentioned before, I've been working with student directors, designers, and producers for over a decade now. And it's interesting which students fall into those positions. I always assumed that a student would have to be brilliant in the classroom to be a solid director. After all, directors have to be able to analyze and even generate symbolism, identify character motivations, and interpret complex themes. But I've worked with some students who have been wholly unremarkable academically but have made compelling directors, designers, and performers. When they have to interpret writing for the stage, they're capable of doing a level of analysis that eludes them on standardized tests like the SAT or even in the essays that they complete for school. Perhaps it's because they know the final product that awaits them at the end; perhaps it's because they know that their work will be judged by an audience. Perhaps it's simply because learning means more when there's a tangible product created at the end. But these students who were otherwise B or C students turned out to be A-level directors. 

Let's be honest: my grades were solid. I was in National Honor Society and everything. But there were students with grades better than mine who got rejected from lesser colleges. My college accepted me BECAUSE of my work as a director. Withholding these leadership positions from students, especially students who might not be the most distinguished academically, does them a major disservice when it comes to differentiating themselves to a college application committee.

At the end of the day, here are the key takeaways:
  • We need to give students the chance to lead -- even if that means giving them the chance to fail.
  • We shouldn't be afraid to let new artists have a voice -- both inside of professional theaters and inside of our schools.
  • We need to be receptive to new ideas -- even if they're not what we would have chosen ourselves.
  • We need to give all of our students the opportunity and support that they need to lead -- even the most unlikely ones. Chances are they'll surprise us in the end. Especially if we say that we have high expectations for every students -- and we actually MEAN it.

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