"Gogging": A Model for Theatre Pedagogy

One of the great ironies of graduate education is that it can prepare students for what they will do least and fail to prepare them for what they will do most. Armed for specialized research, MAs and PhDs may graduate into jobs that demand they teach and direct. They may have theoretical erudition but never actually learn how to shape a class or a show. Then they struggle to master these two skills on the job, as research time becomes severely limited and the daily tasks of a theatre professor take precedence.

Undergraduates, while more likely to be involved in the mechanics of theatre, may also absorb information without ever learning how to pass on what they have learned. Later, they may work with inept colleagues in need of training but not know how to help them. Or they may enter graduate programs where their fellowships require teaching classes independently and find themselves overwhelmed, as course preparation cuts into time for their advanced course of study.

At both levels, students may decide to go on to teach or not to teach, direct or not to direct, without experiencing either. These are enormous commitments to make without firsthand exposure. And what about those poor students being led by these novices in the pedagogy of the art?

This article proposes a model for training based on a pedagogy program employed at the University of Oregon. Over the years, students have "verbed" the word pedagogy and shortened it. "Doing a pedagogy" became "pedagoging" and then simply "gogging." Participants now call themselves "gogs," and the act of gogging has evolved to become a crucial part of each student's preparation. This article reports how the program evolved, describes its basic components, and offers suggestions for its implementation. Since acting is the most widely chosen subject area in Oregon's program, examples will be drawn largely from that discipline.

The Program

I have always been one of those people who learn something best by explaining it to someone else. If I can teach it to you, then I can get it myself--at an even deeper level. I suspect many of us are like that. The pedagogy program serves that basic human characteristic.

--Rocco Dal Vera, University of Cincinnati

The pedagogy program began when a student asked Robert Barton to study with him to learn how he taught acting, in order to become a better teacher. It grew gog by gog and now serves up to fifty students each year, even though graduate student status or completion of a full year of course work in the requested subject area are prerequisites. Many qualified applicants must wait for placement because of demand. The program now has a standardized application process, a workbook, regular seminars, and a curriculum. Graduates of the program have instituted their own at other schools.

The earliest students were largely graduate-level aspiring teachers wanting models for courses they intended to teach themselves. Then aspiring directors began to recognize the program as a way to develop and refine skills. Students hoping to mount period styles shows found that gogging a styles class provided their only supervised experience coaching Greek or Restoration scenes before actually undertaking such plays. Directors who had found themselves inadequate at guiding actors vocally learned that gogging a voice class gave them the vocabulary and technique to do so. Our curriculum has numerous acting but few directing courses, so gogging provided the means for such students to carve out an actual directing program within the acting curriculum. Soon, undergraduates joined the list of applicants. Many were curious to find out if they had it in them to teach. Others wanted to review a class to more fully absorb content they may have missed the first time around.

Now motives vary widely, with some participants not particularly interested in pursuing careers in either teaching or directing. Actors often gog to become better actors. Many report that the experience of coaching others...