(Con)Fusing Theory and Practice: Bridging Scholarship and Performance in Theatre Pedagogy

(Con)Fusing Theory and Practice: Bridging Scholarship and Performance in Theatre Pedagogy J. Ellen Gainor and Ron Wilson "Interdisciplinary" has become a buzz word in the academy. As we energetically try to find ways to transcend the traditional boundaries of our discipline in teaching, research, and creative activity, we have, ironically, become oblivious to the widening gulf developing within our field between the study and practice of theatre. As recent attempts in ATHE demonstrate, we now have to make concerted efforts to engage with our colleagues throughout our profession, to find new points of commonality to insure continued communication as well as growth in all aspects of our work. In essence, we need to become interdisciplinary inside our own back yard, and the classroom seems to us the place to begin. In particular, we seek to address the potential points of intersection between contemporary critical theory and literary criticism, and theatrical creativity. How might these separate disciplines speak to and inform each other? To this end, we designed a class for advanced students that would integrate their academic work in drama with their training in acting and directing. This essay details the development of the class, compares the two versions we have taught thus far, and suggests conclusions we have drawn from our experiment.1 In our four years of collaboration as director (Wilson) and dramaturg (Gainor), we have observed, through discussions with colleagues at our own and other institutions, the ongoing segregation of our professional activities as artists and scholars. Our own department, Cornell University's theatre arts program, fits within the liberal arts focus of the College of Arts and Sciences and offers B.A. degrees in the areas of theatre, dance, and film. The theatre curriculum is divided into two major areas: theatre studies, comprising theatre history, dramatic literature, and dramatic theory; and theatre production, consisting of acting, directing, design and technology, and management. Although students must take courses in both areas for the major, non-majors need not explore each component. Many undergraduates bypass the academic courses within the department in favor of the acting curriculum exclusively, but others choose to focus on theatre scholarship, particularly those anticipating future doctoral training.2 69 70 Gainor/Wilson This departmental structure, certainly not unique to Cornell, suppresses the connection between the study and execution of theatre and provides few opportunities for theatre scholars to undertake a dialogue with theatre practitioners. Furthermore, this not uncommon curricular separation denies our students the opportunity to observe the relationship between the study and practice of theatre. Drawing on long-standing theatrical tradition, some directors still feel only they can research and synthesize critical and historical material, purposely keeping actors ignorant of their discoveries, or refusing dramaturgical assistance as a disruption of their artistic control. Ironically, it is common practice to encourage students in acting classes to research their roles, but in production they are rarely prompted to such exploration. This can create a feeling within the actor that s/he is an intellectual vacuum who should simply learn lines and blocking. We believe that advanced undergraduates, some of whom consider careers in the theatre, should be exposed to a collaborative process that welcomes the fusion of intellectual pursuits and scholarship with artistry. Within theatre studies, educators need to reinforce performance considerations so that historical, theoretical, or strictly textual analyses do not lose sight of the importance of artistic elements; and so that active, productionrelated components such as acting, directing, and design regain balance with the spectatorial position. In an attempt to address this problem, the authors designed a class that would explore the intersections of contemporary literary theory with theatrical production. We did not expect the class would improve students' artistry per se (in other words, we did not envision it exclusively as a class in performance technique). Rather, we hoped that the participants might subsequently be able to make more informed choices as actors or directors by expanding their range of skills in applying textual and critical analysis to performance, and that more academically focused students would emerge with a heightened awareness of performance issues through the consideration of texts from both critical and creative perspectives. Ultimately, the challenge was to...