by BRIAN BOZANICH, MFA
Think Theatre, Share Stories, Create Community
What do you do? Short answer, I am a high school theatre teacher. Longer answer, I unite young people in common purpose to create a unified artistic product combining words, actions, and imagination. I am not a failed actor, I am not teaching until something better comes along, and my production program is not a therapy group for a band of misfits and their damaged instructor. I work with smart, young people, committed to quality productions judged by the standards of good theatre, not merely good high school theatre. The six word title of this article defines my approach.
Think
The brain must be fully engaged to create theatre. If a school wants a serious cross-curricular activity, they should fund the theatre program like the athletic department. Actors engage the language, motor, and emotional centers of the brain to create a role. Designers study history and literature to imagine the world of the play and then apply math and engineering to bring that vision into the day. A good production program examines a range of human experience, exploring diversity in concrete ways beyond a lecture in a history class.
Theatre
I choose to work in theatre rather than film because the performers and audience occupy the same space and time. The space between the actor and audience fascinates me. Any adult worried about the disconnection of young people in a digital age should put them on stage. I create productions which challenge both actors and audience by blurring the lines between the groups. Not many high schools mount musicals in the round (Once on This Island, Into the Woods, and Seussical) or tennis courts (Loves Labor’s Lost, Selkie) or choose to move the audience during the show (Medea, Night of the Living Dead, Shakespeare in the Park.) Growtowski and Brooks examined that space, because, in that gap, is where theatre happens. My students enjoy the effects of proximity and interaction on young people. During our production of Night of the Living Dead, the student zombie horde roamed the aisles of the theater, amplifying the stakes for the characters.
I would like to hear from other theatre people about what high school theatre programs should do to create stronger artists, larger audiences, and better human beings. I will save my thoughts sharing stories in my next post because I wanted to tell you, I had a monkey in my house one day….
Brian Bozanich
Visual and Performing Arts Coordinator
MFA Youth Theatre- University of Hawaii, Manoa
Please visit Smashwords.com and look for Dr. Robin Scott Peters Ebooks now available.
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