Director the Reflector

So while I was not initially convinced with the idea of me being a TA for performance of literature I have truly come to love that class. The area of performance studies within communications is something that has always interested me but was never something that I wanted to make my main focus of study. This class has ended up offering me the perfect opportunity to engage in performance studies, being able to gain a better understanding of how we perform ourselves and how we make sense of the world around us through the use of performance. What’s been even more exciting then that has been the students. I have gotten very lucky with the group of students that I work with in my recitation and have developed a pretty encouraging learning environment. Together we have created a very welcoming space where we all come and learn about performance and how we can utilize it to better understand ourselves and the people around us. Turns out we are all just natural performers. 

So for our second round of assignments the students were doing their poetry performances. This was the first performance that they had the opportunity to actually workshop their poems in front of the class before their final performance. In workshop the students get to go up in front of the class and perform their performance that they have created based off of the poem they selected. Then as a class we get together and offer critiques to each performer, talking about what was good, what was clear, and what could use some improving. We talk about what ideas might help with their performances and what decisions they could make. So being as I am the TA for my recitation I was expected to lead these workshops. After each performance I would get up on the stage with each student and we would work out the performance together. 

So considering I have no experience with acting besides a couple of middle school theatre classes where I played a Sprite in our performance of A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and my own time in 2060 where I managed to barely get by with a C, I was a little nervous to be leading workshop. I had no idea what the hell I was supposed to be telling these kids, but for some reason I was pretty excited to throw myself into the directors position and give my honest critiques towards their performances. When workshop started I was blown away with the amount of effort that my students had put into their performances. They were coming up with such good ideas based off of their characters, and because of their enthusiasm I was so excited to get involved and help try to improve their performances. I was up there talking about their performances, getting ideas from the class, and working to give the students the best input I could, but was I doing too much? 

When I was up there I was talking a lot, trying to give every student the same amount of feedback that I had given to the students before, which seemed to be working pretty well. This was until I had one student go. The student had a good performance, nothing spectacular, but they had made solid performative decisions based off of the poem that they had, but they were quite proud of their performance. So after they finished I got up and started doing what I had done with everyone, pointing out all of the different things I had noticed, what I did and didn’t like, and what I thought they could do to improve. Here’s where I utilized Plax and Kearney’s brilliant concept of “with-it-ness”. I start to see the discouragement in my student’s face, and the class does too. The class starts stepping in and telling the student that they had a good performance, and made good decisions. I start to think about how I wanted to give my student the same amount of feedback that I had been giving everyone, but was this doing more harm than it was doing good? Alright so now that I have demonstrated this act of with-it-ness to understand what’s going on, how do I change the situation?

I think of how in order to create a strong learning environment, the students should be treated as co-teachers within the classroom, which they had already been doing such a good job of, so I let them take over. I gave them the lead of coming up with critiques, allowing the feedback to come directly from the performer’s peers instead of from their instructor. I worked to try and instead guide their critiques towards things that I noticed about the performance that I thought needed improving, asking the class what they thought about the persona or the scene. I would then work off of their critiques and offer ideas, while also making sure to ask the ideas of the performers, attempting to show them that they also had a role in this experience as well, that it was their ideas that were the most important. 

It’s crazy to think about how much goes into teaching. By just practicing with-it-ness in one situation I immediately thought of different concepts I’ve learned such as Dannel’s ideas on constructive feedback, to Barkley's idea of the students being co-teachers. This quick thinking allowed me to bring the class back, and make sure the students understood the importance of their own ideas within their performances and within the classroom as a whole. So despite how amazing of a director I thought I was after one round of workshopping, it is important to remember that the students are great directors as well.