Month: March 2013

How Are the Arts at the Core of Educational Change?

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University academic departments tend to work in silos. Center for the Arts Program Manager Erinn Roos-Brown explores how the arts bridge new collaborations across disciplines and inspire educational change in this entry from the ArtsFwd blog.

Feet to the Fire, an environmental studies and arts program

I recently attended the Innovations: Intersection of Art and Science symposium hosted by Wesleyan University, which explored collaborations between artists and scientists and the effects on scientific research, teaching and artmaking practices. The collaboration topics ranged from dance and biology to aesthetic choices in the evolution of bird species, and speakers came from MIT, Virginia Tech, University of Colorado, Yale University and Wesleyan, among others.While the symposium focused primarily on specific examples of collaborations, the larger question I found myself asking was: At a time when science and math education scores are staggeringly low and the goal and expense of higher education is openly questioned, how can the arts be at the core of educational change? It seems that creating deep connections between the arts and sciences at universities may be the answer.

Why should universities support these collaborations?

Alan Brown and Steven Tepper stated that interdisciplinary collaboration on college campuses “tends to be more open-ended – goals are often unclear, ambiguity is high, outcomes are unknown, and participants must develop shared language and ways of working together. Collaboration requires time, patience, openness and flexibility.”[1] So why, if these collaborations are so challenging and time consuming, is it important for a scientist to develop a dance that demonstrates genetic sequence? My takeaway from this symposium answers it in this way – our most complex global problems require multiple intelligences and can’t be solved without engaging artists, scientists, engineers and others.

Science Choreography

Where universities have an edge is that they employ experts from so many fields and could reward the development of cross-disciplinary teams that engage research questions through exploration, experimentation and collaboration. But this isn’t the case, according to the majority of the symposium presenters. They noted that instead of focusing on collaborative research, universities have trended to be siloed – the humanities, the arts and the sciences typically stay within their own cliques. Faculty without tenure regularly decline from participating in such collaborations for fear it may affect their tenure case. Collaborations at these institutions typically only happen on the individual level and are considered “extracurricular” by the university.

Two of the presenters, MIT and Virginia Tech, had a different story. These universities have already embraced arts-centered collaborations at an institutional level. MIT recently founded the Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and Virginia Tech is in the process of building a multi-million dollar art center. These technological-driven universities seem to understand the value of integrating arts into the core of their science-based curriculum. I found it particularly interesting that it was the technology schools, not the liberal arts ones, that have so quickly embraced the arts. It seemed clear to me that these schools, which benefit from new patents and products, understand that the arts serve a critical role – from promoting creative thinking to aesthetic design.

What is the role of the arts on campuses?

While there are arguably many reasons that the arts should be at the center of collaborations at universities, two points caught my attention at the symposium – the nature of the creative process in the arts and the way the arts communicate concepts.

Artists ask for the unexpected, which pushes scientific thinking during the research process. They are interested in creation, whether conceptually or via physical products, and this knowledge aids the principles of understanding for scientists. Artists are trained to take multiple ideas and perspectives, turn them into actions, evaluate failures and try again.

A rendering of the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech

Artists are also skilled at communicating with audiences, an area where science is sometimes lacking. The arts express knowledge in a more universal way that connects with values, emotions and beliefs. By using these connective processes to communicate scientific knowledge, the arts can spread complex ideas to a wider audience.

How are universities uniquely positioned to foster collaborations?

These collaborations aren’t for everyone, but they would have value at every university. Universities would benefit from new ideas that challenged the current research and education models and used the faculty on campuses as resources for these collaborations. Art and science collaborations should be considered a first step, an experiment of sorts, to rethinking how we teach future generations and how we work towards solving the world’s major issues. By participating in cross-disciplinary collaborations alongside faculty, university students can be better prepared for the future. And, at the end of it all, it seems like the criticism of test scores and university education is really just about that: making sure the next generation is prepared in a way we are not.

[1] Alan S. Brown and Steven J. Tepper, Placing the Arts at the Heart of the Creative Campus: A White Paper taking stock of the Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program. December 2012.

Emma Gross ’15 reviews “The Kindness of Strangers” by Emily Hunt ’13

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Approximately three minutes into Emily Hunt’s opening night performance of her thesis production, “The Kindness of Strangers,” someone’s cellphone went off.

The audience of 23 viewers, myself included, collectively cringed. Ms. Hunt continued with Blanche Dubois’ monologue from A Streetcar Named Desire for a few seconds longer, before breaking character and pleading with the audience to silence all cellphones. Yet the ringing continued. Our intimate, circular seating formation allowed everyone to stare, horrified, around the audience, searching for the culprit responsible for this painful interruption.

The ringing went on. Discomfort was heightened by Ms. Hunt’s noticeably hurt facial expression. Suddenly, she stood up, now completely out of character from the swooning, inebriated Blanche, and walked over to the onstage bed, one of the few components of the minimal set. Ms. Hunt pulled back the comforter, and there, lying on the mattress, was her own phone—lit up and sounding throughout the theater.

Ms. Hunt answered the call. She spoke in a quiet voice to the person on the other end, before hanging up, apologizing to the audience, and attempting to restart the monologue. After uttering the first line, however, Ms. Hunt meekly asked for the house lights to be turned on. She thanked everyone for coming, but explained that she didn’t think she could perform that evening.

Never have I sat in a theater with a greater feeling of shock, confusion, and horror. I fully felt Ms. Hunt’s embarrassment and shame as she wrung her hands, averted her eyes, and attempted to cool her flushed cheeks.

The extreme emotional reaction Ms. Hunt succeeded in evoking in her audience during the first five minutes of “The Kindness of Strangers” speaks to her adept understanding of what triggers various psychological conditions, in this case, distress and discomfort. Combined with her accomplished acting abilities, Ms. Hunt achieved immediate visceral engagement in her performance, an investment she maintained throughout the remaining production.

Ms. Hunt, who wrote, directed, and was the sole performer in “The Kindness of Strangers,” aimed to utilize this unconventional theatrical format to allow her audience an understanding of the challenges of preparing an acting role. Ms. Hunt, who is a Theater and Psychology double major, aimed to convey that the process of embodying a fictional character requires a deep understanding of human psychology.

Her performance continued: Ms. Hunt explained that the call she had received onstage was from a theater company with whom she had auditioned for the role of Blanche. Ms. Hunt had not been cast in the play; the company’s creative team expressed that they did not believe in her portrayal of the character. Ms. Hunt admitted that she had little in common with Blanche, from the character’s experiences and background, to her time period and ethnicity.

In the remainder of “The Kindness of Strangers,” Ms. Hunt explored the following questions: How does one step in and out of a performance without feeling guilty of deceiving an audience and oneself? How can one commit acts that one would never commit in real life on a stage?

Ms. Hunt demonstrated the challenge and complexity of these questions by first identifying surface level emotions in Blanche’s words. She noted “fear” and “sadness,” then asked the audience to show her what these expressions look like.  Various individuals contorted their faces to convey these emotions, and again, we were encouraged to turn our attention away from Ms. Hunt and towards each other, just as we had when the cellphone went off.

Ms. Hunt observed individuals’ interpretations of these emotions and wrote down the physical characteristics they displayed. “Sad,” looked like a downturned mouth and half-closed eyes.  “Fearful” took the form of wide eyes, and a tight, dropped jaw. Ms. Hunt re-attempted Blanche’s monologue, while imitating audience member’s facial expressions. What came of this activity was her realization that to become a character it is not enough to reenact their emotions. To portray a believable role, an actor must understand the psychological roots of their character’s sentiments.

Ms. Hunt connected this assertion to Leon Festinger’s theory of “Cognitive Dissonance.” In the program accompanying “The Kindness of Strangers,” Ms. Hunt wrote, “Cognitive Dissonance describes what we experience when there is ‘an inconsistency among some experiences, beliefs, attitudes, or feelings. According to dissonance theory, this sets up an unpleasant state that people try to reduce by reinterpreting some part of their experiences to make them consistent with others.’”

Ms. Hunt drew from Festinger’s theory, combining it with the philosophical and methodological teachings of dramatists Bertolt Brecht and Konstantin Stanislavski, to “reinterpret” Blanche’s role. In order to empathize with the character, Ms. Hunt recalled stories from her own life, which evoked in her the same psychological conditions and emotions she had identified in Blanche’s monologue.

“The Kindness of Strangers” alternated between Ms. Hunt frankly addressing the audience, reading passages from texts on psychological theory, and sharing personal memories. This innovative integration of performance techniques brought Ms. Hunt to a psychological condition in which she could understand Blanche’s character, and the audience to a psychological condition in which we could appreciate her gradual and successful transition into the role. By the end of the production, Ms. Hunt had fully slipped into Blanche’s character. She ended the performance with a flawless, deeply emotional and believable recitation of the remaining portion of her monologue. This time, there were no cellphone interruptions.

“The Kindness of Strangers” ran Thursday, February 28 through Saturday March 2, 2013 in the Patricelli ’92 Theater. The performances were in partial fulfillment of Ms. Hunt’s Honors Thesis in Theater.