Personal Technology in Class

A feature in the Boston Globe this Sunday morning took on the classroom distraction matter - again. Apparently some universities are contemplating inhibiting classroom wifi. This relates also to the cellphone texting issues. I struggle with this as taking on a role I thought we agreed to shed 40 years ago.

At the college level, what is our responsibility as faculty to discipline our students' adolescent behavior? I've written before about my own approach, arguably a cop-out, that students are in college and old enough to make their own choices, even if they are bad. I have written that this perspective comes from my having lived and been educated in the late 1960s and early 1970s during the struggle by students to shed "in loco parentis" from college regulations. The argument then held that 18-year-olds who were old enough to die in war (then in southeast Asia) should be treated as independent adults. Certainly not like errant school children who did not understand the implications of their behavior.

But the media are hot and addictive. The idea of responsibilty at a given age is a matter of social attribution, not a biological condition. As an adult in the 1990s, I could barely contain my own eagerness to see what response there was to my emails or posting on chat sites. How can we expect rising adults to respond any differently with a laptop computer or a computing pocket telephone? The fundamental premise of social networking is encouragement of that addictive response.

This is hardly the first addictive social technology. Some have come and gone, like citizens band (CB) radio of the 1970s and 80s. Earlier ham radio had some cachet, but it required specialized skills, knowledge and equipment.

And the telephone. A highly controlled utility for a century, it blasted open with new technologies and social uses. Teenagers notoriously have been intensive telephone communicators at least since the 1940s, but housewives (an old 20th century occupation) also were ridiculed for their intensive use. Eventually, mobility was the key for telephones, and then it morphed into a comprehensive communication technology. We now have merged it all - telephone, telegraph, CB radio, repeater mobile radio and walkie-talkie. We also are merging it with power computing and data transfer. We're thinking now about all data and communication existing in "the cloud," everywhere and nowhere. We seem to be approaching a kind of communication Singularity.

Every one of these developments have had compelling utilitarian value, AND addictive appeal. Every age group is susceptible to the addiction, but it is most problematic for people who have not mastered their impulses - something that is counter-intuitive in our commercialized culture. Free enterprise thrives by engendering addictions.

But what does this mean in the classroom? What is the limit of our responsibility to enforce (not just encourage) student focus?

As I've written, I formed my approach to education when it was a meal to be offered, not force-feeding of young adults. Throughout my career I've seen that my job as a teacher is to present and structure the learning experience, to encourage and facilitate but not to force or enforce behaviors that make it work. With that approach one simply reports the degree of learning that one believes has taken place, as measured by examinations and quality of student work. One tries to employ pedagogical techniques that help students organize their learning - emphasizing the structure of the knowledge, connecting the dots, assigning work that involves integrating the knowledge and skills, encouraging creative thinking within a frame, applauding original thinking and evidence of integration, and creating assignments that require application.

The motivational piece is a bit more difficult. I admire faculty who make it work well. The yawns that greet my enthusiasm and excitement for the field and the material are pretty discouraging, but I often find I can't really interpret the responses of students with any accuracy. Students I thought were only vaguely present sometimes tell me later how much they got out of it. Others I thought were getting it, later show little evidence of having done so.

Student use of technology in the classroom makes me try harder, and I try to make sure that what happens in class is important for learning. I do have students with laptops open, and I tell them if they are going to watch a movie or surf the web, they need to sit in the back of the room. In the end, the classroom experience is what it is, and I put the responsibility on the student. Everything they need is there, and I am a resource for help if they need it. The exams are structured to tell the story. It's up to them. For better or worse, they're adults now.

Getting to Real: Rehearsal Check and Put-In

I just completed the first day of a load-in for Machinal, which opens in about 10 days. For a designer, the load-in or put-in is nerve-wracking. It's very demanding and the kick-off of the pressure period. On a given day and time, people start placing scenery on the stage. Your choices become commitments at that point, and reality begins to cut in. That really is what it is going to look like.

It can be very gratifying, but it's quite hard work and a long day. Whether you personally do any heavy lifting, it is busy with planning, consulting, organizing, directing. Protecting. You are indebted to an efficient and capable technical director and stage manager, but many choices are made in the spaces between the drawings and reality. Three inches more here. Reinforce there. Mask into this mark.

The designer usually sees at least a couple of rehearsals of a few parts of the play. The rehearsals one gets to watch only approximate the eventual performance. So what's the point? I always learn important things I didn't know were happening. I get a clearer perspective on the important moments and how they must play.

Rehearsals usually are in a different space where the setting only can be suggested. The dimensions are taped out if possible, but it's all two-dimensional. The actors wander through the space, crossing wall lines and levels, working with miss-sized furniture placed willy-nilly, often only vaguely related to the ground plan. Watching a rehearsal challenges your powers of visualization, but it's important to do if you can. I find that the play in my head is quite different from the play with the actors, no matter how much conversation I've had with the director.

It's also good politics. The director has a chance to point out problems. The director and performers ask questions and point out things they can't make work well. I usually find they aren't using things they didn't know they had, and I discover needs I didn't provide for. It's in a rehearsal that I can understand the implications of the director's casting. And it's in the rehearsal that those ideas we spoke of in design conferences take on a reality full of implications.

The actors also are aware of an observer. It's a bit of an intrusion on their private party, so they tend to game up a little. It's good for them, too.

But the put-in is the reality check, especially when much must be built in place. Sure, I worked with a model and a sketch, but is this what I really expected? My goodness, that platform is high up there. Damn, that area is going to be cramped. Will that castered platform really work the way I imagined? Is that color really going to work? Is that pattern too big for the space and audience distance? Is the amount of that color going to overwhelm everything else? Does this have the richness and finish that I want my work to have? Is it interesting? When the audience sees this will they feel like something exciting is going to happen? Will this set them up properly to receive the play? Will the quality of the design and level of finish tell them that they can relax because they won't have to forgive anything?

Finally, the put-in also is an exciting exercise, because it all comes together at once in a short period of time. It is wonderfully validating. The drawing becomes real and tangible. You dreamed it, thought it, planned it, drew it, and . . . here it is! You created a world.

Scenemaker
April 10, 2011

Launching a Design Project

Back into theater design again. I just left a design class where a student was complaining about the 2 to 3 hours he spent working on a model for Marlowe's Faustus. He's a good guy and really wants to get it, so I don't fault him. Somehow we don't really communicate the commitment it takes. (Perhaps because nobody would pursue it if they knew.) I told him that the design I'm working on now, a production of Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, got worked out in model last weekend - all day Friday, Saturday, and 6 hours on Sunday.

That time was just on the rough design model work. Not counting the sketching and research and conversations with the director that have taken place over the past couple of months. And it's a rough model - a design proposal, something to have a conversation about.

I explained that the advantage of model work is that it really is slow. I had done a lot of visual research and had a sense of where we wanted to go. I began with a short list of requirements that evolved as I worked, and I had a vague thumbnail of a visual idea.

I knew I needed three platformed spaces above the stage, so I cut three scale platform tops and posts to hold them up. Then I worked out the access. I also created the slipstage for scene changes I knew I'd need. I had already discussed most of the furniture needs and how the changes might be done (emphasis on "might be") with the director. I included a required door, and I created steps - three versions before deciding we could use a spiral stair and began to research that. I went back to the research and did some doodling to develop the look, then began constructing the model pieces to make it work.

This is designing in the model and it is a slow, evolving design process. In the following design meeting with the director we worked out more of the detail and flagged problems for scene changes and properties. The build TD was able to look at the model and flag problems he saw. The model doesn't show the final ideas but it leads to conversations about requirements and alternatives. Discussion begins on budget, materials choices, alternatives for positioning elements, the build sequence, and acquiring materials and a spiral stair. And things I failed to allow for.

So the director and the stage manager have the very rough model to work from for blocking and directing traffic. I have the feedback I need to begin working on the draftings for the design. I doubt that I will have time to do a finish model. Since the show is to be done in shades of gray, I really don't need to do a scenic sketch for painting. I may paint a construction elevation just to work out a pattern of grays, but I won't need a full scenic sketch. In a thrust stage arrangement, a perspective view is pretty artificial anyway.

This is how a design begins in a good way.

Scenemaker

No Experts at Home

It seems awfully unfair, and certainly frustrating. They just won't let you be an expert at home. Sometimes environments won't accept expertise that is too close to the problem.

In an academic environment, everybody is an expert. Everybody. At something. That's how we got here. But there are some kinds of light that just has to be used very carefully. And that is the expertise about how to do our jobs - as guides for our students, as professional educators, and as scholars and artists.

The university academic environment is so different from other educational worlds - the K-12 world and the corporate training world, for example. Those results-focused employments are constructed for maximum effectiveness. That educational structure is fed by intensive research on obtaining clear goals and measurable outcomes. Expertise is drawn from wherever it may be found, within and outside the unit.

The university environment is different. It is not so very far conceptually from 11th-Century Bologna when a collection of individual law teachers formed a guild so they could share resources and expertise. The teachers employed the administrators. (Let me repeat: the teachers employed the administrators.) The autonomy of scholars today descends from that tradition of independent experts and scholars collaborating voluntarily on matters of common - and unique - interest.

The key here is "independent experts." Today's academic department is a collaboration of independent scholars, who are in fact expected to advance their scholarship and scholarly production through their own focused interests. And they are selected for employment by the way that their work fits in with those who would employ them. Today, the faculty do not hire the administrators, but neither are administrators "the boss." And the faculty do select their colleagues in most cases.

So everybody is an expert, and there is no structured hierarchy of experts. Academic departments are flat organizations with a single, often elected, member to assume the organizational responsibilities of leadership. While he or she may make decisions regarding the distribution of resources, rarely are they "the boss." Advancement has only two or three levels and is colleagially awarded. Everything else is broad-based and incremental. In general. Some environments do find ways to encourage and reward focused activity for interested scholars, and it can engender some collegial unhappiness if not carefully managed. There are some variations and exceptions, but at the core, the individual faculty member is employed as an independent expert collaborating with other independent experts.

What happens then, when one needs expert advice on the work of the department or the faculty? Experts are brought in. From where? From similar departments elsewhere. One expert here will go there, and perhaps one from there eventually will go here to evaluate and advise on the work of the faculty and their collective efforts.

Some advice may be found locally outside of the department, advice being more welcome from the neighbors, and from resource centers. But advice from an expert on the work of faculty may be welcome at home among departmental colleagues only when solicited. And only as much as solicited. They do know that you know something and will ask you for it when it would be welcome. The complicated academic relationship with authority so complicates our working and personal relationships. But I wouldn't trade it.

College standards - again

The heat is on again regarding college study requirements. Another study has been done showing that college students are not studying, reading and writing as much as they used to, and they are getting better grades. Among the debates was an interesting discussion on Tom Ashbrook's On Point last week or so. Responses attributed the result to the standard grade inflation argument, the use of student evaluations for faculty promotion and tenure, and the suggestion that the push before college was more intense than college itself .

I don't know what to think. The humanities faculty have been saying this as long as I've been associated with higher education, and that's been a couple of generations now. About the only thing I can see that is real about it is that the expectation is B level for average now. It doesn't give you much room to reward excellence. I know that's true in my courses. If a student is consistently at C level I pay closer attention to him or her. Usually, for students below that level life just gets in the way - illness, family deaths, family conflicts, commutes, work requirements, transportation issues. I make offers to help or accommodate them, rarely with any takers. Sometimes students really don't want to do any more work than to pass. But it's kind of been that way for quite a while. I do know that I'm getting better writing from more students, so the push in the schools for that seems to be working. But that's really the only change I see.

My approach to education was formed in the ed classes I took in the early 1970s. It was a world of examining what you do TO students in educating them, and their right to utter freedom from the oppression of forced learning practice. What I learned was to put it out there, help students understand why it was important to learn it, but leave it entirely up to them. No hard feelings. Forty years later, the paradigm is actively interventionist, and we're attacked if students aren't learning whether they want to or not.

So it's possible I can appear not to care if my students learn. I don't have an authoritarian classroom, but I tend to rely on some pretty traditional techniques - lecture, presentations, readings, discussion, a little group discussion, lots of projects, and a couple of traditional mostly essay exams. The work itself isn't difficult - you just have to do it. Students have complete access to everything in the class -and more- on Blackboard, but mostly only the best students take advantage of it. But I do care - I just want to treat them like adults: here it is. The choices are yours. I'm here to help, but it's really up to you.

What I fail to understand is that I can hand out the exam and discuss the answers in the class before, and still get miserable and inadequate responses. It's frustrating, and when I started teaching I took it personally, but I know better now. They're measuring their trade-offs and accepting the result. In the larger scale of life, that particular lapse really won't matter much.

I really can't say much. I'll admit that I had to start college twice to get it right. After a required stint in the military, I learned to treat study as a job to be done, and it really was pretty easy at the undergraduate level with that attitude, even if I was working a paying job nearly full-time. Since I now have several degrees, I obviously got the system down. I think the good students do get the system down. I think the less good students may be working the system. But that's okay at the undergrad level. It's their choice and their money. It's just life.

Scenemaker
February 11, 2011

Back in the swing

The pressure ramps up a bit now. In the face of classes, committees, and incomplete projects, the drawings have to be ready for a build by Friday. Oh, and the shop wants the paint, too. I just learned about some new furniture requirements that came out of a rehearsal. When I went without a design assignment last semester, why did I feel left out?

The creative process of developing and working through a design is gratifying. It has its frustrations, its moments when no idea seems to rise to art. Two full days of looking at pictures and sketching and reading and more sketching is not uncommon. I joke about whether "this is the time when they find out what a fraud I really am." But if it doesn't take that time, I don't trust it. And, if the answer is crisp and apt and a little surprising, it always seems to merit a response of "well, of course." I've hit the mark. Although I won't really know until I've introduced it to the director. A good director always has much to say, which prompts many changes and I return to the worktable. But the nugget is there, and the dialogue strengthens it and makes it all integral.

The struggle with my current project was to integrate the backgrounds of various scenes and two different shows into one construction. In this case, I have to drive the aesthetic. Normally, I prefer not to design for student productions, but when they can't identify a student designer that can even begin to handle the project, I feel I must take it on. Where I work, almost all students want to be stars, and that's what attracted them to program. I can't find a great deal of fault with that. I, too, started that way. I studied acting and directing and taught it for several years before finding my way into design when I had to design for my own productions. The day came when I found I could get more gratifying results from my design efforts than from my directing. And then I worked with some excellent directors. I discovered that the work of being an outstanding director required an investment and a skill set that I was less interested in developing than the satisfactions of doing good design and lighting. So I returned to school for my third degree.

As my professional life has grown in length, I have found rich satisfactions from the range of experiences. I try to pass on to students an excitement for their future and the many paths that can open before them. I'm often glad that I don't teach in a graduate program where I might have more students with more concentration and ability, but where I probably would find my own activities to be too focused.

Scenemaker
February 8, 2011

Where to begin 3: Developing the design

It all looks a bit more linear here than it is in life. When I start looking at visual research varies. Sometimes it depends on how long it has been since my last design. If I'm designing 4 or 5 shows a year, I have a lot of images and a lot resources spinning through my head, even if the shows were all very different. But when as much as 3 or 4 months pass between designs, I always am amazed how far I can get down an uninspired path because I haven't stopped to look at pictures. I can become mired in the problems of a new project rather quickly and fail to connect with any real inspiration. How far I get down that path determines how mundane and unsatisfying the design experience becomes.

It's easy to skip over the gestation period, particularly if the schedule is tight or I am handed the show and the requirements. Gestation often begins with memory of effective and perhaps inspired recent theater experiences. Going to the theater is important. It's a little expensive, but I manage to average a professional (LORT) show a month if I make a point of it. I do pay close attention to the work of the designers. It keeps me sharp about the standards of our profession, and I am always looking inside the choices that they make. It's important for me to see how the design works, which usually is unremarkable to the audience except as it experiences it.

I read a lot about a show. I keep a good personal library as a resource and I read much online. I read about the history of production and the reviews of those events. I dig into the author and sometimes other works by the author. I begin the internal and external research on the play and the author, and on the context of the play's creation. I read about the author's sources and I try to understand the play in the context of its creation as well as in the context of current times and circumstances. All of this enables me to contribute with some creative understanding in the conversation with the director about the play. To be sure, the director has deeper knowledge, but unless I am prepared, I risk having my work dictated.

Directors are allowed - even expected - to get out in front. I design more shows in a year than they direct, and their gestation period necessarily is longer. In some cases it is years, but rarely is it much less than 6 months before first rehearsal for the directors with whom I generally work. I try to connect early enough to find out when I have to be ready to talk about the show.

At some point, usually a Friday morning when I've cleared my calendar and have no pressing work responsibilities until Monday, I begin to work on the design idea. I've read the show, outlined the action, analyzed the themes and ideas of the play, and created a requirement list for the design. I usually have some direction regarding style. I even may have doodled around, but became frustrated with a lack of inspiration. It's time to look at pictures.

If I fail to invest time in looking at pictures, I'm never quite satisfied with my result. I look at lots of them. Books and clipping morgues and online collections. I have to develop a sense of the possibilities. What I look at includes, but is not limited to:

1. Other productions -- of other shows. This is particularly liberating. There are images of designs that I go back to repeatedly, because they inspire me and help me escape my easy answers. These help me envision the style and possible answers to the design challenge.

2. Books of artwork. Periods of painting and sculpture and architecture and fashion. Books of illustration and popular art. Here I find the form and shape, color, line and texture of the show.

3. Period detail. I usually find the unity of a show in the visual environment. Whenever possible, I visit a place and I take my own photos. I make use of online photographic resources, including much shared amateur photography. I also read about the place and the time of the play in whatever resources I can find.

From this research, I collect the most useful and evocative images and sketches, and share them with the director very early. I like to do this in person so I can explain the choice, but it does put the director on the spot. Suddenly she is confronted with something tangible and she knows I am reading her reaction. It often results in a bit of verbal dance. The director may try to be open to what is offered, but still must process it. It's unfair, but effective. In the end it is no different than helping an actor shape a character - a good director takes what is offered and through interaction in rehearsal leads the production into a unified intention.

After looking at a large number of images, it is time for me to sketch and thumbnail. This is the real search for the Way In. Doodles and diagrams and thumbnails. I sketch research for style and period line and detail. This can take days, and I must have a deadline to force decisions and choices.

If I'm lucky, I can get 3 or 4 ideas to show the director and costume designer. One will be my overworked original idea that is not really open for adjustment. Another will be a somewhat stripped down version that has practicality and more openness. Maybe I'll have an alternative idea as a weak second concept, and sometimes another concept that meets a strict budget limitation. Usually they are pencil sketches and diagrams, assisted with a lot of discussion and reference images. The lesser choices ofter are no more than doodles.

The real conversation ensues. It's usually a careful dance about ideas and intentions and practicality for key action and moments. Not infrequently, I am still missing the director's core aesthetic commitment. I learn a great deal at this stage, because the director now can be clear about what can work and what cannot. I find out what the real requirements are, and the relative importance of different ones. It always requires me to go back to the sketch pad, but with the advantage of clear information. Now I can create a preliminary ground plan and scenic sketch. I have found that a design that is not challenged by the director is not one of my stronger designs, because the director does not use it particularly well.

Meeting these criteria is never a simple task. Some matters are purely practical - how can that character get from here to there? Others may be larger and more difficult, not the least of which are my own aesthetic criteria for the design. But solving these more practical considerations is light work compared to the struggle to settle on a design aesthetic I like in the first place.

Then on to the final sketch and/or model and discussions with the shop regarding budget and timetable, trimming where necessary. The visionary design work is done. It's time to move on to the practicalities and the shop drawings. Sometimes I even get around to a final scenic sketch, but directors usually prefer the model.

That's what my design experience is like.

Scenemaker
January 21, 2011