|
| |
|
| |
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
 |
Interview with Daniel Renner, director of Education, Denver Center Theatre; dean, National Theatre Conservatory[Interviewer’s note: Cornerstone's position in American theater is unique, to say the least. I found that I could learn a great deal about Cornerstone by contrasting their operations with those of other types of theaters. To this end, I talked with smaller and larger theaters about their responses to the issues that Cornerstone faces. The most instructive topic of conversation at the time was the NEA's new Arts Learning category guidelines. Daniel Renner is uniquely positioned to observe trends in nationwide funding for arts education. Along with his positions at the Denver Center and the National Conservatory, he has been an NEA panelist, served with the Theatre Communications Group (TCG), and, perhaps most important, began his career working for small theaters. Research on the NEA's new guidelines proved surprisingly difficult until I interviewed Renner, who was refreshingly frank. Note, especially, his advice for small companies considering applying for NEA funds in the Arts Learning category. — F.L.] Daniel Renner: It's interesting, isn't it, that Arts Learning is now the second largest category of NEA funding, next to Creation and Presentation? Ferdinand Lewis: Why is that? DR: They've been grappling with how best to respond to how the field has changed. FL: How has the field changed? DR: Originally, "Education" meant student matinees and touring shows and things like that, but now the field has become so much more complex, theaters have taken on entire education programs and staff members, to use theater itself to actually educate. Theaters are also building bridges between main stage and the education component. The educational work is informing the organizations more now, making theater truly interactive with the community. For a while, education funding was easier to get, when operational funding was slashed, and so at first theaters saw education as a source of money, but now it's an integral part of the organizations. FL: Why is that interactivity with the community important to you? DR: On a personal level, it's about this question: How do you help people to lead an artful life? Because then the arts aren't something elitist, but something that you need, to have a whole and balanced life. If you can do that with your work, you've accomplished something. The museums are way ahead of us on this. They've become community centers, they're not ivory towers that people are terrified to come into. They have interactive art centers, concerts, they're saying, "This is a breathing, living place and part of your community." It' s much less forbidding. Theatres are doing that now. Smaller theaters have always done that but now the large ones are doing that as well. FL: The NEA's understanding of what education can do seems to be changing, too. The new assessment guidelines are a whole new ballgame. DR: The assessment portion [of the NEA funding process] has been there in the past, but it hasn't been as focused. Grants and sponsors want more and more assessment [now]. In the past you'd tell anecdotes, but now they're looking at new ways of assessing, now they're looking at how the schools are assessing themselves, with standard testing. The schools believe this kind of assessment tells them how effective their programming is, which the tax-payers are paying for. The NEA is a reflection of that. Everybody is grappling with it. Any grant that we get, we have to assess it. It does take a lot of time, but you also want to know how well you're doing. FL: Someone at the NEA said that to me that theaters are happy about the new "outcome-based" evaluation system, because it helps theaters to know how well they're doing. DR: Art learning is a step in that direction. It's also a step toward reality in the field. FL: How so? DR: It speaks the language of what theaters are really doing. So theaters don't need to jerry-rig their grants. Ten or 15 years ago, there were no education directors at theaters, now they all have them. In the TCG study we did last year, we found that in the smaller theaters, a larger percent of their budgets went to educational activities as opposed to larger theaters. You're on the street level with smaller theaters, cheek-by-jowl [with the community], and with younger people who have a direct connection to their theaters. A large institution, they're not as agile. The larger ones do amazing programs, though. FL: If you were the artistic director of a small theater, and couldn't afford to hire an education director, and you saw these new NEA guidelines, what would you do? DR: I would instantly go to the teachers I'm working with and ask them, "How do you measure your kids?" You could take attendance, as just one element for evaluation, and ask, "Does our being there increase attendance?" They could also tell you if test scores change because you're there. Use the information that's already there. They're not going to give you information about individual children, but they'll be happy to give you aggregate results. FL: Why is that? DR: The teachers want to work with you. They're getting this theater education for free, and they're learning new teaching techniques, and it reignites the passion for being in the classroom, for them. It's a sharing. They want to help. And when you're helping each other, you get past the colonialism that is so easy in this field. FL: Can you talk about that? DR: For some arts organizations, education is a kind of colonialism. They helicopter in and they say, "Look at this magic that we make, that you can't make, and don't know how to make. We're magicians," and then they're gone and they leave the place a shambles. That' not responsible. You have to ask, "What's the culture you're going into? How can you be responsible for that, and for your affect on that culture?" Colonialism assumes that there's something that we do that you can't do, but that attitude doesn't build bridges into people's lives. But that's going away. FL: And working more closely with the schools will have an effect on that colonial attitude? DR: Theatres are going to have to rethink what they're doing. It forces you to work more closely with communities. You have to prove it now, the education, and think about it. And change the language, and that changes the conversation. And that changes the process and the result. The previous language was slanted toward "arts appreciation," and art learning is slanted to new kinds of programming. FL: Someone at the NEA told me that the outcome-based reporting in the Arts Learning category is a pilot for a system that they hope to eventually put in place in all NEA categories. DR: I think they're going to have to rethink the reporting issue. There's just no way for them to observe it all and check on it all. They don't have the people or the funds to be able to support checking on all that reporting. Ferdinand Lewis is a founding member of The Ghost Road Company, an educator, writer and theater artist. He is currently at work on two books: "Ensemble Theater: An Anthology" and "Ensemble Theater: Traditions, Approaches, Strategies." He lives in Los Angeles.
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||
