ESPrit de Corps

As guest bloggers on ESPrit de Corps, Hawley Hussey and I have been given a true challenge. We have been asked to address answer, in some fashion or other, the following questions:

1. What are some of the radical new ideas you are bringing to the table?

2. What have been some of the challenges?

3. Who have been your allies?

4. What have been some of the unexpected lessons?

5. How has your background (including as an artist) uniquely played into the work you are doing as Education Directors?

Each of these questions is rich; each begs for astute answers filled with insight and depth. To answer each of them individually would take volumes. But, dear reader, fear not: I will not fill volumes. Instead, I will answer the last question and, by doing so, answer the first four as well. When reflecting on the questions, I discovered (or rediscovered perhaps) that my background and current practice as a theatre director plays into every aspect of my work as a director of education and that the answers to the other questions are all inherent in the “rules” that I follow as a theater director.

My radical idea is not so radical: If I apply the dictums that I have learned as a theater director to my practice as director of education and to the efforts of the education program, great arts in education work is not only possible but is probable.

Over the course of the coming 4 weeks, I will attempt to tackle the daunting and inspiring task handed to me by creating a series of Radical Rules for successful practice in arts education (or Everything I needed to know I Learned in Directing-garten). (Although this is no completion for Cool Hand Luke, I will nonetheless attempt it.)