Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2013 - 64

book
arnold wengrow

review

editor

Inspired Teaching

Essays on Theatre Design and Technology Education
Edited by Erik Viker; Syracuse, United States Institute for
Theatre Technology, in conjunction with Broadway Press,
2013. 200 pp. Paper, $20.
Reviewed by Emily Gill
Academia is rife with acronyms. We RISE and LEAP and
play with MAPS to implement our SLOs and QEPs, which
we need to be sure people can NAME, all of which STEMs
from a desire to ACT, implying before we only SAT on
our ASK. ROFL. LMFAO. Which of course means Learning
Multifarious Acronyms Often. JK. (You: SMH.)
At the end of the faculty colloquium or accreditation review, we still face a room full of people who want
something significant from us. Regardless of your generational opinion of those dang kids today, every teacherstudent relationship has this essential condition: Student:
"I want something significant from you." Teacher: "Ummmm... puppets."

Or substitute your whiz-bang audience-winner of choice. You know
you have it. Mine is hula hoops and their surprising portability.
For more qualified answers than hula hoop puppets to the question,
"What is teaching art?" I direct you to Inspired Teaching: Essays on Theatre Design and Technology Education, a USITT monograph edited by
Erik Viker, who teaches production management and technical direction at
Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.
Nineteen essayists have approached the question from different disciplinary points of view and from diverse philosophical perspectives. Some
have chosen to discuss a very specific, but common, challenge, such as design fear and the implications of student and professional
life. Others have chosen to walk the reader through an
expanded and successful unit plan, describing the techniques of designing a specific course, while others discuss planning an entire curriculum. Some essays combine
these approaches to varying degrees.
From my standpoint, teaching theatre majors and
non-majors at a public liberal arts university, I find the
first approach-tackling a specific challenge-more
immediately applicable, so my review will lean more
heavily toward these. However, this shows the book's
ideal use. It can be read either in totality from beginning
to end or more effectively a la carte as a reference. It
can be returned to and reread as the occasion
requires. So what follows is less a reflection of
the quality of the book, than an account of this
novice educator's first reading and the resulting
inner conversation.

Fear of wrong answers
After a recent interaction with a specific
student with nonspecific career goals, I find myself "inspired" by one essay in particular, Cliff
Simon's essay, "Scenic Painting: Finding Meaning and Courage in Unexpected Places," which
recounts his interesting and diverse career as a
graphic designer-cake boss-scenic artist. This
story's applicability to the liberal arts educator's
agenda should be self-evident. However, in addition to the comforting point that it is never too
late to start over, Simon talks about a notion that
I find particularly bothersome and puzzling to
work with in the classroom: fear.
My students from local public schools appear increasingly browbeaten into finding the
right answer, with dire consequences for failure,
sometimes visited more palpably on their teachers
through standardized testing accountability. They
grow up (or don't grow) feeling the weight of assessment bearing down on them and are loathe to
take risks or defend their work.
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s p r i n g 2013
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2013
