Table Work: New Ideas for Theatre History and Musical Theatre History Pedagogy - ATHE 2022
Historical Excavation Project
Dr. Amy S. Osatinski
Assistant Professor of Theatre History
Oklahoma City University
The CourseThis assignment is from a course called Theatre History and Historiography. The class focuses on teaching students skills for engaging with theatre history as theatre artists rather than trying to cover all of theatre history as is the case in a traditional survey course. All students in the School of Theatre at OCU are required to take this course as well as a topics course of their choice in Theatre History. This course is a pre-requisite for that topics course. If you'd like to read more about the Oklahoma City University School of Theatre's Theatre History curriculum, visit this article.
The second and biggest unit in the course is called "Historical Excavation." In this unit, we start with a contemporary production (right now I am using Hamilton) and then we work our way backward through some of the antecedents of the production. For the Hamilton excavation some of the topics we explore are: Opera, Early/Golden Age Musical Theatre, Minstrelsy, Melodrama, African Dance, Music, and Performance, African American Theatre, Latinex/Latine Theatre, and Hip Hop. It is important to note that this unit comes after a unit where we uncover the multiplicity of theatre histories that exist and explode the myth that theatre began with the Greeks. Students are encouraged to think broadly about what is theatre and therefore think broadly about what can be included in the history of theatre. In this course we also spend time learning about best practices for research and the resources available on campus to find both primary and secondary sources. We talk about internet searches and Google Scholar. We learn MLA citation style and the expectations for citation for both text and images. And we learn about information literacy and how to assess a source's validity. This instruction is essential to student success for this assignment. |
The ContextThe Oklahoma City University School of Theatre has three programs, a BA in Theatre Innovation and Entreprenuership, A BFA Program in Design and Production with emphasis in many areas of technical theatre and design, and a BFA acting program with two tracks: Stage and Screen and Screen Acting. Student in all programs except for the Screen Acting track of the BFA acting program are required to take two courses in Theatre History as a part of their degree program. The BA program is currently small so most students in the courses are BFA students who are being trained as theatre artists.
The School of Theatre has a robust performance program as professional preparation is an important part of the mission of the program. BFA Students often work on multiple productions per semester and often have limited time to complete course work. This has an impact on the design of the Theatre History courses as I have to be mindful of the amount of time students have available to complete assignments. |
The Assignment
As we are working our way through our excavation together as a class, students choose a contemporary play that they would like to excavate in much the same way we are doing the excavation together. The students are asked to present their research digitally in a form of their choosing and for our final, we hold a gallery walk where each student brings a QR code and the students and invited attendees walk around and view their work.
The students are encouraged to choose something they are passionate about and to see diverse antecedents that move beyond the traditional canon of theatre history just like our antecedents in class moved beyond the traditional canon of theatre history. Students are also encouraged to think about the canon that they are creating as a cohort for this project. What do these plays say about what they think belongs in the canon?
The project is broken up into steps and the students turn in part of the project at each step. I am very clear with the students that we do this so that they can't leave all of the work to the day before the whole project is due.
If you are viewing this on a computer, the assignment should appear below. If you are viewing this on a mobile device, please click here to visit the assignment.
The students are encouraged to choose something they are passionate about and to see diverse antecedents that move beyond the traditional canon of theatre history just like our antecedents in class moved beyond the traditional canon of theatre history. Students are also encouraged to think about the canon that they are creating as a cohort for this project. What do these plays say about what they think belongs in the canon?
The project is broken up into steps and the students turn in part of the project at each step. I am very clear with the students that we do this so that they can't leave all of the work to the day before the whole project is due.
If you are viewing this on a computer, the assignment should appear below. If you are viewing this on a mobile device, please click here to visit the assignment.
Samples of Student Work
The students in the course went about completing this assignment in many different ways and there were many very successful projects. Here are an assortment of examples of student work from students who utilized various platforms for their final creation. Click the play title to visit the student's project. All work is shared with student permission:
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Kristen Chua - WELGA
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Emerson Stack - Men on Boats
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Hal Piper - Sagittarius Ponderosa
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Lauren Brown - Alice By Heart
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Cameron Brown - Topdog/Underdog
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JP Gates - Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark
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Lilly Hazelwood - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime
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Hannah Maner - Spring Awakening
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Liv McIntosh - Peter and the Starcatcher
Outcomes
Most of the students in the course found the project to be very rewarding and in reflecting on the course and the project, mentioned that they were excited to utilize the tools they gained through the process in their artistic work.
I observed that while working on the project (which spans a good portion of the semester) that the students sharpened their research skills, became adept at understanding the connection between who writes history and the stories that are recorded, and applied the things that they were learning (both content and skills) to their production work. I had many conversations about exciting discoveries that the students were making both as a part of the project and in production.
I asked the students at the end of the semester to tell me how what they have learned will impact their work as artists and if they think it is important that theatre artists study theatre history. Almost all the students in the course reported that what they learned was having a profound impact on how they approach their artistic work and that learning about history and learning about how to engage with history and research history has changed aspects of their artistic process. Almost all of the students reported that they thought it was very important to study theatre history. That was not the case at the beginning of the semester.
I observed that while working on the project (which spans a good portion of the semester) that the students sharpened their research skills, became adept at understanding the connection between who writes history and the stories that are recorded, and applied the things that they were learning (both content and skills) to their production work. I had many conversations about exciting discoveries that the students were making both as a part of the project and in production.
I asked the students at the end of the semester to tell me how what they have learned will impact their work as artists and if they think it is important that theatre artists study theatre history. Almost all the students in the course reported that what they learned was having a profound impact on how they approach their artistic work and that learning about history and learning about how to engage with history and research history has changed aspects of their artistic process. Almost all of the students reported that they thought it was very important to study theatre history. That was not the case at the beginning of the semester.