Free-Range Drama Farm

I just read an inspiring post by David Boevers, one of my professors from Carnegie Mellon. It’s in response to the series of theatre education articles I mentioned earlier, and in it he outlines what the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama is doing to incorporate more of the creative, experimental, “thinking outside the box” aspects into their curriculum.

They’re doing some pretty amazing stuff, but the thing that really caught my eye was a course they’ve developed called OSWALD. Here’s what David has to say about it:

OSWALD. I swear to God the thought behind the OSWALD class is “help students question the status quo, think outside the box, and lead them to explore the larger questions.” Another creature largely of Joe Pino, but also Anne Mundell our Design Coordinator and then to a lesser extent the rest of us OSWALD is intended to help people learn to think, challenge assumptions, broaden horizons, and form their own measuring sticks. Like P.I.N.O. above, OSWALD stands for –REDACTED-. For a while the course was called “&^$%&#$.” The problem was that in development, as soon as we put a more conventional name on it like “charette” or “practicum” or “sandbox” we found that the name brought with it expectations. For our own ability to break the mold we had to come up with not only new content, but new language. As a sideline, the students are going NUTS trying to figure out what it stands for. I can’t tell you what they’re doing in there because it’s the first time through and I am not one of the teachers. I know the first day was a sort of scavenger hunt taking them all around campus looking for clues. There’s a day coming up where –REDACTED-. There was talk of having someone come in with no preamble and start teaching –REDACTED-. There’s no course outline; in the university catalog it says “a course sophomore Design and PTM students have to take, bring tools.” It’s taught as an 8 week intensive, meeting five days a week. Are we hitting our target? Is it working? We don’t know, but so far we’re happy with where it’s going. Evaluation will have to wait a few years I think.

I love the concept behind this - a whole course designed to make students stretch the boundaries of their thinking. Even though the implementation isn’t the same, the idea seems very much akin to the values of the Drama Farm - I think finding out more about what they’re doing could give us some great ideas for things to incorporate into our program. Of course, I won’t be able to talk about them here (just in case any CMU students happen by this blog), but if it leads me to any new Drama Farm ideas, I’ll let you know! =)

Also, you should definitely check out the rest of David’s post - the things they’re doing with the curriculum are really innovative and exciting. I loved every minute of my time at CMU, but it still makes me wish I was there right now instead of 5 years ago!

In his post about focusing on learning, Scott Walters mentions something that his mentor, Cal Pritner, always told him:

The best thing about theatre is that it’s bio-degradable.

I love that, because it’s so true. Nothing we do in the theatre is here forever - it’s what we and the audience take away from the experience that matters. So why not take risks? If you fail, it’ll all be gone soon anyway - what matters is what you learn from doing it.

…to keep you busy while I plug away at updating the website… =)

I recently discovered the blogs of two university theatre professors who (I think) have the right idea about what theatre education should be like. Tom Loughlin at A Poor Player wrote an article yesterday about whether theatre departments today are inspiring their students to create, or just to re-create. In response to Tom’s article, Scott Walters at Theatre Ideas talks about creating a learning environment, rather than focusing on producing “good shows”.

These articles are both part of a longer series that Tom and Scott have written on the current state of theatre education, and I think a lot of it is relevant to the Drama Farm and what we’re trying to achieve. Take a look, and let me know what you think!

I haven’t been writing much lately, but that’s because there’s Big Things going on here in Drama Farm Land. We’re working on a major overhaul of the website right now - it’s pretty text-heavy as it is, and we want to make it more appealing to our potential collaborators (and add some of our new chickens!) Once that’s up and running, we’ll be starting a major push to find interested college students who want to work with us on creating a program for next summer. It’s exciting stuff!

In the meantime, check out this article from Good Magazine. It’s about Project M, which is actually based on a similar concept to what we want to do with the Drama Farm: 8 design students gather for one month, with the sole purpose of accomplishing something meaningful with their design skills. It’s really exciting to see what these students create, and reading it reinforced my belief that we could do something really amazing with the Drama Farm.

Give it a read, and while you’re there, consider subscribing to Good - it’s only $20, and all of that goes to the nonprofit of your choice. You get magazines, your favorite charity gets a donation - it’s a win-win situation!

And stay tuned - you’ll be seeing big Drama Farm updates in the next week or so!

Another stunning thing that I discovered at Nonprofit Boot Camp is that there are hundreds of resources out there for nonprofit organizations - and there are even more nonprofits that don’t know those resources exist.

As I walked around the exhibit hall, I recognized the names of at least 70% of the exhibitors there; that didn’t seem all that strange to me - after all, it was a conference focused on my chosen industry. What astounded me was that most of the attendees seemed not to know about the services available to them. They had no idea that VolunteerMatch.org could fix them up with volunteers who were interested in their cause, or that The Foundation Center offers free workshops and classes in fundraising basics.

That’s when it hit me: all this research I’ve been doing for the past year has really paid off!

Once I discovered that I had all this useful knowledge about nonprofit resources, I had to do something with it! I decided that the best thing to do was to put it all in one place, where it’s easily accessible and other people can add their own resources to it as well. To that end, I proudly present:

The Giant List O’ Nonprofit Resources!

It’s a Squidoo lens where I’ve compiled all of the great nonprofit resources I’ve found so far - links, blogs, services, books, etc. - and I’ll keep adding to it as I find more. I’m encouraging other people to tell me about their own resources too - there’s no way I can find all the good stuff, and if we pool our knowledge, we’ll all end up better off in the end…

Check it out, let me know what you think, and if you’ve got a resource to add, leave it in a comment! Also, if you buy anything through the Amazon links, a small portion of the money will go to Donors Choose, and another small portion will go into the Drama Farm Startup Fund. So do some shopping - it’ll make you feel good!