OSWALD
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!
