DMP Artist/Educator Statement

 Throughout this project, our group learned how to collaborate using our different backgrounds, interests, and talents. We noticed that the theater teaching majors offered key insights to the performance elements of the project. They were able to teach the English teaching majors basic key concepts such as blocking, cheating out, projecting, and incorporating physical theater alongside our scripted words. The English teaching majors offered great contributions to the script-development process itself. They were often focused on the storyline and helped to keep the project moving forward when we were stuck on a creative element. While we were in the phase of organizing ideas and trying to combine technical effects with the scripted storyline, I designed and shared the Google doc entitled “TMA457 Final Script Outline” based on the sample outlines we were given. This document allowed our group to see how all the different elements would be presented simultaneously and gave us the mental space to theorize and organize ideas even when we weren’t physically together. Using our resources, we were able to use our differences in understanding as strengths instead of points of division.

As time went on, I believe our group also improved on communication and welcoming of all ideas. We decided to focus on disabilities because almost everybody in our group is directly affected by some type of either physical or mental disability. Our goal was to raise awareness of inclusion of people with disabilities and to help erase the stigma. Our group ended up focusing on four main topics or parts of this process: invisibility, sense of self, vulnerability, and relationships with others. I think we would all agree that we had personal moments of reflection with each of these as well as group experiences that forced us to internalize what these topics really mean. There were moments when some people’s disabilities affected their opportunity to attend class and/or contribute to the project. We all had to learn how to be flexible and open as we cared for one another. At other times, some people also felt like their experiences with disabilities was underrepresented or misrepresented in our project. We had to take time to listen to one another’s ideas, concerns, and even personal stories and work together as a team to think of ways to include all perspectives and produce the most accurate depictions. This experience personally taught me what it looks like to work with those who have disabilities and to be somebody who will seek to represent their perspectives. If I were to design a modified version of our class assignment, I think I might consider assigning the students the topic of “disabilities” so that they might have some of these same experiences. I believe I am a better teacher because of these main takeaways from this project and I would like to foster a classroom environment of appropriate vulnerability, acceptance, and connections with students from many different backgrounds. The project was a great real-life application of our message and I want to see what I can do to foster a similar experience for my future students.